2.3 Settings
The naturalistic inquiry perspective involves holistic inquiry carried out in a natural setting.
Thus qualitative research is virtually always field research in which the investigator
tries to study all elements present in the setting in which the inquiry takes place
(Borg & Gall et al, 1989).
This study was designed to yield information to help shape and direct efforts in useful ways
long before the technology reached a critical mass in the more general mainstream of education.
One critical criteria in site selection was the need to include organizations associated with
advanced computing environments supporting a group of networked workstations or personal
computers from more than one vendor. For example, the organization needed to have access
to a network designed to support access from Macintosh, IBM, or SUN machines. Due to funding
patterns, these environments were most easily found at the college level. A group of forefront
university projects provided an opportunity to set up an approach and test it while the field
was still young.
A range of situations were desired in order allow comparisons to made between experiences and
phenomena that were common across institutions and those that occurred due to special
circumstances in a particular organization. Variability in the size and mission of organizations
was sought during the selection of sites within the limits that the budget and situation imposed.
The focus of this study was on four separate organizations which supported one or more courseware
development projects in advanced computing environments.
A final key criteria used for organization selection was the existence of
active courseware production projects delivered consistently over a period of years.
Each of the selected projects were both delivered and evaluated on a regular basis for one or more years. Development efforts were focused on a particular set of courseware, rather than the systems software, languages or authoring tools to allow others to create courseware.