Towards Motivating the Effective classroom usage of Smart phones at both Qassim and Baha Universities, KSA (Published)
This study attempts to motivate academics and students at both Qassim and Baha universities towards the effective usage of smart phones while classes. In today’s digital world, using smart phones is common and fundamental phenomenon, predominantly among the teen agers and youths as well. Tertiary level students are no exception in this regard. They regularly use their smartphones while classes, and it is common to see students touching the smart screens every single minute. This situation is headache and challenging to some professors mainly when it comes to classroom management. However, implementing a positive and controlled usage of such devices is also possible. For instance, students can be encouraged to learn how to use them as dictionaries or thesauruses to look up words, phrases and some specific nouns. Smart phones usage while classes might be effective in modeling pronunciation of words with silent letters and irregular phonemes or syllables. Their usage might be applicable in some translation and computer science courses as well. Additionally, task completion particularly a written task and texting can take place while classes through the application of the smart phones before conducting a pair or even a group checking. Both qualitative and quantitative research methodology is adapted through which the researchers observe some classes at the two mentioned – universities. Furthermore, they conducted and distributed a questionnaire of (15) items to a representative sample of students randomly selected from the two universities. The researchers finally display the study results as well as the findings and the necessary recommendations to reach the following consequences:
- Effective smart phone usage enhances and facilitates students’ language learning and possibly improves their awareness of the four language skills.
- It motives students towards active learning regardless their majors.
- These devices can also assist professors to follow up attendance and absences of the students as well as enabling them to conduct virtual classes.
Keywords: KSA, Motivating, Qassim and Baha, Smart Phones, Universities, effective classroom
Assessing University Students’ Satisfaction with Service Delivery: Implications for Educational Management (Published)
The study investigated students’ satisfaction with service delivery in universities in Akwa Ibom and Cross River States, Nigeria. Five areas of service delivery namely library, health, transportation, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and hostel services were considered in the study. The extent to which students’ satisfaction with service delivery varied with types of institution was also examined. Survey research design was adopted for the study. Five research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. The population of the study comprised all the undergraduate students in four universities in the study area. Simple random sampling technique was used to draw a sample of 1466 (915 from federal owned and 551 from state owned universities) students for the study. The instrument for data collection was titled “Students’ Satisfaction with Service Delivery Questionnaire (ASSSDQ)”. The reliability of the instrument using Cronbach Alpha method was 0.85. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and independent t-test. The hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. Findings obtained revealed that majority of the respondents indicated dissatisfaction with library, hostel, as well as Information and communication services, while they showed moderate satisfaction with health and transport services. It was also found that students’ satisfaction with service delivery in terms of library and health services significantly differed by their institution’s affiliation, while they did not show significant difference in their satisfaction with transport, ICT and hostel services. Recommendations for improvement in service delivery in universities were made one of which being that all services that contributes to students’ academic life in the universities are delivered to an acceptable and satisfactory standard.
Keywords: Educational Management, Service delivery, Students’ Satisfaction, Universities
Prevalence of Mentoring among Graduate Students of Sport Management in Southern Nigerian Universities (Published)
The aim of the study was to find out the prevalence of mentoring among graduate students of sport management in southern Nigerian universities. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted. The population as well as sample for the study was 196 graduate students of sport management. Data were collected using a structured and validated questionnaire titled “Sport Management Mentoring Questionnaire (SMMQ)”. It had reliability coefficient of 0.983 which was established using Cronbach alpha. Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation. It was found that graduate students of sport management rarely experienced formal and informal mentoring, traditional/face-to-face mentoring, e-mentoring, multiple mentoring, and team mentoring, career and psychosocial mentoring functions, mentoring activities, initiation, cultivation, separation and redefinition phase of mentoring. It was recommended among others that mentoring seminars and conferences should be organized for graduate students by the Department in collaboration with the University. Students should be assigned to or made to choose mentors for mentoring at the point of admission into sport management. Favourable report or result on mentoring should be part of requirements for successful completion of graduate programmes in sport management. A “Centre for Mentoring” especially for sport management should be established by the universities
Keywords: Graduate Students, Mentoring, Prevalence, Universities, sport management