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RESEARCH PRODUCT

A Participant Experience Method for Illustrating Individuals’ Experiences in the Course of an Evolving Virtual Learning Community

subject

description

Early definitions of virtual learning communities often abstracted participants from their offline environments. However, often students’ virtual and physical environments are not essentially separated. Likewise, scholars should become more sensitive to and aware of their research principles and practices guiding studies in virtual settings and especially, in the intersections of on- and offline contexts. The participant experience method discussed in this paper, grants access also to the events outside the virtual learning context connecting various social settings and simultaneous events. However, the use of participant experience methods requires critical reflection during its various phases and levels of implementation. Firstly, during the fieldwork, the relationship between researcher and researched should be reflected and the representation and reconstruction of these, often intense, field experiences into the field texts should be focused on. Secondly, the process and the inquiry that moulds the field documents into the research account should be highlighted. In order to represent both the researchers’ voices and the voices of the other social actors from the field, a multi-voiced analysis implemented as a split-text narrative is proposed.