Dear ________________ APPENDIX C PERMISSION LETTER TO STUDY SITE.pdf

179 APPENDIX C: PERMISSION LETTER TO STUDY SITE May 15, 2004 Dear ________________: I am writing to request your permission to interview some of graduate students in the School of Information Studies for my doctoral dissertation. I propose to explore information needs of bilingual or multilingual graduate students taking web-based graduate level courses and to understand whether students’ perceptions of culture and their information needs are related. Also, my research explores how these students perceive that their culture influences their information needs in web-based learning contexts and how other factors affect the way that they meet their information needs in web-based classroom settings. In order to allow for different patterns of information needs and behaviors to emerge, rather than the testing of specific hypotheses, and see if there is any relationship between students’ perceived culture and information needs of the graduate students, this study employs case study research design. The target population for this study is graduate level degree seeking bilingual and multilingual students who have partaken in a graduate level web-based learning degree program and/or course. I have selected the School of Information Studies as the site for this case study because it has a strong masters’ level graduate online degree program with a diverse student body that includes bilingual and multilingual participants. For data gathering purposes, this research will employ interview and focus group methodologies. Specifically, I will need to recruit 5 to 10 students who meet my selection criteria to be interviewed for approximately 90 minutes and up to 12 students, including those previously interviewed, if necessary, will be to participate in a focus group for about 90 minutes. In conclusion, I’d like to ask your permission to study some of our graduate students for this research. I have enclosed a copy of my Human Subject Committee applicat