We aim to help families enjoy, understand and encourage creative computing. We do this by offering family workshops where parents and children collaborate and benefit from being alongside other families. We are asking individuals who are assisting us in rolling-out this programme to help us to scale and sustain our activities and ensure we are making progress towards our aims. Participation is voluntary.
Before you decide if you want to help, it is important for you to understand why the research is being done and what taking part involves. Please take time to read the following information carefully. Please ask us if there is anything that is not clear or if you would like more information.
What is the purpose of the study?
We know that you want to support and encourage your community’s creative use of technology. We want to figure out the best way to support that. In particular we want to investigate issues of scalability and sustainability.
To do this we would like to invite you to share your views on the programme and your expertise through an online questionnaire. This is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme and are not a test!
We will ask in the questionnaire if you would be willing to give us more of your time and allow us to conduct an interview with you to discuss the issues in more depth.
Do I have to take part?
We need to collect and store your contact details to give you access to the online questionnaire and organise the interviews. So, in order to participate, you will need to read this information leaflet and sign a consent form.
It is up to you to decide whether to take part. Even if you decide to take part now, you are still free to change your mind at any time and without giving a reason. You can also decide to skip any questions you like.
What will happen to me if I take part?
You will be asked to complete an online questionnaire which will take around 10-15 minutes. We will ask in the questionnaire if you would be willing to give us more of your time and allow us to conduct an interview with you to discuss the issues in more depth. If you agree to this, we may contact you to arrange a convenient time. The interview will take place either online or face-to-face at your convenience and will last around 30 minutes. It will be audio recorded.
- Do not mention yourself or other people by name – if you do by mistake, we will remove the names.
- Participating in all or any of these is voluntary and you may change your mind and stop at any time.
- You may also choose not to answer an individual question in the survey or the focus group at any time and skip it without penalty.
What are the benefits of taking part?
While you will not benefit directly, you will be benefiting future participants and their communities as we figure out together how to best embed this family-centred creative computing programme into communities all over Ireland.
Keeping you and your data safe
Our team are Garda vetted which means we are approved to work with families and children.
Your privacy is important to us. We will store personal information and audio recordings on secure password-protected servers at Trinity College for up to 10 years. Only the project team will have access to it. No hard copies of the data will be stored.
Your name and location will be removed so that your identity remains confidential before it is shared with anyone outside the project team. We will never share the audio files with any third parties. If you decide to withdraw from the research, you may request that we delete your data,
If you are at all worried about how your data is kept, please get in touch and we can answer your questions.
It’s very unlikely, but if we find out about any illegal activities, child protection law means that we must let the authorities know.
What will happen to the results of this research?
There may be media reporting, lectures, conference presentations and academic publications written as a result of this project. However, our reporting and published results will not include any information that would identify you.
What do I do if I have any further questions?
If you have any questions or concerns regarding your participation, please contact our project team at contact@ourkidscode.ie. They will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you
This project is funded by Science Foundation Ireland and the Department of Rural and Community Development and administered by the School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin. The project team consists of Assistant Professor Nina Bresnihan, Assistant Professor Glenn Strong, Louise Caldwell, Mary O’Mahoney, Sarah Chapman and Dr Richard Millwood from Trinity College Dublin.