By the time I started planning my focus group I had done lots of reading on my research topic (see this category in my blog , especially readings on evaluating sources of information), had analysed themes in the questionnaire responses (more details in my blog post here), and had read about the interviews and focus groups too (for example blogs A and B ).
Despite all of the above, I still was a bit comprehensive when working on the FG preparations. It was going to be the first time I carried out primary research. Additionally, the focus group participants were going to be the senior members of my team. On one hand I knew it is great to have good and experienced librarians on board, as one of the focus group principles is involving people who have knowledge about your research topic. (Matthews and Ross, 2010). On the other, I thought that I may find it difficult to steer the conversation, so we stay on track with my plan. I tried not to worry too much and focus on the positive side of having a chance to talk about very important subject with my creative and experienced colleagues. Additionally, the FG was planned to be a semi-structured event, so I was prepared it may go differently to what I though it was going to be.
I limited the time of the FG to 20-25 minutes maximum in order to be able to analyse the data it was going to generate. Even if I do not manage to go through of all of the planned themes I still should have a good set of material to analyse and be able to find some answers to my research question.
My FG plan was based mainly on the reading I did on my topic and the questionnaire’s findings. Most of the themes I chose appeared in both, the reading and the questionnaire. I wrote them down to become my prompts helping with asking questions and making sure I cover the most important aspects of my topic in the FG. I also wanted to use this opportunity to ask more about my participants’ experience of teaching and ideas for sessions. This is going to be a less structured part of the FG. I hope to bring the subject of sustainability into the discussion too, as i left it out of the questionnaire.
My prompts for the FG:
- remind the participants of the research topic and ask them what they think could do at Wimbledon to improve teaching about IL. I think it will provide a good starting point and allow us to discuss some issues that came up in the questionnaire.
- make sure to ask about involving students’s voices and critical pedagogy – this was clear in the answers to the questionnaire that we value students’ perspective and want their input in the sessions. And this reflected what many librarians see as a very important aspect of our teaching that needs to be looked into and improved (Paterson and Gamtso, 2023; Reale, 2012; Ruthven 2019).
- both my readings (Chin and Lin, 2011, Faix, 2014) and the questionnaire answers talk about the importance of closer relationship between library and faculty. Is there anything that we could do to work on it together?
- I am planning to work on a session that would be based on sustainable information literacy principles. What are your thought on this subject? Is there anything you can think of now that would be useful for my plans?