Glyndwr University or another article on education abroad

University aerial photography

Introduction / Foreword


This summer I managed to become one of the participants in the joint double diploma program at the NRU MIET and Glyndwr University. As part of this program, I went through a summer school in Wrexham (North Wales) and am currently writing an English master's degree (computer science), in parallel with a Russian diploma.

Students who are planning to start \ continue their studies abroad, especially those who consider England as a country, students who plan to limit themselves to such a method of education as a summer school, and everyone who is not indifferent to the topic of education, are welcome.

Glyndwr university(hereinafter GU) is considered one of the most advanced universities in England under international cooperation programs between universities and is one of the first in terms of the number of foreign students studying .

At our institute, the program lasts only 2 years. At the beginning is the preparatory phase. After some internal competition, the students selected for the trip need to fill out a standard application form of the institute, collect documents for obtaining a British visa (we received it at the British visa center), write a research proposal, where you need to briefly outline information about the future diploma.

In addition, the international department prepared a document for us with subjects studied in the 5th year, which indicated that we earned 60 credits in total. In the future, these subjects will enter the English diploma. Another mandatory requirement was a certificate of language proficiency not lower than the pre-intermediate level.

Those wishing to go at their own expense were announced the amount of 350 thousand rubles, and in the end there were none. We paid only organizational fees, which is much less.

Ride and study


The first thing that comes to mind is that the British take personal space very seriously. The campus is divided into blocks. Entrance to each block with a separate lock. Inside the block, the entrance to each floor is also with a separate lock. On each floor, two sections again with its own lock on the door. It turns out that with your set of keys you can only go into your block and your section of your floor. In the rooms, wardrobe, table, bed, shower with toilet. The kitchen is shared by section. Virtual campus tour.

The second thing that comes to mind in the UK is significantly less obstacles between students and knowledge. Remember what a typical library looks like in an average university. A bunch of posters "Do not eat, do not make noise, go in formation", a harsh grandmother, the need to fill out a piece of paper before they bring something to you. Of course, the literature in the library still remembers the times of perestroika, and even earlier, therefore, in order to preserve it, they will simply not be given to anyone in their hands.

GU library - two floors of book shelving, and not a single grandmother. An electronic catalog solves the problem of finding a place on the rack, exit detectors solve the theft problem, and barcodes on books and a smart scanner solve the problem of writing books to a particular student. It turns out that in the process “came, chose, leafed through, chose something else, wrote down on himself” no one is involved except the student.



From this follows the following difference between the GU library and its domestic counterpart - the operating mode. On weekdays, the library is open until 9 o’clock, while grandmothers leave at exactly six, and sometimes earlier. Which automatically makes it impossible for senior students to visit the libraries, who almost all work by the 3-4 course.

Also in the library you can find desks for 2-8 people, network sockets for connecting your device to a local network, scanners and printers, for the use of which money is debited directly from the student’s internal account. The account can be replenished by attaching the student to a special machine and feeding him the right amount of funds. Personally at my institute, the printing of documents accompanies standing in a huge queue, especially during the session.

But the educational process in higher educational institutions is not limited to a single library. There are also lectures, labs and homework. In this regard, everything in the GU is tied to a system called moodle. All information on the subject gets here, whether it be lectures, presentations for lectures, assignments for the lab, assignments for the course, links to videos that you need to watch, that's all. Here the student loads his own fruits of activity. (If this is a text document, it can be automatically checked by the turnitin system . This system performs the function of anti-plagiarism and a number of other functions.)

In general, for students who are ready to study, almost all obstacles are removed, almost all possibilities are provided.

The third thing that comes to mind is a completely different approach to teaching. The first thing a university employee does (a library employee, an employee of a service that employs people, a lecturer), if he has not met with a group of students before, leaves his email address. And on occasion, do not forget to advise him to write in the mail for all questions that arise.

The lesson in the GU begins with the teacher marking his barcode on the badge with a special scanner,



marking the barcode on the audience wall



and passing the scanner to students to mark the barcodes on their student cards

.

In addition to lectures and laboratory ones, there were also special hours when an audience was released for us and we could come and use computers. It was called labwork.
In laboratory works, labs and in general with questions about where and what, how we were helped by graduate students who, as it turned out, were from Ukraine themselves and knew the Russian language (thanks to them for their help).

Another typical concept for GU (and not only for it) is the word deadline. This means that within the framework of a particular course, the student has one or several terms by which he is obliged to publish the results of his work in moodle. If this is not done, in the best case they will greatly lower the rating, at worst they will close the link to download the results, which automatically means problems. Deadlines can be carried in exceptional cases.

Items


In just 1.5 months, we studied 4 subjects, 3 of which were included in the program and the fourth was an English language course, where after passing the exam, they will receive an advanced level certificate.

Internet and Mobile Application Development


The subject where we were taught to develop mobile applications in the context of certain ecosystems. As a final result, everyone made a system for registering replacements among the teaching staff, which consisted of a desktop application, a web journal, a mobile client and a server with a database that steered it all. C # language, Visual Studio.



Commercial Website Design and Development


Here, the highlight was the development of the site of the alleged courier company. It was proposed to use the same Visual Studio, and the site itself should be done either on web forms or on ASP.NET MVC. (There were no people who wanted to master MVC in short lines on their own). The teacher of these two subjects was John Worden . Which, in addition to teaching, was engaged in software development for about 15 years and did not know by hearsay what he was telling his students about.

Post Graduate Study and Research Methods


The course that prepared us directly for writing a thesis. It discussed topics ranging from the choice of sources and anti-plagiarism, and ending with the rules of work in Microsoft Project, to draw up a work plan for almost a year (until April 2014, when we will have a diploma defense). The teacher was Denise Oram, who was always just an example of vigor, optimism and compassion. From her “Are you happy?” At the end of each lesson, she sometimes felt uneasy, especially if this time she was asked to write another essay for several thousand words.

English was also led by another indefatigable Anna Aylward (they are all there), who, despite her almost advanced age, managed to calmly discuss with us three page girls and scold students for buying a notebook with the Manchester United logo (the whole city we were in mostly supported Liverpool).

Instead of a conclusion


Although a little more than four months have already passed, the impressions still will not subside. Too quickly I got used to a cozy coffee shop and sandwiches, to the fact that parcels from Amazon reach in 2 days, to a separate toilet and shower, to soft lawns with moss, to weekend trips to London, to huge supermarkets with self-service checkouts. It was all really worth the time spent writing or writing code.

Nevertheless, I tried as best I could to avoid the narrative in the style of “good there, bad here”. There are pros and cons to any education system in any country. Yes, and I mainly had to compare with the educational processes of my native MIET.

The education system in Russia is still at a fairly high level, and if you wish, passing through it you can become an excellent specialist with international recognition. But still, we definitely have something to learn from the British.

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