Investigating suggestions for increasing the throughput rate of distance learning students

During the last few years science faculties at tertiary distance education institutions have had to face increasing pressure from national as well as provincial government bodies to increase the student throughput rate. Various suggestions have been made to achieve this goal. One suggestion was to give all students automatic admission to the examination regardless of whether any assignments were submitted, or visual proof exists, that a particular student has spent time doing preparatory work for the examination. Another suggestion was that students failing the examination, but obtaining a mark of at least 30%, be allowed to sit for a supplementary examination. This paper investigates the viability of these suggestions for solving the throughput problem, using information from the assignment records and the examination marks of students for a specific Computer Science second year module with a practical component. During the last few years science faculties at tertiary distance education institutions have had to face increasing pressure from national as well as provincial government bodies to increase the student throughput rate. Various suggestions have been made to achieve this goal (1). One suggestion was that students who failed the examination, 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 possibility is to give all students automatic admission to the examination, regardless of whether any assignments were submitted, or visual proof exists, that a particular student did in fact spend time doing preparatory work for the examination. Since government subsidies are allocated on the basis of the pass rate of a module and not only on the number of students that are registered for the module, this affects all Departments at tertiary institutions. We believe that the onus is on the lecturers of subjects with relatively low passing rates, such as Computer Science subjects in the case of Unisa, to put measures in place to improve the situation without lowering standards. In this study we investigated the viability of the suggestions mentioned above for solving the throughput problem. In the next section we discuss the methodology used for the study. Then we describe the results of the study regarding the examination marks obtained by an individual student relative to the number of credits earned by that student. We also provide statistics regarding the pass rate of different groups of students who sat for the supplementary examination. Finally, we briefly discuss further research issues pertaining to the throughput rate of Computer Science students as well as that of university students in general.