1. Introduction

This report presents the of a survey of student opinions on the course titled ‘communication at work’. The main of the survey is to gather information on the experiences of students during the course. The report writing task has analysing the gathered data, drawing conclusions and making recommendations. It is hoped that the recommendations will be helpful to the university as it prepares future language courses. The findings of this report are presented with the aid of graphics and are followed by conclusions and recommendations.

2. Procedure

The baseline data for this report were by means of a questionnaire survey of a large sample of design and logistics students in October 2006. The questionnaire was into seven main sections : effectiveness of the teacher, quality of course materials, usefulness of assessment tasks, course workload, relevance of course to future career, difficulty level of course and overall usefulness of course.

3. Findings

3.1 The findings that two aspects that neither design students nor logistics students found were the level of difficulty of the course and course workload, with only one fifth of design students expressing satisfaction with the level of difficulty, and less than one of logistics students being satisfied with the course workload.

3.2 In other aspects there was a difference of opinion. While a high proportion of logistics students were with the usefulness of the assessment tasks, less than half of the design students were satisfied. A result was found in the relevance of the course to students’ future career.

3.3 In contrast to the above factors, just over one third of logistics students expressed with the quality of course materials to nearly all design students.

3.4 For both the effectiveness of the teacher and usefulness of the course the of design and logistics students were quite similar with over two thirds satisfied.

4. Conclusion

The findings clearly show the main sources of for both design and logistics students are the course workload and difficulty level of the course. The results of the also indicate quite clearly that while design students are dissatisfied with the relevance of the course to their future career, and the usefulness of assessment tasks, logistics students are disgruntled with the quality of course materials.

It can be that in order to improve the quality of future courses, we should take some immediate measures to modify the aspects of the courses that were the cause of dissatisfaction.


5. Recommendations

5.1 that there was dissatisfaction with the course workload and difficulty level of the course from all students, it is recommended that in future the amount of work needed to be covered should be reduced, and that the difficulty level is made easier.

5.2 In the of the less than satisfactory results from design students regarding the relevance of the course to their future career and the usefulness of assessment tasks, it is that changes should be made to the design courses to better reflect their specialized needs.

5.3 logistics students expressed discontent with the quality of course materials, I that their course book should be rewritten with more detail paid to the specific needs of those in the logistics industry.