Work in Progress
Satisfaction and improvements: What students have to say about their VET experiences
Summary
- Item:
- 10392
- Title:
- Satisfaction and improvements: What students have to say about their VET experiences
- Type:
- Inhouse research project
- Project no:
- SP603
- Status:
- Finished
- Date commenced:
- 20 December 2006
- Contact:
- Metta Creaser
- phone: 08 82308455
- email: metta.creaser@ncver.edu.au
Purpose
Using both qualitative and quantitative data from the Student Outcomes Survey, this project will examine in more detail the training experiences of people who have recently completed some vocational education and training. Satisfaction with training and how the training may be improved will be the main focus of this project, and as such will provide VET practitioners with an information source that may be used, as part of a suite of tools, to evaluate the quality of training. The analysis undertaken for this project will focus on particular subsets of respondents.
Approach
Data analysis.
Research questions
The following questions will be used to determine the content of the industry flyers:
1. What is the level of satisfaction of VET students with the overall quality of their training and each aspect of teaching, assessment etc.? How do these vary by demographic and training-related characteristics?
2. What aspects of the students' teaching and learning experiences have been identified as needing improvement?
3. Are there differences in the demographic and training-related characteristics of those that make suggestions for improvements and those that do not?
Methodology
Stage 1 - construction of consolidated data file
Using the 2005 SOS data, an amalgamated unit record file will be constructed comprising demographic and training characteristic variables (age, sex, highest prior education level, qualification, field of education, teaching, assessment and generic skills scores, overall satisfaction), reason for training and the verbatims.
Stage 2 - analysis
This stage will involve predominately qualitative analysis with some quantitative analysis to show the extent of comments made and to put the findings in context.
Descriptive analyses will be undertaken to present the level of satisfaction by the following demographic and training characteristics: age, sex, highest prior education, reason for training (>= 25 years), qualification, field of education, student type, and provider type. Descriptive analysis will also present the proportion of students who made suggestions for improvements.
The qualitative analysis of comments will then be undertaken using the CEQuery software. Each of the demographic and training characteristics described above will be examine by level of satisfaction to determine if there are any trends.
Stage 3 - report writing
This stage will involve the writing of the report (1:3:25 format).
Stage 4 - technical report
Technical report on how to use CEQuery.
Stage 5 - publication and dissemination
It is suggested that the final publication is a web-only release. However, consideration will be given to the production of concise (two-page) flyers for TAFE providers, and possibly key representative bodies of private providers, summarising 'the good, the bad, and the ugly' of a student's VET learning experience, and how this information may be used as part of student evaluation of teaching strategies.
Organisations
This project has been funded under the NCVER statistical research program.
