And who you're gathering this data for, and why. Is this to give feedback to the instructors to improve the course for next round? To show the students what they have (collectively) learned? To tell the open source projects involved what happened from your side? In the hopes of getting departmental resources/approval for continuing experiments of this sort?
Also -- Ivaylo, I don't know what the legal situation is in France, but here in the US we have some pretty strict rules about both privacy and research ethics which need to be taken into account before doing a study of this sort. For example:
* If we plan on publishing the results at some point, we need to get IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval of the methods we're going to use to gather it (which includes them signing off on the instrument we're using -- in this case, your survey.)
* We need to make sure we don't reveal student identities without their permission (to oversimplify, one example is that a student's name should never appear with their response in a public space -- unless they have signed off on it being ok.)
* If students are being researched by their instructor, there's usually some extra checking that needs to be done to make sure that the students don't feel pressured/coerced by the power differential (and you may want to check if their answers are influenced by the fact that they'll be read by someone who's giving them a grade -- this is why course evaluations here are done by a third party, not by the professor).
* And other things that people here with more research experience may be able to fill in if it's needed -- I'd check the IRB procedures for your particular institution (how do the social science researchers at your school do their work? they're good folks to ask.)
Please don't freak out about this stuff! It's not meant to scare you and prevent you from doing things, but rather to add a different sort of perspective and awareness to the discussion. Also, I've heard the EU has even more stringent privacy laws than the US and am curious whether French researchers have to deal with the same things American ones do. :)
Please keep doing things! We learn fastest sometimes by stumbling along and making mistakes in public, but it does take a lot of courage -- which you have shown by asking your questions here, and which I applaud!
--Mel _______________________________________________ tos mailing list [email protected] http://lists.teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
