Offering the foundations for innovative research methods
Increasingly, research projects are using technology in their work – maybe to support them in collecting and storing data, to offer assistance in communicating with the research participants, or to publicise the project’s findings.
For some years, research projects within the ESRC’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) have been offered a helping hand with these tasks (and many more) by their Virtual Research Environment (VRE). From the start, they’ve been supported by a CARET team, researching their needs and designing software to help.
Four years on, researchers are using the VRE to support project management, communication and engagement with research participants. Teams collect, store and analyse qualitative and quantitative data, take part in collaborative drafting and writing, and publicise project activities using news and email tools. Groups of researchers have established ‘worksites’, working together on collaborative writing tasks such as producing conference papers, drafting responses to consultation and preparing research proposals. Meanwhile, some seminar series use the VRE to allow online collaboration between face to face meetings.
For other groups and networks, the VRE has become a communications hub: members rarely ‘log in’ but administrators can use the browser-based tools to manage email lists, make announcements to members, and offer access to documents.
From being a simple ‘helping hand’, TLRP researchers have taken their VRE further, using it as the foundation for innovative research designs. Through the VRE, research participants can engage anonymously or pseudonymously in online discussions, and it has also been used as part of a pilot evaluation of innovative online consultation processes. This has allowed researchers to explore new patterns of research engagement, associated ethical issues and ‘mixed methods’ research approaches in which digital data is analysed alongside those collected ‘face-to-face’.
Along with the TLRP’s DSpace Digital Repository (http://www.tlrp.org/dspace), which contains over 1200 research publications and other project outputs, the VRE has been an integral part of this major research programme.
To find out more, and to see the VRE in action, go to http://groups.tlrp.org/
