Common Areas for Improvement in ICT Units that have Critically Low Student Satisfaction

Carbone,A. and Ceddia, J.

Unit evaluations across many Australian universities indicate that close to 10% of units in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) disciplines are flagged as needing critical attention. Poor unit evaluation results may lead to a number of negative consequences including poor student learning. To develop an understanding of the reasons why students rate some ICT units as poor, qualitative responses to Monash��s unit evaluation questionnaire were examined from 13 ICT units for semester 2, 2010 that were deemed needing critical attention. Responses from students to the question ��What aspects of this unit are most in need of improvement?�� were analysed. A partial grounded theory based approach was used to code 281 responses to determine common re-occurring themes. Results show eight broad areas in which units can be improved. However the top concern for students in these units is the lecture content. The implications of our results will help ICT lecturers with planning their next unit offering, and will offer some empirical evidence to central teaching preparation programming.

Cite as: Carbone,A. and Ceddia, J. (2012). Common Areas for Improvement in ICT Units that have Critically Low Student Satisfaction. In Proc. Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE2012) Melbourne, Australia. CRPIT, 123. Raadt, M.D. and Carbone, A. Eds., ACS. 167-176

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