Collecting questionnaire and interview data: evaluating approaches to developing digital literacy skills

This case study describes a method of collecting data on students? experiences of developing digital literacy (ICT) skills as part of their course at the UK?s Open University. An online reflective quiz was integrated into three health and social care modules, offering students the opportunity both to reflect on their experience of developing skills, and to give feedback to module authors. To make this quiz engaging and motivate students to complete it we used a variety of question types, including some that were interactive. We also used the quiz, very successfully, to invite students for interview. Recruiting interviewees can be a difficult process, especially with distance learners. Although there was no evidence of higher response rates, there are indications our data quality may be better than often achieved with standard questionnaires. Respondents value the reflective and interactive aspects of the quiz. Some question types, while improving the respondent experience, require extra work to extract data for analysis, but we suggest the effort is worthwhile in terms of the quality of data generated. Our method reaches all students on a module, not just a sample, and allows us to collect longitudinal data from repeated module presentations.