Prior to my intervention, my research was primarily informed by my own learning and teaching experience, supported by unstructured observation. This included observing student behaviour in the studio and during one-to-one tutorials, as well as drawing on informal feedback gathered at the end of projects and following final shows. Such feedback often revealed shifts in practice, for example an increased focus on traditional tailoring in one year, or a noticeable absence of craft and textile techniques in another.
Following the design of the intervention, I adopted a qualitative research approach in the form of questionnaires to gather data on the perceived usefulness of the project from both students and peers. Although I initially considered focus groups or interviews, time constraints led me to select questionnaires as a more practical method. Interviews would have been time-consuming and unlikely to reach as many participants as a survey distributed to the entire MA2 cohort. In retrospect, focus groups or interviews may have provided richer, more in-depth insights and enabled more responsive discussion; however, concerns about low attendance or cancelled participation also influenced my decision.
As the project progressed and in response to the course timeline, the questionnaire method continued to feel appropriate. Autumn is an especially busy period for second-year students, and I was also keen to gather feedback from colleagues. Given that our teaching team is small, with many tutors working one day per week or employed as HPLs or VLs, a survey offered a flexible and inclusive approach. I therefore designed two questionnaires using Google Forms and distributed them to both students and staff.
The student questionnaire focused primarily on whether students had engaged with the Padlet and which areas they found most useful. During the ARP unit, my central concern was establishing whether students were willing to engage with technical content in a digital format. For peers, I anticipated limited prior engagement with the Padlet, so the survey was shared alongside a direct link and an explicit request to view the content before responding.
Before distributing the questionnaires, I consulted my tutor, my course leader for MA Fashion, and my partner, who provided informal feedback on the clarity and focus of the questions. I consider this a pre-survey survey.
As the Padlet is embedded within the MA Fashion Moodle page, I initially assumed that engagement data would be available through Moodle. However, after consulting CSM Moodle coordinators, I learned that this level of data is not available for individual pages and was advised to use Padlet’s own analytics instead. When reviewing this data, I was surprised by the high number of views early in the project. As the Padlet is set to private, this was explained by the system counting multiple IP addresses, meaning that individual users may be recorded more than once if accessing the Padlet from different devices or locations.
Engagement continued to increase throughout the term, and I captured screenshots of the analytics at various stages. During a tutorial, my tutor confirmed that this form of tracking also constitutes primary data collection, reinforcing the value of combining qualitative feedback with digital engagement data.
The below is an email exchange between the Moodle specialist and me.