Informing Science InSITE- “Where Parallels Intersect ” June 2003 Investigating Suggestion.pdf

Informing Science InSITE - “Where Parallels Intersect” June 2003 Investigating Suggestions for Increasing the Throughput Rate of IS Students Elsa Naudé and Tertia Hörne University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa naudeej@unisa.ac.za hornet@unisa.ac.za Abstract During the past few years science faculties at tertiary education institutions in South Africa have had to face increasing pressure from national as well as provincial government bodies to improve the student throughput rate. Various suggestions have been made to achieve this goal. This paper investigates the viability of two of these suggestions for solving the throughput problem. It is part of a larger reflexive research project investigating various aspects of the teaching and learning of Computing and IS through distance education. Information from the assignment records and the examination marks of students for a specific Computer Science second year module with a practical component was used for this study. Keywords: Education, programming, assignments, pass rate, distance education Introduction During the last few years science faculties at tertiary education institutions in South Africa have had to face increasing pressure from national as well as provincial government bodies to improve the student throughput rate. At the University of South Africa (Unisa) various sugge stions have been made to achieve this goal (Unisa Faculty Executive, 2001). One suggestion was that students who failed the ex- amination, but obtained a mark of at least 30%, be allowed to sit for a supplementary examination. A decision to this effect was taken at a Unisa Science Faculty board meeting. Another