Student Use of Digital Resources - Student Focus Group Pre-Survey

NSDL-Student-Study-Focus-Group-Protocol-Tell-Me-Aboutrevised511 Focus Group Protocol for Tell Me About Group Glenda Morgan, Chuck Dziuban, Flora McMartin, Joshua Morrill & Patsy Moskal INTRODUCTION: This research is being conducted by Glenda Morgan from the Office of the Chief Information Officer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign along with Charles Dziuban and Patsy Moskal from the University of Central Florida, Alan Wolf from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and two independent consultants, Flora McMartin and Joshua Morrill. You are being asked to participate in a research study on how students from Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) disciplines use digital resources and collections of those resources to enhance their learning and understanding. Question 1. When you want to learn more about something, e.g., the history of the atom bomb, or how to do something, like how to bake a cake, what do you do? 2. When you’re looking for information or resources to help you with academics or your schoolwork, where do you start? For example, if there is a concept that you don’t understand or a class that you are having difficulty with, what would you do? Prompts a. Do you use any Internet resources? Which ones? b. Why? For those who mention that they go online. a. When you are starting to look online do you always start with Google or some other search engine? b. Where do you start if it is not with a search engine? c. If you don’t find what you want on the Internet, what do you do? 3. Just say you’re looking for some information and resources to help you with a class assignment. If you’ve been doing a search in Google and you find a really good site, do you keep looking at that site and stop there or do you go back to Google? a. What sorts of things make a site good for finding information useful in your academic work? b. What sorts of things make you dislike or leave a site? c. Say you found a great site with material that would be really useful in a course you’re taking now, would you ever go back and look at that site again? d. Would you bookmark it? How would you remember it? e. Would you tell any of your friends or classmates about the site? How? 4. When you go online to find information or a. For example dome people value the NSDL-Student-Study-Focus-Group-Protocol-Tell-Me-Aboutrevised511 Question study aids to help you with a class in your major can you name the top three things you look for in a site or a resource? 5. Some students share learning materials and ideas by participating in learning communities (or study groups?). Are you part of such a community either face-toface or online? 6. We are going to shift now from work that you do on your own or with friends or classmates to what your professors or instructors do. Think of a science, technology or engineering course you are taking this semester/quarter, how does your instructor use technology in the course? Prompts design of the site or the speed with which they can find it? b. Do these requirements, or the things that you value in a search exercise change by the type of project that you are engaged in at the time, e.g., problem set, design problem, paper, etc.? a. What do you share with this group and what do you gain from participation? b. How did the group form? How do members of the group identify one another? a. E.g., does he or she use digital resources in some way? (Examples of digital resources are: images, animations, simulations, online videos, online tutorials, problem sets, libraries)? b. Do instructors mostly use them in instruction, assign them as homework or recommend them as additional resources? c. Are they generally textbook resources or are they from another source completely? How do you access them? d. If they're from another source, do you remember some of the places they’re from? 7. We’ve talked a lot today about online videos, simulations, animations, images, online problem sets etc., is there a way that you can describe those resources that would make sense to students in your class? 8. Given what we are trying to do in our study, do you have any suggestions about what sorts of things we should be looking for? Places we should be looking? People NSDL-Student-Study-Focus-Group-Protocol-Tell-Me-Aboutrevised511 Question we should be speaking to? Prompts