1Dave, I'm worried about our case study.
2I've done a bit of reading, but I'm not sure what's involved in actually writing a case study.
3I missed the lecture where Dr Baker talked us through it.
4OK, well it's quite straightforward.
5We've got our focus - that's tourism at the Horton Castle site.
6And you said you'd done some reading about it.
7Yes, I found some articles and made notes of the main points.
8Did you remember to keep a record of where you got the information from?
9Sure.
10I know what a pain it is when you forget that.
11OK, so we can compare what we've read.
12Then we have to decide on a particular problem or need at our site.
13And then think about who we're going to interview to get more information.
14OK.
15So who'd that be?
16The people who work there?
17And presumably some of the tourists too?
18Yes, both those groups.
19So we'll have to go to the site to do that, I suppose.
20But we might also do some of our interviewing away from the site -
21we could even contact some people here in the city,
22like administrators involved in overseeing tourism.
23OK. So we'll need to think about our interview questions and...
24fix times and places for the meetings.
25It's all going to take a lot of time.
26And if we can, we should ask our interviewees if they can bring along some numerical data
27that we can add to support our findings.
28And photographs?
29I think we have plenty of those already.
30But Dr Baker also said
31we have to establish with our interviewees whether we can identify them in our case study,
32or whether they want to be anonymous.
33Oh, I wouldn't have thought of that.
34OK, once we've got all this information, I suppose we have to analyse it.
35Yes, put it all together and choose what's relevant to the problem we're focusing on,
36and analyse that carefully to find out if we can identify any trends or regularities there.
37That's the main thing at this stage, rather than concentrating on details or lots of facts.
38OK. And then once we've analysed that, what next?
39Well, then we need to think about what we do with the data we've selected
40to make it as clear as possible to our readers.
41Things like graphs, or tables, or charts.
42Right.
43Then the case study itself is mostly quite standard;
44we begin by presenting the problem, and giving some background,
45then go through the main sections,
46but the thing that surprised me is that in a normal report
47we'd end with some suggestions to deal with the problem or need we identified,
48but in a case study we end up with a question or a series of questions to our readers,
49and they decide what ought to be done.
50Oh, I hadn't realised that.
51So basically, the problem we're addressing in our case study of the Horton Castle site
52is why so few tourists are visiting it.
53And we'll find out more from our interviews,
54but I did find one report on the internet that suggested that one reason might be because...
55as far as transport goes, access is difficult.
56I read that too, but that report was actually written ten years ago,
57when the road there was really bad, but that's been improved now.
58And I think there's plenty of fascinating stuff there for a really good day out,
59but you'd never realise it from the castle website -
60maybe that's the problem.
61Yes, it's really dry and boring.
62I read somewhere a suggestion that what the castle needs is a visitor centre.
63So we could have a look for some information about that on the internet.
64What would we need to know?
65Well, who'd use it for a start.
66It'd be good to know what categories the visitors fell into too,
67like school parties or retired people,
68but I think we'd have to talk to staff to get that information.
69OK. And as we're thinking of suggesting a visitor centre
70we'd also have to look at potential problems.
71I mean, obviously it wouldn't be cheap to set up.
72No, but it could be a really good investment.
73And as it's on a historical site it'd need to get special planning permission, I expect.
74That might be hard.
75Right, especially as the only possible place for it would be at the entrance,
76and that's right in front of the castle.
77But it could be a good thing for the town of Horton.
78At present it's a bit of a ghost town.
79Once they've left school and got any skills or qualifications,
80the young people all get out as fast as they can to get jobs in the city,
81and the only people left are children and those who've retired.
82Right.
83Something else we could investigate would be the potential damage that tourists might cause to the castle site,
84I mean their environmental impact.
85At present the tourists can just wander round wherever they want,
86but if numbers increase, there might have to be some restrictions, like sticking to marked ways.
87And there'd need to be guides and wardens around to make sure these were enforced.
88Yes, we could look at that too.
89OK, well...