Assignment 2: Interviewing Exercise

Assignment 2: Interviewing Exercise

For this assignment, you will interview and be interviewed by someone in this class.

Interview partners have been determined randomly (with the help of random.org). You will be asking each other questions about their experiences.

The topic of your interviews is entirely your choice. Make it something interesting that you’re curious about. For example, how some technology that you find especially interesting impacts the other person’s life in some way.

IMPORTANT: Be sure you’re not interviewing one another on the same topic.

What to do:

1) Develop a short 6-question interview protocol before the interview. Consider your goals for this interview. Order your questions as you plan to ask them. During the interview, you may need to re-order your questions, revise question wording, or ask follow-up questions.

2) Conduct and record your interviews. Aim for 30 to 45 minutes in length for each interview. Most of you already have laptops, smart phones, etc., that you can use for this. (Let me know if you need equipment.) Audacity is just one example of a free audio recording/editing software that works on Windows/Mac/Linux.

3) Transcribe the interview you conducted on your partner. The rule of thumb is that it takes, for a good typist, about 3x longer to transcribe an interview as it took to conduct the interview. For this reason, you will want to be aware of the timing of your interview.

4) Reflect (individually) on how you would revise your topics and questions. If you were to conduct your interview again on someone else, how much you re-think question wording, question ordering, your interviewing style, etc.?

In summary, steps for completing this assignment are:

  1. Coordinate a meeting time and place with your interview partner.
  2. Determine a strategy for recording your session.
  3. Interview and be interviewed by that person on your different topics.
  4. Transcribe the interview you conducted
  5. Reflect on what you learned from the experience, including what you would do differently the next time.

What to turn in:

  1. A short statement of the goals of your interview.
  2. The list of questions you prepared in advance of your interview, with as much specific wording as you felt necessary.
  3. A revised list of questions based on your hindsight reflections. (This can be either a separate list or an annotation of your initial list.) This is neither the questions you planned to ask nor the questions you did ask, but what you would use to guide the next interview, if you were to do one.
  4. Your interview transcript.
  5. A brief, 1-2 page summary of key findings from the interview for which you were the interviewer.
  6. Two reflections, about 1 page each:
    • on being the interviewee
    • on being the interviewer
  7. As interviewee, up to 1 page of feedback to the interviewer: What advice would you like to offer regarding questions, body language, interview style, etc., during their interview of you? Share this feedback with your partner, and also include it in your assignment.

Be concise. No part of this needs to be very long.

Due: Feb. 13

How to submit:

  • Each student individually email your write-up in PDF format to the instructor and TA before 4pm on the due date.
  • See instructions regarding individual file naming conventions, etc., on the course Assignments page.