Students will have a range of technologies available to support their interviews, including audio and video devices. They will seek the necessary agreements to record conversations, from their interviewees, prior to interview. Using a dedicated social networking space, managed by the core team, students will write up and edit the outcomes of their investigations, with the opportunity to comment on, and add to, each others’ posts, with additional inputs, guidance and supervision from the core team and advisors. Real-time live guidance and direction, from the core team, will be available to students undertaking interviews through mobile technologies such as Skype and online chat.

As part of the students’ assessed course work, they will then refine outcomes by negotiation with their tutor into at least two further formats including journalistic features for the educational press, guides for students and staff, posters for conference presentations, web pages and case studies for an edited collection to be produced by the core team and made available on a project website.

Throughout the project, new sites can be added to the project wiki, and students returning to previous interviews can update and enhance reviews. The project will be informed by our work in this area through the JISC-funded Planet project (led by Professor Janet Finlay) and the NTFS Share project, led by Sally Fincher at the University of Kent.

Costs will be lower than for traditional research projects because those for student research and review time will not be incurred as they will be combined with student coursework.