Learning and assessment are inextricably intertwined, since assessment not only measures learning, but future learning is also dependent on assessment. The purpose of this two phase sequential mixed-methods study was to examine the interplay between informal and formal assessment in Grade 9 EFAL classrooms in order to gain a better understanding of teachers’ assessment practises. Argued from a constructivist point of view, the study endorses continuous assessment (CASS), which balances informal and formal assessment. In order to direct the study towards the stated purpose, the researcher embarked on a literature study to contextualise English as First Additional Language against the background of educational developments in South Africa since 1994 and to examine assessment of English First Additional Language in an OBE framework. The literature study was followed by an empirical study. By applying a sequential mixed-methods research design, 66 conveniently sampled EFAL teachers in the Johannesburg-North District of the Gauteng Department of Education participated in the quantitative phase of the empirical study. By means of a survey as strategy of inquiry, these teachers completed a questionnaire. Six randomly selected teachers from the initial sample participated in the qualitative phase of the empirical study which followed a case study strategy of inquiry and consisted of individual interviews and observations. The empirical research findings revealed that the sampled teachers experienced the official Departmental documents as regulatory, overwhelming and ambiguous and that they gave more attention to formal assessment than informal assessment. Due to this emphasis on formal assessment, the teachers felt uncertain about the purposes of informal assessment which, as a consequence, was considered as less important than formal assessment. A preference of conventional assessment methods was also disclosed which implied that the sampled teachers were not willing to experiment with alternative assessment methods. In conclusion, the researcher discovered that although CASS was implemented in the sampled teachers’ classrooms, learner-centred teaching founded on constructivism with the aim of encouraging scaffolding, was not high on the teachers’ teaching agendas. / MEd (Learning and Teaching), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2013

State universities in Saudi Arabia have adopted a new educational policy, which made English the medium of instruction for all scientific departments. This has led to establishing a Foundation Year Programme (FYP) in the English Language Institute (ELI) of those universities, which aims to prepare university students to cope with the new academic requirements in their chosen majors and to improve their overall language competence. This study investigates teachers’ roles and beliefs regarding assessment practices in the ELI with the aim to uncover not only the role(s) teachers play in both continuous and summative assessment practices, but also teachers’ understandings of and attitudes towards assessment and their roles in it. Findings will also include how teachers perceive this role in this interpretive study, where the data were collected using open-ended interviews with twenty male and female expatriate and Saudi EFL teachers who work in the ELI of a specific Saudi university. The data were analysed on the basis of participants’ views and explanations about their roles in both continuous and summative assessment in the institution. The findings revealed that teachers had no role in summative assessment unless they were members of the Assessment Committee and that most teachers wanted to have a voice and be more involved. While teachers had a limited role in continuous assessment in the classroom, they felt the need for more involvement in the choice of materials/topics employed as well as more freedom regarding the way it is administered. The study also revealed that the ELI was not well receptive of criticism from teachers, which made teachers sometimes reluctant to being more involved in assessment or voicing their views in fear of being labelled negatively. Finally, some contributions to knowledge, implications for the context and recommendations are provided as well as some suggestions for improving teachers’ roles in assessment for future consideration.

abstract: Software engineering education today is a technologically advanced and rapidly evolving discipline. Being a discipline where students not only design but also build new technology, it is important that they receive a hands on learning experience in the form of project based courses. To maximize the learning benefit, students must conduct project-based learning activities in a consistent rhythm, or cadence. Project-based courses that are augmented with a system of frequent, formative feedback helps students constantly evaluate their progress and leads them away from a deadline driven approach to learning. One aspect of this research is focused on evaluating the use of a tool that tracks student activity as a means of providing frequent, formative feedback. This thesis measures the impact of the tool on student compliance to the learning process. A personalized dashboard with quasi real time visual reports and notifications are provided to undergraduate and graduate software engineering students. The impact of these visual reports on compliance is measured using the log traces of dashboard activity and a survey instrument given multiple times during the course. A second aspect of this research is the application of learning analytics to understand patterns of student compliance. This research employs unsupervised machine learning algorithms to identify unique patterns of student behavior observed in the context of a project-based course. Analyzing and labeling these unique patterns of behavior can help instructors understand typical student characteristics. Further, understanding these behavioral patterns can assist an instructor in making timely, targeted interventions. In this research, datasets comprising of student’s daily activity and graded scores from an under graduate software engineering course is utilized for the purpose of identifying unique patterns of student behavior. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Engineering 2016

Cloud computing is an emerging model in which applications, data, computing resources and operating platforms are provided to clients as a service. It represents a unique way to architect and remotely manage computing resources with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. As it become widely used and being relayed on, security and the risks surrounding it became more in focus to ensure the data protection. The purpose of the study is to focus on the security risks of confidentiality, integrity and availability, and how the cloud consumer perceives cloud security based on those risks. For this purpose, a qualitative research method was adopted and semi-structured interviews with 6 users with experience within the cloud were conducted to collect the data. The data were analysed and explained using codes and categories, based on the research questions and related literature. A roadmap was developed consist of four elements which can support in the migration decision. Those elements are: Trust, Compliance, Proactive and Continuous assessment.

<p>This study explores the assessment practices of adult educators in Mamelodi Adult Learning Centers using a qualitative methodology. The study recognizes that assessment is an important activity within the education and training enterprise since it can be used to improve the quality of teaching as well as improve and support the learning process. The study sets out to investigate how Mamelodi adult educators conceptualize assessment / the skills levels of these educators / the nature of support and training these educators received to enhance their assessment practices / the different assessment methods employed by the adult educators to assess learners / and the educational validity and efficacy of these practices.</p>

<p>This study explores the assessment practices of adult educators in Mamelodi Adult Learning Centers using a qualitative methodology. The study recognizes that assessment is an important activity within the education and training enterprise since it can be used to improve the quality of teaching as well as improve and support the learning process. The study sets out to investigate how Mamelodi adult educators conceptualize assessment / the skills levels of these educators / the nature of support and training these educators received to enhance their assessment practices / the different assessment methods employed by the adult educators to assess learners / and the educational validity and efficacy of these practices.</p>

Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / This study explores the assessment practices of adult educators in Mamelodi Adult Learning Centers using a qualitative methodology. The study recognizes that assessment is an important activity within the education and training enterprise since it can be used to improve the quality of teaching as well as improve and support the learning process. The study sets out to investigate how Mamelodi adult educators conceptualize assessment; the skills levels of these educators; the nature of support and training these educators received to enhance their assessment practices; the different assessment methods employed by the adult educators to assess learners; and the educational validity and efficacy of these practices. / South Africa

This research sought to investigate how appropriate the Continuous Assessment (CASS) and Common Task for Assessment (CTA) are as assessment models for the General Education and Training Certificate (GETC) with specialization in Economic and Management Science. It examined the appropriateness of quality assurance mechanisms that were used in CASS and CTA at Grade 9 level, with specific reference to Economic and Management Science. The research question further examined how valid the CASS tasks are and how reliable the CASS and CTA marks are at Grade 9 level, with reference to EMS? The qualitative research approach was used within a case study research design. Thus purposeful sampling was used to select the five participants of this study, namely; two EMS educators, two EMS departmental heads and the District facilitator for EMS. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, document analysis and observations, and triangulated to support the conclusions and to make the findings more reliable. The results indicated that teachers lacked the skills to construct tasks of high quality, assessment plans, and assessment tools. As a result, they resorted the use of tests as a dominant form of assessment. The study further revealed that moderation of Grade 9 School-Based Assessment occurred at various levels of the education system, namely at school, cluster and provincial level. The study showed that there was a corroboration of concepts used in the conceptual framework based on the open system theory, as teachers’ qualifications contributed to the effective development and implementation of the learning programmes in Economic and Management Science. However, the procedures used in conducting moderation were not regarded in a favourable light. The difficulty of CTA was attributed to the non-coverage of all assessment standards during the implementation of CASS. Copyright / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

Educators in the basic education system are facing extreme challenges in assessing learners in general and in implementing assessment policy in particular. These challenges influence the pass rate, particularly in grade 12. The validity of the evidence of the learners’ performance depends on the quality and type of assessment tasks administered to those learners. Therefore, it was critical that those aspects, which pose challenges in the management of the assessment policy within the education system, be addressed by developing policies which would assist educators in managing assessment at school, since assessment forms an integral part of teaching and learning. Support programmes on policy implementation had to be developed for learners and for the training of educators, the implementation of which should improve the pass rate. These programmes had to include the conditions and roles of provincial and district education officers. A South African policy development model had to be developed to address the unique situation of developing such programmes. The introduction of the National Curriculum Statement (NCS) and the National Protocol on Recording and Reporting (NPRR) were some of the measures aimed at improving learner performance and assisting educators in implementing and managing assessment which is in line with national policy. An exploratory study, aimed at providing a broad framework on policy analysis, was used with the view to understand how the NCS and National Protocol for Recording and Reporting are managed. A proportional representative sample of 25% of the schools from the six clusters in the Mopani district formed part of this study. To ensure that the historically white, urban and rural schools were represented, an incidental biased sampling method was used. Data obtained from the questionnaire indicates that educators have knowledge of the various policies, acts and guidelines which should be used in assessing learners. However, some data indicates that some educators know about the existence of such policies, acts and guidelines but do not have knowledge of the content thereof. Data obtained from the interviews indicates that educators either know the content of policies or are only aware of them. Therefore, the lack of knowledge of policy content which regulates the practice of a policy has an influence on the teaching and assessing of learners. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / School of Public Management and Administration (SPMA) / unrestricted

The 1994 democratic elections marked a great turning point in the history the of the South African education system. A call from many politicians and academics for dismantling apartheid education which was racially biased was subsequently made. This was supported by theorists and educational reformers such as Darling-Hammond (1996) and Sizer (1984) who suggested that an educational transformation that would provide South African learners with the necessary knowledge and skills to think critically was required. Following this call, in 1997, a National Curriculum Statement (NCS), with its accompanying assessment policy in a form of continuous assessment (CASS), was introduced in South African schools. This study focuses on the experiences of secondary schools management teams (SMT) in the implementation of continuous assessment. This study is informed by the findings of Chisholm (2001) and Jansen&Christie (1995) who contend that the hasty implementation of CASS was extremely problematic for school managers. The objective was to explore the role of principals, deputy principals, and heads of departments (as managers of schools) in the implementation of the continuous assessment policy. Furthermore, the study aimed to investigate the kind of support the Limpopo Department of Education provides to the SMT for the successful implementation of CASS. The study was conducted in six secondary schools in the Malamulele East Circuit, Vhembe District in Limpopo Province in the following schools: Deliwe, Dlayani, Falaza Gembani, Ndhengeza, and Yollisa and it employed a qualitative research approach. Semi-structured individual interviews were used to collect data from principals, deputy principals and heads of departments. In addition, semi-structured focus-group interviews were conducted with heads of departments in order to get in-depth understanding with regard to their experiences when implementing a continuous assessment policy. This study found that members of the SMT in many secondary schools in the Malamulele East Circuit did not receive training for the implementation of continuous assessment and as a result, they lack clarity in many critical aspects of this assess1nent policy. It has further been found that the majority of the members of the SMT lack a conceptual understanding of what CASS is and also the role they are supposed to play in its implementation. Consequently, educators are still relying much on tests to judge the performance of the learners. In the light of this, it is therefore recommended that principals, deputy principals and heads of departments be provided with extensive training which would generate a deeper conceptual understanding of this assessment policy. Copyright / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted