To achieve the study goals, the study constructed the study tools in order to plan and design the research methods. This chapter presented the research methods, sample and instrumentation implemented for this study. Furthermore the research procedure, data collection procedures, reliability and validity and data analysis of this study are specified in this chapter.
Research Method
In order to fulfill the research purpose, a qualitative approach was chosen for this study. This study used interviews for data collection. The interviews consisted of open ended questions also known as in-depth interviews in order to obtain in-depth information about the participants’
knowledge, beliefs and feelings about a particular topic.
By listening the opinions of experienced teachers, researchers can obtain important insights in terms of their motivations for staying in the professions, furthermore such information could aid administrators, trustees and teachers themselves to increase faculty satisfaction and effectiveness in order to produce positive outcomes for the students’ education (Marston &
Brunett, 2009). The individual in-depth interviews enables interviewers to explore deeply into social and personal matters. Interviews are one of the most well-known strategies used for data collection in qualitative research (Dicicco & Crabtree, 2006). The in-depth interviews instrument used in qualitative research can provide important results that can better show the whole picture of the online teacher’s satisfaction factors. Using a qualitative approach was important for this study because it allowed the researcher to carefully listen the point of views of the research participants in terms of their experience teaching mandarin Chinese online courses.
Participants
Among all language centers in Taiwan, the Mandarin Training Center from NTNU was selected because the center represents one of the world’s oldest and most distinguished programs for Mandarin Chinese language study. By the time this research was conducted, this language center was the only language center in Taiwan who used an online platform where foreign students can register to study mandarin Chinese through online courses. The mandarin training center was the only language center in Taiwan that had teachers who didn’t only teach face-to-face lessons but also through online mandarin courses.
32
Therefore, this study was limited to the mandarin training center of NTNU. The total population of teachers who was working in the mandarin training center as online teacher was 70.
This study implemented purposive sampling in order to help select appropriate interviewees for this study.
Criteria of Participant Selection
This research used the following criteria selection of the participants for the interviews: (1) they were online teachers who were teaching online courses in the mandarin training center of NTNU; (2) who had more than one year of experience in teaching online mandarin Chinese courses. The number of participants for the interviews of this study was set to 10.
Processes of Participant Invitation
Therefore, the researcher used the following procedure to select and invite the participants of the interview; the researcher visited the department of online education, also known as MTC online department, of the mandarin training center and the department informed about this study.
The researcher established close contact with the technical clerk of the mandarin training center online department who facilitated the whole interview process.
The researcher asked for assistance to find online teachers, then the technical clerk informed by email every online teacher about this study. The online teachers who were interested in this study contacted the researcher and the technical clerk. The teachers who were interested in this study, were contacted by the researcher and the individual interviews for this study were arranged by the researcher in different time and settings. The Table 3.1 shows the summary of the interviewees in this study, which revealed the critical information for research reference such as gender, education level and work experience. The following table showed detailed information about the online teachers based on the type of course they were teaching, their online teaching experience, overall teaching experience and education level.
33
experiences with online courses, the factors and levels of satisfactions.
A pilot study was conducted with two online teachers of the mandarin training center. The pilot study questions included five questions which aimed to investigate the online teacher satisfaction with online courses. The pilot study questions of this study are shown on Appendix A.
After the pilot study was conducted, it provided important data about the levels of satisfaction and satisfaction elements but did not provide enough information about the teacher experiences with online courses and about the suggestions of teachers, therefore, the pilot study questions
34 were modified.
The number of questions for the new interview questions was set to ten in order to investigate the teacher experiences with online courses, levels of satisfaction, factors of satisfaction and suggestions, therefore five new questions were added. For the final interview version, four questions were designed to investigate the teacher experiences with online courses, two questions were designed to explore the levels of satisfaction of the teachers, two questions were designed to explore the satisfaction factors of teachers with online courses and two questions were designed to investigate the teacher suggestions. The final interview questions were attached in Appendix B of this study.
Before conducting the interviews, expert advice and consultation were used to obtain guidance from the advisor professor and subject matter experts from NTNU were selected during the development of this study. The modified interview questions were validated by the experts and mentioned that the questions matched the research questions and interview questions.
After the questions were approved by the experts, the researcher contacted a Taiwanese graduate student from the department of foreign languages of National Chengchi University who is fluent in English, mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese. This graduate student had teaching experience of English as a second language and also had experience as a translator. The researcher invited him to join this study to help in the data collection process as a translator and interview assistant. The researcher also chose him because he conducted research studies in the past, therefore his experience and help through the data collection of this study were important.
The questions were translated from English into mandarin Chinese and from English into mandarin Chinese by the Taiwanese graduate student. The English and mandarin Chinese interview questions are shown in Appendix B and Appendix C of this study.
Data Collection
The interview sessions included individual in-depth interviews that were conducted by the researcher along with an interview assistant in different times and settings. The researcher interviewed the participants based on questions that were reviewed by experts who considered them valid for this study. Before collecting the qualitative data, the instructions of the interview process were explained to every participant. The interviewees were informed that their names
35
would be kept confidential and that pseudonyms would be used to type the findings of this study, but information such as education level and work experience would be reported in this study.
The interview questions were sent to the teachers in advance in mandarin Chinese language.
It gave them time to understand the content for more in-depth information and enabled them to know better the purpose of the interviews. The interviews were conducted in mandarin Chinese language by the researcher despite the fact that every interviewee could speak English. With permission of the interviewees, every interview was recorded using an audio digital recorder. To store the data, a digital audio recorder device along with a recorder software were used to record every interview conducted by the researcher. After all the interviews were done, the Taiwanese student transcribed verbatim the interviewee’s answers by closely listening the recordings and later translated them into English. The English transcripts allowed the researcher to analyze the data for this study.
The transcripts were coded using the windows computer software atlasti, which is well-known in qualitative research, in order to facilitate the data management. The atlasti software has been used in many qualitative studies to support the coding process because it allows the researcher to code the data (Yang & Wildemuth, 2009). The researcher decided to use atlasti software in order to properly manage the text documents and also because it is suitable for coding, taking and reviewing notes.
The ten interviews of this study were conducted from the eighteenth day of the month of May until the sixth day of the month of June. The detail information of each interview was listed in Table 3.2.
36
Quentin Isaac May 18 10:00am 56 minutes Heping Campus Catherine
Jaclyn Rose June 6 5:50pm 41 minutes Gongguan campus
Validity and Reliability
In order to enhance the validity of this study, the researcher ensured that the interview questions responded to the research questions. The content validity was determined by experts who read precisely the interview questions. The instrument was revised at least eight times based on expert feedback which provided important suggestions to the researcher. This study conducted a pilot test to establish construct validity. A pilot study tested on two online mandarin Chinese teachers was conducted and it was useful to confirm if the instrument was good enough for this study. After the answers of the pilot study were obtained, the questions were modified in order to obtain enough data for this study.
The reliability ensures that the findings are consistent and that if the same study was repeated the same results would be obtained (Shenton, 2003). In order to enhance the reliability of this study, the researcher used the standard data analysis technique. The collected data for this study was transcribed, classified, coded and then categorized. The codes were continuously reviewed by the researcher in order to ensure their consistency. By following this procedure, the consistency and reliability of the analyzed data was ensured.
Research Procedure
The first step of the research methods was developing the research topic. Then the researcher developed the purpose of the study along with the research questions. After reading education and technology literature, the researcher decided to investigate the mandarin Chinese teachers’
37
satisfaction factors of online mandarin Chinese courses. Then the researcher designed the instrument to be used for the data collection. In the next step, the researcher interviewed the participants of this study in order to gather information for this study. As soon as the data were collected, the researcher typed and summarized the participants’ information in order to analyze the results. The final step of this research included the findings and conclusions of the study. The procedure of this research is shown below in Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1. Research procedure.
Data Analysis
The following analysis of qualitative data was used in this study in order to provide an
38
accurate representation of teacher’s satisfaction factors of online mandarin Chinese courses. This study used the well-known software for qualitative research known as atlasti for data analysis.
The qualitative data were first reviewed and then organized. The data was analyzed and arranged during in a first stage and a second stage.
In the initial stage, the relevant statements of the transcripts were underlined and afterwards were sorted. Every interviewee were given pseudonyms according to the coding number and statements coded according to the answers of the transcriptions. This was followed by their pseudonyms, then there were numbers that indicated the categories, themes and key concepts.
The coding letters for interviewee 1 was QI, for interviewee 2 was CG, for interviewee 3 was HA, for interviewee 4 was MF, for interviewee 5 was MZ, for interviewee 6 was QZ, for interviewee 7 was RL, for interviewee 8 was XH, for interviewee 9 was XY, for interviewee 10 was JR. An example of a coding number of the teachers was MZ-1-1-1.
In the second stage, categories were highlighted from the transcripts. Labels were made by the researcher and then were classified into themes. Finally, the emerging themes from the categories helped in providing answers to the research questions. The statements of interviewees who had similar answers were put together into the same category. The coding sample of the initial stage of the coding process for the first theme of this study was presented on the figure 3.
2 while the coding sample for the second stage was presented on the figure 3.3. The entire coding process is shown on the appendix section of this study. The examples of the initial coding stage were shown in Figure 3.2.
39
Code Coding number
… The school recently created workplaces for the online courses. I joined that work, then the school helped me
XY-1-1-1
I also joined. In the workplace, I designed learning materials with teachers. All the teachers who joined were being prepared
XH-1-1-1
They were interested in teachers, they needed teachers.. Then they called me to go and help
MF-1-1-1
Figure 3.2. Initial coding process.
The examples of the second stage of coding were shown in Figure 3.3.
Theme category Key concepts Figure 3.3. Second stage of the coding process.
Summary
This study investigated the satisfaction of mandarin Chinese online teachers with online Coding numbers of
40
courses at mandarin training center in Taiwan. The interviews used in this study provided data about the satisfaction of teachers with online mandarin Chinese courses. The third chapter defined the research methods and procedures used to accomplish the goal of the purposed study, which was to explore the satisfaction of teachers with online mandarin Chinese courses at mandarin training center. The data collection, data analysis, reliability and validity were described. The results of the data analysis are presented in the following chapter of this study.
41