KIT714 ICT Research Principles

International students join foreign universities for better education and employment opportunities. However, the communication barrier is one of the leading issues experienced by international students irrespective of the country (James-MacEachern and Yun 2017). To overcome the issues international students often seek help with language translator applications. 

Many international students who get enrolled in the Master of Information Technology and Systems Degree offered by the School of ICT at UTAS faces various communication issues. To resolve these communication barriers, many students use Language Translation Apps regularly for mitigating language issues that students come across either in day-to-day communications or while working towards their degree. 

Although language translator applications are rising in terms of popularity, the purpose and motivation for using these applications remain ambiguous. Therefore, in-depth research is required to identify the purpose and motivation of using these applications from a student's perspective.

The purpose of this research is to identify the following aspects of using language translator application by international students: 

• Type of application used by students 
• Functionalities of the application 
• Context of using a language translation application 
• Level of dependency on language translator applications 
• The usefulness of language translator applications 

Any research is based on a certain hypothesis and the data collected in the research either justifies or rejects the hypothesis. A null hypothesis has been chosen for conducting the research and it is the following: 

Language translator applications help students to communicate better despite linguistic and communication barriers that exist between different international groups of students. 

Qualitative research refers to the type of research that relies on descriptive data rather than numerical data (Flick 2018). There are various approaches for conducting qualitative research including case study, ethnography, action research or grounded theory. However, the choice for a particular qualitative research method will depend on the agenda and purpose of the research (Kornbluh 2015). 

The purpose of this research as already described is to identify motivations and reasons for using language translator application by international students. Therefore, data needs to be collected that describes various aspects of using language translator applications from the student’s perspective. The researcher in this context, therefore, needs to actively interact and collaborate with participants for collecting required data as per research aims and hypothesis (Gentles et al. 2015). Action research is a type of research where researchers actively collaborate with participants in obtaining answers to research questions (Bansal, Smith and Vaara 2018). Therefore, the qualitative research method that will be employed in this research is action research. 

In addition to this, case study methods will also be employed as part of the qualitative research strategy. A case study is a preferred research method when researchers need to conduct an in-depth examination of people or groups of people (Lune and Berg 2017). Considering the purpose and motivation behind this research, an in-depth examination of university students is required to identify what application they use, when these applications are used and how these applications are used. A case study-based experiment will be conducted with students of UTAS enrolled in MSC ICT courses. 

As part of the case study implementation, 150 students from UTAS will be asked to review 5 popular language translator applications. The participants will be asked to review these applications for 5 days and then they will be asked to provide their feedback regarding which features they have found most helpful in these applications, what application they have found most helpful, what additional features are required and whether they will use any of these applications for their language translation service. It will help to obtain insight on context and motivation for using these applications. 

Although the interview aims to keep the interview open-ended to obtain the opinion of international students regarding the use of language translator application some predefined questions will be considered that will help to collect the required data for the research. Therefore, the interview format that will be used in this data collection method is a structured interview (Cairney and St Denny 2015). In a structured interview, questions are designed before conducting the interview and the questions are then asked by the facilitator conducting the interview and the participant shares their own opinion concerning the questions asked (Yates and Leggett 2016). This type of interview will be helpful in the research because the purpose of this research is to identify the opinion of international students regarding applications they use, how they use these applications and the purpose of using the applications and answers to this question cannot be obtained properly if the question is not set before the interview. If the questions are not defined before conducting the interview it will be difficult to organise the interview and chances are that our data could not be obtained through this data collection process (Hennink, Hutter and Bailey 2020).

Overview of question frame to be used in the interview 

As part of the data collection process, a structured interview will be conducted, it is extremely important to carefully design questions for the interview so that required data can be obtained. 

The questions of the interview will be based on the following aspects

• Type of application used by students 
• Functionalities of the application 
• Context of using a language translation application 
• Level of dependency on language translator applications 
• The usefulness of language translator applications 

Interview questions have been created accordingly. The following questions will be asked to the participants for obtaining their responses regarding use of language translator applications: 

What are the applications you use most?

Students will be asked to provide information regarding applications they use for obtaining insights regarding popular applications among international students in the university. 

What are the motivation and reasons for using language translator applications?

In the interview, students will be asked to explain the real motivation and reasons for which day considered language translator applications when communicating with other students, groups or lecturers of the university and whether such applications are helpful or not. A major focus will be on obtaining details that explains requirements of students and things that motivates them in using these language translator applications. Without obtaining details regarding use cases of these applications, it cannot be identified in what scenario a student is most likely to use any language translator of their choice. Therefore, an important aspect of this interview is to identify actual motivation and reasons for international students to consider language translation applications. 

Why do you think that language translator applications are useful for international students?

Is a language translator application helpful for international students or does it need improvement?

Students participating in the interview will be asked to explain whether language translator applications are very helpful in resolving communication issues or there is a need for improvements to make this application more effective and useful for international students to communicate better with fellow students and professors of the universities.

In this research, primary data needs to be collected that describes the viewpoints and opinion of the participants regarding the use of language translator applications. 

Any research involving human participants is required to obtain consent from the participants to ensure that the research is consistent with ethical requirements and standards of academic research (Merriam and Grenier 2019). Therefore, an invitation will be sent to the students and participation in this interview is up to the students and there is no mandatory requirement to join the interview session and the students can opt-out of this interview as well (Harrison et al. 2017). The invitation will be sent to the students detailing the guidelines and purpose of conducting the interview and the type of data that will be collected in this interview. This interview will be conducted on the campus of the university and students will join the interview session on the required date as highlighted in the invitation form.

The questions described in this interview plan will be distributed to the participants and the interview will be conducted on one-to-one basis so that the students feel comfortable to share their opinion and to keep the opinion of the student anonymous and private. The interview of the participants will be transcribed in real-time so that their opinion can be analysed during the data analysis phase of this research. The purpose of transcribing the interview in real-time is to ensure data accuracy and to minimise any distortion in data for enhancing the quality of data analysis and research findings (Adhabi and Anozie 2017). Once the interview is completed acknowledgement will be shared with the participants and their feedback will be also collected regarding experience in this interview and any additional queries after completion of this interview (Riger and Sigurvinsdottir 2016). The idea is to keep the interview transparent and compatible with ethical guidelines of academic research while collecting required data for obtaining answers to the research questions as described in this context.

Qualitative Data Analysis technique 

To analyse the qualitative data thematic analysis will be conducted and through this thematic analysis common themes and patterns in the interview data will be identified (Terry et al. 2017). The responses of the students regarding language translator applications that are used by the students will help to identify the most popular applications that are used by the international students in the university. The applications will be rated in terms of popularity features available how students find them helpful and based on students’ responses applications will be waited on a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 representing the highest overall quality combining the aspects including is of used features available effectiveness of the applications along with overall usefulness of the applications as highlighted by the students participated in the interview.

For other aspects of the application such as when and which context the applications are used, the purpose of using the applications, motivation for using the applications will be obtained from the interview and through the thematic analysis, it will be identified whether there exists any common pattern in opinion of the participants of the interview and it will help to identify and evaluate the real motivation and purposes of students for using the application (Richards and Hemphill 2018). Therefore, the approach that will be considered for analysing data is semantic analysis followed by a rating system for evaluating the popularity of the applications if it will help to evaluate the research hypothesis effectively as per aims and objectives of this research.

Conclusion 

International students when enrolled in foreign universities experience various challenges and communication barriers is one of the leading issues that affect the experience of international students in foreign universities. To resolve these communication issues international students often use language translator applications. However, the real motivation and purposes and the patterns of using this application are not well known and in-depth research will be conducted to identify motivation and purposes for using language translator applications. To conduct the data for this research action research and case study analysis have been considered as qualitative research strategies.

The data for this research will be collected through interview and observation and analysis of this data will help to answer questions related to the use of language translator applications by international students. Participants will be interviewed as part of the data collection process and their responses will be obtained accordingly. It will help to analyse requirements and motivations for using language translator applications. Data collected through interviews will be analysed through thematic analysis as described in this context. The research once successfully completed will help to answer questions like type of application used by students, functionalities of the application, context of using a language translation application, level of dependency on language translator applications and the usefulness of language translator applications as described in this context.

References

Adhabi, E. and Anozie, C.B., 2017. Literature review for the type of interview in qualitative research. International Journal of Education, 9(3), pp.86-97.

Bansal, P., Smith, W.K. and Vaara, E., 2018. New ways of seeing through qualitative research.

Cairney, P. and St Denny, E., 2015. What is qualitative research (Bloomsbury).

Flick, U., 2018. Designing qualitative research. Sage.

Gentles, S.J., Charles, C., Ploeg, J. and McKibbon, K.A., 2015. Sampling in qualitative research: Insights from an overview of the methods literature. The qualitative report, 20(11), pp.1772-1789.

Harrison, H., Birks, M., Franklin, R. and Mills, J., 2017, January. Case study research: Foundations and methodological orientations. In Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Vol. 18, No. 1).

Hennink, M., Hutter, I. and Bailey, A., 2020. Qualitative research methods. Sage.

James-MacEachern, M. and Yun, D., 2017. Exploring factors influencing international students’ decision to choose a higher education institution. International Journal of Educational Management.

Kornbluh, M., 2015. Combatting challenges to establishing trustworthiness in qualitative research. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 12(4), pp.397-414.

Lune, H. and Berg, B.L., 2017. Qualitative research methods for the social sciences. Pearson.

Merriam, S.B. and Grenier, R.S. eds., 2019. Qualitative research in practice: Examples for discussion and analysis. John Wiley & Sons.

Merriam, S.B. and Tisdell, E.J., 2015. Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. John Wiley & Sons.

Richards, K.A.R. and Hemphill, M.A., 2018. A practical guide to collaborative qualitative data analysis. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 37(2), pp.225-231.

Riger 2016. Thematic analysis. Handbook of methodological approaches to community-based research: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods, pp.33-41.

Terry, G., Hayfield, N., Clarke, V. and Braun, V., 2017. Thematic analysis. The Sage handbook of qualitative research in psychology, pp.17-37.

Yates, J. and Leggett, T., 2016. Qualitative research: An introduction. Radiologic technology, 88(2), pp.225-231.

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