Findings Summary & Reflection
Hey guys, welcome back!
With the new remote delivery system being introduced into the University program as a consequence of COVID-19, I became very curious about how students would respond and what areas would thrive or fail. To gain some insight, I conducted a small-scale research project which gathered data from a small sample pool of BCM212 students from the University of Wollongong. The data was collected from the responses of 21 students using a small online survey. Please note this makes the findings quite limited as the number of participants is small and lacks diversity.
The strongest finding was that 71.4% of participants feel the most negative characteristic of remote delivery, which is negatively affecting their experience, is the lack of face-to-face interactions, especially for those who identify as extrovert or consisting of both introvert and extrovert qualities. On the contrary, those who actually found the lack of face-to-face interactions as preferable, identified as having introvert qualities. It is evident that personality traits can impact one’s preferred learning style and desired level of social interaction.
Having said this, findings show that 90.5% of participants feel positive about not needing to travel, as this has allowed students more time to relax, produce quality work and do other things, such as focus on mental health, socialise with family and friends and exercise. This data can be used by Universities to improve their remote delivery system and perhaps introduce more flexibility when remote delivery is over, such as online lectures or tutorial recordings.
This project has taught me a lot about research process, with the main teaching being the importance of pre-planning through project design and management. This allowed me to gain a narrower scope of what I wanted to research and achieve at the end of the project. It allowed me to manage the project in stages and polish my questions so that I could gain helpful responses and hence effective research findings. I also learnt the value of ethical practices and consideration when it comes to surveying. I would have liked to solidify my research topic sooner as I had changed my topic after the task 1 proposal. This would have improved my understanding of the topic further. As the project reaches a close, I would say I have grown my skills and feel ready to conduct research in the future.
By Kayla Mathew
Capture By Kayla 