Abstract
Background:
Lecturers in higher education hold a crucial position in a student's educational journey. This is especially true in chiropractic vocational education, where lecturers serve as the bridge between theoretical knowledge and the practical application in clinical practice. Delivering high-quality education has a profound impact on students even outside of the classroom, assisting them in achieving academic success, staying motivated, persevering through challenges, and even improving institutional effectiveness. Therefore, it is important to recognise the lecturer qualities that students consider necessary in order to ensure a valuable learning experience. With the currently lack of any insight into understanding the qualities that chiropractic students expect in their lecturers, the investigation into what chiropractic students at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) perceive as important lecturer qualities for effective learning may assist in providing the required knowledge on the matter.
Aim:
The study’s central aim was to determine how the Bachelor and Master of Health Science (BHSc and MHSc) chiropractic students from the University of Johannesburg in South Africa rate the importance of their lecturers’ qualities. This study, secondarily, also aimed to determine lecturer quality importance based on different demographic data.
Method:
This study was an online cross-sectional quantitative explorative survey that was distributed to chiropractic students registered for the BHSc and MHSc degrees at the University of Johannesburg. Likert-scale questions were used to obtain the data in a numerical manner, where the median, mode and mean were evaluated and compared. The data was collected via an adapted survey from Chiropractor Lecturer Qualities: The Student Perspective (Chesterton, 2022). The survey was adapted by removing qualitative open-ended questions.
Procedure:
The survey was distributed to all BHSc and the MHSc chiropractic students at the University of Johannesburg. The classes were visited, the students were informed about the study, the study process and why it would be beneficial for the students to complete the questionnaire.
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The students received a link to the survey via their class-representatives, who distributed the link on their class WhatsApp (WhatsApp, Facebook Inc, Menlo Park, California, USA) groups. Data was collected via Google Forms (Google LCC, Mountain View, CA, USA).
Results:
One hundred and eighteen (n=118) students took part in this research with a response rate of 48.36%. The general results of this study showed that all good qualities that lecturers possess are seen as important to a large majority of chiropractic students. In Section B4, the highest ranked item was item 2, “An effective chiropractic lecturer can deliver high-quality information in a clinical or practical class setting” with a mean of 4.88. In Section B5, the highest ranked item was item 2 “Knowledge of subject matter” in the category of importance of lecturer qualities with a mean of 9.14. In Section B6, item 3, “Development of your clinical skills” was ranked the highest with a mean of 4.73, in terms of how integral university lecturers are to numerous aspects of a student’s educational journey.
Conclusion:
The importance of good lecturers is well understood and valued by chiropractic students at the University of Johannesburg. The most important lecturer qualities recorded by the students was being equipped with high quality content in clinical and practical scenarios, lecturers having a distinct knowledge of the material being taught and discussed and the students have been seen to value their lecturers with regard to developing them into clinically competent practitioners.