Dear prospective participant

You are invited to participate in a survey conducted by Colin Pilkington, under the supervision of Prof. L Pretorius, towards a PhD at the University of South Africa.

This survey has been designed to study the usefulness of a collaborative wiki for learning about research methodologies. You were selected to participate in this survey as one of the Honours students in the research module in the School of Computing. By completing this survey, you agree that the information you provide may be used for research purposes, including dissemination through peer-reviewed publications and conference proceedings.

It is anticipated that the information we gain from this survey will help us to better structure the wiki to which you have had access. You are, however, under no obligation to complete the survey and you may withdraw from the study prior to completing the survey. As the survey is an anonymous one, we will have no way of connecting the information that you provide to you personally, and, consequently, you will not be able to withdraw from the study once you have clicked the Okay button at the end of the survey.

If you choose to participate in this survey, it will take up no more than 10 minutes of your time. You will not benefit from your participation as an individual; however, it is envisioned that the findings of this study will help other postgraduate students in the future. We do not foresee that you will experience any negative consequences by completing the survey. The researcher undertakes to keep any information provided herein confidential, not to let it out of his possession and to report on the findings from the perspective of the participating group and not from the perspective of an individual.

The records will be kept for five years for audit purposes where after it will be permanently destroyed (the electronic records will be permanently deleted from the hard drive of the computer). You will not be reimbursed or receive any incentives for your participation in the survey.

The research was reviewed and approved by the Research Ethics Review Committee of the School of Computing (047/CLP/2018/CSET_SOC). The primary researcher, Colin Pilkington, can be contacted at pilkicl@unisa.ac.za. Should you have any questions regarding the ethical aspects of the study, you can contact the chairperson of the Research Ethics Review Committee of the School of Computing (Dr B Chimbo, chimbb@unisa.ac.za). Alternatively, you can report any serious unethical behaviour at the University’s Toll Free Hotline 0800 86 96 93.