Title: Enhancing students' skills of higher education: methodology, statistical analyses and survey outcomes

Authors: Abdullah M. Al-Sarmi; Zuhair A. Al-Hemyari; F.A. Salamn

Addresses: Ministry of Higher Education, P.O. Box 82, P.C. 112, Ruwi, Sultanate of Oman ' Ministry of Higher Education, P.O. Box 82, P.C. 112, Ruwi, Sultanate of Oman ' College of Arts and Sciences, P.O. Box 33, P.C. 616, Nizwa, Oman

Abstract: In the process of education, a number of elements including learners, skills and teaching methods form a trinity that inevitably plays interrelated roles affecting the performance, achievements, and quality of future workforce. This paper explores essential metacognition thinking skills of higher education students. In addition, it investigates the problems of students' quality relevant to these skills to presents effective means of developing them and elevating the quality of teaching. To address these issues, five main dimensions are proposed, and many significant items for this problem are defined. Then a university course is selected to conduct this study, and in order to assess the level of metacognition skills, the proposed dimensions, and the relevance among these dimensions, the research instrument was distributed to 50 students. The data is analysed, conclusions and numerical results are then reported indicating that the use of the proposed procedure for assessing the ability of students in planning, organising, controlling, and evaluating skills is highly recommended.

Keywords: institutional management; teaching quality; cognition skills; metacognition skills; employability skills; surveys; statistical analyses; student skills; higher education; thinking skills; student quality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIDS.2015.068118

International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences, 2015 Vol.7 No.1, pp.71 - 98

Published online: 31 Mar 2015 *

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