Wk 6 & 7 Reflections - Interviewing an Innovator

The last two weeks have been extremely valuable giving me an opportunity to interview an innovator. Although I initially struggled to identify who would be a good candidate to interview, fortunately a work colleague was willing to share her recent successes.

The innovation I investigated involved using forums to conduct pre-course learning activities prior to attending a week residential course on the subject of ‘Introduction into E-Learning’. Although the concept is certainly not new for the likes of the Open University, I choose to interview this innovator as it was the very first time discussion forums have been used to engage a group of MOD learners to conduct pre-course learning activities on the Defence Learning Portal.

I approached the interview by initially requesting answers to a set of questions send via email having previously agreed my rationale to gathering data. This enabled me to read through the interviewee’s responses and research interesting line of enquiry before re-engaging with a final face-to-face interview. In my research I found several good examples which identify the benefits of using forums to connect distance learners and shared this information with the interviewee with a view to help improve her academic grounding. This was well received and we are now both working towards advertising these benefits to encourage other training organisations to seek similar learning opportunities.

All going well I should have the TMA02 report completed by the end of the week. I hope fellow H807ers find this activity as enjoyable and rewarding as I have?