Open coding
At this first level of coding, you are looking for distinct concepts and categories in the data, which will form the basic units of your analysis. In other words, you are breaking down the data into first level concepts, or master headings, and second-level categories, or subheadings.
Researchers often use highlights to distinguish concepts and categories. For example, if interviewees consistently talk about teaching methods, each time an interviewee mentions teaching methods, or something related to a teaching method, you would use the same color highlight. Teaching methods would become a concept, and other things related (types, etc.) would become categories – all highlighted the same color. Use different colored highlights to distinguish each broad concept and category. What you should have at the end of this stage are transcripts with 3-5 different colors in lots of highlighted text. Transfer these into a brief outline, with concepts being main headings and categories being subheadings.