After identifying the aim of the investigation, I had to select the research method that best suited my inquiry. My choice of a mixed methods design dominated by the qualitative phase was motivated by the exploratory nature of the problem, which can be studied effectively by qualitative inquiry (Dörnyei, 2007). Besides, the limited number of language
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teachers who claim to be expert users of technology in higher education and who were in the focus of the study, made a deeper and richer inquiry possible. Thus, to answer the research questions I developed a semi-structured interview schedule. However, to collect information about the use of specific tools, the reasons why teachers started to use them, as well as the purposes they use them for; a follow-up questionnaire was designed based on the data that emerged from the interviews. Both instruments were piloted with one expert and one participant. In this section first the characteristics of the participants will be detailed, then the interview schedule and the questionnaire will be described, followed by the administration procedures.
6.2.1 Participants
The ten language teachers who were the participants of the third phase of the research were selected by purposeful sampling so that they could provide rich data about the use of technology in language teaching. The criterion for the selection was that the teachers should have considerable experience in the integration of ICT into teaching. The participants were contacted at conferences and workshops on educational technology personally or by email. At the same time, the sampling was homogeneous from the aspect of the type of education since the aim of the project was to collect data about language teaching in higher education.
However, within higher education maximum variation sampling (Dörnyei, 2007) was applied to ensure a great variety of data based on different forms of experience. Although all participants were language teachers, they were working at six higher education institutions in Budapest, teaching different subjects including German (one participant), English (general or professional) or English language teaching (ELT) methodology (eight participants). One English teacher (Rob) was not teaching at the time of the interview but was employed as an e-learning advisor. Most of the participants were Hungarian native speakers, apart from two native English teachers. The characteristics of the participants can be seen in Table 24.
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Participants of Phase 3
Phase Name Age Sex Native language
Teaching experience (years)
ICT experience (years)
Subjects taught Pilot
phase
Sue 32 female Hungarian 10 10 ICT methodology
Main study
Kim 63 female Hungarian 40 15 general, IT and
business English
Sam 37 male Hungarian 13 13 business German
Kate 52 female Hungarian 28 13 ICT in ELT
methodology
Zoe 48 female English 24 10 ELT
methodology, general English and ESP
Jill 44 female Hungarian 22 5 ELT
methodology, general English
Jane 50 female Hungarian 15 3 general, IT and
business English
Pat 44 female Hungarian 19 10 ESP, ICT in ELT
methodology
Ian 51 male English 26 8 ELT methodology
Rob 43 male Hungarian 20 6 e-learning advisor
6.2.2 Instruments
In order to gain insight into language teachers’ motivations to use virtual learning environments (VLEs) and web 2.0 tools at different tertiary level institutions in Budapest, I developed a semi-structured interview guide. The interview started with questions about the teachers’ background, including where and what they teach, how long they have been teaching, whether they participate in teacher training and research projects. The questions in the main part of the interview were grouped around six topics: teachers’ use of the internet
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and web 2.0 tools for personal purposes, the tools they use for teaching, the reasons for their use, students’ and colleagues’ reactions to the integration of technology into teaching and the future of language teaching. The semi-structured format allowed me to supplement the main questions with various probes that used what the participant said as a starting point. In this way the emergent nature of qualitative data could be enhanced (Dörnyei, 2007). In the end, teachers also had the opportunity to add anything they felt would be relevant to the topic and had not been asked about. The questions were in Hungarian as most participants were Hungarian, and then they were translated into English for the two native English speaker participants. The first draft of the interview guide was piloted with one expert who was asked to comment on the questions, which resulted in minor changes in the sequence and wording of the questions. Subsequently, a pilot interview was conducted with one of the participants.
Based on her feedback, the questions were fine-tuned and finalized. The interview schedule can be seen in Hungarian and in English in Appendix G and H.
Based on the results of the interviews, I developed a follow-up questionnaire, which consisted of three sections and 41 items. The first section contained 16 Likert-scale questions about the frequency of use of 16 tools, the second section had 6 Likert-scale questions about the influences that made teachers start to apply these tools and the third section contained 15 Likert-scale questions about the purposes teachers can use the tools for. While participants had to indicate their choices on a five-point scale in the first section, questions in the other two sections offered only three options. Each section contained one open-ended question to generate any further tools, influences or purposes and the last question invited comments about the questionnaire or the interview. Similarly to Phase 1 and 2, I followed the checklist about constructing questionnaires provided by Dörnyei (2010, p. 127) during the development process. The piloting of the items followed the same procedure as the piloting of the interview schedule. First, the questions were checked by an expert, which was followed by the
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rewording of problematic items, then the questionnaire was piloted by one participant, who was asked to think aloud while filling in the questionnaire. The final form of the questionnaire in Hungarian and its English translation can be seen in Appendix I and J.
6.2.3 Data collection
Before the interview I initiated contact with the teachers mostly by email or personally at conferences and asked them if they would be willing to participate in an interview. After gaining consent, I requested a visit to their institution to conduct the interview. Most interviews including the pilot interview were held at the participating teachers’ institutions and were recorded with a mobile phone with the consent of the participants. One interview was carried out in the cafeteria of a library at the request of the participant. The average length of the interviews was between 35-45 minutes. At the end of each interview I asked the participant to complete a short questionnaire in the future about the same topic. Several weeks after the interviews when the results were analysed and the questionnaire was developed, I sent the link to the web-based electronic questionnaire to the participants along with an email asking them again to fill in the questionnaire.
6.2.4 Data analysis
The interview data were subjected to qualitative content analysis using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Maykut & Morehouse, 1994) with the help of a co-researcher. The interviews were meticulously transcribed first, then categorised and coded in relation to the research questions. As a first step meaning units were identified and highlighted by colour codes in the transcripts, then they were categorized.
Categories and meaning units were discussed with the co-researcher and unified. At the same time new categories were created and an attempt was made to find emerging themes and patterns. Finally, the categories were analysed and evidence from the results of the
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questionnaires were sought in support of the findings of the interviews. As only six teachers filled in the questionnaire, no quantitative analysis of the results will be provided.