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The purpose of this study was to explore how postgraduate students express themselves semantically when constructing and writing up their research projects and the ways in which their word choices and expressions lead to methodological contradictions, particularly in relation to qualitative vs quantitative methodological approaches. The dominant logic of science in the business and management literature is well-established in the post-positivist paradigm. This leaning has resulted in the view that worthwhile research must necessarily take a quantitative approach to generate statistically significant generalisable findings. Qualitative research approaches are, by contrast, consciously or subconsciously taken less seriously judging by the language and terminology used by students in writing their theses and dissertations. There is evidence that students inappropriately apply quantitative assumptions and criteria to qualitative studies in their attempts to justify various methodological choices or endeavour to minimise their study limitations. In addition, students easily use inappropriate quantitative terminology in their qualitative studies. Twenty available qualitative master's dissertations were thematically analysed to explore the extent and nature of inappropriate use of quantitative terminology, assumptions and judgements used by postgraduate students in their research studies The analysis revealed that the types of errors fell into the following categories: quantitative or numerical terminology, types of research questions, types of interview questions, binary framing of issues, convergent vs divergent thinking, generalising from small samples, lack of appreciation of the concepts of theory building vs theory testing, and bias. Students can take a "wishful thinking" approach to qualitative research by thinking of and writing about their studies in a quantitative manner to try and make the research appear statistically significant and generalisable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Knowledge Management (KM) studies evolve, concerns regarding counterproductive sharing behaviors such as withholding, hiding or hoarding knowledge have emerged. Despite attempts by researchers and practitioners to understand what motivates people to share knowledge and organizations adjusting their practices to enhance Knowledge Sharing (KS), there is still a need to understand the undesired behaviors that negatively influence efficacy in diverse organizational contexts. Knowledge Hoarding (KH) cannot be considered the opposite of KS. Nevertheless, it does not contribute positively to KS. The study aims to investigate if well-known intrinsic and extrinsic KS motivators - enjoyment in helping others and reputation - help reduce Knowledge Hoarding. Higher education institutions are knowledge intensive and therefore constitute an important environment to research KH. For this purpose, a survey was applied to postgraduate students (master's and Ph.Ds.) attending public and private universities in Brazil. Following snowball sampling, the valid responses, from 295 students, were analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Two perspectives were considered in this research - the student's perspective related to own hoarding behavior and their perception regarding colleagues' hoarding behavior. In terms of intrinsic KS motivation, our results indicate the more the students enjoy helping others, the less they tend towards hoarding behavior. On the other hand, the KS extrinsic motivator 'reputation' demonstrated inverse influence on student knowledge hoarding behavior, suggesting there is a perception that by retaining some part of their knowledge, exclusive, they will enhance their reputation. Another finding from this research concerns the high influence of the behavior of others on a student's own behavior, i.e. when the student perceives his/her colleagues hoard knowledge, he/she will also hoard. Although enjoyment in helping others and reputation are significantly related with KH, they explain a very small part of KH variance. As future research, the authors suggest conducting qualitative research in order to identify the KH barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the postgraduate students' perceptions about Learning Management Systems (LMS) tools in elevating pedagogical practices. This was after observing that despite the wider embrace of Information and communication technologies (ICT) in higher education, the uptake of such ICTs as the LMS tools was still at its infancy in the developing African contexts such as Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the students' LMS perceptions are limited in literature where much relates to the technical issues of the LMS and less on the role played by the institutional structure in influencing students' perceptions about the ICT resources. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from a single university case's postgraduate students who were selected using the purposive sampling technique. Of the thirty administered, twentyseven paper based questionnaires were successfully completed and returned. Additional data were also collected from the same cohort of students grouped into nine focus groups with at least three students in each group. Although there were indications of satisfaction with ICT enabled learning, the students also revealed many concerns, which require to be addressed by the institutions prior to selecting and implementing future ICT based learning technologies. Emerging from the findings are concerns relating to the issues of LMS tools availability, accessibility, usability and compatibility, themes which were neither individual nor technological but institutional. The findings have an implication on the higher learning institutions that are challenged to be more cognisant of the institution's environment and structures if added value is to be realised from the implementation of ICT resources in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empowerment of human capital through higher education is a key element that contributes to the growth of national income. In line with this, Malaysia under the MyBrain15 initiative aims to produce a total of 60,000 doctoral degree holders by 2023. However, high attrition and low completion rates among postgraduate students to date have hindered the noble aspiration. Among the factors that have contributed to this are postgraduate supervisory practices and student limitations in terms of knowledge, and 21st century skills such as critical thinking, autonomy and lifelong learning. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate students' perceptions of their level of dependence on supervisors in postgraduate study in relation to digital literacy and academic matters in terms of providing motivational support, writing a proposal, collecting and analysing data and writing the final report. This exploratory descriptive case study involved 132 postgraduate students from the largest public university in Malaysia. Data were collected using a mixed-methods research design through the use of a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The findings show that students' level of dependence on supervisors for academic matters such as the need for was much higher compared to dependence in using digital tools. In terms of digital literacy, students articulated dependence on supervisors in aspects such as data analysis, data visualization and data management tools. With regard to academic study, students' dependence on supervisors was highest at the proposal stage but reduced at the data collection and data analysis stages. Nevertheless, their dependence again increased at the final writing stages. The findings of the study suggest that postgraduate students lack autonomy for lifelong learning and hence appropriate steps need to be taken to improve the quality of postgraduate supervision in the university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under normal circumstances, it is assumed that PhD students will make use of ICT (i.e., computer technologies) throughout their research journey for a variety of generic and specialised purposes. Yet, there is limited documented research about postgraduate use of ICT beyond their information sourcing skills and general knowledge consumption. This paper reports the first stage of a study that examines how PhD students use their computers to support their research practice, by taking into account not only their computer use skills, but also ICT use within the broader context of the research process. Computer usage monitoring software was installed on the computers of nine doctoral students at the University of Otago who self-reported as being skilled computer users. The software harvested applications used, websites visited, documents accessed and the associated times and durations these activities occurred over a period of three months. Regular discussion sessions were held with each student to review the computer activity data in the light of their discipline and their PhD stage (literature review, fieldwork, write-up etc.). An analysis of data gathered at this first stage of the study indicates that: (a) there is no difference among these students across the various PhD stages in terms of the level of engagement with computers; and (b) there is no difference in the use of computer (applications and documents) among the students despite their different discipline backgrounds. At this point in the study, there is a strong indication that for these students while ICT plays a dominant role in their daily lives, ICT use to support their PhD work is limited. While these students used computers daily, the computers simply were not as crucial to their research practice as expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge management (KM) has been discussed in various domain but less emphasis is given in the educational field particularly in understanding the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge. The knowledge is formed through connection of online learning environment elements. Therefore, the outcome of KM in educational field is unknown due to insignificant attention towards knowledge created from the process itself. This paper discusses the process of knowledge creation based on the Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization (SECI) model amongst postgraduate students in an online learning environment. Research sample covers 160 postgraduate students who were actively involved in Learning Management System (LMS) support environment. A research instrument has been developed based on the SECI constructs. Factors examined are the intensity of knowledge creation processes for transforming tacit knowledge in the learning, thinking and decision making skills. The findings show that the model fit the data for thinking and decision making skills only. The findings indicate that the model is not applicable for developing learning skill for postgraduate students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]