A Novel Methodology to Elicit Student Perspectives In Semi-Structured Interviews

This paper introduces a novel methodology that was designed to enrich student perspective interview data by providing students with a more robust approach to supplying their justifications to interview questions.This methodology evokes student perspectives on a target object (e.g., their typing speed) by inviting participants to place the object along a physical dial representing a conceptual continuum (e.g., slow to fast) and justify their placement through open-ended discussion.The data presented to introduce the methodology was collected from upper-level undergraduate students in a quantum mechanics (QM) course.In this paper, we focus on two illustrative case studies, Oliver and Emma, to demonstrate the range of interpretive strategies used among students.The methodology supports multiple modes of reasoning: object-focused, scale-focused, qualitative, and quantitative.The physical dial acted as an anchor for students to provide structure to not only the interview protocol, but also how students deliver their responses to the interviewer.Through the use of a training period at the beginning of the interview, where students "learn how to play the game", students were able to give consistent responses to course perspectives interview questions.The pilot study presented here is part of a larger analysis of the methodology, but already suggests that integrating semantic differential scaling into interviews offers a promising framework for structured yet open-ended exploration of student thinking across complex scientific domains.