Currently my team members and I have now fully grasped the concepts and objectives for the Willow Patterns remixed project and are well under way to achieving these objectives.
We have completed our first task successfully, which was partly due to the consistent communication between group members on Facebook. Everyone has made a commitment to reply to comments, to upload drafts for everyone to check over, and to provide positive feedback. This constant communication and collaboration has resulted in a more cohesive thought process, which is evident when reading through our finished task (our overview for our Willow project).
The next task am now focusing on, is preparing questions to ask the authors involved with Willow Patterns. These interviews are important as they will reveal information on the experiences of the 24 hour book project, which will provide us with further material and stimulus to use for our own project. Furthermore, uploading and sharing the interviews with all of the authors will be good for both the projects publicity and the Brisbane Writing Centres publicity, as these interviews would be of interest to the fans of these local Brisbane writers and avid readers in general, and thus encourage them to read and engage with our blog.
Considering this, I have been researching different interview styles and skills in order to prepare for my interviews. Bill Gilliam who wrote a book specifying in interviews for research purposes argues that the most important component of an interview is that the questions must be open. “Questions asked or topics raised must be open so that the interviewee is determining their own answers; doing this provides a truer representation of their thoughts as they are less inclined to say what they think the interviewer wants to hear” (Gillham, 2005).
Consequently, when constructing my initial questions, I tried to take this on board, leaving my questions open ended, so that each author were free to interpret and respond to the questions in any way they liked. For example “Why did you decide to become involved with Willow Patterns?”
Gillham also states that interviewing is a difficult mix of maintaining and following a structure (set questions) while simultaneously taking advantage of opportunities when they arise naturally during the interview (2005). I believe what he means by this is, although an interviewer should always have a clear idea of the questions they want to ask, they must also be prepared, that questions they hadn’t thought of originally, may arise through the natural course of conversation. This will be an important thing to keep in mind if I conduct my interviews in person, however if I conduct my interviews through email, I will miss the chance to ask any follow up questions or questions in relation to something the author says in conversation. This puts me at a slight disadvantage as there is the potential to miss out on added information. To try and solve this, my final question can be “Is there anything you would like to add?” which hopefully will encourage them to discuss anything not specifically mentioned in the questions.
Applying these tips to my interviews should hopefully allow me to engage with the interviewee in a way that will give me the best responses and maximise the amount of information I receive.
To finish, like my fellow colleagues before me I am posing a challenge to the readers of this blog. If there is one question you would ask any of the featured writers in Willow Patterns, if you got the chance....what would it be? Send the questions in on our blog, and we can ask them, on your behalf! (It must be noted, however that any distasteful and inappropriate questions will be removed immediately)
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