The Challenge of an introductory course

For good or ill, I have been teaching what I have called "An Introduction to NVivo" for the last two years. It was put on due to popular demand and at present I have to run it every two months to keep up with demand (technically I am not doing that).

The odd thing is that in many ways a two hour talking head course is NOT a good way to teach NVivo, it would not be my preferred way. It is meant really as a taster, something that can give people a flavour for NVivo and get them to explore it for themselves. As that it is barely acceptable and leaves me drained when I do it. The fact that I am doing it on out of date software does not help.

Yet this course is hugely popular and I regularly leave people enthused for the package. It is one of the ironies of life. The group I taught today was relatively easy, there was at least one other user and his enthusiasm was infectious. I think we might have even persuaded some of the people who were computer shy that it was worth a try.

What I have to remember for next time is to be quite deliberate about pointing people to other resources to help them. Even the guy who was a user was interested to hear of the two day courses where you could take along your own data and get help from an NVivo expert. The problem at Sheffield is that I am the NVivo expert and I am very aware of huge chunks where I just don't know about the package. The student who was overwhelmed by the course was guided by him to the help on the QSR website and was able to see that they had videos and tutorials that might really help her and which she could take in small bite size pieces. I think I have at least three more users this time which is all I aim to achieve.

If my aim with SPSS course is to get people out from being paranoid to where they feel its a chore, then my aim with this course is to get people to the stage where they feel it is worth having a trial with NVivo. To do that I have to overcome a level of scepticism and persuade users that the program is not going to take over the analysis (and disappoint them that it won't produce p-values) also I have to persuade them that being computerised does not imply distance. On my last course where one guy says "this is not about taking you away from your data, its all about keeping you close to it". If I can get that across no matter how tired and drained I am, then the course has suceeded.