Fast-tracking Research Methodology Immersion for Students: Experiences from a Project on Fairwork in the Gig Economy

This paper showcases an innovative student research project in a South African taught Masters programme, where students learnt to apply a sound research methodology in the real world, and align their work with a global research project. The Fairwork (fair.work) project assesses the extent to which gig work platforms in a number of countries conform to ‘fair work’ principles for their workers. The Fairwork project has a clearly defined and rigorous research methodology used by senior academics around the world to rate labour-broking platforms such as those in e-hailing (Bolt, Uber) or delivery services (UberEats) to rate  their adoption of fair work principles for their workers. The University of Pretoria adopted this research methodology in the context of a student-based group project in a taught 2020 “Digital Economy” Masters programme. Student groups used the same methodology and interviewed South African platform workers to score seven different platforms. The key motivations and intended benefits were that the research methodology was already tried and tested, students should able to apply the skills taught in an earlier (theoretical) research methods course, subject specific knowledge around the gig economy had to be researched and was internalized, each group had the freedom to select its own platform, results could be validated against publicly available ratings, students engaged themselves in real world empirical research, and their research outputs had a real world relevance. In addition, this project turned out to work well under Covid19 partial lockdown circumstances. The student submissions exceeded the expectations of everyone involved, and some groups produced research results which matched the level of highly experienced researchers. This project also provides a strong contribution to the academic community, not only because it provides a validation benchmark and alternative research approach to the Fairwork project, but also because this project is easily portable to similar courses in other country contexts.