This week I got to run another group of participants! Thankfully, everything ran much more smoothly than the last time! My group consisted of three participants, which is still missing the mark, but is certainly hitting closer than my first group of two did. This group was much more lively and conversational than my first group. This may be partially due to my efforts to be more friendly and upbeat myself. I realized while watching the recording of my first session that I had been acting quite nervously and this probably didn’t make the participants feel at ease. So from now on, I will attempt to be more friendly and relaxed, so that the atmosphere of the Zoom call can follow suit.
Although my participants were much more lively, they were also a bit more prone to mistakes. Twice during the session I received two direct Zoom messages from participants telling me they had messed something up in filling out the surveys. Fortunately these were only minor issues that didn’t impede the data very much. Then, after the Zoom call, two out of three participants had done their proficiency test wrong, so I was unable to use that data. Unfortunately I had to email the participants to get them to redo the tests.
On the whole, this week went well! I am still sad that I cannot travel to Germany (or anywhere else for that matter) yet, but I can be patient! I have another group scheduled for Wednesday. After that group, I will be effectively out of participants to run. I’m not sure what we will do then, but hopefully my advisor has something up her sleeve. Until then, I can only wait and hope that more people sign up.