Research DesignIn "Faculty Lived Experiences In The Online Environment" (Conceicao, 2006) , a phenomenological study design was considered the most suitable for the study because it provided a clear process for setting aside the researcher's preconceptions about the phenomenon of online teaching and resulted in a shared examination of the phenomenon by the researcher and study participants. Both social constructs or shared meanings (Berger & Luckmann 1967), and personal constructs or individual meanings (Kelly 1955) were of interest in the research.
In "Seeking Authenticity: Women and Learning in the Catholic Worker Movement" (Parrish & Taylor, 2007), the research was qualitative in nature and employed a life history approach. The life history method was well-suited to this study by making it possible to explore the highly personal and uniquely contextualized nature of each study participant's spirituality, and its relationship to their commitments to the common good. The life history approach was used to prepare individual accounts of each person's experiences and learning processes as a Catholic Worker.
English: A panorama of a research room taken at th...
English: Computer science researcher Jonathon Grud...
English: Hashem El-Serag, a Palestinian-American d...Then thematic analysis across the cases, as described by Lincoln and Guba (1985), was used to compare participants' experiences in different contexts.
Data collectionIn "Faculty Lived Experiences in the Online Environment" (Conceicao, 2006), data were collected using semi structured, open-ended interviews conducted at the participants' site of preference, with follow-up interviews via electronic mail. The investigator followed the essential processes that characterize a phenomenological analysis: phenomenological reduction, imaginative variation, and synthesis of meanings and essences. A total of 10 college faculty members (5 women, 5 men) teaching at 4-year institutions of higher education from different geographic areas of the United States and Canada were included in this phenomenological study. Selected participants were from different academic disciplines, including accounting management, adult education, business management, human resources, library science, management information systems, nursing, and workplace...