CORE Curriculum and Students Perceptions: Approach to Curriculum Review

Abstract

quantitative study addressing student’s perceptions of three higher education institutions CORE curriculum within the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study utilized survey methodology to collect the perceptions of students across all four levels of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior students. The data collected was analyzed using percentages for descriptive statistics and T-test for identifying relationships between the dependent and independent variables, the strength of the relationships was determined using (phi) since the variable were all categorical. The literature review of the following study will cover the Role of CORE curriculum in post-secondary education. The frame work of the current study is that the students’ perception of their university curriculum affects the effectiveness of the learning process, and is to be considered in universities curriculum reviews. The major findings of the study show that students confidence levels with their CORE curriculum is greater than that of the overall curriculum, English courses ranked first in confidence level followed by Math courses and finally Natural science courses. The CORE curriculum model utilized affected students responses in relation to the level of agreement for the need to add new courses to the CORE curriculum, where students from universities apply the scholarly discourse model reported a higher agreement. Universities are recommended to provide additional resources to the Match course, and additional resources and knowledge base to the Natural Science courses. Limitations of study are the sampling strategies utilized in deciding the sample and the sample size. Recommendations of future research on students perceptions of universities curriculum and its importance in curriculum reviews, also a duplication of the following research is encouraged.