Doing Things Differently: Transformation, Innovation and Student Success in CTA and ITC

Prior to the commencement of this study, all parties involved (i.e. CAC, the author, her supervisor and UCT) signed a non-disclosure agreement, which granted the author permission to use the data concerned, subject to confidentiality requirements. Ethical clearance for the research was also obtained from the UCT Ethics Committee. Following this, the PGDA Programme Coordinator at CA Connect ("CAC") sent the author several spreadsheets containing the relevant information applicable to the CAC PGDA classes of 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The information received from CAC consisted of details entered into the online application system by students when applying for the programme (which had been independently validated by CAC for all accepted students); demographic data gathered at the time of enrolment; the final marks spreadsheet for each academic year, indicating students’ results in each of the four core subjects after the outcome of supplementary exams had been taken into account; and an analysis of the ITC results of students who had successfully passed PGDA. Working backwards from students for whom the marks spreadsheet indicated final PGDA outcomes (i.e. eliminating those students who were either not eligible for final exams in accordance with the programme rules or who had dropped out during the year for some other reason), relevant information was compiled for each student in each year, using their unique, numeric student number as a reference point. Where missing data points were identified for certain students, the author manually retrieved this information from CAC’s online application records, where possible. The three years were then combined into a single spreadsheet. Any identifying particulars (such, as name, surname and student number) were then deleted from the dataset and each data point was instead allocated a unique ID number for the purposes of this research.