scholarly journals Perceptions of research structures and service quality within various faculties at Durban University of Technology: staff and students perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-200
Author(s):  
Musawenkosi Ngibe ◽  
Lawrence Mpele Lekhanya
Keyword(s):  
Service Quality ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Support Structures ◽  
University Management ◽  
Research Support ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
University Of Technology ◽  
The Impact

In order to compete, retain and attract postgraduate students, and overcome the lack of postgraduate throughput, universities of technology need to be more customer orientated. Therefore, to gain competitive advantage, university management needs to identify and assess the service quality gaps in research support structures and analyze the impact they have on students and staff within the university. The purpose of the study is to investigate the perceptions of staff and postgraduate students with regard to research structures and service quality support by relevant offices with specific reference to Durban University of Technology. Data were collected from academic staff and students across six faculties at the Durban University of Technology. The sample consisted of 278 academic staff and 260 postgraduate students, using a simple random sampling. A mixed method approach of qualitative and quantitative techniques was used, with a closed and open-ended questionnaire developed, by adapting the SERVQUAL instrument developed by Parasuraman et al. (1985), to evaluate and assess the quality dimensions (gap) for reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The findings of the study indicated that staff and students were dissatisfied with the research support structures across six faculties. Further research should aim at assessing performance management of research support structures and service within the relevant research offices

scholarly journals The development of LibGuides at Cape Peninsula University of Technology Libraries and the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on their usage

IFLA Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 034003522110460
Author(s):  
Deborah A Becker ◽  
Joanne Arendse ◽  
Veliswa Tshetsha ◽  
Zulaiga Davids ◽  
Vuyokazi Kiva-Johnson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Research Support ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
University Of Technology ◽  
Cape Peninsula ◽  
Literacy Training ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Insight Into

LibGuides have been used by librarians at Cape Peninsula University of Technology since 2012 as a means of providing subject-based information to students, with quick links to selected resources and information supplementing information literacy training. Lecturers use the resources for preparing lectures and identifying learning materials, while researchers and postgraduate students use research support guides when writing their papers. As the worldwide pandemic caused a major lockdown, academic institutions in South Africa were closed and students sent home. However, students still needed to complete their studies, and librarians at Cape Peninsula University of Technology had to continue providing support to these students. One of the online services available was LibGuides. This article provides insight into the historical developments of LibGuides at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, the use of LibGuides during lockdown, and the experiences of a selected group of students and librarians.

scholarly journals Corporate Attitudes towards Big Data and Its Impact on Performance Management: A Qualitative Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Pugna ◽  
Adriana Duțescu ◽  
Oana Stănilă
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Senior Executives ◽  
Organizational Challenges ◽  
Critical Areas ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Impact

This paper investigates the organizational challenges raised by Big Data and its impact on the business environment with a focus on performance management. We investigate managers’ perceptions, understanding, and attitudes relating to Big Data and its analytics, in terms of opportunities, extent, limitations, challenges, and implications, with specific reference to performance management. The research methodology we adopt is grounded theory: we develop a reflection guide based on research questions covering the impact and challenges of a data-driven culture on business, and the impact on performance management and the decision-making process. The results obtained from senior executives from 21 Romanian companies leads to a conceptual model that distils the major areas arising from the responses and the interrelationships between them. These reveal several key areas of managerial relevance and suggest fruitful action. In particular, we find that the most critical areas requiring intervention lie in the area of awareness and understanding, goal setting, assessing benefits and limitations, learning to trust data, and commitment to an embedded data-driven culture. In addition to changes within organizations themselves, there are also implications for other stakeholders, such as education providers.

scholarly journals Customer satisfaction in online meeting platforms: Impact of efficiency, fulfillment, system availability, and privacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (38) ◽  
pp. 70-81
Author(s):  
Cemil Top ◽  
Bayad Jamal Ali
Keyword(s):  
Customer Satisfaction ◽  
Service Quality ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Business Performance ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Kurdistan Region ◽  
Customer Demand ◽  
System Availability ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Privacy Issues

As it is known business rely on the customers, which means the profitability of any company change depending on customer demand. Due to that, it is necessary to treat customers as the central factor of the market. In another meaning, Customer satisfaction is very important issue to a company’s business performance. In this regard, the purpose of this project was to determine the Impact of service quality on the customer satisfaction in the online meeting platforms. By means of service quality, we tested the impact of efficiency, fulfillment, system availability, and privacy on the customer satisfaction. Though conducting a survey data was collected. Different nationalities from various universities participated in this study including Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Turkmen, Indian, Pakistan, Uzbek, Nigerian and British with having different position such as head of the faculty, instructor, academic staff, head of the department and etc. in Kurdistan region of Iraq. Based on the result fulfillment, privacy issues were affected the customer satisfaction mostly.

scholarly journals An Assessment of some Factors Influencing Scientific Research on Student's Competency Development According to CDIO Model in Vietnam

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nghiem Xuan Huy ◽  
Tran Thi Hoai ◽  
Ngo Tien Nhat ◽  
Nguyen Thi Tuyet Anh ◽  
Dang Van Duy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Academic Staff ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Training Model ◽  
Competency Development ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Research Support ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Impact

The paper analyzes a number of factors related to scientific research activities including support policies; facilities, equipment and materials for scientific research; support from the universities to students in the development of four CDIO competencies (Conceive - Design - Implement - Operate). The authors then evaluate the impact of the above factors on the student's competency development in the CDIO training model. The authors surveyed 1401 academic staff, 2306 students and conducted semi - structured interviews of 18 lecturers at 6 Vietnamese universities. The results show, from the most to the least influential groups of factors in the student competency development: facilities and equipment for practice, internship and scientific research activities, the university's support in the 4 CDIO phases and the policy matters, respectively. In general, all four students' competencies are assessed at a fairly high level and vary among universities. Specifically, the ability to form ideas was the highest rated, followed by the ability to design products, and the lowest rated competencies are to test and operate products in practice. Based on the findings, the authors proposed 6 solutions to improve student’s competencies in the CDIO training model.

scholarly journals Governance of the research activities in higher educational institutions: factors and outcomes

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-30
Author(s):  
Musawenkosi Ngibe ◽  
Lawrence Mpele Lekhanya
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Doctoral Studies ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

South African higher education institutions, specifically, universities of technology have been faced with an arduous battle of increasing postgraduate students enrolment (masters and doctoral) and improve their completion rate. However, the situation is exacerbated by inadequate number and inexperience of supervisors to supervise these postgraduate students. The Durban University of Technology has formulated research structures to administer and co-ordinate research activities in order to improve the number of staff members with doctoral qualifications in order to aid the current challenges. Therefore, the aim of this study is to evaluate the circumstances and factors hindering the academic staff throughput rates and the impact it has on the university. The use of qualitative and quantitative approach was used for this study, with closed and open-ended questionnaires used to collect data from 278 academic staff members using a probability sampling. The respondents 9 (4.9%) indicated that lack of external funding and project management skills proved to be major contributory factors hindering academics staff to complete their postgraduate degrees within the required time. The study recommends that funding should be made easily available to academics pursuing doctoral studies, while project management workshops should be organised regularly to help academics appropriately management their studies. This can have a positive impact which will benefit the university and aid to the current crisis of lack of supervisor for masters and doctoral studies.

scholarly journals Research support-oriented MATLAB learning: tackling difficult concepts and promoting personalised learning

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunhua Yang ◽  
David Smith
Keyword(s):  
Student Learning ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
Learning Performance ◽  
Research Support ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Knowledge And Skills ◽  
Personalised Learning ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Questionnaire Surveys ◽  
Matlab Programming

This study investigated the acquisition of MATLAB programming skills by postgraduate students, and whether this learning was improved by research support-oriented teaching. Questionnaire surveys were given to academic staff asking about what they considered the most important knowledge and skills in programming to be. Questionnaire surveys were also given to students asking about what programming concepts they found the most difficult and confusing to understand. The intersection between what knowledge and skills in programming the researchers deemed the most important, and what areas in programming students had most difficulty with, was carefully addressed in subsequent teaching in a module teaching the essentials of programming to postgraduate students. Student learning performance, as measured by examination marks on the module, before and after the intersection concepts were emphasised was compared. The student learning performance improvement, together with interviews to students about their perceptions about programming, suggests that teaching oriented to research support is effective at increasing student understanding of programming in MATLAB.Keywords: Programming; MATLAB; Research support

scholarly journals Evaluating service quality and performance of higher education institutions: a systematic review and a post-COVID-19 outlook

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Anthony Camilleri
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Service Quality ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Online Teaching ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Education Services ◽  
Higher Educational ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Impact

Purpose This study aims to present a systematic review on service quality in higher education. It discusses about the latest opportunities and challenges facing higher educational institutions (HEIs) following the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Design/methodology/approach The study relied on the grounded theory’s inductive reasoning to capture, analyze and synthesize the findings from academic and non-academic sources. The methodology involved a systematic review from Scopus-indexed journals, from intergovernmental and non-governmental policy documents, as well as from university ranking sites and league tables. Findings The comprehensive review suggests that HEIs can use different performance indicators and metrics to evaluate their service quality in terms of their resources, student-centered education, high-impact research and stakeholder engagement. Moreover, this paper sheds light about the impact of an unprecedented COVID-19 on higher education services. Practical implications During the first wave of COVID-19, the delivery of higher educational services migrated from traditional and blended learning approaches to fully virtual and remote course delivery. In the second wave, policy makers imposed a number of preventative measures, including social distancing and hygienic practices, among others, on HEIs. Originality/value This timely contribution has synthesized the findings on service quality and performance management in the higher education context. Furthermore, it investigated the effect of COVID-19 on higher education services. It deliberates on the challenges and responses in the short/medium term and provides a discussion on the way forward. In conclusion, it implies that HEI leaders ought to embrace online teaching models and virtual systems, as they are here to stay in a post-COVID-19 era.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document