The Institution Focused Study (IFS)

The IFS is unique to the IOE EdD programme. The study is presented as a 20,000 word report and its intention is to show that you can complete a piece of research within a professional setting. Although not compulsory, most students complete the IFS within their employing institution, and as such it provides excellent experience of being an ‘insider researcher’.

I chose to do my research on the retention of students within the College of Estate Management and the reasons why some drop out. I had already looked at this in respect of first year degree students for the MOE2 assignment. I titled my study ‘Towards Quality Improvement: Mapping Student Drop Out Against The Student Value Chain’ as I was interested to know at what point in their journey through the College they dropped out. My aim was to follow this up with identifying the reasons and thereby the actions that the College could take to remedy these where possible. I started by analysing the data that the College holds on students and used submission of assessed work (assignments and exams) to identify the point at which students dropped out of study.

Originally I had intended to send a questionnaire out to all drop out students to discover their reasons but this was blocked within the College. Negativity in the question phrasing and lack of resources were the reasons cited. This was an unexpected move and demonstrated one of the problems facing the insider researcher. The impact was to introduce a 6 month delay while an alternative approach could be arranged. Eventually a short emailed questionnaire was sent to drop out students but the response was minimal (actually zero). The reason was that the time interval was so great between when the students had ceased study and the questionnaire arriving that it had little relevance to them. Again there was a delay until the next set of degree courses finished when the same questionnaire was sent to students who had more recently dropped out. This produced a decent set of responses which were followed up with a sample of interviews.

The main conclusions from the IFS showed that College students behave in the same way as other students and drop out mainly for time reasons. What was interesting was that time became an issue due to different combinations of factors involving the course, workplace and home. It appeared that there were a limited range of factors that act to either increase or decrease the time available for study. It also appeared that there was a minimum time below which the cost of continuing with study was too high in spite of the potential benefits of completing the course. I have always been interested in time and its influence on work processes and planning, and as a result of these findings I decided to make time the focus for my thesis.

Despite the IFS being wholly relevant to the aims of a professional doctorate many of us found it more time consuming than anticipated and in many respects on a par with the thesis. That said it was worthwhile in hindsight and many of the problems and issues encountered were valuable lessons in advance of the thesis. Having sent in the IFS proposal in Summer 2005, by rights I should have completed the report by Autumn 2006. However, due to the unintended delays and a bout of ill-health I didn't actually submit my IFS until Summer 2007.