LINK Centre (Learning Information Networking Knowledge Centre)

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/19250

The Wits LINK Centre is a leading African academic research and training body focused on ICT ecosystem policy and practice. Based at the Wits Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, LINK engages in knowledge production and capacity-building for the broad communications and information and communications technology (ICT) sector in Africa. Its focus spans across policy, regulation, management and practice in telecommunications, Internet, broadcasting, digital media, e-government, e-transformation and e-development, all with an emphasis on economic and social implications in African and other developing-world contexts. LINK publishesThe African Journal of Information and Communication (AJIC), which is accredited by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). Director: Dr. Lucienne Abrahams: luciennesa@gmail.com

For technical questions regarding this collection, contact Nina Lewin, nina.lewin@wits.ac.za, who is the responsible librarian.

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Author: search.filters.author.Van Biljon, JudySubject: search.filters.subject.visualisation, assessment, postgraduate, dissertation

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    Postgraduate Dissertation Assessment: Exploring Extant Use and Potential Efficacy of Visualisations
    (LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, 2015-12-15) Van Biljon, Judy; Renaud, Karen
    In the context of assessment, two specific challenges face South African academics. The first is that their universities have experienced an unprecedented increase in postgraduate students without a concomitant increase in supervision capacity. The second challenge is that many South African students are studying in a second or third language and struggle to express themselves in English. It is notoriously difficult to write text that is easy to read. Examiners are thus finding it challenging to maintain their own existing high standards of consistency, accuracy and fairness. This paper focuses on identifying a way of making the assessment of dissertations more efficient, while retaining rigour and fairness. In so doing, we want to provide students with a tool that will help them to communicate their research more effectively. In seeking an intervention, we noted the emerging use of visualisation as a communication facilitator in other areas of academia. Given the innate human ability to understand and remember visual representations, and the deep level of cognitive processing required to produce such visualisations, the considered inclusion of visualisations could be the means we are seeking. In this paper we report on an investigation into the extant use and potential usefulness of visualisation in a number of dissertations. We also explore supervisor expectations with respect to the use of visualisation in research reporting. Based on our findings, we propose that a discourse be opened into the deliberate use of visualisation in postgraduate research reporting.