Monthly Archives: March 2016

The fifth interview

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The fifth interview was very interesting. The participant was a team member with a very different perspective on the question.

The participant currently works in a customer facing role and has had a lot of student interaction. This has changed though over the past three to four years as a result of the introduction of technologies particularly web based services that allow students to upload their work electronically which previously had to be submitted on paper. The paper had to be processed, catalogued passed on to markers, returned to the administration team and returned to students.

This process was very labour intensive and made the participant feel underappreciated especially when it came to how they felt they were viewed by other staff – particuallary academic staff.

The impact of technology on the team has been to free up time for the participant to spend more time with students and they felt that this allowed them to provide a much better and more personalised service than before,

The number of students coming in person has significantly reduced and this has meant that those coming in have more complex issues to deal with. This has allowed the participant to develop better customer service skills. The participant mentioned that they felt that the team had developed a better skill set and was more appreciated by academic staff as a group that had real expertise – rather than just being paper pushers.

The participant said that the SID system is a success but it is early days and there is a need to constantly reinforce the message – with staff and students – that it should be used.

This was a very interesting interview because the participant is a direct user of the SID system and had some useful insights. Once again I felt the interview went well and there were some very useful convergent points raised.

The fourth interview

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The fourth interview was with a person was quite different from the three earlier ones. The main difference was the three earlier interviews were with managers the fourth was with a team member who had quite a different perspective on the question.

The interviewee was much more focused on operational issues and talked about team structure issues. The issue of staff changes was raised and how these have had an impact on the team and its work. The participant mentioned that over the years the institution has discussed many organizational level changes but many have not been implemented and many others have been only partially implemented.

On one occasion a merger between two teams was stopped due to teams objecting to job changes and the need to develop common practices. This resulted in some conflicts developing due to a lack of openness to new ways of working.

Over time jobs have changed though mainly due to the impact of new technologies being introduced. Technologies that have reduced the need to handle paper. The technologies have increased the skill level of the team and this has in turn built the confidence level of team members who now have more time to provide better customer support.

The use of the student information desk (networked communication system) was raised and the difficulty of building a supportive network of users and how difficult it is to get user buy in. It is felt by the participant that the SID system creates an impersonal service – unlike direct email communication – even though the SID system is seen as a better system than email.

I found that this interview worked well probably because I’ve done a few now and am getting more confident about the process. The data collected is becoming very relevant to the project and ties in very well with relevant theories.

The third interview

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I carried out the third interview yesterday afternoon. The participant talked about changes to the team that they manage and who the changed have occurred over the past five years. Changes include changes to the structure of the team, staff leaving and being replaced and the introduction of technology.

The participant was not sure at the beginning of the interview where to start. The participant decided to start with the question “Who is my team?”. This was a great starting point for an answer about identity and multiple identities.

The participant mentioned that they are a member of four teams each of which has a different identity. The issue of working practices and the variety of technologies entering the team were mentioned.

Issues of structure change at team, department and institutional levels were mentioned. Work complexity was mentioned as an influence on the team and how the team functions.

The introduction of the student information desk was raised as an issue for team members and the different ways that staff members have responded to the system i.e. some consider it to be the enemy and others a member of the team. The view that technology has increased workloads rather than reducing it.

The participant mentioned that staff tended to be more open to adopting new technology and innovations if the new technology replaced a manual system or was clearly an improvement otherwise staff would be inclined to see the technology as a problem or be seen by those introducing the technology as blockers or resistors.

The participant mentioned that there needs to be a fit between the technology, the team and the organisation in order for it to be accepted. The need for a technology champion was mentioned as a way of helping the team adopt the technology.

After the interview I reaslied that there is a need to expand the interview scope from the four originally selected teams to include the IT manager who was responsible for the implementation of the student information desk.

Looking at the project through an ANT lens I need to start ‘following the Actors’ a bit more closely. I will be speaking to the IT team manager in the next few weeks, tracing the documentation around the initial idea for the information desk and how the system was translated from the initial idea into the actual application.

I want to investigate how the decision making process and internal relationships influenced the procurement, the project design, planning, training and implementation. I also want to investigate whether the information desk was seen as being aligned with the interests of team members who would be using the system.

The second interview

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The second went a little better than the first. The main difference between the first and the second is I was a better prepared. I amended some of the documentation after comments from the first interview. For example the first participant didn’t want to sign the Participant Consent form because there was a section for a witness to sign. The participant commented that the interview couldn’t be confidential if the form was witnessed.

I have now removed the witness signature. The second participant was happy to sign the form and the interview started. I repeated the same procedure as the first interview, leaving the question on the table in front of the participant.

Another change I made was I made use of the Sonocent text blocking function. This worked really well in allowing me to write text notes against the recorded voice.

The interview lasted about 50 minutes. The participant was happy to speak openly about the team and covered all the points I needed. I have found interviewing to be quite tiring. The need to listen carefully and manage the recordings and type notes is quite strenuous.

I have found that the participants enjoy the experience of being interviewed and it’s interesting how much information people will provide when asking just one question. This seems to create a space where people feel they can open up freely.

The first interview

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I finally managed to carry out my first interview. After about two months of trying to get people to engage with the project I decided to change my research design slightly. Originally I had planned to set up a Convergent Interview reference group but it was not possible to gather the group together. The people selected were interested but did not have the time to come together as a group due to work loads.

The slight change I made was to interview the people who had agreed to be on the reference panel. I reasoned that as they were interested in being on the reference panel they would be interested in being interviewed. I was correct. I now have three interview participants and have completed two interviews and have a third lined up for Friday this week.

The first interview went very well. The participant was asked to answer one question and a few supplemental questions. I typed the questions and printed them on a landscape piece of paper and left it on the table so that the interviewee could keep the question in mind so that they stayed focused.

I was slightly concerned that my interviewee would not remember to come or would just not bother. The participant was about five minutes late but did arrive. I was both happy and disappointed. I asked the participant to sign the release form and then started the interview.

I explained the purpose of the research and then asked the participant to read the question. The participant spent nearly 50 minutes talking about his team. The answers given aligned really well with the three theories underpinning the research. Completing the interview I realised that the readings I have been doing for the literature review made complete sense. I now believe the project will actually provide some interesting insights into teams, technology and identity.