eSTEeM Seminar Series: Scholarship Showcase - May 2023

Location: Via MS Teams
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eSTEeM continues its seminar series with presentations from project teams. May’s seminar will explore the methodology and findings of the following eSTEeM project.

Impact study of the taught MScs in Technology related subjects on students’ employability

Daphne Chang

Certain aspects of employability such as motivations for study/outcomes of postgraduate studies have been documented and discussed to some extent. However, there seemed to be little discussion/debate on medium to long-term impact that a postgraduate qualification has on OU students’ careers. This research aimed to investigate the impact of gaining an MSc in Technology related subjects. We carried out this scholarship project in 2017 to examine why our students chose to study a MSc degree with us, whether our offerings met our students’ expectations, the impact of a MSc degree has on our students’ career progression and whether such an impact is a gendered one. The data collection took place in the summer and autumn of 2017. Two qualitative research tools were used to collect data: online questionnaire and semi-structured telephone interview. 111 alumni out of 264 eligible informants answered our questionnaire (42% response rate) and 33 interviews were carried out (30% of those who responded to the questionnaire). In this seminar, I will share some of the analyses.