Reshaping the University Curriculum through the Visiting Lectureship
Abstract
The purpose of the study is to investigate how visiting lectureship is capable to reshape and improve the university curriculum for four different majors such as educational policy, instruction, healthcare, and technology. The research is significant because it addresses some current challenges forming a crisis of higher education such as an instructional challenge, a fiscal challenge, a birth rate-related challenge, and a graduate employment challenge. This study combines exploratory and quasi-experimental research methods, and Baseline Study Survey Questionnaires (BSSQ), Questionnaire to Measure Research Skills (QMRS), The students’ research activeness checklist, Professional Self-development Critical Reflection Scale (PSCRS), along with Self-directed Learning Skills Scale (SLSS) are the research instruments used in this study. The sample used are 184 (169 students and 15 lecturers), and key data are drawn from the assessment of students’ research skills and activeness, professional self-development, self-directed learning and self-education skills, and professional socialisation by students themselves and their teachers before and after the intervention. The stakeholders’ perceptions of visiting lectureship such as students, lecturers, and representatives of the host organisations are studied using the focus group interviews. It is found that visiting lectureship reshapes and improves the university curriculum of four different majors namely:  educational policy, instruction, healthcare, and technology. Add to this, visiting lectureship positively influences students’ research activeness, professional self-development, self-directed learning & self-education skills, and professional socialisation, and it is positively perceived by students, lecturers, and representatives of the host organisations. Visiting lectureship also increases lecturers’ motivation to provide a higher quality of instruction. Besides, it benefits the potential employers as these are involved in the educational process at the early stage of the programme in its design and updating, which will result in a more competent and competitive staff for them to hire.
https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.19.12.4
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