Rapid Prototyping

As part of this project we agreed to start with a rapid prototyping process whereby we would create some audio podcasts that would be immediately of use to our students and get some feedback quickly.

As a number of our Masters student undertake the research part of their dissertations over the summer, and typically use a mixed methods apporach to the evaluation of their thesis, at the start of the summer a podcast was designed to help in this process. After a few false starts we created a 55 minute podcast concerning the use of interviews for qualitative research.

To do this we undertook research on useful audio recording tools, and finally selected a free, cross-platform sound editor called "Audacity" available at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/.

We wrote a number of drafts of a script that would communicate the key points concerning interviews for qualitative research, finally we recorded and edited the podcast.

Once the podcast was completed we realised that 55 minutes was too long and we needed to break it up into smaller parts. So we edited it as best we could to divide it down into three different parts, but we realised it would be necessary to re-script and re-record substantial parts of the podcasts to make each part stand-alone but also help contribute to an overall understanding of interviews.

The three parts in the final assembly are;

1. An Introduction to Interviews (16 Minutes)
2. Analysis of Interviews (14 Minutes)
3. Interview FAQs (8.5 Minutes)
   

This recordings were put up on a webpage with additional supporting materials of including; powerpoints, links, and a fun Youtube video of "Yes, Minister", all available at;
http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Podcasts/Interviews.html

The students undertaking research over the summer were informed out there podcasts, and several used them and gave us positive feedback, and asked for more such recordings.

Following this we put the podcasts up on Pod-O-Matic which is one of the most commonly used repositories for Podcasts. We have had about 25 unique visitors who have listened to the podcasts, and hope that this number will grow as time goes on;
http://ditschoolofcomputing.podomatic.com/