Organigrama de importancia de las competencias

Research work of whatever form cannot be done without taking care of issues of ethics. Ethics in research may be looked at from various perspectives. Punch (2014: 36) postulates that while ethics deals with what are good, right or virtuous courses of action, research ethics is a branch of applied ethics. It is focused on the specific contexts of planning, conducting, communicating and following up research. For Bhattacherjee (2012: 137) ethics are principles to guide researchers in data collection, analysis, and interpretation procedures. On the other hand, Wang (2013:763) argues that ethics are principles to guide in the interrelationships between the researcher and the researched. This sample of definitions recognises the strong tie that exists between a researcher and the participants as well as with the data in the research study.

Initial planning for the current study included a request for permission to conduct research with Solusi University as a case study. The copy of the letter for this request is shown in Appendix 5- Request for Permission to do Study. This was granted by the Faculty Research Committee of Solusi University on 6 March, 2015 as shown in Appendix 6- Letter Granting Permission to do Study. Additionally, Universities have policies that require ethical clearance for their students doing research at any level. This serves to offer protection from redress in case of any eventualities (Drake and Heath, 2011: 52). The current research was granted ethical clearance by the University of South Africa on 13 May 2015 as shown in Appendix 7- UNISA Ethical Clearance.

The granting of ethical clearance by the University of South Africa gave the impetus for the current study to go on. As a researcher there are some fundamental ethical values that one should uphold. According to Bhattacherjee (2012: 137-139), the following are the widely accepted ethical values together with comments on their application to the current study:

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1. Voluntary participation and harmlessness- The participants in a research project must be aware that their participation in the study is voluntary, that they have the freedom to withdraw from the study at any time without any unfavourable consequences, and they are not harmed as a result of their participation or non- participation in the project.

This information was communicated to each participant through a letter to which was attached an Informed Consent Form (see Appendix 8- Consent Letter For Lecturers and Appendix 9- Consent Letter for Students). This was written to them for their attention prior to the face-to-face meeting with them.

2. All participants must receive and sign an informed consent form that clearly describes their right to not participate and right to withdraw, before their responses in the study can be recorded. This was followed in the current study. A copy of the Informed Consent Form for Lecturers is shown in Appendix 10 and the one for students is shown in Appendix 11.

3. Anonymity and confidentiality- In the letter to each participant it is stated that anonymity and confidentiality will be maintained.

4. Disclosure. Apart from the letter that I served each participant, I also held a session to explain the nature of my study and the investigation to be carried out. I also gave them opportunity to ask questions and seek further clarification.

5. Analysis and reporting- I informed the participants that data from my findings would be reported using the qualitative research study approach and explained what that means.

4.10. SUMMARY

In this chapter I intended to deal with the methodology that would lead to data collection and analysis. There are two data generation instruments that were used. These are interviews and document analysis. The interviews were done with four lecturers, one from each of the four selected modules (core-courses) and a focus group from each of the four modules. The data was analysed using themes and sub-themes. Since the qualitative research approach was being used, I ensured that trustworthiness was established by the credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability of the findings of my research. The fundamental ethical values in research were also strongly upheld.

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CHAPTER FIVE

DATA PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION

5.1. INTRODUCTION

This chapter seeks to present and discuss data that was generated during the research process. This is done through the themes and sub-themes that have emerged from the data. The generation of data was done using two instruments namely; interviews and document analysis (see Chapter Four). Hence the presentation and discussion of data is being done as the data from the different instruments converge to address a theme or sub-theme. Such should be able to yield some insights from the analysis that will help to make interpretations to the emerging patterns.

To begin with, I document some notable features that arose from the data on how the participants characterised the formative assessment process at Solusi University. These come first from the interviews that I had with the students’ focus groups as well as those I did with the individual lecturers. They are hereby presented and discussed in order to address the first part of the first research question. The first research question reads, “What is the true worth or value of formative assessment in the context of self-regulated learning?” The first part of the first research question sought to find out how the lecturers and students in the various Departments characterised the quality of formative assessment practices.

Secondly, the outstanding features are noted and discussed from the analysis that I did on the documents that are used in the assessment process at Solusi University. They are presented and discussed in order to partially address the second part of the first research question in this study. It reads “What do course outlines and related documents suggest regarding the quality of formative assessment?”

The outstanding features from the two data sources are analysed and presented to result in four major issues to be discussed: (1) Performance, (2) Assessment of Learning, (3) Assignments, and (4) Course Objectives. This will help to address the second element of the second part of the first research question on how the evidence from the course outlines and related documents compares with staff and students’ perspectives.

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It is worth noting that qualitative data analysis begins at the same time that data is being generated (Creswell, 2009: 184). I was able to analyse the data as I was generating it from the focus groups’ interviews together with the lecturers’ interviews as well as from the documents. In each case I analysed the data for categories, trends, and connections between categories of what I heard and recorded from the interviews, (Ratcliff, 2008:120). This was done during the course of the interviews and later when all the data was being synchronised.

As for the documents, I did them course by course as each document was made available by the lecturer. I used the Course Outline Analysis Schedule to record for each course whatever item as per the schedule, (see Appendix 3). After that the information was combined in one Course Outline Analysis Schedule and analysed as was done for the interviews. I used the Quizzes, Tests and Assignments Schedule to capture the number of Quizzes, Tests and Assignments that were given for each course. The same was used to record the number of objectives according to Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Objectives for each quiz, test and assignment that was given. These were tallied for frequency of occurrence.