survey questions they were asked to answer; the responses were to be on a scale of 1 – 7, with 7 being agree strongly and 1 being disagree strongly, there were options in between including a neutral response;
· Most potential students had career goals as a motivating factor.
· Many potential students said they thought online education would be easier.
· Most of the potential students had full-time jobs.
There were two additional questions designed to provide open elaboration from the participants (see Appendix A).
The interviews were conducted on various dates during the above stated time frame. There were 20 requested and only 16 were conducted due to scheduling conflicts and time constraints. The average time of each interview was about 6 minutes with the longest being 8 minutes long and the shortest interview being 3 minutes long. An example of the type of interview question asked;
· What reasons do OS give for why they requested further information online?
The questions in the interview were chosen to allow for as much commentary as possible and the average participant took advantage of the opportunity to share their views (see Appendix B).
With these questions a general sense of the information received during phone conversations can be extrapolated. The interviews lend validity to the surveys by allowing the respondents to express their experiences first hand without the constraints of a given set of questions. However a valid criticism might point out that the information obtained from these participant’s is hearsay and therefore not conclusive. The defense is