E-learning encompasses a continuum of integrated educational technologies. At one end are applications like PowerPoint, which have little impact on learning and teaching strategies or the organization. At the other end are virtual learning environments (VLEs), and managed learning environments (MLEs), which can have significant impact upon learning and teaching strategies, and upon the organization (OSU, 2003; Julian et al, 2004). Broadly, OSU (2003) views the continuum of e-learning as the educational technology from the supplemental use of technology in the classroom, through blended or hybrid uses comprising a mix of face-to-face and fully online instruction, to fully online synchronous and asynchronous distance learning environments delivered to remote learners.
Methodology
My research approach is participatory research. As Crotty(1998) said, Research methodology is a strategy of plan of action that shapes our choice and use of methods and links them to the desired outcomes. Differ from other conventional research methodologies, participatory research focuses on a process of sequential reflection and action, carried out with and by local people rather than on them. It lies in the location of power in the research process. As one of the user of online learning in MA Education in the UEA, I can explore the answers to research questions by my participatory practice and interactions with others.
Methods of data collection
I、The interviews
Interviewing provides access to the context of people’s behavior and thereby provides a way for researchers to understand the meaning of that behavior. A basic assumption in in-depth interviewing research is that the meaning people make of their experience affects the way they carry out that experience (Blumer, 1969, p.2) Interviewing is like listening to the stories interviewees are telling, about their experience, about their ideas. Telling stories is essentially a meaning-making process. When people tell stories, they select details of their experience from their stream of consciousness. (Seidman, I. 2006) And from people’s stories and their ways of telling stories, included their words used in their expressions, interviewers could grasp their thoughts. Every word that people use in telling their stories is a microcosm of their consciousness (Vygotsky, 1987, pp. 236-237). It is this process of selecting constitutive details of experience, reflecting on them, giving them order, and thereby making sense of them that makes telling stories a meaning-making experience. (See Schutz, 1967, p. 12 and p. 50, for aspects of the relationship between reflection and meaning making.)The purpose of in-depth interviewing is not to get answers to questions, nor to test hypotheses, and not to ‘evaluate’ as the term is normally used. (See Patton, 1989, for an exception.) Admittedly, we do interviews as part of our research for our understanding of the research questions. It is not only a process to find answers to questions, it is also an opportunities for researchers to find other people’s ways of thinking about the issues which they both interested. At the root of in-depth interviewing is an interest in understanding the lived experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience. Being interested in others is the key to some of the basic assumptions underlying interviewing technique. It requires that we interviewers keep our ego
