Using ICT within the PE curriculum

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http//telematics.ex.ac.uk
http//www.molli.org.uk
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What is a focus group?

•  Group interviews with target group sample
• Open discussions on topics of interest to
  researcher
• The topic itself must engage the participants.
  (Morgan, 1988)
• A form of qualitative research
• a lively conversation among friends
• tape recorded (not videoed), plus paper evidence
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http//telematics.ex.ac.uk
http//www.molli.org.uk
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Focus group pros

•   quick, cheap, easy to set up an effective
  small-scale survey requiring low budget
• opportunity to observe a large amount of
  interaction on a topic over a limited period of
  time.
• permits an open survey that allows researchers
  to adopt an openness to alternatives (Krueger,
  1997)
• generates users spontaneous reactions and
  ideas through interaction between participants
  (Nielsen, 1993)
• complements other data collection methods e.g
  questionnaires, interviews, observation
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Focus group cons

• not natural settings
• do participants say what they think or what they
  think you want to hear?
• do groups reflect individual opinions or group
  behaviour (tribal instinct?)?
• may go off track if not managed carefully
• may fail if groups doesnt gell
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http//telematics.ex.ac.uk
http//www.molli.org.uk
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• Focus Group 1 educators
• Context setting
• Visit and intro to Yoruba collection (curator)
• Presentation of artist in residence (ed officer)
• video of Emmanuel Jegede sculpting, poetry
  reading, printing
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• Brainstorm
• Pairs brainstorm to sheet off-line ideas,
  on-line ideas
• Set time limit 5 mins
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• Brainstorm
• Pairs brainstorm to sheet off-line ideas,
  on-line ideas
• Set time limit 5 mins
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• Selecting ideas stage 1
• Ask pairs to choose up to 10 best ideas put onto
  index cards (GS)
• Set time limit 10 mins
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• Selecting ideas stage 1
• Ask pairs to choose up to 10 best ideas put onto
  index cards (GS)
• Set time limit 10 mins
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• Selecting ideas stage 3
• Collect cards into packs
• Add in 8 cards with ideas previously generated by
  MOLLI ed officer and MOLLI researcher
• Go through each card as quickly as possible
  getting accept reject or maybe verdicts from
  plenary. Join ideas (cards ) together as
  requested.
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In practice this took longer than the ten minutes
planned, rejected too few ideas (3) but became
the session where ideas were most fully
explored.
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• Selecting ideas stage 4
• Split back into new pairs
• Pair 1 get on-line deck of cards, pair 2 get
  off-line deck of cards
• Groups asked to set out cards in a priority
  pyramid. i.e. best idea at top next best ideas at
  next level and so on. Some recombinations of
  ideas took place
• Ask groups to add in salt line above which they
  would absolutely like to see the ideas be
  implemented
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• Focus Group 2 parents
• Nearly identical process (shorter)
• Ideas generated by first focus group added into
• card decks prior to accept/reject sorting
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• Focus Group 2 parents
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• Final stage
• Compare results from both groups to determine
• basic content specifications and implement
• draft design of WWW site prior to pilot testing.
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Yoruba Focus Group Procedure

• References
• Krueger, R. (1998). Analyzing and Reporting Focus
  Groups. Thousand Oaks Sage
• Morgan, D. (1988). Focus groups as qualitative
  research. Sage University Paper Series on
  Qualitative Research Methods, Vol. 16.Beverly
  Hills Sage
• Nielsen, J. (1993). Usability engineering. San
  Diego Academic Press
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