Proposal

Narrative

This application directly supports the efforts of roughly 18 graduate students to conduct qualitative research in the PhD and Education Specialist (EdS) programs in Curriculum and Instruction. Our request is to purchase 10 two-year Atlas.ti licenses and 8 six-month licenses for doctoral students conducting their dissertation research or completing research assignments in EDG 7944 (a PhD course in semester I, Yr. 2) and for EdS students enrolled in their capstone course. Although Atlas.ti software is available to faculty and students through a third party (Citrix), via virtualized applications, our survey of C and I students’ technology needs conducted via Survey Monkey in October 2020 indicated that the virtual apps is not user-friendly due to these reasons: 1. Because the university site license works through a third party (Citrix) virtualized applications, students are working on the program remotely on another computer, not theirs. This slows down the whole process because the information is being sent via the third party. In fact, all university users are doing that and each time a user logs on, it slows down the whole process. 2. Another issue with using the software through a third party app is when saving coding information into a “bundle” in Atlas.ti so that the zipped folder can be sent to other collaborators. Users found that that the folder cannot be opened by the recipients, which lessens its utility. The Coordinator of the PhD program said that her advisee, who successfully defended her dissertation recently, wasted 2 days trying to figure out how to share the information with her. When they reached out to the Atlas support team, Atlas reverted them back to a Citrix team, who said that the problem is due to limitations with the apps. While the virtualized application works well for programs like Word, Excel on an individual basis, it does not seem to work as well for programs that have to be zipped and which are meant to be shared.

Facilities

None

Hardware Requirements

None

Software Requirements

The project will require the following purchases: 1. eight 2-year Atlas.ti licenses 2. seven 6-month Atlas.ti licenses

Personnel Costs

CCEI 's staff, who is responsible for handling department's material requisition and budget matters, will handle the purchases or reimbursements for these licenses to students.

Other Costs

Budget expenses: 1. Ten 2-year Atlas.ti licenses @ $99 each = $999 2. Eight 6-month Atlas.ti licenses @ $51= $408 Total expenses: $1407

Timeline

Efforts will be made to sustain the costs over a contracted two year period.

Sustainability

Not applicable.

Resource Matching

Not applicable.

Implementing Organization

Not applicable.