D.Litt. et Phil. / Technikon SA has a high attrition rate, which seems to indicate that students are not ready for distance education and that firsttime students at Technikon SA are of a lower educational quality than such students at other technikons. The purpose of this study was therefore to predict which students are not ready for formal enrolment in distance higher education, thereby avoiding a potentially negative situation by identifying those prospective students who could benefit from support programmes. Methods followed This study, which makes use of the Kember Model of student attrition in distance higher education, investigates the extent to which different students, who can potentially be differentiated according to 15 biographical characteristics, are close to or far from academic success. The assumption is made that the identified eight different academic performance groups are more or less ready for technikon distance education. Approximately 13 590 TSA students' registration records and academic performance were investigated over a period of four years and was used to assign the students to one of the eight academic performance groups. The collected data was analysed by using CHAID-analysis as well as correspondence analysis. Results The research question/hypothesis for this study is as follows: Certain cognitive variables (previous academic performance) iii and non-cognitive variables (biographical and other typifying student characteristics) are satisfactorily better than others at distinguishing between the different distance educationready groups of Technikon SA students. The results appear to indicate that at least 9 of the 15 variables are able to distinguish between academic performance groups and to predict academic performance. The variables supporting this research statement are placed in order of increasing importance: Study group formation, work status, value of senior certificate, age group, marital status, previous activities, value of last school examination symbols and cultural group formation. It would appear that these variables assist in defining the term "distance education readiness" by helping to identify the students that are in this way predisposed to it. Generally, it would appear that older white married female students are academically more successful than the other groups, while black unemployed female students are academically least successful. This may be partially explained by the large differences in the educational opportunities and socioeconomic backgrounds of people in South Africa. However, this study was unsuccessful in providing a clear picture of how to identify those students
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:9502 |
| Date | 16 August 2012 |
| Creators | Welman, Johannes Christiaan |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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