Sejahtera Academic Framework (SAF)

66 65 Findings from FGD From the FGDs with the kulliyyahs, all informants appeared to be concerned about UniCORE courses and suggested the UniCORE curriculum, content, scheduling and, in particular the overall implementation be looked at. Many believed that the monitoring of UniCORE courses has not been done systematically. The concerns among informants revolved around the redundancy and duplication of the content of UniCORE courses and the content of courses offered at the kulliyyahs , and as such, the informants requested that a reduction of hours for UniCORE courses be considered. Informants also discussed instances where UniCORE courses have to be held at night to avoid clashes in scheduling of classes. Informants wished for UniCORE courses to be more hands-on rather than theoretical in nature and be less examination-oriented. They viewed UniCORE courses as the courses that wouldmake studentsmore resilient and capablewith soft skills like creative thinking skills and communication as the highly needed ones by IIUM students. The informants also wished for the selection and training of instructors for UniCORE courses to be given better attention as students informed them that there were instructors who did not seem to have strong beliefs or competencies in the content of courses they are teaching. The FGD with the students and course providers provided slightly different themes. Five (5) main themes were extracted from all the FGDs conducted with the course providers, namely the novelty of UniCORE courses; human resources and logistic; training on teaching methods and assessment procedures; moral support from IIUM authorities; and other matters. a. Novelty of UniCORE courses UniCORE The triangulation from the different data collectionmethods strongly indicated the strengths and weaknesses of the IIUM academic experiences. While generally positive, especially when it comes to staff-student relationships, and that the students/alumni appreciate the Islamic elements in the academic programme, there is still room to improve which has to be done at the programme review level. This is generally because the concerns seem to revolve more on the inadequate breadth in terms of content (e.g., duplicated content), skills (e.g., not much access to relevant technology) and choice. This theme concerns the ability of the informants in making sense of the term UniCORE and the objectives for the offering of UniCORE courses. The FGDs conducted indicated that the informants had uncertain and different views towards UniCORE courses. Some of the informants were not sure of what the term UniCORE stands for. Even when given the chance to define what UniCORE is, the “off-the-cuff” responses ranges from, the courses that will provide Islamic input to students, a certain “must” for IIUM students, a way to differentiate IIUM students from students of other institutions to “a collection” of courses that students must register as a graduation requirement. The responses given by the informants lack a clear and definitive interpretation of UniCORE courses and the objectives in offering these courses. This uncertainty is present in the comments by all informants in the FGDs conducted although it is more prevalent among the students. There seemed to be no or a lack of briefing about UniCORE courses and the features of UniCORE courses to the IIUM population. In spite of the fact that all informants were involved with the offering and implementation of UniCORE, their understanding of UniCORE was limited to their own responsibilities and scope of work. There was no clear indication of their concise knowledge of all the components of UniCORE in terms of structure, implementation and monitoring of concerned courses. This was even more serious in situations when there was an administrative reshuffle, where a staff who was previously located in a non-UniCORE-offering office was transferred to a UniCORE-offering office. This needs a further attention of the University as UniCORE courses function as the backbone of academic programmes, where all the courses serve to consummate students’ experience as IIUM students. Another concern that was observed during the FGD was that some informants did not perceive the presence of UniCORE courses as being useful to students. The words “previously” or “before this” appeared many times during the FGDs, which relate to the predecessors of the present UniCORE courses. Questions on the usefulness or success of the proposed UniCORE courses seem to conjure a comparison between the present UniCORE courses and the “old” university required courses. There was a view that suggests the “old” required courses were more capable in making an impact among our students than the present UniCORE courses. It was not known if this view is nostalgic, sentimental or objective in nature but it was noted. b. Human Resource and Logistics This theme revolved around the issues of time, number of students in a class, venues, equipment and the recruitment of instructors to teach UniCORE courses. Informants who were members of staff lamented the fact that the number of hours allocated to teach their subjects was too small, indicated by the small number of credit hours. Pedagogically, they suggested that without frequent face-to-face meetings, the students might not be able to have a good understanding of the knowledge and a good mastery of the skills that the instructors attempted to impart. They believed that they should meet their students more frequently per week and thus, their courses deserve a higher number of credit hours. This issue was mentioned together with the number of students in a class. This was particularly the concern of those who were teaching Mata Pelajaran