Recommendations for the digital services offered by Cardiff Met to facilitate more effective learning outcomes of their students

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to provide some recommendations on how the electronic services offered by the university could be improved and better meet the learning outcomes of the students. One of the objectives is to identify original findings from a secondary data, which has been collected from The Digital Literacy Project. Secondary data consist of questionnaire results as well as transcribed focus groups. The two methods used earlier to collect information has some patterns shared between them, therefore they were analysed using a thematic analysis as it allows the researcher to examine and record the themes or patterns across the dataset. The use of the two methods questionnaire and focus group, are powerful tools to improve the understanding of the university and students of the digital services offered to students to improve and better meet the learning outcomes of the students. The data mentioned above is a mix of quantative and qualitative data and can be called ‘mix methods’. The secondary data has many themes or patterns shared between them. Therefore, a thematic analysis was used to better understand the data and it also helps the researcher “to interpret large amount of data and articulate themes or patterns in a readable, constructive and meaningful way” (Ryan, 2008). Qualitative approach can use either inductive or deductive approach to interpret the meanings that can be derived from the data. Inductive approach is what has been applied in this dissertation where it “uses the data to generate ideas (hypothesis generating), whereas deductive approach begins with the idea and uses the data to confirm or negate the idea (hypothesis testing)” (Thorne, 2000). In the findings part every recommendation is presented with the relevant service as bullet points.