Dear academics and staff involved in Community Engagement activities and Students
My name is Zanele Boti. I am a PhD Candidate studying at Stadio Higher Education. My study aim is to understand the Frameworks for Evaluating Community Engagement in South African Public Universities. Your insights will help me understand the strengths, challenges, and possible improvements in current practices in community engagement evaluation. There are no right or wrong answers, I am interested in your experiences and perspectives.
I am in the process of gathering information on community engagement and the evaluation of community engagement at public higher education institutions in South Africa. This process is not an assessment or evaluation of policies and practices of individual institutions. Rather, it is part of the PhD study, the purpose of which is to know what is happening at various institutions with respect to the evaluation of community engagement.
Please feel free to express your opinions openly and honestly. I will treat all information confidentially. Under no circumstances will your responses and/or institutions be identified by name in formal or informal meetings or documents. In order to capture our discussion for subsequent transcription and analysis, it would be ideal to record the interview, with your permission.
Please feel free to express your opinions openly and honestly. I will treat all information collected from this discussion confidentially. No individual responses and/or institutions will be identified by name in formal or informal meetings or documents”.
The research aims to understand the frameworks for evaluating community engagement in South African public universities.
Its main objectives are to:
- To investigate how staff and students understand Community Engagement at UKZN
- To investigate students’ perceptions on how CE is evaluated in UKZN
- To find best practices on the evaluation of CE.
Research participant criteria:
- Anyone above the age of 18.
- Currently registered third year, fourth year and postgraduate students at UKZN.
- Academic and support staff at all UKZN campuses.
Study procedure
If you are interested in participating in the study, you will be asked to participate in an online survey or a Teams Meeting that will last between 30 minutes to an hour. Please email me to indicate interest and preferred option (survey/Teams). The information you provide for contact will remain confidential. It will not be linked to your response in any way. For the sake of analysis, the interviews will be audio-recorded.
Participation is voluntary, and your answers will be kept confidential and used solely for research purposes. There are no incentives for participating.
The study has been granted exemption from ethics review by the Stadio Research Ethics Committee (Stadio-2025-24426590-DOCX1).
Kindly find attached Gatekeeper’s approval and Ethical Clearance.
For any additional information, please email me on Boti.Z@che.ac.za
Your participation would be greatly appreciated.
Kind regards,
Zanele Boti
Supervisor: Professor Flip Schutte. Flips@stadio.ac.za
To complete the online survey, kindly click on this link: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=QBoCYADbn0SztylUCZDN9J1LbyMc_eVOkRFDtIhej4dUM1oxWk5VS0hBQkNIQ1lZMTlDOEs1Tk5RNC4u
