Very often such studies are done on a low level of professional expertise, resulting in low response rates, much too simple data analysis and wrong interpretations of the findings. The DIES Training Course “UNIVERSITY GRADUATES’ TRACER STUDY COURSE (UNITRACE)” offered by the International Centre for Higher Education Research at the University of Kassel (INCHER-Kassel) in Germany is targeted to people from higher education institutions who will be responsible for realizing graduate tracer studies. Participants will be enabled to conduct professional tracer studies. Furthermore, participants will be trained in the freeware software QTAFI, a key tool developed by INCHER-Kassel to prepare questionnaires, online-surveys, tables and figures for professional tracer surveys.

The participants will be trained by experienced researchers in the major steps of the studies: questionnaire development based on relevant theories and specific research questions, research methodology, organization of the field work, methods to achieve a high response rate, data entry and data editing, coding, data analysis, interpretation of findings and reporting. Participants will be accompanied and supported throughout the whole process of a tracer study.

It is expected that participants apply in a team of two members per institution. Both team members are supposed to jointly conduct the tracer study at their institution. This will enable them to support each other during the process. It is recommended that one of the team members should have knowledge in higher education policy issues (e.g. curriculum development, quality assurance, accreditation). The other team member should be experienced in empirical research projects including data analysis. Both team members are expected to attend the whole series of workshops in the training to make sure that both of them gain a deep understanding of all aspects of a tracer study to support each other.

The training will be realized in three consecutive workshops comprising the following
components:

* Workshop 1

Survey preparation (e.g. relevant theories, design of the survey, identification of mailing addresses of the graduates, organization of the field work, methods to achieve a high response rate)
Location: Kassel University, Germany.
Time and duration: two weeks: October 11th – October 22nd, 2010.

* Workshop 2

Data analysis (e.g. data entry and editing, coding, data analysis)
Location: Kassel University, Germany.
Time and duration: two weeks: 6 – 9 months after the first workshop, date to be specified.

* Workshop 3

Interpretation of findings and dissemination (e.g. the role of comparisons, presentation of findings, different kind of reports, tables and figures)
Location: Central America, Eastern Africa, Southeast Asia (depending on home regions of participants, to be specified).
Time and duration: two days: 12-18 months after the first workshop, date to be specified.

Application deadline: July 22, 2010

For registration an further information please contact Constanze Engel: constanze.engel[at]incher.uni-kassel.de

This online service is not intended for a real survey, it is designed for researcher who wants to try online.QTAFI. For real online survey we recommend to install online.QTAFI engine in your own server.

To try online.QTAFI in this server please send email to Bhina Patria:
patria[at]incher.uni-kassel.de. Please include some information about you (name and institution) and a brief information about your project.

• Methodology and methods of tracer studies
• Construction of the questionnaire
• Data collection and analysis
• Presentation and interpretation of findings
• Preparation of field phase and conduction of the tracer study

Participants come from Oman, Indonesia and Colombia.  We will post the full review of the training in the next article.