This chapter presents the methods of this study, including the description of the study setting, participants, data collection, procedure, and data analysis.
Study Setting
The current study targeted at one online language learning community which was located in one of the most popular SNS in the world—Facebook. Facebook users may join one or several ―Pages‖ created by other Facebook users with similar
interests or experiences. The targeted Facebook page, ―Oh, That is Not How We Say It in English?‖ (原來這句英文不能這樣說喔？
http://www.facebook.com/poor.english)3 was an English learning community where community members gathered together in a virtual space and discussed English language problems with other members.
According to the profile page of the Facebook page, the mission of this page is to provide an online space for discussion about using English correctly. Community members can post their questions for discussion in the Facebook page. The profile picture of this Facebook page also tells the purpose of this learning community (see Figure 3.1). Besides, there are three Facebook page rules as follows: (1) Please look up the word in the dictionary or google it first. This is the way to improve your English ability; (2) If you are not sure about the answers after consulting, then drop your questions for discussion here; (3) Please keep a polite and warm manner. The Facebook page was founded in April 17, 2010 by an anonymous Facebook user and
3 The name of the targeted Facebook page is in Chinese, that is, 原來這句英文不能這樣說喔？The researcher translates the Chinese name into an English name, ―Oh, That is Not How We Say It in English?‖
the number of members has been increasing to over 245,000 in April 2011.
This study tried to elicit the community members’ experiences from the very beginning of their participation and intended to capture their changes in the
community. Therefore, this online language learning community was targeted as an ideal research site because the researcher started the study while the online
community was launched.
Figure 3.1 Screenshot of the targeted Facebook page
Community members of this Facebook page can have discussion by posting language problems or responding to other members’ questions on the ―wall‖ of the Facebook page. The ―wall‖ is a virtual place where community members can share their thoughts and ideas on any topics they are interested in. In this online learning community, any topics of language learning were posted and discussed by community members. From the online observation, it was found that discussion topics on the wall
profile picture
Wall (discussion of language problems)
Facebook page rules
of this Facebook page included English-Chinese translations, English grammar questions, culture-embedded language issues, English learning strategies, and any other issues related to language learning.
The Recruitment of Participants
The researcher started to search active members by doing online observation since April 2010 right after the online community was founded. The online
observation indicated that although the number of members was huge and has been increasing rapidly, there were a few members who participated in online discussion intensively. By observing their participation for four months, nine members were targeted because of their regular participation in online discussion. They posted questions or replied to other members’ questions at least once a week.
The nine members were informed of the purpose of the study through private message on Facebook. After they replied to the private message, the researcher sent them both Chinese and English version of consent forms by email (see Appendix A and B). Consequently, four of them who intensively answered members’ questions on the wall of this Facebook page agreed to be the participants for this study. Table 3.1 presents the basic demographic information of respective participants.
Table 3.1
Profiles of the targeted community members
Participant Age Gender Location First language D Above 50s Male Taiwan Chinese English Intermediate
Participant A lived in the U.K., Participant C in the U.S., and Participant B and D lived in Taiwan. In other words, two of them lived in an English-speaking country while two of them lived in an English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) country.
Participants were all Chinese and their first language was Chinese except Participant A who was born in the U.S. He used English as his first language and Chinese as his second language. Furthermore, their self-assessed English proficiency was
intermediate to native.
With regard to the time of their participation in this Facebook page, Participant A and B had joined the discussion of the community for four months while Participant C and D had joined for almost two months by the time of the study. That is, the duration of participants’ activity ranged from two to four months by the time the recruitment of participants took place. In spite of their different durations of participation, they constantly and regularly engaged in the discussion during their participation. Table 3.2 illustrates the number of entries from the time of their first participation to August 2010 the time they were recruited as participants in this study.
Table 3.2
Number of entries per month on the wall of the Facebook page Participant Date of first
participation
In order to set a complete picture of what and how participants did in the online
4 Participant C and D started to join the discussion in July so there were no entries during April to June.
learning community, the researcher collected data from various sources. Data was gathered from online observation, online questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews with participants. Data collection started from April 2010 and lasted to April 2011. The following sections explicitly describe the data collections which were applied in this study.
Online Observation Field Notes
The researcher visited the targeted online learning community and kept observation field notes twice a week (see Appendix C). The purpose of field notes was to record the targeted community members’ participations and interactions in the online community. The observation field note served as supplementary data for developing interview questions with participants.
Questionnaire
To gain information regarding the participants’ biographical information,
education background, English learning experiences, and perceptions of participating in the language learning community, the researcher asked the participants to complete the online questionnaire (see Appendix D) in September 2010 before the first
interview. The information acquired from the questionnaires was helpful for the researcher to have further understanding of the participants and therefore developed interview questions.
Interviews
Two interviews with each participant were guided with semi-structured open-ended questions and also guided by questions emerging during the
implementation processes. Given the participants lived in different areas (i.e. the U.K.,
the U.S., and Taiwan), the interviews were done via Windows Live Messenger (except for Participant D who preferred to have interviews by telephone). Table 3.3
summarizes ways of conducting and other related information about both the first and second interview.
Table 3.3
Summary of related information about the first and second interview
Participant Location Ways of conducting interviews Language used
A U.K. Windows Live Messenger English
B Taiwan Windows Live Messenger Chinese
C U.S. Windows Live Messenger English
D Taiwan Telephone Chinese
The average length of each online interview lasted from one and half hours to two hours and the length of telephone interview was approximately one hour. The
language used in interviews was tailored to the convenience of the participants. Some participants preferred to use Chinese while some participants felt more comfortable in using English. Among these interviews with four participants, Chinese was used in interviews with Participant B and D who lived in Taiwan while English was used with Participant A and C who lived in the U.K. or the U.S.; yet, code-switching between Chinese and English happened very often.
The first interview was conducted in October 2010 after the first six-month
online observation. The first interview aimed to probe into the following questions: (1) the experiences of participating in the online learning community, (2) the perceptions of their experiences in the online learning community, (3) factors or motivations of participating in the online learning community, and (4) other specific events which were matter to the participants (see Appendix E). The second interview was
conducted after the second six-month online observation. It was used to trace
participants’ changes of participations and perceptions of engaging in the online learning community. In the second interview, participants were asked to clarify their changes of (1) actions and (2) perceptions in their at least nine months of participating in the online learning community and furthermore, (3) underlying factors of their changes were also explored in the second interview (see Appendix F).
Data Collection Procedure
The data collection procedure undertaken in the study lasted for one year. Table 3.4 summarizes the data collected time and procedure. The researcher did online observation within the online learning community from April 2010 right after it was founded in April 17, 2010 and lasted to April 2011. After completely observing the community members’ participation in this online learning community for four months, the researcher was curious about the participants’ background information which was helpful for the researcher to develop the following interview questions. Hence, the participants completed online questionnaire regarding their basic information in September 2010 before the first interview. Then, the first interview was conducted to collect their experiences, perception, and factors in participating in the online learning community in October 2010. After the first interview, the researcher kept doing online observation for four months to perceive any changes in participants’ action,
participation or interaction in the online learning community. The perceived changes of the participants were the focus of the second interview which was conducted in April 2011 six months later after the first interview. At this particular time after these four participants had joined the online community at least for nine months, the purpose of the second interview was to capture the underlying factors of changes of community members’ participation. Through the whole data collection procedure, the researcher tried to acquire a holistic picture of things which happened in the online
learning community during a prolonged time period as it naturally occurred.
Table 3.4
Data collection period and procedure
Data collection period Method Data
Apr. 2010 – Aug. 2010 Online observation Field notes Sept. 2010 Online observation Field notes
Online questionnaire Online questionnaire Oct. 2010 Online observation Field notes
Interview #1 One audio-taped and transcribed interview and four online
interview logs Nov. 2010 – Mar. 2011 Online observation Field notes Apr. 2011 Online observation Field notes
Interview #2 One audio-taped and transcribed interview and four online
interview logs
Data Analysis
In this Facebook page, community members discussed issues related to English learning with other members. They got involved in the discussion to fulfill their needs.
Through the lens of activity theory, these community members were seen as subjects who mediated their actions in the English learning Facebook page in order to attain their goals. In the context of the study, these community members’ mediated actions were participating in the discussion of the learning community. In order to capture the holistic picture of participants’ mediated actions and its underlying factors in the learning community, the study first examined participations’ online entries to acquire a preliminary understanding of their participation and then analyzed the online observation note and the interview data which was related to their participation in the Facebook page.
Analysis of Online Entries
The analysis of online entries was guided by grounded theory approach (Strauss
& Corbin, 1990). From the analysis of their entries, participants’ mediated actions can be categorized into two main types, replying message and initiating message. The first type of participation, replying messages, included (1) answering questions, (2)
showing appreciation, and (3) chatting, while the second type of participation,
initiating messages, included (4) contributing knowledge, (5) asking questions, and (6) suggesting posting rules. Specific descriptions of the six mediated actions are
provided as follows (see Figures 3.2 to 3.7)5.
Replying messages: replying to the Facebook page members’ entries.
1. Answering questions: providing answers for community members.
2. Showing appreciation: expressing appreciation to community members who provide good answers or clear explanations to the questions
3. Chatting: going off-topic and chatting about their personal life.
Initiating messages: initiating a thread on the Facebook page wall.
4. Contributing knowledge: posting message containing English knowledge.
5. Asking questions: seeking for answers to English questions.
6. Suggesting posting rules: asking community members to follow posting rules to keep the community in order.
Figure 3.2 Example of answering questions posted by Participant B and C
5 Participants’ usernames and profile pictures in figures of the thesis are hid to protect their identities.
Figure 3.3 Example of showing appreciation posted by Participant C
Figure 3.4 Example of chatting posted by Participant C
Figure 3.5 Example of contributing knowledge posted by Participant A
Figure 3.6 Example of asking questions posted by Participant D
Figure 3.7 Example of suggesting posting rules posted by Participant A
The one-year online observation was divided into three stages, namely, April 17, 2010 to August 2010, September 2010 to December 2010, and January 2011 to April 2011. The first stage was the period of online observation for recruiting target
participants. After four-month online observation, the second stage was the time of deciding the target participants and giving the first interview. After nearly four months, the third stage started and then ended after the second interview. Comparing mediated actions emerged in three continuous stages, the changes of participants’ mediated actions and its underlying factors were readily revealed. In addition, participants’
different types of mediated actions were also compared to elicit what respective participants did in their participation of the online learning community.
Analysis of Different Data
In addition to the analysis of online entries by grounded theory, the study also adopted Engeström’s (1987, 1999) model of activity theory (see Figure 3.8) as the
analytic framework to examine different sources of data, including online entries, observation notes, and the interview data. The model of activity theory was used to identify participants’ activity systems and its tensions within their activity systems.
The six components of activity theory model, namely subject, object, mediating artifacts, rules, community, and division of labor, constantly interact with one another and intertwine together to achieve the final outcome gradually. In the current research, the six components in an activity system were operationally defined as follows:
1. Subject: four participants and their subject agency, such as their personal background and past learning experiences;
2. Object: the goals of engaging in the online community. That is, objects were community members’ expectation toward participating in the discussion of the online learning community;
3. Mediating artifacts: materials or tools utilized in the process of engaging in the online community, such as Facebook and online resources. Additionally, languages community members used in interacting with other members were also mediating artifacts;
4. Community: community members who posted online as well as those who read or replied to the entries in the online learning community;
5. Rules: the regulations and net etiquette of posting on the Facebook page.
For example, the founder of the Facebook page set rules of posting questions in the online community;
6. Division of labor: interactions and power relationships among the community members.
Figure 3.8 Six components of activity system in the current study
Data Analysis Procedure
In the process of data analysis, the researcher used analytic induction (Silverman, 2006) and constant comparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) for the analysis of the online observation field notes and interview data. Analytic induction generated themes and categories from online entries, field notes and interviews based on the six components of activity theory. Then, the data was analyzed through a constant
interplay between analysis and data (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
In this study, the researcher first examined the four participants’ online entries and categorized them into the six types of mediated actions. The mediated actions were compared according to respective participants and three observation stages. This
Communities: community
helped the researcher have a preliminary understanding of participants’ participation in the learning community. Second, the researcher further analyzed interview data according to the components of activity theoretical framework. In this process, the researcher first compiled the online interview logs and transcribed the telephone interviews. Next, the researcher read through the online logs and transcription and reviewed them for general impression of participants’ thoughts of the online
experiences. Then, the researcher read the data again and marked phrases connected to the ideas of the six factors in activity systems. Third, the researcher mapped out the relationship of the six components within individual participants’ activity systems.
During the process of coding, the researcher tended to clarify how these six
components interacted with each other and discovered the underlying factors of the interaction within an activity system.
Trustworthiness
To achieve the trustworthiness of the methodology, the current study applied two approaches: triangulation of data and member checking. According to Denzin and Lincoln (2003), ―the use of triangulation reflects the attempts to secure an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon in question‖ (p.1) and is also a good way to achieve validation. Therefore, to increase the credibility of the study in qualitative research, the study collects multiple data which consist of online observation, field notes, and interviews with the participants. These multiple data triangulated to acquire the holistic picture of the data. In addition to collecting data from multiple sources, the data, such as observation, was undertaken in a continuous way. This study kept observing the online learning community for one year and cross-checking the data presented in this study at different time which implied triangulation of a single data source.
The study also adopted member checking technique to establish the
trustworthiness. Member checking is used to verify and to avoid false interpretations of the data. It is used to ensure that the themes emerging from the data are not biased but truthful and reflect true experiences of the participants (Creswell, 2007). In this study, member checking was done after the interviews. The participants were asked to examine the accuracy of transcribed interview and online interview logs.
In the next chapter, the results of this study are presented in response to the research questions above-mentioned. In addition to exploring the mediated actions participants engaged in, activity systems of respective participants are also provided to illustrate the interaction among different elements of their system in their
participation process.
CHAPTER FOUR