the ISFC39 Proceedings - International Systemic-Functional ...

to boldly proceed ...AssessmentsCollectedIndividual essayYesGroup presentationYesGroup report to accompany group presentation YesFinal examinationNoTable 2. Assessments in comparative human resource management courseThe structure of the two curriculums, the contents provided, assessments or any otherrequirements will be examined and compared to see how the experience of the Thai studentsparticipating in the case study affected their academic literacy development.5 Research methodology: ParticipantsThe participants in this study include both lecturers and Thai students undertakingpostgraduate education at an Australian university. Initially, students were contacted byemails, and only those who replied and agreed to participate were contacted in person toarrange for a face-to-face meeting and provide further details of the research project. Thestudy started with six participants. Later on, however, one student opted out so the numberremained five. The five students were from two faculties: Business (majoring: InternationalBusiness, Marketing, and Hospitality) and Sciences (majoring: Chemistry and BiomolecularSciences, and Biological Sciences).After the students agreed to take part in the study, the lecturers were contacted forpermission to observe classes and access of course reading notes, unit outlines, audiorecordings, and other documents relevant to student writing. For the Business discipline, thethree participants were undertaking one communal unit (Comparative Human ResourceManagement). So, the lecturer of this unit was contacted for permission of class observationand access of relevant texts. In the discipline of Science, the two participants did not share thecommunal units which required writing assignments, therefore; two lecturers of differentunits were contacted (Medical Chemistry, and Molecular Biology and Genomics). Permissionfor class observation and collection of all relevant data was received from the lecturer ofMedical Chemistry but no reply was made from the latter. This, again, resulted in the numberof participants dropping down to four. Therefore, full analysis of the data collected in thisstudy will be made by comparing the school of Chemistry with Business school.6 Methodology: DataThe data in this study include learners’ assignments, taken from a single course of study overone semester. The supplementary data include texts from different resources, observation andrecordings of lectures and labs, transcripts of interviews with the participants, and teachers’comments on students’ assignments. The collection of some data has been completed whilesome are still in progress. The details of data collection and its progression in this study arepresented in Table 3 below.7 Data analysisTable 3 below shows that the data in this research study have been collected through a rangeof methods. To answer the research questions, the data analysis of this study is set toinvestigate three different angels: (1) the demands students encounter, (2) the patterns ofstudent writing, and (3) the factors influencing the changes in their writing. The demandsplaced on students will be examined through the analysis of data from unit outlines, coursereading notes and relevant documents, tasks or assignments, and observations of lectures,workshops or laboratory classes, which will represent the social values, norms and identities36