I found this workshop to be very helpful! I also found it to be pretty time consuming, but it did prove to be good practice for the interviewing I’ll be doing for my research project. Through this workshop I have discovered that the interviewing process isn’t as easy as I had previously thought it to be. I had no idea that I’d have to include such things as an orientation report in my interview. I really just thought interviewing was asking questions and getting answers.. plain and simple. Guess it’s not! I found module 4 of this workshop to be the most helpful as it defined and gave examples of the different types of interviewing and question you one could use. A suggestion I would have for this workshop is to just have 1 interview required to finish the task. 2 seems a bit much.. but maybe I just feel this swamped because I am taking two of your i classes at once.

This interview workshop was helpful for me. I learned new aspects in how to approach with interview questions, settings, and audience. In this workshop, it made me realize what kind of questions are important for me to cut to the point and ask the audience. Although it is hard to just cut to the point and ask question, I found that it is necessary to do so without wasting mine and the audience’s time. The interview workshop exercise allowed me to interviewed some friends and it gave a really good practice in how to ask good and relevant questions. I found module 5 to be very helpful for me personally just because sometimes I freeze up and go blank. In that module, it taught me how to conduct interview professionally. Overall, this workshop was great except it was hard to find audience to interview.

This was a very helpful workshop. I feel like many of us think that interviewing is easy and that we just need to ask the interviewee questions. But there is way more to interviewing then just asking questions. We need to do research, establish rapport, plan questions accordingly and ask probing questions. Like the workshop said, "Researching the topic is essential in preparing for the information interview," this way you won't ask questions that you can already get the answers to. Also picking the right interviewee is important, you want to make sure they are going to be able to give you the time and information that you need. For my project I want to use mostly open-ended questions with probing questions. I will get the most detail answers if I just let the interviewee talk and then I can have them explain or clarify more with probing questions.

This tutorial was well put together and extremely informational! I thought the best part was about the tutorial was the module and assignment that you could complete because it let me see how it was done right, which was helpful. I thought some key aspects covered in this tutorial where about researching the topic and structuring the interview. I thought researching the topic part was helpful and because it went into detail what to research and how, and how important it is too do this. I also thought structuring the interview was a helpful module on this page because it explained the most important part of an interview, the questions! Overall, the tutorial was a big help!

I really liked this weeks workshop. It was easy to understand. The material this week was repetitive which under most circumstances I would not like, but this week I found it helpful. I also really appreciated how much the workshop coincided with the material in the book. They worked well together to clarify each other. I found the section on "Ted's cardinal rules of interviewing" to be really applicable. It gave good information on important factors for preparing an interview. It is important to remember that all interviews should be purposeful and goal-oriented. Module 1 emphasized the beginning phases: phrase the purpose so that others can understand it; the purpose is the foundation for the interview, and make sure questions keep the interview on track so as not to waste interview time on unnecessary data. Module 2 was focused on background research: demonstrate basic understanding of the research topic, and it also had a very helpful section for where to conduct online research. Module 3 most important part was the four questions to ask when choosing interviewees. Module 4 gave basic knowledge of the interview guide:there are 5 factors in phrasing questions (the two I found most important were relevance and complexity), the importance of probes and how/when to use them, and the types of questions to ask. Module 5 discussed the interview climate and how to order or sequence questions based on the type of interview: funnel (well known topic/will freely talk), inverted funnel (help remembering/need motivation), diamond (painful or difficult topic/reluctant to discuss), tunnel (simple surface info, not used for in-depth interviews). The goal is to leave the interview feeling positive and satisfied with the interview. Module 6 taught us how to evaluate information obtained, and to consider the interviewee(s). The three basic ethical principles were the most important part. Module 7 taught questions to ask when determining how to present the report.

The workshop was extremely useful especially since it was more interactive and engaging compared to the other workshops (no offense). The practical scenarios presented for instance with the interview at the high tech company was a perfect example of the pitfalls to avoid. Also the break down with the structure of the questions were insightful since it gave a better sense of how to formulate a question and in what scenario would it fit it best for it. Especially distinguishing open-ended and closed questions I feel is crucial because with the example "Is there anything else you think we should talk about?" you would think it was a question that would lead into greater detail in discussion when in reality it is a simple yes or no answer. After reviewing the workshop, I feel very confident in diving into an interviewing with good rapport, quality questions and with an effective presentation structure once presenting my findings. I wish I had reviewed the workshop before doing some recent interviews for a research paper I had to do for another class. I would have been more confident in my interviewing capabilities and findings with the helpful information presented in the modules and applications of the workshop.

Just like last year, this tutorial is outstanding and you can tell how much work was put into making this tutorial. As a career, I am going to need to be able to interview other individuals and/or groups, however, I will not have the time to get everything written out and well thought out before conducting the interview- it will have to be on the fly, most of the time. Interviewing is a subject that is intimidating to me for that very reason, that I am in dyer need of being excellent at conducting interviews. The only way to get better at this is through practice, and making sure I am able to conduct interviews efficiently. Last year when we did this tutorial, I was extremely excited because I was able to examine various ways of how to conduct an interview and I was also given a very in-depth overview of the interviewing process. This tutorial has been so helpful for me, and I am grateful for being able to use this tutorial as a reference. Not only that, but I will be able to continue to use this interviewing tutorial whenever I need it. Although it is lengthy and time consuming, it is worth every minute put into the tutorial!

This work shop has been a huge help especially since my second method for my project is interviewing. I never new that there was so much detail to consider while looking over the data collected. This was very helpful because I feel way more confident now doing interviews for my research project since this was almost like a practice. It was nice to practice how to ask probing questions to get more information from the interviewee. thank you for giving us examples of what question to ask because it definitely helped me out while doing my own interviews. In the past I have just seen interviews as simple questions and responses and never took into account how many variables there could be. Overall, this workshop was very beneficial and once again has helped me on my research project.

I am finding throughout all of these workshops that they are still helpful even though I have looked through them before. This interviewing workshop was helpful to me because it gave me a refresher on what is needed to be done before, during, and after an interview. It is important for us to understand the different modules discussed, we have to make sure we are prepared for the interview, the person we are interviewing is able to give us information we don't already know, and we have to make sure we build a relationship with the interviewee. It was also a good idea for me to review over module 4, the actual conducting of the interview. The first thing that crosses my mind for interviews is that I have to think of any question, but it is more then that. I have to have the right question and I have to have the right question phrased the right way.

These workshops I have to say are getting better and better each time around. Now, I'll be honest they are time consuming, but I seem to be enjoying more and me. After reading the chapter, posting on D2L, and doing the exercise. I didn't realize how much of a art or science even interviewing can be. I appreciated the notes in the book, and being able to interview people. I hope the next workshop is even better. I know getting good at interviewing takes time, but I believe after all the training we receive in these workshops, we will be equipped to interview others in either grad school or the workplace. Because interviewing is a valuable skill to have.

I actually took the pre-test on the site and did fairly well going in to the modules (thanks to the readings). After reading the first two modules, it started to echo the readings from chapter 6 in the book. It was good feeling that because in this class, there's not a lot of hands on activities for us to do together and some of the topics can get a bit abstract. Like Bree said, the repetition was helpful, and I feel a lot better conducting my interviews knowing what I do know (although not everything) about the pitfalls, structure, and the ways I should conduct my own interviews. I agree with the others: the workshop was lengthy, but I felt better on this workshop than any of the others. Oh, and I will definitely be using Ted's Cardinal Rules for my interviews.

I have actually taken an interviewing class here at SJSU. It was nice to have a refresher on the different types of probes out there. I did enjoy the small exercise and I could always use more practice with interviewing skills. While I also felt it was time consuming, I did enjoy the outcome of the interviews as it made me feel more confident about conducting interviews with people I do not know. One thing about this workshop is that I never heard of a consent form before! While this workshop was helpful due to the hands-on aspect, I feel that it could improve by having the requirement be more than one probe so that the student can get a better grasp of what a probe is capable of doing.

I found this workshop to be very informative. I liked the external website that took me step-by-step into the set up of the interview process. I never realized how many steps it took to develop a good rapport with someone before sitting down and actually interviewing. There's a lot of research involving the topic you want to pick and a lot of research choosing your interviewees. The examples were straight forward and clear. I got a lot of good information out of this workshop.

This workshop was extremely informative and helpful. Since I will be using the Interviewing Method for my research, it was great to have this tutorial. I didn't even realize how extensive the process can be with correctly wording the interview questions to get the most information possible, making sure your interviewees are available and willing to be interviewed for at least 10 minutes, and getting consent from the interviewee on paper! It all feels so official and exciting. I'm looking forward to conducting interviews, and after this tutorial I'm definitely feeling a lot better about using this method and confident it will provide sufficient research.

This interviewing workshop is really helpful. Interviewing always seemed do easy like just asking a bunch of questions but after reviewing this workshop I learned that there is so much detail that goes into it like the correct kinds of questions to ask, probing questions, and the various aspects of probing questions. The toughest part of the interview process seems to be building trust with the subject. Trust is often something that takes time to build and not just through one interview. This workshop definitely help give me confidence to go conduct interviews for the research project. The interview workshop with the comparative interviews (probe and no probe) was really eye opening for me. The best for me was having the questions written out beforehand. That gave me time to really develop great probing questions without coming across too pushy for information. Clarifying the purpose was really important because it develops the mood for the whole interview. A good purpose will help put the interview at ease and through that allows he/she to speak more freely giving us more valuable information and data.

This workshop was really helpful. Going through all of the modules on the website was long though, and it took me a while. I will probably want to do that again since, I felt that at times I couldn't concentrate on what I was reading, otherwise though, for what I was able to focus on, I understood. Wording seems to be of high importance when it comes to interviews. It is also important to be aware of the questions others ask you. Questions like, " is America on the right track or are we going in the wrong direction? These questions are loaded and your answer to such questions can be interpreted in a way you did not intend. Why can't we be somewhere in the middle instead? We have to watch out for those false dichotomy questions too. Writing good questions is definitely harder than it seems and this workshop will help with writing those questions to get solid data, and will teach us to be aware of bad questions from those who want to use our answers to manipulate others.

This workshop was very helpful in more way then one. You really get a chance to start thinking of questions open-closed with probs. Probs are nice because you get the answers you were hoping for and it gives the interviewer a chance to get comfortable. Everyone thinks interviewing is easy but it truly is not. It's a lot of work and needs details to help collect proper data. Making sure you allow yourself to get comfortable with the person as well as get the interviewer comfortable is key. if you have good questions that it's easy to code later on. This is the part I'm not looking forward too but at least I can do it and hopefully one day that will come in handy. I know this is late post but I completely blanked and thought what is the harm in doing it anyway. Hope this is okay. Thanks again, Justine :)

Its interesting how the probe questions can start an entire conversation. When the interviewee thinks that you are really interested in what they have to say like when you ask a probing question it causes them to really open up and share their feelings. Interviewing is difficult so it is very important to have your questions written out before you sit down. I loose my train of thought so easily when I am sitting in front of my interviewee. The other thing that I learned from this exercise was that when I sit down and ask someone about a topic that is important to them it builds rapport because they know that I am interested. People love to talk by nature so interviewing is a great way to build relationships.