Continuous Assessment Test MPM 8109: RESEARCH METHODS IN PUBLIC POLICY AND MANAGEMENT DATE: Wednesday, 27th June 2022 Time: 2% Hours Instructions Please answer Q the questions and upload a WORD document answer script onto the e learning portal immediately after the CAT. Please do not submit scanned handwritten work. Any papers not uploaded immediately will be disqualied. QUESTION 1 (20 Marks) Please read the case study Students' use of workbased learning in their studies, and answer the questions that follow. Case Study: Students' use of work-based learning in their studies Work based learning (WBL) refers to the learning that people achieve through undertaking work. It is recognised as a legitimate form of learning that can be used to enhance what higher education students do in class. For Kenyan university students in Higher Education, WBL is achieved through undertaking a placement in private or public sector institution for three to six months. These students are sometimes referred to as 'sandwich' students because their placement and the associated work experience is 'sandwiched' between their time at the university. Jim, a researcher, was interested in exploring how sandwich students at his Business School used WBL from placements when they returned to his university to complete their undergraduate studies. His review of the academic literature in this area revealed that there was a great deal of research to support the argument that WBL offered potential benets to students, but little about how this learning was actually used in the classroom. Evidence from two survey-based studies suggested that students, in general, did not appear to be using WBL in the classroom. Jim therefore decided that he could contribute something to the understanding of this topic by exploring the extent to which students at his Business School used WBL from their placement in their final year of study. From his reading of the literature, Jim felt that using survey data had certain limitations as a means of understanding how students used WBL. The topic is highly complex, making the construction of a valid questionnaire problematic, and the resources Jim had for the study were limited. Jim felt that there might be other equally valid ways of understanding how students were using WBL in the classroom. In his reading Jim had discovered Kolb's (1984) Learning Cycle on the use of reection in understanding and learning. This argued that reection was an important stage in learning, enabling theory and concepts to be learnt at a deep level, using the context of specific experiences. Jim reasoned that, if WBL from the placement was being utilised by students in the final year, it would reveal itself in any reective work they might be producing for assessment. Demonstrating their learning through reection would involve the students applying theoretical knowledge to their experiences, including those they had on placement. Analysing such work by the students should therefore offer a good indication of whether the students were using WBL from placement in the final year. Page 1 of6 Jim identified one final year module in the Business School in which students were asked to reect on theoretical aspects of management practice such as organisational culture, use of technology, strategy, operations, logistics and so on, and present these reections in the form of learning logs. The lecturer for the module required the students to demonstrate through the logs that they had understood these topics and could apply them in some way to their experiences. Learning logs were used by all students. Jim expected that the logs for sandwich students, if they were using their WBL, should contain specic references to their placement. With the lecturer's and the students' permission, Jim analysed a sample of learning logs chosen at random by the lecturer. Half were by students who had been on placement and half by students who had not. His analysis of the logs was guided by the work of Moon (1999) who is an acknowledged expert on the use of reflection in learning. Jim completed his analysis of the learning logs and came to four main conclusions that he wished to explore with the students. He wrote to the students asking them if they were willing to be interviewed as a group about their learning logs, and the letter outlined what, in broad terms, the interview would be about and how long it was likely to last. After students responded positively, Jim then found a date for the interview that was convenient for all of them. The management of the interview with the students was divided into three stages. In stage one, Jim outlined the purpose of the meeting and why it was needed for his study. In particular, he stressed that the discussion would be treated as confidential. He also asked for permission to audio record the interview and stated that at any point any of the students could ask for the recorder to be switched off, or for a piece of the interview to be deleted from the recorder. After making sure the students were ready to begin, Jim formally started the interview. This was the second stage. The interview took just over one hour during which Jim tried at all times to make sure the students, rather than he himself, were the ones talking. He encouraged dialogue across the group to try and broaden the discussion and only interrupted on occasion when the direction of the debate had wandered well beyond the topic. Jim found the students became increasingly motivated to make their views known and he made copious notes as the interview progressed. The third and nal stage of the interview was to close the discussion ensuring that everybody had had a final opportunity to raise any points that had not been mentioned during the interview. Jim then formally closed the interview, thanked the students for their time and reiterated the fact that everything that they had said would be treated as condential. The students responded by saying that they had enjoyed the meeting. The results from the interview left Jim with a number of questions relating to the comments made by the students about their final year lecturers. These comments had highlighted that students perceived lecturers did not encourage them to use their placement experience in the nal year. Jim therefore decided to explore some of the detail behind these comments with three experienced lecturers of final year students. The group interviews revealed a very different perception to that of the students. The lecturers were resolute that students' WBL from their placement was used in the classroom, and they offered a range of examples as to how this was done. However, the interview revealed that lecturers' encouragement might be implicit rather than explicit a lot of the time. The research had confirmed that students at the Business School were not on the whole using WBL from placement in their nal year. It also suggested that this was because of their perception that the lecturers were not encouraging them to do this. A key recommendation was Page 2 of6 that sandwich students needed to have explicit encouragement from lecturers if they were to make use of WBL in their nal year. Questions (a) Why did Jim feel it necessary to analyse reflective material produced by students rather than just interview nal year students in his research? (5 marks) (b) Why was it important to plan and manage the interviews in the way described? (5 marks) (0) Was it valid for Jim to decide to interview lecturers when originally he had not intended to? Explain your answer. (4 marks) (d) What were three strengths and three weaknesses of this research? (6 marks) Page 3 of6