cpetrachenko
commented
9 years ago This section may need some support/clarification based on what comes from the above.
"\section{Interview Participants} I conducted interviews with 13 students from SE, 1 of which was in the DS course, alongside 6 others from DS. These interviews began at the midway point of the semester and concluded at the end of the semester."
You said that you recruited people at the first class, and then again in the last class. But then it's fuzzy as to who participated when.
The study began by sending a survey to everyone that signed up at the first class? "Our study began by sending a preliminary survey to the students, asking them to discuss their opinions on learning tools in general, and on GitHub as a specific learning tool. This was distributed to all students who signed up to participate, and would guide the questions asked in the next phase.
Perhaps I'm getting stuck on the "main means of collecting data"...but the next little bit doesn't really jive. Did you interview everyone who did the survey, as well as people who signed up in the last class? "As the main means of collecting data, I interviewed the participants who were willing to discuss their experiences and opinions. Interviewees were recruited from the participant pool who volunteered to participate during the recruitment phase. As such, respondents of the preliminary survey did not necessarily participate in future phases of data collection. Interviews began midway through the semester and continued until the conclusion of the course. Most interviews with the students were one-on-one, however, due to scheduling reasons, some students requested to be interviewed as a group of 2 or 3. Interviews with the students lasted 20-30 minutes and were all conducted face-to-face in a meeting room. Audio from every interview was recorded with participant consent, and I recorded notes for reference. The interviews were semi-structured based on 12 guiding questions (listed in Appendix B) and I probed further with additional questions as deemed appropriate. This supported the exploratory nature of the work and allowed for the discovery of interesting insights."