Tutor: So, the task I gave you both was to choose an article about a small-scale research project. Jake: Yes... Tutor: You were then required to try to reproduce the research procedures in your own context ... i.e. try it out for yourselves. Jake: Yeah... and that's what we've done. Tutor: Great. So I'd like you to tell me a bit about the article and why you chose it. Leela: Well, the article's written by two university lecturers who had started using crosswords to help their students revise terminology for exams. Jake: And the crosswords were designed and set on computers. Leela: And we selected the article because ... well it seemed an accessible topic, even though we weren't familiar with the technique... you know ... using IT to design crosswords for higher education. Tutor: That's a good reason. So these lecturers wanted to see how well this innovation was received by their students? Jake: Yes. Tutor: So how did you go about reproducing the research? Leela: Well, we drew up a list of terms from one of our own modules ... and designed a crossword for revising these terms. Jake: Then we asked our classmates to try out the crossword and give us feedback, you know, their opinions, on how they felt about using the technique. Tutor: Was it easy to find participants? Jake: lt wasn't easy at first. But then we convinced them that by taking part in the research they were actually benefiting themselves by preparing for an exam which is coming up later this term. Leela: And it worked! Tutor: Good. So how did you find out what the students thought about doing the crosswords? Jake: A questionnaire. The original article used a two-page long questionnaire. There were lots of excellent questions on it but the whole section on difficulties using IT is now obsolete... old-fashioned even, even though it had only been written a couple of years ago. Tutor: So you designed a shorter version? Leela: Yeah. Then we sent it to the forty students by email and got twenty-eight replies. I was taken aback by the fact that everybody we talked to thought this was a good return! I mean the responses were well written, you know, people had taken a lot of care, but I was really disappointed with the low numbers. Tutor: Yes, an important lesson to learn for an apprentice researcher.