Glyndwr University or another article about education abroad

Introduction / Foreword

This summer I was able to become one of the participants in the joint program of obtaining double degrees from universities of the National Research University MIET and Glyndwr University. As part of this program, I passed a summer school in the city of Wrexham (North Wales) and now I am engaged in writing an English master's degree (computer science), in parallel with a Russian diploma.



Students who are going to start / continue their studies abroad, especially those who consider England as a country, students who are planning to confine themselves to a method of study like the summer school and everyone who cares about education, are welcome.



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

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In our institute, the program is only 2 years old. At the beginning there is a preparatory stage. After some internal competition, the students selected for the trip need to fill out a standard form of the institute, collect documents for a British visa (we received at the UK Visa Application Center), write a research proposal where you need to briefly present information about your future diploma.



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



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

Trip and training

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



The second thing that comes to mind is that in the UK there are significantly fewer obstacles between students and knowledge. Recall what a typical library looks like in an average institution of higher education. A bunch of posters "Do not eat, do not make noise, walk in order," a harsh grandmother, the need to fill out a piece of paper before you bring something. Of course, the literature in the library still remembers the times of restructuring, and even earlier, therefore, for the sake of preservation, it will not be given to anyone in their hands.



GU library - two floors of shelves with books, and not a single grandmother. The electronic catalog solves the problem of finding a place on the rack, the output detectors solve the theft problem, and the bar codes on the books and the smart scanner solve the problem of writing books to a particular student. It turns out that in the process “I came, chose, looked through, chose something else, wrote down for myself” no one else participates except for the student.







This implies the following difference of the GU library from its domestic counterpart - the mode of operation. On weekdays, the library is open until 9 o'clock, while grandmothers leave at exactly six, and sometimes even earlier. That automatically makes it impossible for the libraries to visit senior students who almost all are already working for the 3-4 course.



Also in the library you can find tables for 2-8 people, network sockets for connecting your device to the 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 required amount of funds. Personally, at my institute, the printing of documents is accompanied by standing in a huge queue, especially during the session.



But the library process is not limited to the educational process in higher educational institutions. There are lectures, labs and homework. In this regard, everything in GU is tied to a system called moodle . All the information on the subject gets here, whether it be lectures, presentations for lectures, tasks for labs, tasks for the course, links to videos to watch, in general, everything. Here the student loads his own fruits of activity. (In case it 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 that a university employee does (a library employee, a service employee who employs people, a lecturer), if he has not met a group of students before, leaves his email address. And on occasion, do not forget to advise writing to him by mail with any questions that arise.



A class in GU begins with the fact that the teacher marks his bar code on the badge with a special scanner,







marks the bar code on the audience wall







and passes the scanner to the students so that they mark bar codes on their student cards



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In addition to lectures and laboratory, there were also special hours, when an audience was released under us and it was possible to come and use computers. Called labwork.

In laboratory works, labwork and in general with questions about where and how, graduate students helped us, who, as it turned out, were from Ukraine themselves and knew Russian (thanks to them for their help).



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

Subjects

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

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, everything was done by the replacement registration system among the teaching staff, which consisted of a desktop application, a weblog, a mobile client, and a server with a database that was driving all this. C #, Visual Studio.

Commercial Website Design and Development

Here the main point was the development of the site of an alleged courier company. It was suggested to use all the same Visual Studio, and the site itself to do either on web forms or on ASP.NET MVC. (there were no people willing to master MVC on short lines). The teacher of these two subjects was John Worden . Who, in addition to teaching, has been involved in software development for about 15 years and knew not by hearsay what he told his students.

Post Graduate Study and Research Methods

The course that prepared us directly to write a thesis. It discussed topics ranging from the selection of sources and anti-plagiarism, and ending with the rules of work in the 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 cheerfulness, optimism and compassion. From her “Are you happy?” At the end of each lesson, it sometimes became uneasy, especially if this time they asked you to write another essay with several thousand words.



English was also led by another tireless Anna Aylward (they’re all there), who despite her old age managed to calmly discuss three page girls with us and scold students for buying a notebook with the logo of Manchester United (the whole city where we were mostly rooting for Liverpool).

Instead of conclusion

Even though a little more than four months have passed, the impressions are still not settling down. I got used to a cozy coffee shop and sandwiches too fast, to the fact that parcels from Amazon reach for 2 days, to a separate toilet and shower, to soft lawns with moss, to the opportunity to go to London for weekends, to huge supermarkets with self-service cash registers. It was all really worth the time spent writing or writing code.



And yet, as best I could, I tried to avoid the narrative in the style of "well there, bad here." There are pros and cons in any education system of any country. Yes, and I mostly had to compare with the educational processes of my native MIET.



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