Thesis (Ed.D.)--Liberty University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

M. Ed. / Many higher education institutions face the loss of subsidy due to the high attrition rate of students. Despite the many advantages of alternate access programmes documented in literature, numerous Engineering Faculty members and members of the management of the University of Johannesburg believed that first time applicants with A and B symbols on their senior certificate were stronger students than those students who had completed an alternate access programme. Furthermore, they felt that the alternate access students took up the places which should have been given to those students with excellent senior certificate results. While many studies have been conducted on alternate access programmes there appears to be no evidence of the academic benefits that students derive from them. This generic qualitative study focused on what students perceive to be the academic benefits of alternate access programmes for their mainstream study. Purposeful sampling was used to select Engineering students from the 2005 and 2006 cohort to participate in focus group interviews and the data gathered during the interviews were analysed and interpreted using an Interpretivist lens. The themes that emerged from the study confirmed that students found the programmes to be beneficial but that they became aware of most of the academic benefits only once they joined the mainstream students in their second year of study. This study revealed the alternate access students were of the opinion that there are a number of academic benefits that they had derived from the alternate access programmes. They were in agreement that these benefits had helped to prepare them for mainstream study and they concluded that the benefits had contributed to their academic success in their mainstream studies. The findings of this study suggest that alternate access programmes have an important role to play in providing students with access, support and success in mainstream studies which in turn leads to the increased throughput of students and higher education institutions retaining subsidy.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of three testing procedures on comprehensive final examination performance. The 64 undergraduates used as subjects were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a non-repeated single-unit, a non-repeated cumulative, or a repeated single-unit testing procedures. Subjects in the non-repeated testing procedures were administered a weekly multiple-choice test taken from content covering either (a) the most recent material or (b) all the material to-date. Subjects in the repeated testing procedure were administered up to three alternate forms of a multiple-choice test taken from content covering the most recent material. The dependent measure was a comprehensive 100 item multiple-choice test. Grade point average was used as a covariate.An Analysis of Covariance was applied to determine whether there was a significant difference between (a) the means of the non-repeated cumulative and the repeated single-unit procedures, and (b) the average mean of these two procedures and the mean of the non-repeated single-unit procedure. The .01 level was used for judgments about statistical significance.Findings1. No significant difference was found between the mean final examination score obtained by the students in the non-repeated cumulative and the repeated single-unit testing groups after the effects of the covariate were partialled out.2. No significant difference was found when the average of the final examination scores obtained by the non-repeated cumulative and the repeated single-unit groups was compared to the mean final examination score obtained by the non-repeated single-unit group.3. The subjects in the repeated single-unit testing group obtained a significantly greater number of points on the examinations administered throughout the quarter.Conclusions1. Previously reported differences between repeated versus non-repeated and repeated versus cumulative testing on final examination performance may be reflecting only differences in testing frequency.2. The higher grades obtained by students given multiple opportunities to "master" material may not reflect actual end-of-course achievement by a comprehensive final.3. To aid in the valid interpretation, generalizability, replication and synthesis of research findings, detailed descriptions of the independent and dependent variables used in testing procedures research seem warranted.

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