When designing the data-gathering process for my Action Research Project, I aimed to capture diverse perspectives across all year groups in the Bespoke Tailoring course while maintaining a primary focus on Year 2 students. To achieve this, I developed three distinct questionnaires – one for each year group – tailored to their specific experiences with my teaching sessions.
Year 2 was my focal group due to their comprehensive exposure to the analogue-to-digital workflow I was investigating. Over the previous academic year 23 / 24, I conducted regular sessions with them, starting with an open Analogue Drawing session and moving through Analogue Drawing activities in Graphic Design sessions to Analogue Drawing activiites to support their engagement with Adobe Illustrator. Their feedback would provide the most robust and nuanced insights into the effectiveness of this approach, given their year-long experience.
Year 1, in contrast, had only a term of exposure to my sessions, in this academic year 24 /25. While their limited experience could offer initial impressions and identify early challenges or successes, their data would necessarily be less comprehensive.
Year 3, while not directly involved in Adobe Illustrator-focused sessions, participated in related activities such as Analogue Drawing before an introduction to generating images using Adobe Artificial Intelligence (the lesson plans are in the previous blog post ARP 5 (https://23044881.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2025/01/09/arp-5-lesson-plan-which-integrates-analogue-drawing-into-a-more-technical-session/) ), and general Graphic Layout sessions. Including this group allowed me to gather broader feedback about the role of Analogue practices in Digital skill development, even if their responses weren’t as tightly aligned with my core research question.
I spent quite some time refining the questions in the questionnaires!
I wrote my speculative Year 2 Questionnaire and shared it in our second group tutorial (attached ‘arp questionnaire rationale and questions 1.pdf’). The first part has the rationale, and the second part has the proposed questions with reason below, here are 2 examples:
Q1: were you nervous of using the computer?
YES / NO, followed by IF YES, THEN
Q1A: Did the drawing activity help to encourage/Help you to engage with the digital activity – YES / NO
- ‘Bridging the Digital Divide’:
Not all students have equal levels of comfort or proficiency with digital tools, often due to varying access to technology in their educational or personal backgrounds. By incorporating analogue drawing—a universally accessible practice—students who may struggle with digital platforms can still actively participate and engage with the learning process. This helps to level the playing field, especially for those from under-resourced schools or communities where technology access is limited.
Q2: Do you PREFER TO work analogue (PHYSICAL DRAWING/SKETCHBOOK) or digital (PROCREATE, ADOBE SUITE (DELETE? normally (sketchbook or ProCreate) – ANALOGUE / DIGITAL - ‘Appealing to Different Learning Styles’:
Many educational approaches are dominated by digital or verbal methods that may not resonate with all learners. Analogue drawing allows for visual and kinesthetic learners to express ideas and engage with content in a way that aligns with their learning preferences. This inclusivity helps ensure that students who might be marginalised by traditional lecture-based methods can find a way to connect with the material.
The feedback from the tutoria was that it was too long, so I amended it to 21 questions.
I made a printed version for myself to see if this would work in addition to the online version, u ‘arp questionnaire 1.pdf’ and ‘arp questionnaire 3.pdf’. They include the BERA statement, as seen in the next post.