|
|
2015 » Papers » Volume 1 » Preparing the Students for Successful Completion of University Studies 1. PREPARING THE STUDENTS FOR SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF UNIVERSITY STUDIES Authors: Burianova Maria, Magdin Martin Volume 1 | DOI: 10.12753/2066-026X-15-004 | Pages: 31-36 | Download PDF | Abstract
The completion of study at the university is marked by passing the state exam, which needs to be defended as part of the final thesis. The state exam verifies the knowledge and skills that the student acquired during their studies and assesses their ability to use these skills in resolving the challenges presented by their field of study. The choice of thesis and their registration to the Academic Information System is ordinarily scheduled for the beginning of the third semester of study. This presents the key questions: Is the student mature enough at the time to be able to choose the right topic? Is he capable of evaluating/assessing the professional topics, which he has not fully studied yet? What was his decision based on?
What was he influenced by? Aside from these questions the key objective of this research has been to collate the views and attitudes of students prior to and post completion of their final thesis. In most cases, it is fair to say that the final thesis becomes the students' first professional publication. The student should go through the phase of research, selection and filtering of information and should - during the writing phase - understand the logical grouping and sequence of technical text. In practise, however, the majority of students find the writing part of the process extremely difficult. Adhering to the technical terminology, a typographical and spelling rule presents a similar issue. Still a greater problem is the actual speech - a communication style used to defend the final paper - where only a small percentage of students manage to meet the required level. To improve both the quality of final thesis as well as the quality of communication style was the key reason for an inclusion of the Seminar subject to the final thesis 1, 2, 3. The course is taught through presentations and is supported by e-learning, namely LMS Moodle. Within that environment, questionnaires were created and shared with the 2nd and 3rd year students of Bachelor studies at the Department of Computer Science. The paper presents the results obtained from two surveys in the academic year 2013/14, 2014/15. The first survey was conducted in the fourth semester, once the final paper topics were assigned and the questionnaire included topics such as the method used for identifying and forecasting around the successful processing of selected thesis, assessments of time used to complete the work, etc. The second survey was conducted in the sixth semester - using the same group of students - bollowing the final thesis submission deadline. The questionnaire titled 'Now I can say that ...' was designed to either confirm or contradict their original statements related to the challenges they had to overcome, further on the possibility of accepting the offer of having the work completed by a third party (by another person or company), etc. The survey presented interesting findings that are further discussed in this paper. | Keywords
University Studies; Bachelor thesis; E-learning; Knowledge and Skills; LMS Moodle. |
|
|
|