The following is a letter from John Benseman requesting help from providers and participants involved with the NCALNE (Voc) over the last few years. Please click through to the relevant links if you are able to complete the survey.
Greetings
I wrote to you (or someone else in your organisation) about a study of NCALNE providers and students. This is an important study as it is an area in New Zealand adult literacy and numeracy that is severely under-researched at present.
NCALNE is one of the most significant developments with tutors over recent years, with in excess of 2000 tutors from a wide range of backgrounds enrolling since then with about 30 providers throughout the country.
I am seeking your help in undertaking this piece of research in two ways:
- Firstly, because I am not able to directly contact any of the students who did the National Certificate through your organisation (I don’t have any names or contact details), I am writing to see if you could send the attached email message (which has a link to their SurveyMonkeyquestionnaire) to all of your current and past students. They can then choose whether or not they want to be involved by completing the on-line questionnaire (or not).
- Secondly, I would like to invite you (or your nominee), as someone who has been involved in NCALNE, to be part of this study by completing an on-line questionnaire about your experience as a provider, with the National Certificate. The link for your provider questionnaire is: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/H8WBFWG . As with your students, you are free to participate in this research or not.
Brief information about the project:
The aims of this study are:
- To identify the characteristics and career progression of NCALNE participants
- To assess the value of the NCALNE for the participants in their professional roles
- To identify current and future professional needs of NCALNE participants.
You may have some questions about the project, so I have outlined my replies below.
- Who is funding the study? – My time in this project is covered by the research part of my position here at Unitec.
- Who is covered in the study? – All those who have enrolled in the National Certificates, whether they have finished or not (to ensure that we get as broad a perspective as possible) and their Certificate providers.
- What would ‘participating in the project’ mean? – if your organisation agrees to participate, the person responsible for NCALNE will be asked to complete an on-line questionnaire (usingSurveyMonkey) and you would contact all your students, distributing the attached message (you could either include in the body of a message or as an attached file).
- How do I know the study will be done in an appropriate way? – Firstly, the project was planned in co-operation with a number of National Certificate providers at a planning workshop in December 2012 and secondly, the study has been approved by the Unitec Ethics Committee.
- What do you want from me right now?
- ask the staff member with overall responsibility for the National Certificate if they would agree to complete the on-line survey [accessed at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/H8WBFWG ]
- send an email (or whatever form of communication is appropriate) to all the people who have enrolled (whether they finished or not) in the National Certificate through your organisation, attaching the file that I have sent with this message.
I would be glad to answer any other questions that you may have about the project if you like to email them to me. If you are interested in receiving a copy of the final report, you can drop me a line at jbenseman@unitec.ac.nz
I trust that you think this project has merit and that you are keen to help make it happen.
Regards, John Benseman
Department of Education, Unitec Institute of Technology
Email: jbenseman@unitec.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 815 4321, ext. 8736
