Initial Data Collection Complete!

Yesterday I drew a line under the initial phase of the data collection when I closed the online questionnaires to further responses.

To summarise the target students for this research:

705 students are registered to study the year 1 course in 2008, and thus were invited to complete the Pre-Course questionnaire. 567 responses were returned to the questionnaire which yielded 506 usable sets of data once duplicates were removed. As a principle the latest version of the questionnaire has been included unless this was a blank response, in which case the next earliest that included answers was taken. Overall this equates to a 72% response rate to the Pre-Course Questionnaire.

470 students are registered to take the Information Management and Control module which the initial phase has focused on. Of these 74 students were retaking the module after failing or deferring it in a previous year. 381 students submitted a copy of the diary that they kept for week 2 of the module, of which 363 were usable for research purposes. This equates to a response rate of 77% for the diary.

In respect of the module assessment 447 students submitted their first assignment and 438 submitted assignment 2, a submission rate of 95% and 93% respectively. In terms of module outcome this results in 430 students passing the module - a pass rate of 91%.

348 students submitted a response to the Post-Module questionnaire. After duplicates were removed (following the same criteria as for the Pre-Course questionnaire) this yielded 310 usable responses - a response rate of 66%.

When these various sets of data are combined, the result is a total of 221 complete sets of data that include responses to the two questionnaires, submission of the diary as well as details of student's assessment marks and their participation in the VLE forums. This equates to 47% of the module population, however, as only 2 students retaking the module submitted a complete set of data this is effectively 55% of new students taking the module.

In respect of profile of the full sets collected, 56% are from male students (compared with 65% across all students taking the module), which would appear to be representative. What appears less representative is that 99% of the students submitting complete sets of data are passing the module whereas only 1% (2 students) have failed it. This does suggest that a proportion of students (up to 45) may already have dropped out or deferred before the module ended. What is not clear is the extent that time may have caused, or contributed, to this.

The next phase is to analyse the data. All 221 sets of data are now printed and a visual examination will be the first step. This should reveal those factors which seem to contribute to time pressures, and so will be extracted into SPSS for more detailed analysis.

Never a dull day!!