The Quality of Education within Bangor University

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Introduction

Bangor University is a reputable and a world-class university located in North Wales. The university is home to local students within the U.K and many international students who come from diverse nations.

Quality education is an important part of today’s society and hence leading lecturers from the university and other like-minded universities and education institutions have been in the forefront of ensuring that the quality of Education within the country and in their respective institutions is up to standards with the current demands of the global market.

If the quality of education offered in tertiary institutions is high and appropriate for the market then the quality of graduates from universities such as B.U. will be very high and appropriate for the market.

In achieving quality standards, course work is an important part of B.U.’s curriculum and every term/semester is usually strategically preplanned and scheduled in order to ensure that the academic and practical needs of the student body are well catered for.

Having the students needs in mind, lecturers strive to achieve a balanced syllabi that will assist students attain both practical and theoretical expertise by developing programs that involve both writing and presentations on relevant course units/subjects (Noddings 1995, 13).

Purpose of the research

This report intends to look at the quality of education within B.U and therefore will critically gather data from students of B.U. with the sole intention of taking a look at how lecturers achieve academic goals through setting the appropriate course work syllabus and the various techniques such as exams that are used to evaluate how well students within the Bangor University have learnt throughout the term/semesters.

Also course work is important because it can be used to evaluate both students’ performance and lecturers’ input by ranking student performance. Additionally, this research intends to investigate how familiar and effective presentation and writing techniques help students to achieve the objectives of their course work (Kothari 1985, 10).

Necessity

The research is important because the data gathered from this process can be used by the faculty of B.U. and also the students to improve and carry out any needed changes that may be necessary in the curriculum and syllabus of B.U.

The aim of any tertiary institution is to impart knowledge and develop highly competent individuals and therefore this research will shed some light into whether the university curriculum is appropriate for the students studying within B.U.

Methodology

The research is a scientific research with a clearly defined problem. It is to take a look into the effectiveness the course work and curriculum that is used by the faculty to impart knowledge among the students of B.U. (Kumar, 2005, p. 122).

The researcher intends to use a non probabilistic method to gather his data. Data will be gathered by the interviewer form every faculty within the campus, the researcher will use a convenient sampling technique where based on a predetermined quota the researcher will predetermine the number of 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th year students who need to be to be interviewed and strive to ensure that he collects data from all the faculties within B.U.

Data gathering technique

The researcher will gather data from various faculties of students who study in B.U. using semi structured questionnaires. The advantage of using a semi structured questionnaire is that the researcher gathers both qualitative and quantitative data which will enable the users of the research conducts a more in-depth analysis during the process of Data analysis (Kothari 1985, 65-67; Beeby 1966, 81).

The source of information

The data of this research will be primary data that will directly be collected from the respondents who are current students within various faculties of B.U. the sample size of the number of respondents is 100 students from diverse faculties of B.U.

Data Analysis

Once the 100 questionnaires are filled the researcher intends to arrange and analyze the data using both qualitative and quantitative techniques (Dawson, 2002, p.34).

The use of qualitative techniques will enable the researcher attach percentages to the data while the qualitative data analysis techniques will enable the researcher co0nduct some content analysis that will enable the researcher give a description of the various implication (Whyte 1989, 29; Dawson 2002, 53).

Results

40% of all respondents were from the College of Business, 10% from the Social Sciences and Law while 5% were from the College of Lifelong Learning, 20% were College of Natural Sciences while 10% were from the College of Health and Behavioral Sciences and the last 15% were form the College of Physical and Applied Sciences.

20% of all respondents were foreigners while 80% were citizens of Wales. 50% of all students in the College of Arts Education and Humanities were taking education while 10% were taking music, 20% were taking theology while the rest 30% were taking modern languages.

Out of all the respondents from the college of Business social science and law 60% were taking business courses while the remaining 34% were taking law. The entire respondents from the College of Lifelong Learning were taking the same course. 5% of the respondents from the College of Health and Behavioral Sciences were taking medicine while the rest were in school of sports and exercise science.

All the respondents from the College of Physical and Applied Sciences were taking electronics (Kumar, R., 2005, 102; Brandt 2000, 96).

Most of the students within B.U. claim to do well when asked if they have ever failed exams, 85% of them responded by saying they attain their pass mark while the remaining 15% have previously failed to attain their pass mark.

74% All the respondents claimed they have at least one presentation as part of their course work while the remaining 26% said that their curriculum doesn’t involve making presentation as part of the course work. 80% of all the respondents claimed that the main reason of their failure was either wo0rk overload or unfair lecturers; the remaining 15% of those who failed claimed that is their lack of preparedness that leads to failure.

Out of all the 100 respondents 80% of them have never missed exams before while the rest who have earlier missed exams were forced to take substitute exams only if they had given authorities prior notice and sufficient reason those who never gave prior reason are forced to repeat the subject (Pashler, McDonald & Bjork 2009, 77).

60% of all the respondents fell that presentations are a very important part of their curriculum while the remaining 40% see it as a waste of time.55% of all respondents stated that they at least have one presentation per term while 25% of them stated that they have more that in presentation per term the remaining 20% have no presentations.

The respondents stated that 50% of all presentation per tem were given as part of group work while the rest were individual assignments.

60% of all respondents believed that essay writing was very important for first years while 30% believed that report writing was important for first years the remaining 20% stated that email were essential for first years. 70% of respondents stated that essays were between 1-5 pages in first year while the rest stated that essays were more that 5 pages in first year.

55% of all students stated that they only contact tutors only when they have homework while 40 % said they make sure that they contact tutors at least once a week 5% said that they contact their tutors through email daily or frequently.

30% of respondents especially those taking health sciences and arts stated that they write an essay weekly. The remaining 70% stated that their lecturers ensure that they give them an essay at least once in 3 months.

90% of those students who are given essays weekly stated that they ensure they finish their essays within seven days because if they don’t they risk loosing marks.

50% Student who are required to do one essay in 3 months said that they ensure that by the end of the second month they finish their essays, 20% of them said that they finish their essay by the end of the first month while the rest said they ensure that they finish the essays by the end of the third month.

Discussion

It is thus clear that the faculty and lecturers at B.U use practices that encourage their students to be highly proactive especially when it comes to learning. Student’s taking medical sciences, applied sciences and Arts are exposed to more essays and report writing activities due to the nature of their courses.

The faculty’s policy is effective in the fact that it has ensured that there is a high turnout rate especially during exams and that those who miss exams with no reason face the consequences.

As far as first years are concerned it is good to ensure most of them (60%) are involved in rigorous writing activities so that they can nature their writing ability skills while still at the early stages of university so that they can be experienced writers in later years.

Recommendations

The University should ensure that the curriculum of every faculty is well balanced and that the course work has a balanced approach that allows the students to enhance both their writing and presentation skills through having both report and essay writing together with presentation assignments every term/semester.

In faculties where the volume of materials to study is very large especially in the College of health Sciences it is important that the faculty of B.U ensures that the students are not overworked or excessively given assignments because this can affect their performance and course work.

Due to the low level of communication between the tutors and the students it is necessary that the faculty comes up with awareness campaigns that will encourage students to communicate more frequently with tutors with the aim of improving their academic performance.

The campus administration should open a clear and more open communication system in regard to exams so that students who fail their exams can communicate their reasons in due time and avoid their chances of repeating the whole course over again (Bangor University, 2011).

Reference List

Bangor University, 2011. Bangor University. Web.

Beeby, C., 1966. The quality of education in developing countries. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Brandt, R., 2000. Education in a new era: ASCD Yearbook 2000. Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Dawson, C., 2002. Practical Research Methods. New Delhi: UBS Publishers Distributors.

Kothari, C. R., 1985. Research Methodology- Methods and Techniques. New Delhi: Wiley Eastern Limited.

Kumar, R., 2005. Research Methodology-A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners, 2nd ed. Singapore: Pearson Education.

Noddings, N., 1995. Philosophy of Education. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Pashler, H., McDonald, M. & Bjork, R., 2009. “Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 9 (3): 105–119.

Whyte, C., 1989. “Student Affairs-The Future.” Journal of College Student Development, v30 n (1) p. 86-89.

Appendices

Nationality of Students in Bangor University

Representation of every faculty in the final sample.

Students who though presentation was important.

Types of writing is important to 1st years.

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