Dear readers,
Greetings! This marks the completion of the second instalment of the wonderful social psychological projects done by students of module MS006A in Singapore Polytechnic. As usual, there are a number of projects that focus on improving academic and social environments here. They are yet again illuminating barring the presence of hindsight bias from the readers.
This instalment has also come with some controversial research topics. I respect these students who are willing to investigate on such divisive areas. It is never easy to do a research on areas such as deviant behaviours because its stakeholders are usually not easy to approach and are generally not forthcoming in their responses. However, these young researchers persevered and succeeded. As ethical researchers, they have also ensured the identities of their interviewees are protected.
These controversial areas should not be ignored just because they touch on sensitive areas. Instead, they should be eagerly pursued in the spirit of creating awareness of such phenonmena. Social changes need such brave souls to initiate and effect.
Lastly, for the advancement of humankind, let us know hope more investigation into the thoughts, emotions and behaviours of humans can be supported and celebrated.
Watch out the next instalment early 2009! Cheers!
Henry Khiat
22.8.08
A EXPLORATORY STUDY OF WHY STUDENTS BREAK THE SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL RULES
A EXPLORATORY STUDY OF WHY STUDENTS BREAK THE SINGAPORE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL RULES.
DONE BY: (AN admirable solo effort of a researcher who dares to ask controversial questions)
Aim Of Study
The study, titled “why students break the Singapore Polytechnic school rules?” is carried out with the intent of getting a more in depth understanding of why the students break the school rules and how can we go about preventing a repetition of this in the future.
Ultimately, we hope to give a detailed analysis so as to let this issue be resolved more easily, resulting in certain guidelines and regulations that Singapore Polytechnic can adopt to prevent such conduct from taking place in the future.
The main research question is divided into 3 sub questions:
a. Why do the students think breaking of school rules is okay?
b. Why have the school been not able to stop this from happening repeatedly?
c. What causes the students to break the school rules?
Data Collection And Analysis Methods
The research was conducted in Singapore polytechnic. The research took a total of three weeks to complete. The research spans from 12th July 2008 to 26 July 2008.
The method used for this study is as follow:
· Selected interviewing of 4 students who were seen breaking school rules and willingly accepted our invitation. A sample of an interview can be seen in Appendix A.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an interview are shown in Appendix A to Appendix C respectively.
b) Noting habits, patterns
c) Noting relations between variables
d) Clustering
Findings
The findings for this research are as follows:
8.1 Factors involved when students break the Singapore Polytechnic school rules
The main factors as to why the students break the school rules can be summarized into 3 main categories, the type of students, type of lecturers, and the environmental situation. This answers the first 2 questions.
8.1.1 Type of Students
The students tend to be attached in groups or with their girl or boyfriends. Therefore, they are easily influenced into doing things they do not want, for example, breaking the school rules. Therefore, this plays a very a big part in whether students will break the school rules. As we can see in the interviews, many students do not think that breaking the rules is wrong because of the fact that their friends are breaking them too. Next, the students themselves ave very little will power. They are wavered too easily and thus influenced too easily. Thus, this can be a major hurdle in tyring to stop the school rules from being broken.
8.1.2 Type of Lecturers
The lecturers, on the other hand, are sort of the higher authority to the students. However, from the interviews, we can see that they have not really made an effort to actually stop the rules from being broken. This causes the students to think that breaking the school rules is okay because the lecturers are not catching them. Therefore, lecturers have to start exerting their authority on this matter if they want to get this to stop. Next, in one of the interviews, one of the subjects even mentioned they have actually witnessed one of the lecturers breaking the rules themselves. This has got to stop before the situation can be solved. Therefore, for the current situation to stop, we need the lecturers to take a firm stand.
8.1.3 Environmental situation
Students are affected by the environment too. For example, from what they see, they might think that it is acceptable. Thus, the correct environment where the students are placed in will be important. At the same time, parents are also part of the students’ environment. So at the same time, the parents have to be good role models and have to set the perfect example for their children
8.2 Attributes for students who break the school rules
From our interviews, we can see a few of the attributes or characteristics that these students possess or is affected by. This answers the third question.
8.2.1 Theory of planned behaviour
Some of the subjects actually showed their unwillingness to break the school rules at first but later on submitted to the situation. This can be attributed to the theory of planned behaviour as they made themselves think that it is actually okay to break them. Therefore, this is one of the main behaviours that the subjects showed to let them relieve themselves of their guilt when breaking rules.
8.2.2 Social norm
The students who broke school rules think that it is okay also due to the fact that everyone is doing it now. This is the effect of social norm. When someone sees that someone else is also doing it, then it should be okay. This is probably the most dominant cause of students willing to break the school rules. However, this is not something that can be easily solved. Many times, this is the hardest part to erase as it is happening so rampantly and there is really little that one can do to stop it.
8.2.3 Stereotyping
Many times, students will possess a set of believes which results in rigid and overgeneralised images of members of that group. This causes them to have a mindset that the groups that possess rule breakers are okay. Once they stereotype these groups, they will have the same mindset as them, thinking that breaking rules is okay and that they should break rules. This causes them to have the same attitude as the rule breakers and end up like them, breaking school rules.
8.3 Reasons why students break school rules
8.3.1 Oblivious to it
Most students do not even know of the existence of the school rules.
8.3.2 Self-convenience
Most students break school rules due to the fact that it makes their life easier and that some procedures which consume time can be skipped. E.g. Logging into the school computers without booking.
8.3.3 Lack of Punishment
Many students continue to break the school rules as there is no punishment imposed on them.
8.3.4 Social Norm
Many students continue to break the school rules even though they know that it is wrong as everyone else is also doing it.
8. Conclusion
In order to provide a fruitful and effective research, I must understand the whole problem thoroughly. This is also the case for rule breaking in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, I have developed a few factors, attributes and reasons to explain why the rules have been repeatedly broken. With the knowledge of such factors, attributes and reasons, teachers, counselors and researchers will be able to deal with this situation more effectively and maybe even develop a more advanced why of dealing with the current situation. Furthermore, this can be a platform for other researchers to have further development or expansion. Nevertheless, if the teachers, counsellors and researchers cannot see the significance of mathematics anxiety and refuse to act on it, this study will remain a research article that serves the sole purpose of pleasure reading.
DONE BY: (AN admirable solo effort of a researcher who dares to ask controversial questions)
Aim Of Study
The study, titled “why students break the Singapore Polytechnic school rules?” is carried out with the intent of getting a more in depth understanding of why the students break the school rules and how can we go about preventing a repetition of this in the future.
Ultimately, we hope to give a detailed analysis so as to let this issue be resolved more easily, resulting in certain guidelines and regulations that Singapore Polytechnic can adopt to prevent such conduct from taking place in the future.
The main research question is divided into 3 sub questions:
a. Why do the students think breaking of school rules is okay?
b. Why have the school been not able to stop this from happening repeatedly?
c. What causes the students to break the school rules?
Data Collection And Analysis Methods
The research was conducted in Singapore polytechnic. The research took a total of three weeks to complete. The research spans from 12th July 2008 to 26 July 2008.
The method used for this study is as follow:
· Selected interviewing of 4 students who were seen breaking school rules and willingly accepted our invitation. A sample of an interview can be seen in Appendix A.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an interview are shown in Appendix A to Appendix C respectively.
b) Noting habits, patterns
c) Noting relations between variables
d) Clustering
Findings
The findings for this research are as follows:
8.1 Factors involved when students break the Singapore Polytechnic school rules
The main factors as to why the students break the school rules can be summarized into 3 main categories, the type of students, type of lecturers, and the environmental situation. This answers the first 2 questions.
8.1.1 Type of Students
The students tend to be attached in groups or with their girl or boyfriends. Therefore, they are easily influenced into doing things they do not want, for example, breaking the school rules. Therefore, this plays a very a big part in whether students will break the school rules. As we can see in the interviews, many students do not think that breaking the rules is wrong because of the fact that their friends are breaking them too. Next, the students themselves ave very little will power. They are wavered too easily and thus influenced too easily. Thus, this can be a major hurdle in tyring to stop the school rules from being broken.
8.1.2 Type of Lecturers
The lecturers, on the other hand, are sort of the higher authority to the students. However, from the interviews, we can see that they have not really made an effort to actually stop the rules from being broken. This causes the students to think that breaking the school rules is okay because the lecturers are not catching them. Therefore, lecturers have to start exerting their authority on this matter if they want to get this to stop. Next, in one of the interviews, one of the subjects even mentioned they have actually witnessed one of the lecturers breaking the rules themselves. This has got to stop before the situation can be solved. Therefore, for the current situation to stop, we need the lecturers to take a firm stand.
8.1.3 Environmental situation
Students are affected by the environment too. For example, from what they see, they might think that it is acceptable. Thus, the correct environment where the students are placed in will be important. At the same time, parents are also part of the students’ environment. So at the same time, the parents have to be good role models and have to set the perfect example for their children
8.2 Attributes for students who break the school rules
From our interviews, we can see a few of the attributes or characteristics that these students possess or is affected by. This answers the third question.
8.2.1 Theory of planned behaviour
Some of the subjects actually showed their unwillingness to break the school rules at first but later on submitted to the situation. This can be attributed to the theory of planned behaviour as they made themselves think that it is actually okay to break them. Therefore, this is one of the main behaviours that the subjects showed to let them relieve themselves of their guilt when breaking rules.
8.2.2 Social norm
The students who broke school rules think that it is okay also due to the fact that everyone is doing it now. This is the effect of social norm. When someone sees that someone else is also doing it, then it should be okay. This is probably the most dominant cause of students willing to break the school rules. However, this is not something that can be easily solved. Many times, this is the hardest part to erase as it is happening so rampantly and there is really little that one can do to stop it.
8.2.3 Stereotyping
Many times, students will possess a set of believes which results in rigid and overgeneralised images of members of that group. This causes them to have a mindset that the groups that possess rule breakers are okay. Once they stereotype these groups, they will have the same mindset as them, thinking that breaking rules is okay and that they should break rules. This causes them to have the same attitude as the rule breakers and end up like them, breaking school rules.
8.3 Reasons why students break school rules
8.3.1 Oblivious to it
Most students do not even know of the existence of the school rules.
8.3.2 Self-convenience
Most students break school rules due to the fact that it makes their life easier and that some procedures which consume time can be skipped. E.g. Logging into the school computers without booking.
8.3.3 Lack of Punishment
Many students continue to break the school rules as there is no punishment imposed on them.
8.3.4 Social Norm
Many students continue to break the school rules even though they know that it is wrong as everyone else is also doing it.
8. Conclusion
In order to provide a fruitful and effective research, I must understand the whole problem thoroughly. This is also the case for rule breaking in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, I have developed a few factors, attributes and reasons to explain why the rules have been repeatedly broken. With the knowledge of such factors, attributes and reasons, teachers, counselors and researchers will be able to deal with this situation more effectively and maybe even develop a more advanced why of dealing with the current situation. Furthermore, this can be a platform for other researchers to have further development or expansion. Nevertheless, if the teachers, counsellors and researchers cannot see the significance of mathematics anxiety and refuse to act on it, this study will remain a research article that serves the sole purpose of pleasure reading.
An exploratory study of the types of inconsiderate behaviour exhibited by students in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic.
Title : An exploratory study of the types of inconsiderate behaviour exhibited by students in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic.
Date : July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester1
Conducted by :
Goh I-Vy 0656670
Vanessa Chan Sing Nee 0635899
Ong Aaron 0635365
Izdiyad Syamin Bin Rosli 0740308
Muhd Firdaus Bin Sahrol 0739342
Low Young Boon 0764434
Siti Mahirah Bte Malek 0642116
Huang Pengyu 0753791
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
What are the types of inconsiderate behaviours encountered in food courts during peak hours from 11am to 2pm?
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) What are the types of behaviour in food courts?
b) Why is the behaviour perceived as inconsiderate?
c) Why do the students perform such inconsiderate behaviours?
d) What do the students think of such inconsiderate behaviours?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in all food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of five weeks to complete. The research stretched from July 2008 to August 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Observation of the behaviour of students in six different food courts, taking a total of 8 observation sessions of around 30 minutes each. An example of an observation in this study is shown in Appendix A.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of two students in food courts 1, 4, 5 and 6, and four students in food court 2 and 3. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix B.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an observation and interview are shown in Appendix C and Appendix D respectively.
b) Noting relations between variables
c) Partitioning variables
d) Notting themes, pattern
FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The different types of behaviour or actions that students in Singapore Polytechnic consider as inconsiderate. This answers the first sub research question for this study.
Table-hogging
Based on the answers given, table-hogging appears to be the most common inconsiderate behaviour displayed by the students across all six foodcourts. There are several ways groups of students hog the table.
For example, the most common observation was that most students tend to put their bag on the extra seats. This prevents other students from occupying the extra seats. Students also hog the table by remaining in the seats even after finishing their meals and chat, play games, surf the internet, completing assignments and other activities with no relation to eating. The main purpose is to pass or ‘kill’ time.
Table-hogging also causes a disruption to the traffic flow of students in the food courts. Students who are waiting for available seats will block the pathway in the food courts. Some key factors to take note of include the narrow pathways in between the tables and the substantial amount of space is taken up by cleaners pushing carts to clear the tables. This causes the food courts to be crowded and affects the efficiency of the cleaners.
Jumping Queue/ Long Queue
Students were observed allowing their friends to cut into the queue. There are also students who help their friends to purchase food during peak hours. This results in slow and long queue, and is also a form of cutting queue as it is unfair for the other students that are waiting in line. The other students in the queue are hence unable to estimate the time they would take to buy their food. In addition to that, the long queues also cause a disruption along the food court pathways.
Tables Cleanliness
We observe that most students do not clear their tables after meals. On top of that, they also dirty the tables and leave their litter around. As a result, other students tend to refuse to occupy the tables when they are vacant, but would rather wait for a cleaner one.
In this scenario, two groups of students can be observed. The first group consist of the students who fail to clear their plates after their meals. The second group are the students who refuse to occupy the vacant tables unless they have been cleared by the cleaners. Both groups are not willing to undertake the responsibility and are not willing to take the initiative to keep the food court clean but rely on others to clear it up for them.
b) The main reason on why such behaviour occurs in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. This answers the second and third sub research question for this study.
Convenience
Students choose to stay in the food courts after meals, because it is the most convenient place. Based on the answers given, most students feel that the food court is the nearest place to hang out at while waiting for lessons to start. They can pass their time by doing whatever they want such as reading, chatting, playing PSP, surfing the internet, etc. Some feel that the idea of having to find another suitable location is troublesome and are reluctant to move to another location.
c) The reactions of the students towards the inconsiderate behaviour shown by their peers in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. This answers the fourth sub research question for this study.
Based on the interview answers, we realise that the students feel most strongly about the table-hogging issue. We also noted that most students choose to ignore the inconsiderate behaviour when they encounter them. They would only stare at the other students and walk away, even if they felt frustrated, annoyed or angry.
DISCUSSION
After researching, we realise that the main inconsiderate behaviour of students in food courts is the table-hogging issue. Therefore, we shall focus on table-hogging in our discussion.
Our definition of table-hogging is the occupying of seats for an unnecessarily long period of time and using the tables for reasons other than eating. Firstly, we realise that most students hog the tables in groups. They are usually observed to be chatting with each other or waiting for each other to finish their meal. This demonstrates group behaviour, as the action of an individual is influenced by the member.
For example, if most of the members in the group are chatting after the meal, it is unlikely that any member of the group would solitarily leave their seat. Even if any of the members feels considerate enough to leave the place, he or she would not dare to raise his or her opinion but would rather go along with the majority. This is an issue of conformity, where there is a distortion in perception and might be also due to the fear of being socially ostracised.
The groups of students waiting for the vacant seats could also be demonstrating an issue of diffusion of responsibility. No action is taken, even if they felt frustrated or annoyed with the group of students hogging the table. None of the groups belonging to this category approached the group to ask them to leave. This can be said as a diffusion of responsibility as every member of the group relied on the other members to take the initiative. This leads to the decision to wait for other tables to be vacant.
CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of the inconsiderate behaviour exhibits by teenagers in food courts in Singapore.
From this study, we have identified three main behaviours perceived as inconsiderate exhibited in food courts: hogging of tables, jumping or cutting of queues and failing to clear the tables after meals. After analyzing the answers given in the interview and observations, we are able to identify several concepts that form the reasons behind such inconsiderate behaviour.
The main reason that such behaviour exists is due to group behaviours. Issues such as conformity and the fear of being socially ostracised are some of the main contributors to the problem. Diffusion of responsibility is also prominent among the groups.
Being aware of the reasons of such behaviour entitles some form of further action to be taken, such as campaigns related to the issue to be organised by the school in order to create awareness among the students. By creating awareness, every individual member of the group would realise that he or she plays a crucial role in maintaining the good etiquette in food courts. If no actions are taken to address and solve this issue, the general level of courtesy of Singapore may be affected if such inconsiderate behaviours were to be repeated outside of Singapore Polytechnic.
Date : July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester1
Conducted by :
Goh I-Vy 0656670
Vanessa Chan Sing Nee 0635899
Ong Aaron 0635365
Izdiyad Syamin Bin Rosli 0740308
Muhd Firdaus Bin Sahrol 0739342
Low Young Boon 0764434
Siti Mahirah Bte Malek 0642116
Huang Pengyu 0753791
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
What are the types of inconsiderate behaviours encountered in food courts during peak hours from 11am to 2pm?
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) What are the types of behaviour in food courts?
b) Why is the behaviour perceived as inconsiderate?
c) Why do the students perform such inconsiderate behaviours?
d) What do the students think of such inconsiderate behaviours?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in all food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of five weeks to complete. The research stretched from July 2008 to August 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Observation of the behaviour of students in six different food courts, taking a total of 8 observation sessions of around 30 minutes each. An example of an observation in this study is shown in Appendix A.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of two students in food courts 1, 4, 5 and 6, and four students in food court 2 and 3. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix B.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an observation and interview are shown in Appendix C and Appendix D respectively.
b) Noting relations between variables
c) Partitioning variables
d) Notting themes, pattern
FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The different types of behaviour or actions that students in Singapore Polytechnic consider as inconsiderate. This answers the first sub research question for this study.
Table-hogging
Based on the answers given, table-hogging appears to be the most common inconsiderate behaviour displayed by the students across all six foodcourts. There are several ways groups of students hog the table.
For example, the most common observation was that most students tend to put their bag on the extra seats. This prevents other students from occupying the extra seats. Students also hog the table by remaining in the seats even after finishing their meals and chat, play games, surf the internet, completing assignments and other activities with no relation to eating. The main purpose is to pass or ‘kill’ time.
Table-hogging also causes a disruption to the traffic flow of students in the food courts. Students who are waiting for available seats will block the pathway in the food courts. Some key factors to take note of include the narrow pathways in between the tables and the substantial amount of space is taken up by cleaners pushing carts to clear the tables. This causes the food courts to be crowded and affects the efficiency of the cleaners.
Jumping Queue/ Long Queue
Students were observed allowing their friends to cut into the queue. There are also students who help their friends to purchase food during peak hours. This results in slow and long queue, and is also a form of cutting queue as it is unfair for the other students that are waiting in line. The other students in the queue are hence unable to estimate the time they would take to buy their food. In addition to that, the long queues also cause a disruption along the food court pathways.
Tables Cleanliness
We observe that most students do not clear their tables after meals. On top of that, they also dirty the tables and leave their litter around. As a result, other students tend to refuse to occupy the tables when they are vacant, but would rather wait for a cleaner one.
In this scenario, two groups of students can be observed. The first group consist of the students who fail to clear their plates after their meals. The second group are the students who refuse to occupy the vacant tables unless they have been cleared by the cleaners. Both groups are not willing to undertake the responsibility and are not willing to take the initiative to keep the food court clean but rely on others to clear it up for them.
b) The main reason on why such behaviour occurs in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. This answers the second and third sub research question for this study.
Convenience
Students choose to stay in the food courts after meals, because it is the most convenient place. Based on the answers given, most students feel that the food court is the nearest place to hang out at while waiting for lessons to start. They can pass their time by doing whatever they want such as reading, chatting, playing PSP, surfing the internet, etc. Some feel that the idea of having to find another suitable location is troublesome and are reluctant to move to another location.
c) The reactions of the students towards the inconsiderate behaviour shown by their peers in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. This answers the fourth sub research question for this study.
Based on the interview answers, we realise that the students feel most strongly about the table-hogging issue. We also noted that most students choose to ignore the inconsiderate behaviour when they encounter them. They would only stare at the other students and walk away, even if they felt frustrated, annoyed or angry.
DISCUSSION
After researching, we realise that the main inconsiderate behaviour of students in food courts is the table-hogging issue. Therefore, we shall focus on table-hogging in our discussion.
Our definition of table-hogging is the occupying of seats for an unnecessarily long period of time and using the tables for reasons other than eating. Firstly, we realise that most students hog the tables in groups. They are usually observed to be chatting with each other or waiting for each other to finish their meal. This demonstrates group behaviour, as the action of an individual is influenced by the member.
For example, if most of the members in the group are chatting after the meal, it is unlikely that any member of the group would solitarily leave their seat. Even if any of the members feels considerate enough to leave the place, he or she would not dare to raise his or her opinion but would rather go along with the majority. This is an issue of conformity, where there is a distortion in perception and might be also due to the fear of being socially ostracised.
The groups of students waiting for the vacant seats could also be demonstrating an issue of diffusion of responsibility. No action is taken, even if they felt frustrated or annoyed with the group of students hogging the table. None of the groups belonging to this category approached the group to ask them to leave. This can be said as a diffusion of responsibility as every member of the group relied on the other members to take the initiative. This leads to the decision to wait for other tables to be vacant.
CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of the inconsiderate behaviour exhibits by teenagers in food courts in Singapore.
From this study, we have identified three main behaviours perceived as inconsiderate exhibited in food courts: hogging of tables, jumping or cutting of queues and failing to clear the tables after meals. After analyzing the answers given in the interview and observations, we are able to identify several concepts that form the reasons behind such inconsiderate behaviour.
The main reason that such behaviour exists is due to group behaviours. Issues such as conformity and the fear of being socially ostracised are some of the main contributors to the problem. Diffusion of responsibility is also prominent among the groups.
Being aware of the reasons of such behaviour entitles some form of further action to be taken, such as campaigns related to the issue to be organised by the school in order to create awareness among the students. By creating awareness, every individual member of the group would realise that he or she plays a crucial role in maintaining the good etiquette in food courts. If no actions are taken to address and solve this issue, the general level of courtesy of Singapore may be affected if such inconsiderate behaviours were to be repeated outside of Singapore Polytechnic.
Why are there long queues at Foodcourts?
Title
Why are there long queues at Foodcourts?
Date
15th July 2008, Semester 1
Done By:
CHONG SUAN TING 0620321
NUR HAZWANI BINTE ISMAIL 0615332
NURAIN BINTI BORHAN 0622208
SIM KIAN TAT 0625681
TAN XIANG YING 0635659
MUHD SYAFIQ ABDUL GHANI 0640354
WONG LENG FEI GARY 0727314
ALVIN LOW CHONG BOON 0539906
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
To find out the factors that causes long queues in all foodcourts in Singapore Polytechnic.
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) Which foodcourt do you visit most frequently? Why?
b) What other activities do you do besides having your meal?
c) What is the average time taken from queuing to getting seated?
d) How has it affect students / consumers?
e) How can we overcome this problem?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in all foodcourts (FC 1 – FC6) in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of six weeks to complete. The research stretches from 9th July 2008 to 23rd July 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Each group member is in charge of 2 food courts. Detail research and analysis done individually. There is a repeat of information gathered from the same foodcourt to obtain optimum results.
b) Every team member uses the same set of interview question. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix A.
c) Each member to have personal observation to contribute to the data analysis by the interviewees. An example of a set of observations is shown in Appendix B.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an observation and interview are shown in Appendix C and Appendix D respectively.
b) Finding common themes
c) Categorising
FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The conditions and the causes long queues in foodcourts are as follows:
i) Environment
In this study, it is shown the environment of food court is a factor that determines where the students go for lunch. For instance, some interviewees commented that they like going to Foodcourt 2 because it is renovated. As such, the space becomes well-ventilated and bigger, thus, students will tend to go in big groups and spend longer time there. Similarly, in Foodcourt 4, it is air-conditioned and the dining space is configured into 3 sections. Therefore, these appealing factors the respective food courts offer brings about comfort thus able to attract students.
ii) Location
Location is one determining factor when students decide where to go. Most of the time they would go somewhere which is near to their classes because it is much more convenient, time and energy saving (avoid the hot weather). However, some students don’t mind travelling further to satisfy their cravings, thus there is no fixed number of students in every foodcourt during lunchtime.
iii) Variety & Quality of Food
Students are able to choose from a wide range of food is available in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. There’s fast food (Macdonald’s in FC 2, Pizza Hut & KFC in FC 5), Thai Cuisine (FC 4), Vegetarian Food (FC 1 & FC 6). Fast food is the all-time favourite of youngsters; therefore the lengthy queue lines formed is inevitable.
Besides fast food, students also go for food quality. An example is the economical mix rice stall in FC 2, where most would agree that the food is delicious yet cheap.
iv) Peer Influence
Peer plays an important role in decision making because most people prefers going for meals with their friends/ colleagues by nature. Therefore, consumers are expected to come in groups.
v) Inconsiderate Behaviours
The inconsiderate behaviours that contribute to the problems the team observed are mainly table-hogging and buying multiple shares. Some students tend to stay on chit chatting, using their laptops and playing card games after the meals, depriving others of the seat, thus leading to circulation problems as the block the passage way while roaming around for available seats.
Another major issue is when one student orders multiple sets of meal for their friends. This causes the people at the back of the queue to be greatly affected as they have to wait longer for their turn to come. This explains why some people have to spend half of their lunch break queuing up.
vi) Speed of Food Preparation
Time taken for the stall workers to prepare food also affects the long queues greatly. When the workers take a longer time to prepare, the queue will only accumulate than getting shortened and the waiting time per person increases. The team noticed that the stalls that take a longer time to get ready the food are usually run by elderly. Examples of slow food preparation are the Muslim Food in Food court 6, Fishball Soup in Foodcourt 2 and Muslim Stall in Foodcourt 3.
DISCUSSION
-Environment
Environment is an important factor that will influence students on whether will they patronise that particular food court often or once in a blue moon. Students normally will patronise food court with better ambience and environment, so that they will be able relax and relieve from stress while enjoying their meal. Sub-factors that contribute to the environment of a food court are the type of crowd, ambience, sceneries and whether is the food court air-conditioned. We can relate these entire factors to the food court in our campus, for example; Food court 4 being well air-conditioned and the only air-conditioned food court in our campus, which result in the overwhelming crowd. Whereas food court 3 has a panoramic view of the field and a lovely fountain by the entrance of the food court, thus attracting a substantial amount of students to patronise. In food court 6, the type of crowd in it is the sole factor that attracts student to patronise, as it is renowned for its high population of female students. Whereby, attracting most of the male students from all other schools to patronise in food court 6, despite it is located at the far end of the campus.
- Location
For location, attitude is one of the social psychological points that affect the thought of students. Most students are merely self-centred. They prefer going to the nearest foodcourt regardless of the price and variety of the food just to save time and energy which is to avoid the hot weather as well as for self-convenience which is to avoid the hot weather. Only a minority who are broadminded would not mind travelling to other further foodcourt to try other different variety of food as well as experience the environment of other foodcourts since some foodcourts are well-ventilated or air-conditioned.
- Peer Influence
Peer influence is a huge factor in letting students to decide their choice of foodcourts as well as the food they are having. The social psychological viewpoints that can be used to change the thought of students include persuasion, conformity and consensus seeking.
Students of Singapore Polytechnic usually hang around in cliques and members in the group are usually very concerned with consensus seeking. The members will be very concerned with gaining unanimous agreement rather than quality of group decision, which in this case, means that when an individual decide to have lunch at a certain foodcourt, the rest will agree and go together.
In addition to consensus seeking, students also use persuasion to change their friends’ thoughts on which foodcourt to go and what to have. They may apply rational or emotional arguments to convince their friends to adopt their personal position. The friends will be facing pressure from the one persuading them and will thus conform and agree to go to the foodcourt as requested by the one. They will modify their behavior in response to pressure from others, either imagined or real, and actually no in response to a direct request.
- Food Quality
Does the presence of fast-food affect the choices made by the students in deciding on which foodcourt to go? Some foodcourts offer special food such as Thai cuisine, Macdonald’s, Pizza hut, Waffleton and vegetarian food. These stalls are not common in Singapore Polytechnic, so students may be attracted to visit the foodcourts that has these stalls when they have special cravings to eat these foods.
Some food offered in different foodcourts may taste better, which are also main attractions for students to visit. Chicken talk, the chicken rice stall at foodcourt 3, is very popular with students as the quality of food is good and the price is acceptable. There are chicken rice stalls in almost all Singapore Polytechnic foodcourts but students tend to visit the stall that offers the ‘same’ food but of higher quality.
- Popularity of Foodcourt
What attracted students to visit the food courts in SP?
According to observations data, food court 4 will be a much popular food court in SP. Reasons being that is air-conditioned and there are good and cheap foods. However, there are students whereby prefer to go a certain food court which is near to their school. Reasons such as lazy to walk, time consuming to travel and etc.
A breakdown of 6 Food Courts in SP by their popularity.
Food Court 1:
Being the nearest food court to the School of Built Environment, most common students from School of Built Environment will visit this food court during their 1 hour lunch break. School of Chemical Life Science and Singapore Maritime Academy students will visit too, due to the popularity of the stalls. Stalls such western foods which can wait up to 35 minutes, Japanese food and Yong dau fu stalls can wait up to 20 minutes.
Food Court 2:
Having one of the popular fast food restaurants can really attract a lot of students especially during breakfast. Ways that attract students also because it is cheaper compare to public. Not forgetting some cheap and nice foods along the way. Recommended by Singapore Maritime Academy students where they will normally have their lunch. Chicken rice, mixed vegetable rice and the Muslims stalls are the one which always got long and messy queues.
Food Court 3:
Having one food court which is almost the centre of the whole campus, it attracts students from all schools to drop by. Chicken talk stalls where they sell Muslims chicken culet rice and noodles costing $2 each. Queues for this stall can queue up to 20 minutes just to wait for the food. Ban Mian which is also popular especially to ladies who want to eat small and filling food. The queue can wait up to 10 – 15 minutes.
Food Court 4:
Air-conditioned food courts which have no different compare to the public food court attract not only students but non SP students too. Food court operated by “Kou Fu” is a popular food court out in the public too. Crowds never seem to subside when they start their daily operation till 3-4 O’clock. Muslims stall are one of the best selling food in the food court. Long queue can be spotted especially during lunch break. Waiting time can queue up to 20 minutes. Thai Cuisine which has been awarded one of the best foods in SP also receives long queues during lunch break. Foods in food court 4 have more variety compare to the other food courts.
Food Court 5:
Another 2 popular fast food restaurants which located at food court 5 attracts nearby secondary school students from New Town Secondary School. Waiting time just for getting a meal can wait up to 25 – 30 minutes. Queues are spotted to have multiply columns at the KFC counters. Pizza huts are always full house. What attracts students is the price. It is at least 50 – 90 cents cheaper compare to public.
Food Court 6:
Last food court located at the School of Business is one of the cheapest food courts in SP. Crowds start flowing in when it is close to lunch break. Long queues can be spotted at Muslims food and chicken rice stalls. This two are the much more popular foods not only in food court 6 but as well as in the whole SP. Nice and cheap food. As usual, crowds are mostly students from School of Business. This food court is one of the food courts with vegetarian’s food and this will attracts vegetarians from different school to travel here to buy.
- Inconsiderate Behaviours
Those whom are queuing up may show inconsiderate behaviours by buying food for their friends. This may create anger and unhappiness to those at the back of the queue as it was unfair to them. Others will be affected by their inconsiderate actions, even stall owners will be affected for they have to prepare a big number of meals at one time. They may be under pressure too due to this.
In other cases, a friend would allow a few other friends to queue in front of them instead of going to the back of the queue. This may be due to persuasion by their peers however ignoring those behind who has been queuing for some time.
All these inconsiderate behaviours have been a factor for causing long queues during peak hours.
CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most significant solution to the problem of long queues in foodcourts, we need to understand the factors that contributed to this problem.
We have separated the factors into different categories of location, peer influence, food quality, popularity of foodcourts, and inconsiderate behaviours. From the viewpoint of social psychology, there are usage of persuasion, conformity and consensus seeking in deciding the foodcourt to visit.
After determining the types of categories and the social psychological viewpoints, we can better understand the problem and be able to provide a more in depth analysis as well as suggest more relevant solutions. Researchers can use it as a platform to study the other aspects of the factors leading to long queues and their impact on others.
Why are there long queues at Foodcourts?
Date
15th July 2008, Semester 1
Done By:
CHONG SUAN TING 0620321
NUR HAZWANI BINTE ISMAIL 0615332
NURAIN BINTI BORHAN 0622208
SIM KIAN TAT 0625681
TAN XIANG YING 0635659
MUHD SYAFIQ ABDUL GHANI 0640354
WONG LENG FEI GARY 0727314
ALVIN LOW CHONG BOON 0539906
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
To find out the factors that causes long queues in all foodcourts in Singapore Polytechnic.
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) Which foodcourt do you visit most frequently? Why?
b) What other activities do you do besides having your meal?
c) What is the average time taken from queuing to getting seated?
d) How has it affect students / consumers?
e) How can we overcome this problem?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in all foodcourts (FC 1 – FC6) in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of six weeks to complete. The research stretches from 9th July 2008 to 23rd July 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Each group member is in charge of 2 food courts. Detail research and analysis done individually. There is a repeat of information gathered from the same foodcourt to obtain optimum results.
b) Every team member uses the same set of interview question. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix A.
c) Each member to have personal observation to contribute to the data analysis by the interviewees. An example of a set of observations is shown in Appendix B.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an observation and interview are shown in Appendix C and Appendix D respectively.
b) Finding common themes
c) Categorising
FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The conditions and the causes long queues in foodcourts are as follows:
i) Environment
In this study, it is shown the environment of food court is a factor that determines where the students go for lunch. For instance, some interviewees commented that they like going to Foodcourt 2 because it is renovated. As such, the space becomes well-ventilated and bigger, thus, students will tend to go in big groups and spend longer time there. Similarly, in Foodcourt 4, it is air-conditioned and the dining space is configured into 3 sections. Therefore, these appealing factors the respective food courts offer brings about comfort thus able to attract students.
ii) Location
Location is one determining factor when students decide where to go. Most of the time they would go somewhere which is near to their classes because it is much more convenient, time and energy saving (avoid the hot weather). However, some students don’t mind travelling further to satisfy their cravings, thus there is no fixed number of students in every foodcourt during lunchtime.
iii) Variety & Quality of Food
Students are able to choose from a wide range of food is available in the food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. There’s fast food (Macdonald’s in FC 2, Pizza Hut & KFC in FC 5), Thai Cuisine (FC 4), Vegetarian Food (FC 1 & FC 6). Fast food is the all-time favourite of youngsters; therefore the lengthy queue lines formed is inevitable.
Besides fast food, students also go for food quality. An example is the economical mix rice stall in FC 2, where most would agree that the food is delicious yet cheap.
iv) Peer Influence
Peer plays an important role in decision making because most people prefers going for meals with their friends/ colleagues by nature. Therefore, consumers are expected to come in groups.
v) Inconsiderate Behaviours
The inconsiderate behaviours that contribute to the problems the team observed are mainly table-hogging and buying multiple shares. Some students tend to stay on chit chatting, using their laptops and playing card games after the meals, depriving others of the seat, thus leading to circulation problems as the block the passage way while roaming around for available seats.
Another major issue is when one student orders multiple sets of meal for their friends. This causes the people at the back of the queue to be greatly affected as they have to wait longer for their turn to come. This explains why some people have to spend half of their lunch break queuing up.
vi) Speed of Food Preparation
Time taken for the stall workers to prepare food also affects the long queues greatly. When the workers take a longer time to prepare, the queue will only accumulate than getting shortened and the waiting time per person increases. The team noticed that the stalls that take a longer time to get ready the food are usually run by elderly. Examples of slow food preparation are the Muslim Food in Food court 6, Fishball Soup in Foodcourt 2 and Muslim Stall in Foodcourt 3.
DISCUSSION
-Environment
Environment is an important factor that will influence students on whether will they patronise that particular food court often or once in a blue moon. Students normally will patronise food court with better ambience and environment, so that they will be able relax and relieve from stress while enjoying their meal. Sub-factors that contribute to the environment of a food court are the type of crowd, ambience, sceneries and whether is the food court air-conditioned. We can relate these entire factors to the food court in our campus, for example; Food court 4 being well air-conditioned and the only air-conditioned food court in our campus, which result in the overwhelming crowd. Whereas food court 3 has a panoramic view of the field and a lovely fountain by the entrance of the food court, thus attracting a substantial amount of students to patronise. In food court 6, the type of crowd in it is the sole factor that attracts student to patronise, as it is renowned for its high population of female students. Whereby, attracting most of the male students from all other schools to patronise in food court 6, despite it is located at the far end of the campus.
- Location
For location, attitude is one of the social psychological points that affect the thought of students. Most students are merely self-centred. They prefer going to the nearest foodcourt regardless of the price and variety of the food just to save time and energy which is to avoid the hot weather as well as for self-convenience which is to avoid the hot weather. Only a minority who are broadminded would not mind travelling to other further foodcourt to try other different variety of food as well as experience the environment of other foodcourts since some foodcourts are well-ventilated or air-conditioned.
- Peer Influence
Peer influence is a huge factor in letting students to decide their choice of foodcourts as well as the food they are having. The social psychological viewpoints that can be used to change the thought of students include persuasion, conformity and consensus seeking.
Students of Singapore Polytechnic usually hang around in cliques and members in the group are usually very concerned with consensus seeking. The members will be very concerned with gaining unanimous agreement rather than quality of group decision, which in this case, means that when an individual decide to have lunch at a certain foodcourt, the rest will agree and go together.
In addition to consensus seeking, students also use persuasion to change their friends’ thoughts on which foodcourt to go and what to have. They may apply rational or emotional arguments to convince their friends to adopt their personal position. The friends will be facing pressure from the one persuading them and will thus conform and agree to go to the foodcourt as requested by the one. They will modify their behavior in response to pressure from others, either imagined or real, and actually no in response to a direct request.
- Food Quality
Does the presence of fast-food affect the choices made by the students in deciding on which foodcourt to go? Some foodcourts offer special food such as Thai cuisine, Macdonald’s, Pizza hut, Waffleton and vegetarian food. These stalls are not common in Singapore Polytechnic, so students may be attracted to visit the foodcourts that has these stalls when they have special cravings to eat these foods.
Some food offered in different foodcourts may taste better, which are also main attractions for students to visit. Chicken talk, the chicken rice stall at foodcourt 3, is very popular with students as the quality of food is good and the price is acceptable. There are chicken rice stalls in almost all Singapore Polytechnic foodcourts but students tend to visit the stall that offers the ‘same’ food but of higher quality.
- Popularity of Foodcourt
What attracted students to visit the food courts in SP?
According to observations data, food court 4 will be a much popular food court in SP. Reasons being that is air-conditioned and there are good and cheap foods. However, there are students whereby prefer to go a certain food court which is near to their school. Reasons such as lazy to walk, time consuming to travel and etc.
A breakdown of 6 Food Courts in SP by their popularity.
Food Court 1:
Being the nearest food court to the School of Built Environment, most common students from School of Built Environment will visit this food court during their 1 hour lunch break. School of Chemical Life Science and Singapore Maritime Academy students will visit too, due to the popularity of the stalls. Stalls such western foods which can wait up to 35 minutes, Japanese food and Yong dau fu stalls can wait up to 20 minutes.
Food Court 2:
Having one of the popular fast food restaurants can really attract a lot of students especially during breakfast. Ways that attract students also because it is cheaper compare to public. Not forgetting some cheap and nice foods along the way. Recommended by Singapore Maritime Academy students where they will normally have their lunch. Chicken rice, mixed vegetable rice and the Muslims stalls are the one which always got long and messy queues.
Food Court 3:
Having one food court which is almost the centre of the whole campus, it attracts students from all schools to drop by. Chicken talk stalls where they sell Muslims chicken culet rice and noodles costing $2 each. Queues for this stall can queue up to 20 minutes just to wait for the food. Ban Mian which is also popular especially to ladies who want to eat small and filling food. The queue can wait up to 10 – 15 minutes.
Food Court 4:
Air-conditioned food courts which have no different compare to the public food court attract not only students but non SP students too. Food court operated by “Kou Fu” is a popular food court out in the public too. Crowds never seem to subside when they start their daily operation till 3-4 O’clock. Muslims stall are one of the best selling food in the food court. Long queue can be spotted especially during lunch break. Waiting time can queue up to 20 minutes. Thai Cuisine which has been awarded one of the best foods in SP also receives long queues during lunch break. Foods in food court 4 have more variety compare to the other food courts.
Food Court 5:
Another 2 popular fast food restaurants which located at food court 5 attracts nearby secondary school students from New Town Secondary School. Waiting time just for getting a meal can wait up to 25 – 30 minutes. Queues are spotted to have multiply columns at the KFC counters. Pizza huts are always full house. What attracts students is the price. It is at least 50 – 90 cents cheaper compare to public.
Food Court 6:
Last food court located at the School of Business is one of the cheapest food courts in SP. Crowds start flowing in when it is close to lunch break. Long queues can be spotted at Muslims food and chicken rice stalls. This two are the much more popular foods not only in food court 6 but as well as in the whole SP. Nice and cheap food. As usual, crowds are mostly students from School of Business. This food court is one of the food courts with vegetarian’s food and this will attracts vegetarians from different school to travel here to buy.
- Inconsiderate Behaviours
Those whom are queuing up may show inconsiderate behaviours by buying food for their friends. This may create anger and unhappiness to those at the back of the queue as it was unfair to them. Others will be affected by their inconsiderate actions, even stall owners will be affected for they have to prepare a big number of meals at one time. They may be under pressure too due to this.
In other cases, a friend would allow a few other friends to queue in front of them instead of going to the back of the queue. This may be due to persuasion by their peers however ignoring those behind who has been queuing for some time.
All these inconsiderate behaviours have been a factor for causing long queues during peak hours.
CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most significant solution to the problem of long queues in foodcourts, we need to understand the factors that contributed to this problem.
We have separated the factors into different categories of location, peer influence, food quality, popularity of foodcourts, and inconsiderate behaviours. From the viewpoint of social psychology, there are usage of persuasion, conformity and consensus seeking in deciding the foodcourt to visit.
After determining the types of categories and the social psychological viewpoints, we can better understand the problem and be able to provide a more in depth analysis as well as suggest more relevant solutions. Researchers can use it as a platform to study the other aspects of the factors leading to long queues and their impact on others.
Title: An exploratory study of the behaviours of Singapore polytechnic students breaking school rules intentionally.
Title: An exploratory study of the behaviours of Singapore polytechnic students breaking school rules intentionally.
Conducted by: (Webmaster: Another wonderful group of trailblazing researchers at work. Their identities are protected.)
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why do students violate school rules in Singapore Polytechnic (SP) even though they know about them?
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
1. What are the rules that SP students violate?
2. When do they violate these rules?
3. Where do they violate these rules?
4. Why do they violate these rules?
5. How do we stop students from violating the rules?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in a Singapore polytechnic. The research takes a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 11th July 2007 to 25th July 2007.
The form of data collection for the research is as below:
1. Selected informal open-ended interviews of the sixteen school rule breaker students taking an average of 15 minutes per interview. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix A.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
1. Open Coding. An example of open coding of an interview is shown in Appendix A.
2. Noting patterns and themes (Appendix B)
3. Partition variable (Appendix C)
4. Making Comparison/contrast (Appendix D)
FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:
1. The type of rules violated by SP students is as follow:
Wrong dress code
In this study, wearing the wrong dress code is most commonly violated by SP students. Wearing mini skirts and shorts are commonly seen among female students whereas slippers are common among both sexes. (Appendix A, B)
The above findings answer the first sub research questions for this study.
2. The reasons for SP students violating school rules are as follow (Appendix C):
2.1) Unaware
Some students are ignorant of all the SP rules because rules are not made clear to them on the first day when they entered SP and most students have a ‘cannot be bothered’ mindset to check out SP rules.
SP rules are listed inside a student handbook which is not considered a compulsory item to be bought by all SP students. Hence, the chances of students knowing SP rules are low and chances of breaking of rules unintentionally are therefore high.
2.2) Aware
Students are actually aware of the dress code rules, but simply ignore it and continue violating the rule intentionally. This is because of:
2.2.1) Comfort and Convenience
Students feel that wearing comfortable and convenient attires to school is more important than abiding SP rules. Therefore, they disregard the dress code rule and continue wearing slippers and shorts due to convenience and comfort.
2.2.2) Peer Influence
Peers play an important role in causing students to violate school rules intentionally especially when students encounter peers wearing slippers and shorts and not being caught. Therefore, students deliberately have the wrong dress code since the majority of SP students are wearing it and no actions are taken to correct this wrong dress code.
Peers also play a part in school rule violation. Some people would be influenced by their peers, and thus would break the school rules just to fit in. Sometimes, they would see how cool their friends look with dyed hair or so, and would then follow suit.
2.2.3) Personal grooming/self conscious
While some people go for comfort, others would rather be more conscious about the way they look while they are in school. This usually applies to girls in wearing hot pants and tank tops. They wish to either look more attractive or they feel more secure or self conscious by wearing what they would look best in.
2.2.4) No Strict Enforcement
Students feel that lecturers are not doing much to catch students violating the dress code rule because they feel that lecturers cannot do much in preventing the large portion of SP students from wearing slippers and shorts. The strictest enforcement most commonly used is only the issuing of warning letter, which is not strong enough to deter students from violating the dress code rule. As a result, students violate the dress code rule intentionally since no strict enforcement is taken.
2.2.5) Freedom
Students expect more freedom in polytechnics as compared to secondary schools and junior colleges. They feel that students are treated as young adults in a tertiary education whereby lots of freedom and respects are given to them. Therefore, students tend not to abide the school rules because they long for freedom in polytechnics.
2.2.6) Challenge the Rules
Students find that wearing slippers and shorts/mini skirts does not hinder their studies and is neither offensive nor too revealing. They feel that allowing the wearing of sandals but prohibiting slippers is ridiculous because the difference lies only in one strap. This shows that students will challenge the rules and do what they think is acceptable and reasonable, thereby violating SP rules on purpose.
The above findings answer the fourth sub research question for this study.
3. Students who commonly violate the school rule are:
3.1) Year 2 and 3
It is commonly seen that seniors are the ones wearing inappropriately, either too revealing or too sloppy. This may be due to the fact that wearing conveniently and comfortably i.e. wearing slippers and shorts/mini skirts have already become a habit of them, causing students to have a ‘cannot be bothered’ mentality towards SP rules. As a result, students have no fear towards the disciplinary actions for violating rules as they were not caught in year 1.
3.2) School of Business (SB) - females
Students cited that females in School of Business are the ones that commonly violate the dress code rule. Since there are more females found in SB, chances of females wearing mini skirts/shorts and slippers are therefore higher in SB.
3.3) School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering (EEE) – males
According to students, males in EEE are more likely to have outlandish hairstyle and dress in bermudas with slippers. Since there are a higher percentage of males in EEE, there will be higher tendency for males to violate SP rules in EEE.
The above findings answer the second and third sub research questions for this study.
4. Some possible and effective punishments suggested by students for a more deterring factor include:
4.1) Deduction from GPA
Result shows that people are more concern with their result than monetary matter. They are willing to fork out money even if they break the rule. However, they are reluctant to risk violating the rule if they have to sacrifice their GPA. GPA is accumulated, if punishment implemented, it will directly affect the score that allow them to enter university if they intend to. Therefore, it’s one of the effective ways of controlling.
4.2) Doing CIP
Students, be it male or female, feel that personal image is important. They would do anything in order to secure a good impression of themselves on others. Hence, they would abide by the rules, as it is shameful to be seen doing CIP. Forcing them to do CIP (e.g. picking up rubbish and sweeping the floor) is seen as an effective form of punishment for violating the school rules.
DISCUSSION
From a social psychological viewpoint, rule-breaking increases because of the social norms set in the school’s environment. Rule-breaking is a very important social indicator in school as students who break rules would often cause damage to the school’s reputation. Thus, coupled with the inevitable phenomenon of social comparison among peers that occurs in a school setting, rule- breaking among students would escalate if no appropriate actions or enforcements are taken. Teachers and enforcers, who are unhelpful and unconcerned to rule-breaking students, can increase their anxiety. This reduces their concerns about the rules and as these students starts to break rules, they may begin to feel a sense of achievement. This could potentially affect the students’ future attitude in life. The school should treat this issue more carefully and come up with a better solution.
CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of rule violation of students in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, three categories of rule-breaking behaviours are identified. They are the categorized under ignorance-oriented, self-innocence and convenience, which achieve the understandings of rule-breaking. By the better understanding of such behaviours, teachers and rule enforcers can better understand the behaviours of rule-breakers and diagnose their conditions promptly to treat it effectively. Nevertheless, if the teachers and rule enforcers cannot see the significance in correcting student’s rule-breaking behaviour, and refuse to act on it, this study will remain as a research article that serves the sole purpose of pleasure reading.
Conducted by: (Webmaster: Another wonderful group of trailblazing researchers at work. Their identities are protected.)
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why do students violate school rules in Singapore Polytechnic (SP) even though they know about them?
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
1. What are the rules that SP students violate?
2. When do they violate these rules?
3. Where do they violate these rules?
4. Why do they violate these rules?
5. How do we stop students from violating the rules?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in a Singapore polytechnic. The research takes a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 11th July 2007 to 25th July 2007.
The form of data collection for the research is as below:
1. Selected informal open-ended interviews of the sixteen school rule breaker students taking an average of 15 minutes per interview. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix A.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
1. Open Coding. An example of open coding of an interview is shown in Appendix A.
2. Noting patterns and themes (Appendix B)
3. Partition variable (Appendix C)
4. Making Comparison/contrast (Appendix D)
FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:
1. The type of rules violated by SP students is as follow:
Wrong dress code
In this study, wearing the wrong dress code is most commonly violated by SP students. Wearing mini skirts and shorts are commonly seen among female students whereas slippers are common among both sexes. (Appendix A, B)
The above findings answer the first sub research questions for this study.
2. The reasons for SP students violating school rules are as follow (Appendix C):
2.1) Unaware
Some students are ignorant of all the SP rules because rules are not made clear to them on the first day when they entered SP and most students have a ‘cannot be bothered’ mindset to check out SP rules.
SP rules are listed inside a student handbook which is not considered a compulsory item to be bought by all SP students. Hence, the chances of students knowing SP rules are low and chances of breaking of rules unintentionally are therefore high.
2.2) Aware
Students are actually aware of the dress code rules, but simply ignore it and continue violating the rule intentionally. This is because of:
2.2.1) Comfort and Convenience
Students feel that wearing comfortable and convenient attires to school is more important than abiding SP rules. Therefore, they disregard the dress code rule and continue wearing slippers and shorts due to convenience and comfort.
2.2.2) Peer Influence
Peers play an important role in causing students to violate school rules intentionally especially when students encounter peers wearing slippers and shorts and not being caught. Therefore, students deliberately have the wrong dress code since the majority of SP students are wearing it and no actions are taken to correct this wrong dress code.
Peers also play a part in school rule violation. Some people would be influenced by their peers, and thus would break the school rules just to fit in. Sometimes, they would see how cool their friends look with dyed hair or so, and would then follow suit.
2.2.3) Personal grooming/self conscious
While some people go for comfort, others would rather be more conscious about the way they look while they are in school. This usually applies to girls in wearing hot pants and tank tops. They wish to either look more attractive or they feel more secure or self conscious by wearing what they would look best in.
2.2.4) No Strict Enforcement
Students feel that lecturers are not doing much to catch students violating the dress code rule because they feel that lecturers cannot do much in preventing the large portion of SP students from wearing slippers and shorts. The strictest enforcement most commonly used is only the issuing of warning letter, which is not strong enough to deter students from violating the dress code rule. As a result, students violate the dress code rule intentionally since no strict enforcement is taken.
2.2.5) Freedom
Students expect more freedom in polytechnics as compared to secondary schools and junior colleges. They feel that students are treated as young adults in a tertiary education whereby lots of freedom and respects are given to them. Therefore, students tend not to abide the school rules because they long for freedom in polytechnics.
2.2.6) Challenge the Rules
Students find that wearing slippers and shorts/mini skirts does not hinder their studies and is neither offensive nor too revealing. They feel that allowing the wearing of sandals but prohibiting slippers is ridiculous because the difference lies only in one strap. This shows that students will challenge the rules and do what they think is acceptable and reasonable, thereby violating SP rules on purpose.
The above findings answer the fourth sub research question for this study.
3. Students who commonly violate the school rule are:
3.1) Year 2 and 3
It is commonly seen that seniors are the ones wearing inappropriately, either too revealing or too sloppy. This may be due to the fact that wearing conveniently and comfortably i.e. wearing slippers and shorts/mini skirts have already become a habit of them, causing students to have a ‘cannot be bothered’ mentality towards SP rules. As a result, students have no fear towards the disciplinary actions for violating rules as they were not caught in year 1.
3.2) School of Business (SB) - females
Students cited that females in School of Business are the ones that commonly violate the dress code rule. Since there are more females found in SB, chances of females wearing mini skirts/shorts and slippers are therefore higher in SB.
3.3) School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering (EEE) – males
According to students, males in EEE are more likely to have outlandish hairstyle and dress in bermudas with slippers. Since there are a higher percentage of males in EEE, there will be higher tendency for males to violate SP rules in EEE.
The above findings answer the second and third sub research questions for this study.
4. Some possible and effective punishments suggested by students for a more deterring factor include:
4.1) Deduction from GPA
Result shows that people are more concern with their result than monetary matter. They are willing to fork out money even if they break the rule. However, they are reluctant to risk violating the rule if they have to sacrifice their GPA. GPA is accumulated, if punishment implemented, it will directly affect the score that allow them to enter university if they intend to. Therefore, it’s one of the effective ways of controlling.
4.2) Doing CIP
Students, be it male or female, feel that personal image is important. They would do anything in order to secure a good impression of themselves on others. Hence, they would abide by the rules, as it is shameful to be seen doing CIP. Forcing them to do CIP (e.g. picking up rubbish and sweeping the floor) is seen as an effective form of punishment for violating the school rules.
DISCUSSION
From a social psychological viewpoint, rule-breaking increases because of the social norms set in the school’s environment. Rule-breaking is a very important social indicator in school as students who break rules would often cause damage to the school’s reputation. Thus, coupled with the inevitable phenomenon of social comparison among peers that occurs in a school setting, rule- breaking among students would escalate if no appropriate actions or enforcements are taken. Teachers and enforcers, who are unhelpful and unconcerned to rule-breaking students, can increase their anxiety. This reduces their concerns about the rules and as these students starts to break rules, they may begin to feel a sense of achievement. This could potentially affect the students’ future attitude in life. The school should treat this issue more carefully and come up with a better solution.
CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of rule violation of students in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, three categories of rule-breaking behaviours are identified. They are the categorized under ignorance-oriented, self-innocence and convenience, which achieve the understandings of rule-breaking. By the better understanding of such behaviours, teachers and rule enforcers can better understand the behaviours of rule-breakers and diagnose their conditions promptly to treat it effectively. Nevertheless, if the teachers and rule enforcers cannot see the significance in correcting student’s rule-breaking behaviour, and refuse to act on it, this study will remain as a research article that serves the sole purpose of pleasure reading.
An exploratory study of the coping behaviours of student doing last minute school work.
Title : An exploratory study of the coping behaviours of student doing last minute school work.
Conducted by : Nicholas Lee Chee Wee (P0715670, DBS/FT/2B21), Ho Su Jun Christina (P0723787, DCP2B21), Shon Boon Ling (P0757849, DIT2B21), Pei Chew Mui (P0744089, DPFM2A02), Chai Yit Hoong (P0746841, DEEE/FT/1B/28), Michelle Chong Hui Shan (P0707761, DAC/FT/2A/03), Shi Xiang (P0652267, DGDD/FT/3A/01)
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why do students choose to do last minute school work?
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) What are the causes (influence) of delaying school work?
b) What are the consequences of delaying school work?
c) When do they start delaying their school work? (habit)
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in a polytechnic in the western part of Singapore. The research takes a total of four weeks to complete. The research stretches from 4th July 2008 to 25th July 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Selected informal open-ended interviews of 16 students taking an average of 15 minutes per interviews.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding.
b) Noting relations between variables
c) Clustering
FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The causes that lead to students doing their assignment last minute are as follow:
Difficulty of the assignment
Students look at the difficulty of the assignment to decide if they want to do the work early or last minute. This could be because they do not understand the assignment aspects or their lessons. However, towards the dateline of the assignment, students will be left with no choice but to complete the assignment. This assignment could be rushed through or copied from others.
Weight-age of assignment
Students look at the contribution of the percentage towards to the entire module. Assignments which have a higher weight-age are often more highly regarded by students; while assignments with a lower weight-age are less regarded. When the assignments are highly regarded, students will put set aside more time for it
Interest towards work
Students tend to work in accordance towards their interest in a particular module. For example, they will put in more time and effort into a module which they are interested in, as compared to one module which they have got no interest in.
Peer Influence
Individuals may be influence by their peers. For example, when the majority of the classmates do not start their assignments early, the minority will tend to go with the flow.
Other commitments
From the interviews, students are often engaged in other commitments such as Co-Curriculum Activities (CCA), boy-girl relationships (BGR), and part-time job. These commitments have higher priority than school assignments. This causes them to push assignments to a later date and doing them when the datelines are nearer.
Distractions
Students tend to neglect their work and participate in other leisure activities such as gaming, surfing the internet, watching television, hanging out with friends, etc.
b) The consequences of delaying school work
Lack of Sleep
Occurrence of careless mistakes
Stress
Remorseful
Under performance
Tendency to neglect other assignments of lower weight-age
Trapped in a vicious cycle of doing last minute assignment (heavy workload)
When assignments start to accumulate, students will feel stress and burn midnight oil to complete their assignments. This causes them to have a lack of sleep, which in turn may lead to more occurrences of careless mistakes and thus under perform. The students may then feel remorseful as because they could have achieved quality work if they did not do last minute work.
Also, when there are 2 assignments of different weight-age due on the same deadline, students will tend to focus on the assignment with higher weight-age and neglect the other assignments.
This scenario will keep occurring if more work (with deadline nearing to the current assignment) is introduced into their existing workload and thus the students are trapped in this vicious cycle.
c) When do they start delaying their school work? (habit)
1. Attitude towards work
The attitude towards work largely constitute to their choice of doing their assignments last minute. Students tend to do their work when they feel like to. Comments such as “I do not have the mood” are commonly used as excuses. Students who hold the apathetic attitude tend to leave their work undone.
Three categories of coping behaviours employed by students doing last minute work evolve from this study. They are named as the categories of procrastinating behaviours, delusive behaviours and resistant behaviours respectively in this study. This answers the first, second and third sub research question for this study.
i) Procrastinating Behaviours
Procrastinating behaviours are subdivided into self procrastinating behaviours and group procrastinating behaviours.
Self-procrastinating behaviours
Delayed action in doing assignment
Such students tend to always put aside their work with or without doing it, until the deadline is approaching. The excuses they gave are always ‘I have no mood to do’, ‘I don’t know how to do’ or ‘Still got so much time’ and etc…
Group procrastinating behaviours
Doing non assignment related activities
Such students tend to procrastinate in a group (friends, classmates...), they will put aside their assignments and do it at another date or somewhere near deadline. They tend to do a bit of their work first, but after some time, they will start doing other stuff and progress to not wanting to do the assignment anymore.
ii) Delusive Behaviours
Delusive behaviours are divided broadly into two subcategories- self-deluding behaviours and teacher deluding behaviours.
Self Deluding Behaviours
Refusal to admit doing last minute work is wrong
Students will blame other events, such as too many assignments thus giving them no choice but to do last minute work. The fault lies in the lecturers who are flooding them with assignments instead of themselves for the poor time management. Students will also think that doing last minute work is correct and they will reaffirm it when asked about doing last minute work. Thus, they will keep doing last minute work, it become like a habit. They tend to give reasons like ‘it helps me focuses, ‘there’s no difference from starting the work early’ and etc. Some even thought that doing last minute work, have a better quality than doing the work in a earlier time.
Self affirmation
Reduce the impact of a dissonance- arousing threat to their self-concept by focusing on and affirming their competence on some dimension unrelated to the threat. Such students when they are dragging the school work will tell oneself that he still has the time; the deadline for the work to submit is still long.
Teacher Deluding Behaviours
Deliberate deadline changing
Students may request to change the dead line of the assignment, giving excuses like forgotten the dead line of the assignment thus the assignment could not be submitted on the actual day to support their stand.
Faking illness, giving excuses
Students will give fictional excuse such as illness, funeral, etc as reason forcing them to do last minute assignments. Students will also pretend to be sick to skip lesson giving them one extra day to do the work. They will tell the lecturers that they cannot come on that day, so they can only hand it in today. Indirectly, they postponed the deadline of the assignment
Copying of assignment from others
Students not only not do their assignment till the last minute, but many also copy their assignments from their friends at the last possible minute. They tend to unthinkingly shift their attention to their peers’ answers and copy immediately from them. This action is almost automatic to such students observed. Some of them choose to copy as their peers are still in the process of doing while the others prefer to copy only when their peers have finished the assignment. All these actions are performed discreetly outside the view of the teacher.
iii) Resistant Behaviours
Resistant behaviours are categorised into two groups – independent resistance and influencing resistance.
Independent Resistance
Failure to bring assignment
Such students will claim that they forget to bring their due assignment. They are usually unapologetic about it. They also do care about the admonishments or punishments meted to them.
Deliberately skip lesson
Such students will skip the lesson where they have to hand in their assignment, so that they have one more day to do the assignment. They are also ready to take any admonishments or punishments meted out by the teacher.
Influencing Resistance
Promoting others to hand in together
Students will try to promote their friends/classmates to hand in together/as a class together, applying peer pressure, and nudging on their slacker personality hidden inside of them. This will lead to a large bunch of students handing in their work late together.
DISCUSSION
From a social psychological viewpoint, habit of doing last minute work arises because of their attitudes towards assignment and workloads. Teachers, who are unhelpful and unconcerned to the needs of these students, can further their attitude towards doing last minute work. As these students continued to keep doing last minute work, they begin to feel that it is a social norm to do last minute work. In the long run, they will feel that it’s alright doing last minute work. This greatly reduces their self efficacy of learning. The whole purpose of doing assignment is thus changed to ‘just finish it’ kind of mentality. They missed out the learning experiences from doing the assignment properly. Also, as our education system teaches us that doing last minute work is wrong. To counter such unpleasant feelings caused by cognitive dissonance, they begin to engage in coping behaviours that aim to delude. This is because such coping behaviours are psychologically fruitful to them than to engage in changing their perspective and habit which requires a lot of effort, time and self-discipline.
Conclusion
Many students in Singapore have this bad habit of waiting till the last minute before rushing out their assignments, this is a very worrying trend that has plagued schools and institutions around the island and with none of them spared. This trend has the potential of wrecking the lives of the youths who are engaging in this sort of activities with many of them getting poor results as a direct consequence for their bad habit. With this bad results, many of them then proceed to ruin their future career options .Also many students because of them rushing their assignments, are unable to understand the subject well and thus lead to them struggling and lost when the lecturer moves on to more deeper topics.
In addition this may in turn affect the student health as they had to burn midnight oil just to complete their work. Thus In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. From this study, three categories of coping behaviours of students doing last minute work evolve. They are the categories of procrastinating behaviours, delusive behaviours and resistant behaviours.
By knowing the behaviours, lecturers can have a better understanding of the students and help to solve the problem. However if the lecturers choose to ignore this, the trend of students waiting till the last minute before rushing out their assignment will continue and getting worse.
Conducted by : Nicholas Lee Chee Wee (P0715670, DBS/FT/2B21), Ho Su Jun Christina (P0723787, DCP2B21), Shon Boon Ling (P0757849, DIT2B21), Pei Chew Mui (P0744089, DPFM2A02), Chai Yit Hoong (P0746841, DEEE/FT/1B/28), Michelle Chong Hui Shan (P0707761, DAC/FT/2A/03), Shi Xiang (P0652267, DGDD/FT/3A/01)
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why do students choose to do last minute school work?
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) What are the causes (influence) of delaying school work?
b) What are the consequences of delaying school work?
c) When do they start delaying their school work? (habit)
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in a polytechnic in the western part of Singapore. The research takes a total of four weeks to complete. The research stretches from 4th July 2008 to 25th July 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Selected informal open-ended interviews of 16 students taking an average of 15 minutes per interviews.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding.
b) Noting relations between variables
c) Clustering
FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The causes that lead to students doing their assignment last minute are as follow:
Difficulty of the assignment
Students look at the difficulty of the assignment to decide if they want to do the work early or last minute. This could be because they do not understand the assignment aspects or their lessons. However, towards the dateline of the assignment, students will be left with no choice but to complete the assignment. This assignment could be rushed through or copied from others.
Weight-age of assignment
Students look at the contribution of the percentage towards to the entire module. Assignments which have a higher weight-age are often more highly regarded by students; while assignments with a lower weight-age are less regarded. When the assignments are highly regarded, students will put set aside more time for it
Interest towards work
Students tend to work in accordance towards their interest in a particular module. For example, they will put in more time and effort into a module which they are interested in, as compared to one module which they have got no interest in.
Peer Influence
Individuals may be influence by their peers. For example, when the majority of the classmates do not start their assignments early, the minority will tend to go with the flow.
Other commitments
From the interviews, students are often engaged in other commitments such as Co-Curriculum Activities (CCA), boy-girl relationships (BGR), and part-time job. These commitments have higher priority than school assignments. This causes them to push assignments to a later date and doing them when the datelines are nearer.
Distractions
Students tend to neglect their work and participate in other leisure activities such as gaming, surfing the internet, watching television, hanging out with friends, etc.
b) The consequences of delaying school work
Lack of Sleep
Occurrence of careless mistakes
Stress
Remorseful
Under performance
Tendency to neglect other assignments of lower weight-age
Trapped in a vicious cycle of doing last minute assignment (heavy workload)
When assignments start to accumulate, students will feel stress and burn midnight oil to complete their assignments. This causes them to have a lack of sleep, which in turn may lead to more occurrences of careless mistakes and thus under perform. The students may then feel remorseful as because they could have achieved quality work if they did not do last minute work.
Also, when there are 2 assignments of different weight-age due on the same deadline, students will tend to focus on the assignment with higher weight-age and neglect the other assignments.
This scenario will keep occurring if more work (with deadline nearing to the current assignment) is introduced into their existing workload and thus the students are trapped in this vicious cycle.
c) When do they start delaying their school work? (habit)
1. Attitude towards work
The attitude towards work largely constitute to their choice of doing their assignments last minute. Students tend to do their work when they feel like to. Comments such as “I do not have the mood” are commonly used as excuses. Students who hold the apathetic attitude tend to leave their work undone.
Three categories of coping behaviours employed by students doing last minute work evolve from this study. They are named as the categories of procrastinating behaviours, delusive behaviours and resistant behaviours respectively in this study. This answers the first, second and third sub research question for this study.
i) Procrastinating Behaviours
Procrastinating behaviours are subdivided into self procrastinating behaviours and group procrastinating behaviours.
Self-procrastinating behaviours
Delayed action in doing assignment
Such students tend to always put aside their work with or without doing it, until the deadline is approaching. The excuses they gave are always ‘I have no mood to do’, ‘I don’t know how to do’ or ‘Still got so much time’ and etc…
Group procrastinating behaviours
Doing non assignment related activities
Such students tend to procrastinate in a group (friends, classmates...), they will put aside their assignments and do it at another date or somewhere near deadline. They tend to do a bit of their work first, but after some time, they will start doing other stuff and progress to not wanting to do the assignment anymore.
ii) Delusive Behaviours
Delusive behaviours are divided broadly into two subcategories- self-deluding behaviours and teacher deluding behaviours.
Self Deluding Behaviours
Refusal to admit doing last minute work is wrong
Students will blame other events, such as too many assignments thus giving them no choice but to do last minute work. The fault lies in the lecturers who are flooding them with assignments instead of themselves for the poor time management. Students will also think that doing last minute work is correct and they will reaffirm it when asked about doing last minute work. Thus, they will keep doing last minute work, it become like a habit. They tend to give reasons like ‘it helps me focuses, ‘there’s no difference from starting the work early’ and etc. Some even thought that doing last minute work, have a better quality than doing the work in a earlier time.
Self affirmation
Reduce the impact of a dissonance- arousing threat to their self-concept by focusing on and affirming their competence on some dimension unrelated to the threat. Such students when they are dragging the school work will tell oneself that he still has the time; the deadline for the work to submit is still long.
Teacher Deluding Behaviours
Deliberate deadline changing
Students may request to change the dead line of the assignment, giving excuses like forgotten the dead line of the assignment thus the assignment could not be submitted on the actual day to support their stand.
Faking illness, giving excuses
Students will give fictional excuse such as illness, funeral, etc as reason forcing them to do last minute assignments. Students will also pretend to be sick to skip lesson giving them one extra day to do the work. They will tell the lecturers that they cannot come on that day, so they can only hand it in today. Indirectly, they postponed the deadline of the assignment
Copying of assignment from others
Students not only not do their assignment till the last minute, but many also copy their assignments from their friends at the last possible minute. They tend to unthinkingly shift their attention to their peers’ answers and copy immediately from them. This action is almost automatic to such students observed. Some of them choose to copy as their peers are still in the process of doing while the others prefer to copy only when their peers have finished the assignment. All these actions are performed discreetly outside the view of the teacher.
iii) Resistant Behaviours
Resistant behaviours are categorised into two groups – independent resistance and influencing resistance.
Independent Resistance
Failure to bring assignment
Such students will claim that they forget to bring their due assignment. They are usually unapologetic about it. They also do care about the admonishments or punishments meted to them.
Deliberately skip lesson
Such students will skip the lesson where they have to hand in their assignment, so that they have one more day to do the assignment. They are also ready to take any admonishments or punishments meted out by the teacher.
Influencing Resistance
Promoting others to hand in together
Students will try to promote their friends/classmates to hand in together/as a class together, applying peer pressure, and nudging on their slacker personality hidden inside of them. This will lead to a large bunch of students handing in their work late together.
DISCUSSION
From a social psychological viewpoint, habit of doing last minute work arises because of their attitudes towards assignment and workloads. Teachers, who are unhelpful and unconcerned to the needs of these students, can further their attitude towards doing last minute work. As these students continued to keep doing last minute work, they begin to feel that it is a social norm to do last minute work. In the long run, they will feel that it’s alright doing last minute work. This greatly reduces their self efficacy of learning. The whole purpose of doing assignment is thus changed to ‘just finish it’ kind of mentality. They missed out the learning experiences from doing the assignment properly. Also, as our education system teaches us that doing last minute work is wrong. To counter such unpleasant feelings caused by cognitive dissonance, they begin to engage in coping behaviours that aim to delude. This is because such coping behaviours are psychologically fruitful to them than to engage in changing their perspective and habit which requires a lot of effort, time and self-discipline.
Conclusion
Many students in Singapore have this bad habit of waiting till the last minute before rushing out their assignments, this is a very worrying trend that has plagued schools and institutions around the island and with none of them spared. This trend has the potential of wrecking the lives of the youths who are engaging in this sort of activities with many of them getting poor results as a direct consequence for their bad habit. With this bad results, many of them then proceed to ruin their future career options .Also many students because of them rushing their assignments, are unable to understand the subject well and thus lead to them struggling and lost when the lecturer moves on to more deeper topics.
In addition this may in turn affect the student health as they had to burn midnight oil just to complete their work. Thus In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. From this study, three categories of coping behaviours of students doing last minute work evolve. They are the categories of procrastinating behaviours, delusive behaviours and resistant behaviours.
By knowing the behaviours, lecturers can have a better understanding of the students and help to solve the problem. However if the lecturers choose to ignore this, the trend of students waiting till the last minute before rushing out their assignment will continue and getting worse.
A study of why the students of Singapore Polytechnic smoke in the campus despite knowing the laws restrict so.
Title
A study of why the students of Singapore Polytechnic smoke in the campus despite knowing the laws restrict so.
Done by: (Webmaster: The identities of the researchers are protected due to the sensitivity of this study. They are a brave lot. Salute them!)
Aim of Study
The aim of the study is to answer the main research question below:
· Why do students smoke in campus when they clearly know it is against the campus laws?
This main research questions is fragmented into the following sub-questions:
· What are the consequences of smoking in Singapore Polytechnic? What do you think of the consequences?
· Where in the campus do students usually smoke at? What are their behaviours when smoking in the campus? Why?
· How far to an extent would students go just to be able to smoke?
Data Collection and Analysis Methods
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. This research was conducted in Singapore Polytechnic, taking a total of eight weeks (30th May 2008 to 25th July 2008) to complete.
The form of data collection for this research is as follows:
Student Interviewers; by coming up with interview questions to interview selected students of Singapore Polytechnic. An example of the interview questions is shown in the Appendix.
The form of analysis is used as follows:
Open Coding.
Findings
The Common Areas
The common spots disclosed by the interviewees who smoke are toilets. This fact can be tallied by the interviewees who do not smoke by the encounters with toilets which reek of the smell of cigarette smoke. Other places disclosed as a common smoking area include the deserted basement of Foot Court 5. There are other interviewees who refrained from disclosing their common smoking spots.
Reasons why the students smoke in the campus
• Inability to resist the temptations to smoke
They cannot resist the temptations to smoke as the people around them to smoke. This usually implies to heavy smokers who would consistently walk out of the class to smoke in order for them to stay focus and pay attention during lessons. They become too dependent on the cigarettes to listen in class.
• Influence of friends
Friends do play an important part for students who choose to smoke in school. It is usually when an individual who smokes, ask his friends to go along with him/her to smoke. It ends up having more people who smoke as some of these students who smoke in campus are social smokers. They main intention is to accompany their friends. And it is when their friends who smoke offer them a cigarette that they all end up smoking.
• Find it far to walk out of school
Some feel that walking out of school to catch a puff is a hassle. They find the distance traveled is far and they are lazy to do so. They would rather smoke in school as it is more convenient to do so.
• Secluded areas in school
There are certain areas in the school where most smokers would go too. They do so as they realised that very seldom do school staffs walk pass there and there is no one to watch them. Since this is the case, they would stay there to smoke. These areas do not have any sensors or staff to catch them smoking as it is a more secluded area with very little or even no crowd at all.
How the non-smokers in the campus feel about the issue
In this study, it is shown that most of the non-smokers are affected by the smokers. They think that smoking is not only unhealthy but also a waste of money and time. They do not want to spend such amount of money and in the end, they are killing themselves. There are some non-smokers who think that smoking only shows those smokers are immature and it is not as cool as what they think. However, there are still some non-smokers who fully understand why smokers smoke.
Non-smoking students who have been interviewed are generally affected by this smoking issue. They seem to be concerned about their surroundings and the atmosphere of the place they are in. With this, we can see why some of these students are against students who smoke within the campus. Students who do not smoke tend to have a negative outlook on students who smoke within the campus; some to the extent that they hate the people who smoke within the campus.
Non-smokers are affected mostly by smelling the smokes. As we all know, passive smoking kills twice as fast as smoking itself. Non-smokers feel that is it very irritated but they cannot change the situation. Therefore, majority of them choose not to care about it and just try not to walk pass those people who are smoking. They do not think there is a point to stop the smokers or report to someone unless he/she is related to them.
We can definitely say that some students are biased towards smokers and they tend to ‘hate’ them more due to the fact that they still smoke within the campus even though it is against the school rules. Therefore, non-smokers are generally affected by this issue due to them being uncomfortable with having students who smoke within the campus itself.
Non-smokers feel that this is a rather big issue and that the school should implement harsher punishments to students who smoke within the campus. With this, it shows that majority of the non-smokers are really against students who smoke and that they are willing to share their opinions in order to eliminate students who smoke within the campus. This also shows that they are concerned about this issue and are in a way affected by the actions of smokers.
Suggestions to resolve the issue
From our survey respondents, they think that having fines and punishment is not enough to solve the smoking issue in our campus. Furthermore, our school security is not possible to cover the entire Singapore Polytechnic with such a low numbers.
The following some of the more prominent recommendations that respondents have in accordance to what smoking issue inside Singapore Polytechnic’s campus:
1) Smoke detector
With reference to the findings in the survey done by our student researchers, a number of respondents indicated that the school can take steps and insert smoke detectors at every corner of the school. For example, these smoke detectors should be placed at “hot spots” whereby most of the time smokers will visit to take a puff and think that they will not get caught as the area is dark, secluded or hard to access. These smoke detectors work in the way such that they will let a sounding alarm whenever the detector senses any traces of cigarette’s smoke around it, whenever the alarm is sounded, there will be a security breach light that lights up at the campus’s security post. The benefits of smoke detectors are as follows:
The alarm will be able to frighten off the smokers.
Secondly, the school will be able to catch those groups of smokers.
2) Increase fines
Many of the respondents think that the fines are not pricey enough and the smokers are not afraid of the small amount of fine as they do not feel the pinch on their fingers. Respondents recommend that the school should increase our fines to a minimum of $5000. Firstly, this huge amount should be able to let the smokers feel the pinch on their fingers. And secondly, the parents would not be able to pay for them. With the fines increases to a minimum of $5000, it would be able to stop those smokers.
A study of why the students of Singapore Polytechnic smoke in the campus despite knowing the laws restrict so.
Done by: (Webmaster: The identities of the researchers are protected due to the sensitivity of this study. They are a brave lot. Salute them!)
Aim of Study
The aim of the study is to answer the main research question below:
· Why do students smoke in campus when they clearly know it is against the campus laws?
This main research questions is fragmented into the following sub-questions:
· What are the consequences of smoking in Singapore Polytechnic? What do you think of the consequences?
· Where in the campus do students usually smoke at? What are their behaviours when smoking in the campus? Why?
· How far to an extent would students go just to be able to smoke?
Data Collection and Analysis Methods
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. This research was conducted in Singapore Polytechnic, taking a total of eight weeks (30th May 2008 to 25th July 2008) to complete.
The form of data collection for this research is as follows:
Student Interviewers; by coming up with interview questions to interview selected students of Singapore Polytechnic. An example of the interview questions is shown in the Appendix.
The form of analysis is used as follows:
Open Coding.
Findings
The Common Areas
The common spots disclosed by the interviewees who smoke are toilets. This fact can be tallied by the interviewees who do not smoke by the encounters with toilets which reek of the smell of cigarette smoke. Other places disclosed as a common smoking area include the deserted basement of Foot Court 5. There are other interviewees who refrained from disclosing their common smoking spots.
Reasons why the students smoke in the campus
• Inability to resist the temptations to smoke
They cannot resist the temptations to smoke as the people around them to smoke. This usually implies to heavy smokers who would consistently walk out of the class to smoke in order for them to stay focus and pay attention during lessons. They become too dependent on the cigarettes to listen in class.
• Influence of friends
Friends do play an important part for students who choose to smoke in school. It is usually when an individual who smokes, ask his friends to go along with him/her to smoke. It ends up having more people who smoke as some of these students who smoke in campus are social smokers. They main intention is to accompany their friends. And it is when their friends who smoke offer them a cigarette that they all end up smoking.
• Find it far to walk out of school
Some feel that walking out of school to catch a puff is a hassle. They find the distance traveled is far and they are lazy to do so. They would rather smoke in school as it is more convenient to do so.
• Secluded areas in school
There are certain areas in the school where most smokers would go too. They do so as they realised that very seldom do school staffs walk pass there and there is no one to watch them. Since this is the case, they would stay there to smoke. These areas do not have any sensors or staff to catch them smoking as it is a more secluded area with very little or even no crowd at all.
How the non-smokers in the campus feel about the issue
In this study, it is shown that most of the non-smokers are affected by the smokers. They think that smoking is not only unhealthy but also a waste of money and time. They do not want to spend such amount of money and in the end, they are killing themselves. There are some non-smokers who think that smoking only shows those smokers are immature and it is not as cool as what they think. However, there are still some non-smokers who fully understand why smokers smoke.
Non-smoking students who have been interviewed are generally affected by this smoking issue. They seem to be concerned about their surroundings and the atmosphere of the place they are in. With this, we can see why some of these students are against students who smoke within the campus. Students who do not smoke tend to have a negative outlook on students who smoke within the campus; some to the extent that they hate the people who smoke within the campus.
Non-smokers are affected mostly by smelling the smokes. As we all know, passive smoking kills twice as fast as smoking itself. Non-smokers feel that is it very irritated but they cannot change the situation. Therefore, majority of them choose not to care about it and just try not to walk pass those people who are smoking. They do not think there is a point to stop the smokers or report to someone unless he/she is related to them.
We can definitely say that some students are biased towards smokers and they tend to ‘hate’ them more due to the fact that they still smoke within the campus even though it is against the school rules. Therefore, non-smokers are generally affected by this issue due to them being uncomfortable with having students who smoke within the campus itself.
Non-smokers feel that this is a rather big issue and that the school should implement harsher punishments to students who smoke within the campus. With this, it shows that majority of the non-smokers are really against students who smoke and that they are willing to share their opinions in order to eliminate students who smoke within the campus. This also shows that they are concerned about this issue and are in a way affected by the actions of smokers.
Suggestions to resolve the issue
From our survey respondents, they think that having fines and punishment is not enough to solve the smoking issue in our campus. Furthermore, our school security is not possible to cover the entire Singapore Polytechnic with such a low numbers.
The following some of the more prominent recommendations that respondents have in accordance to what smoking issue inside Singapore Polytechnic’s campus:
1) Smoke detector
With reference to the findings in the survey done by our student researchers, a number of respondents indicated that the school can take steps and insert smoke detectors at every corner of the school. For example, these smoke detectors should be placed at “hot spots” whereby most of the time smokers will visit to take a puff and think that they will not get caught as the area is dark, secluded or hard to access. These smoke detectors work in the way such that they will let a sounding alarm whenever the detector senses any traces of cigarette’s smoke around it, whenever the alarm is sounded, there will be a security breach light that lights up at the campus’s security post. The benefits of smoke detectors are as follows:
The alarm will be able to frighten off the smokers.
Secondly, the school will be able to catch those groups of smokers.
2) Increase fines
Many of the respondents think that the fines are not pricey enough and the smokers are not afraid of the small amount of fine as they do not feel the pinch on their fingers. Respondents recommend that the school should increase our fines to a minimum of $5000. Firstly, this huge amount should be able to let the smokers feel the pinch on their fingers. And secondly, the parents would not be able to pay for them. With the fines increases to a minimum of $5000, it would be able to stop those smokers.
A STUDY OF WHY STUDENTS PLAY ELECTRONIC GADGETS DURING LECTURES
A STUDY OF WHY STUDENTS PLAY ELECTRONIC GADGETS DURING LECTURES
DONE BY: CHAN HAN WEN NICHOLAS P0709127
LOH SOK KHIM P0656120
TAN XI LIANG P0614315
SHIRIN CHUA HUI YING` P0627290
NG REN JYE P0632333
CHIA KA WEI EDWIN P0735476
LEONG HWEE YING P0743611
Aim Of Study
The study, titled “why students play electronic gadgets during lectures?” is carried out with the intent of gaining an insight of the “what” and “why” inside the student’ mind when they engage themselves in such conduct.
Ultimately, we hope to find out the answer for the state study. Devise certain guidelines and regulation that Singapore Polytechnic can adopt to prevent such conduct from taking place.
The main research question is divided into 3 sub questions:
a. Why are the games attractive?
b. Why do they choose to play games during lecture?
c. What are the kinds of gadgets that they are attracted to?
Data Collection And Analysis Methods
The research is conducted in Singapore polytechnic. The research took a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 12th July 2008 to 26 July 2008.
The statistics and the way data was collected is stated below:
Interviews are conducted among 15 students from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) who come from different courses and different schools (as in business, design etc). 15 interview questions were asked per interviewee.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an interview are shown in Appendix A to Appendix G respectively.
b) Noting themes, patterns
c) Noting relations between variables
d) Clustering
e) Counting
Findings
The findings for this research are as follows:
7.1 Factors That Student Play Electronic Gadgets During Lectures
The different types of students, lectures and environment are the main causes as to why students play electronic gadgets during lectures. This answers the first and second questions of this study.
7.1.1 Type of Students
For these group of students, they do not intend to listen to lecture as they do not think that it is important or relevant to their study. As the lecture is too dry, the students are more tempted to play the gadgets instead. Typically, the students are easily influence by peers. Not attentive, easily distracted students. The students are too dependent on their lecturer giving tips. On the other hand, there are student who are independent and they prefer to study by their own. These kind of students thinks that they can score better if they study on their own rather than listen to the lecturer. These groups of students are also selfish as they do not care about others students who are attentive and want to learn from the lectures. Another possibility is that some students did not have much of a childhood, and didn’t get to experience the joys of playing, and are making up for it when they are older.
7.1.2 Type of Lecturers
The lecturers usually have monotonous voices, which makes it harder for students to concentrate, adding to the fact that the lesson is already boring to them, thus students want to keep themselves awake and entertained by playing electronic gadgets. It is even worse when lecturers make no attempt to engage the students, and to make them part of the lesson and learning process. They take no action even when they know that the students are not paying attention. This is probably because they are either too tired or cant be bothered, as they have seen this situation too many times.
7.1.3 Environment
Students think that what is wrong may be right because everyone around them is doing it.. Another reason is that gaming can be addictive and a form of relaxation (escapism) from a stressful hectic life or boring lectures. During lectures, students who do not want to listen to the lecture will get their electronic gadgets (eg. Mobile phone, Play Station Portable(PSP), Laptop). They will influence those attentive students to play as well.
7.2 Behavior of Student Who Play Electronic Gadgets During Lectures
There are a few types of behaviors which are common among students who play electronic gadgets during lecture that we can conclude from this study. This answers the second question of this study.
7.2.1 Conformity behaviors
The students involved in this study do state that they are affecting their friends around them in class, and influencing them to play. When interviewees are playing in class, the students sitting around him/her will get affected. Their friend will start to play electronic gadgets together as they see the interviewees play.
7.2.2 Internal attribution
The students who play electronic gadgets during lectures attribute that the student who are affected by them do not have self discipline. They think that it is their lack of self discipline rather then themselves directly affecting them. Besides that, the interviewees also think that the students who want to listen to lectures will stay focused.
7.2.3 Utilitarian attitude
The student will try to hide the electronic gadgets while they are playing to avoid attention from their lecturer. Besides that, the interviewee also assumes that they have gotten approval from their lecturer to play in class.
7.2.4 Ego defensive attitude
The students who play electronic gadgets during lessons have lack of interest and motivation to study. The students are too lazy to bother about the lecturer and try to find ways to entertain themselves (thus playing electronic gadgets).
7.2.5 Value expression attitude
The students refused to listen to the lecturer even after they have been warned. This shows that the students are lack of self-discipline and are defiant. They will prefer to study on their own. The student will request lecturers to post all the notes and important information on blackboard so that they can study before exam.
7.3 Attitude of Student Who Play Electronic Gadgets During Lectures
7.3.1 Killing time
Most students take out their devices usually when they are bored. E.g. during travelling trips and lectures.
7.3.2 Awareness of lecturers
Most lecturers are aware but they do not take action as long as the students involved do not disturb the rest of the class.
7.3.3 Playing with companions
Many of them play with friends as it is more competitive and challenging than playing with AI.
7.3.4 Distracting classmates
They do not bother if their classmates are distracted by them. They probably feel that it is not a cause for concern as it is of their own wish to watch.
7.3.5 Regrets
Most do not regret and would continue to do it. Those who regret did not bother to change their attitude.
7.4 Comments About Playing Electronic Gadgets During Lecture
Comments about playing electronic gadgets during lecture
Number of participants mentioning item (N=7)
Unable to pay attention
2
Interesting to play with friends
4
Will not affect grades
1
Bored, keep him self occupied
5
Keep themselves awake
4
Kill time
3
Lecture not ‘attractive’
2
Attracted / addicted to games
1
Friend influence (peer pressure)
4
Too quiet
1
Lecturer ‘don’t care’
2
7.5 Type of Electronic Gadgets Played By Student During Lectures
This answers the third questions of this study.
Type of electronic gadgets used
Number of participants mentioning item (N=7)
Play station portable (PSP)
4
Hand phone
5
Laptop, computer
3
Nintendo DS
3
MP3
2
8. Conclusion
For all the research and observations, the researcher must fully understand the problem. This provides the most effective and accurate data collection. From this study, the factors that caused students to play electronic gadgets during lectures can be grouped into 3 categories. These 3 categories are type of students, type of lecturers and environment. By knowing these 3 categories, attitude and behavior of students, the lecturers and counselors in school will have a better understanding about their students. After knowing the causes of their students’ behavior, the lecturers can improve their ways and methods of teaching. This helps to solve the problem and increase the efficiency of teaching. From the reflection of students involved in this research, they found that the lecturers are too boring, and that the lectures are a waste of time. This results in them choosing to play electronic gadgets during lecturers. Peer pressure is also a major factor. The students are affected by peers around them and are more willing to cooperate with them.
DONE BY: CHAN HAN WEN NICHOLAS P0709127
LOH SOK KHIM P0656120
TAN XI LIANG P0614315
SHIRIN CHUA HUI YING` P0627290
NG REN JYE P0632333
CHIA KA WEI EDWIN P0735476
LEONG HWEE YING P0743611
Aim Of Study
The study, titled “why students play electronic gadgets during lectures?” is carried out with the intent of gaining an insight of the “what” and “why” inside the student’ mind when they engage themselves in such conduct.
Ultimately, we hope to find out the answer for the state study. Devise certain guidelines and regulation that Singapore Polytechnic can adopt to prevent such conduct from taking place.
The main research question is divided into 3 sub questions:
a. Why are the games attractive?
b. Why do they choose to play games during lecture?
c. What are the kinds of gadgets that they are attracted to?
Data Collection And Analysis Methods
The research is conducted in Singapore polytechnic. The research took a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 12th July 2008 to 26 July 2008.
The statistics and the way data was collected is stated below:
Interviews are conducted among 15 students from Singapore Polytechnic (SP) who come from different courses and different schools (as in business, design etc). 15 interview questions were asked per interviewee.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding. Examples of open coding of an interview are shown in Appendix A to Appendix G respectively.
b) Noting themes, patterns
c) Noting relations between variables
d) Clustering
e) Counting
Findings
The findings for this research are as follows:
7.1 Factors That Student Play Electronic Gadgets During Lectures
The different types of students, lectures and environment are the main causes as to why students play electronic gadgets during lectures. This answers the first and second questions of this study.
7.1.1 Type of Students
For these group of students, they do not intend to listen to lecture as they do not think that it is important or relevant to their study. As the lecture is too dry, the students are more tempted to play the gadgets instead. Typically, the students are easily influence by peers. Not attentive, easily distracted students. The students are too dependent on their lecturer giving tips. On the other hand, there are student who are independent and they prefer to study by their own. These kind of students thinks that they can score better if they study on their own rather than listen to the lecturer. These groups of students are also selfish as they do not care about others students who are attentive and want to learn from the lectures. Another possibility is that some students did not have much of a childhood, and didn’t get to experience the joys of playing, and are making up for it when they are older.
7.1.2 Type of Lecturers
The lecturers usually have monotonous voices, which makes it harder for students to concentrate, adding to the fact that the lesson is already boring to them, thus students want to keep themselves awake and entertained by playing electronic gadgets. It is even worse when lecturers make no attempt to engage the students, and to make them part of the lesson and learning process. They take no action even when they know that the students are not paying attention. This is probably because they are either too tired or cant be bothered, as they have seen this situation too many times.
7.1.3 Environment
Students think that what is wrong may be right because everyone around them is doing it.. Another reason is that gaming can be addictive and a form of relaxation (escapism) from a stressful hectic life or boring lectures. During lectures, students who do not want to listen to the lecture will get their electronic gadgets (eg. Mobile phone, Play Station Portable(PSP), Laptop). They will influence those attentive students to play as well.
7.2 Behavior of Student Who Play Electronic Gadgets During Lectures
There are a few types of behaviors which are common among students who play electronic gadgets during lecture that we can conclude from this study. This answers the second question of this study.
7.2.1 Conformity behaviors
The students involved in this study do state that they are affecting their friends around them in class, and influencing them to play. When interviewees are playing in class, the students sitting around him/her will get affected. Their friend will start to play electronic gadgets together as they see the interviewees play.
7.2.2 Internal attribution
The students who play electronic gadgets during lectures attribute that the student who are affected by them do not have self discipline. They think that it is their lack of self discipline rather then themselves directly affecting them. Besides that, the interviewees also think that the students who want to listen to lectures will stay focused.
7.2.3 Utilitarian attitude
The student will try to hide the electronic gadgets while they are playing to avoid attention from their lecturer. Besides that, the interviewee also assumes that they have gotten approval from their lecturer to play in class.
7.2.4 Ego defensive attitude
The students who play electronic gadgets during lessons have lack of interest and motivation to study. The students are too lazy to bother about the lecturer and try to find ways to entertain themselves (thus playing electronic gadgets).
7.2.5 Value expression attitude
The students refused to listen to the lecturer even after they have been warned. This shows that the students are lack of self-discipline and are defiant. They will prefer to study on their own. The student will request lecturers to post all the notes and important information on blackboard so that they can study before exam.
7.3 Attitude of Student Who Play Electronic Gadgets During Lectures
7.3.1 Killing time
Most students take out their devices usually when they are bored. E.g. during travelling trips and lectures.
7.3.2 Awareness of lecturers
Most lecturers are aware but they do not take action as long as the students involved do not disturb the rest of the class.
7.3.3 Playing with companions
Many of them play with friends as it is more competitive and challenging than playing with AI.
7.3.4 Distracting classmates
They do not bother if their classmates are distracted by them. They probably feel that it is not a cause for concern as it is of their own wish to watch.
7.3.5 Regrets
Most do not regret and would continue to do it. Those who regret did not bother to change their attitude.
7.4 Comments About Playing Electronic Gadgets During Lecture
Comments about playing electronic gadgets during lecture
Number of participants mentioning item (N=7)
Unable to pay attention
2
Interesting to play with friends
4
Will not affect grades
1
Bored, keep him self occupied
5
Keep themselves awake
4
Kill time
3
Lecture not ‘attractive’
2
Attracted / addicted to games
1
Friend influence (peer pressure)
4
Too quiet
1
Lecturer ‘don’t care’
2
7.5 Type of Electronic Gadgets Played By Student During Lectures
This answers the third questions of this study.
Type of electronic gadgets used
Number of participants mentioning item (N=7)
Play station portable (PSP)
4
Hand phone
5
Laptop, computer
3
Nintendo DS
3
MP3
2
8. Conclusion
For all the research and observations, the researcher must fully understand the problem. This provides the most effective and accurate data collection. From this study, the factors that caused students to play electronic gadgets during lectures can be grouped into 3 categories. These 3 categories are type of students, type of lecturers and environment. By knowing these 3 categories, attitude and behavior of students, the lecturers and counselors in school will have a better understanding about their students. After knowing the causes of their students’ behavior, the lecturers can improve their ways and methods of teaching. This helps to solve the problem and increase the efficiency of teaching. From the reflection of students involved in this research, they found that the lecturers are too boring, and that the lectures are a waste of time. This results in them choosing to play electronic gadgets during lecturers. Peer pressure is also a major factor. The students are affected by peers around them and are more willing to cooperate with them.
14.8.08
Why are we usually unable to find a table during peak hours?
Title : Why are we usually unable to find a table during peak hours?
Date : 29th July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester 1
Conducted by :
Nur Azlin Mohd Afendy p0623407
Nur Afidah Binte Afandi p0733078
Tang Tat Chong p0741060
Mohamed Hizam p0763701
Fazli
Sheila p0759010
Jingxian p0748588
Flex p0661094
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Our main aim of the study conducted was to the find out how students react and behave in a situation where there is a crowded food court and they needed that time to have their lunch. Ultimately, to further support the aim of the study, research questions posed by the group had to be answered.
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) Why students hang around the table after eating?
b) What are the areas where the student cannot find seats?
c) How does the student overcome this lack of seats during lunchtime?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in all food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of four weeks to complete. The research stretches from 9th July 2008 to 30th July 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Non participant observation of about 5 groups of students’ behaviours in a crowded food court during peak hour, taking a total of 5 observation sessions of 15 minutes each. An example of an observation in this study is shown in Findings.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of selected random students in the crowded food court, taking an average of 10 minutes per interviews. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix A.
Data Collection and Analysis Methods
After, we had conducted the interviews for our questions; we obtained a wide different and similar answer. We have written data to give our interviews more credibility. Using the data collected we made our analysis and compile the data.
Subsequently analyzing what we have, we drew a mind map for understanding.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Interviews
b) Sharing Data
FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The condition that causes overcrowding during lunch hour at a certain food court is as follows:
i) Timing
In this study, it is shown that all the students studying in SP are having the same lunch break. Due to this, during lunch break almost every time students need to wait for a long time before they can get a seat. Sometimes students will attend lesson late because of overcrowding at food court.
ii) Peers
Student likes to have lunch together with their friends. Therefore many of them will have lunch in big group and it is hard to find seats for big group. Many will continue waiting in food court for seats. If they get sick and tired of waiting then they will proceed to buy packet food and eat somewhere else.
iii) Area
One of the factors is that after their last lesson, students will prefer to go to the nearest food court to have lunch. If a certain area of students has the same lunch break, then there will be an overcrowding of students at that particular food court.
The above findings answer the first, second and third sub research questions for this study.
b) Categories that will help in solving the overcrowding of food court during lunch hour. They are cohesiveness and social psychology. This answers the fourth sub research question for this study.
i) Cohesiveness
The strength of the relationships that link members of a group together and are essentially what keeps people in a group or causes them to stick together.
After lesson, students will always gather together and they will proceed to have lunch together. This will result in students having lunch in big group or as a class. This will make their bonding even closer and they can discuss their school work together and if they encounter any problems they will solve it together. Having lunch in big groups is good and fun but the only problem is that it is hard to find table for such a big group in a crowded food court.
Furthermore, every time when we are eating in food court we can see that group of students eating in food court are always in big group of 4 and above. Even if there’s table, it only can fit 4-5 persons. If they sit separately, slim chances that they can sit side by side. Some students when gotten a seat and had their lunch, they will sit and wait till their next lesson is about to start then they will leave their seat. Only a minority will quickly finished their food and give up their seats for others. This will only add on to the problems of overcrowding of students at a certain period like lunch hour.
ii) Social psychology
The scientific study of how individual thinks about, interact with, and influence each other.
Students would rather go to the nearest food court to have their lunch, as they wouldn't want to waste their time travelling to another food court which will eat into their one hour lunch break time. Moreover, they will also consider where is the next location they'll be going to and then decide where to eat for their convenience. Furthermore, all students in Singapore Poly are having the same break time at 12noon. This leads to overcrowding of students at a particular food court.
Eg. Students from business school will usually have their lunch at Food court 6. They are seldom seen in other food courts as most of their lectures are held in business block. And with the same break time for all Singapore Poly students, every food court will face the same problem, Overcrowding. Business students wouldn't want to waste their time travelling back to business block where their lectures will be held at from the other food court which they had their lunch earlier on. As it is time consuming and inconvenient for them to do so.
Food courts in SP preferred
FC1
5.13%
FC2
5.13%
FC3
20.51%
FC4
28.21%
FC5
5.13%
FC6
35.90%
Waiting queue timing
Time
5mins
10mins
15mins
20mins
Peak Hours
Fast
Average
Moderate
Worst Scenario
Choice in a crowded food court ended up in
Wait for a table
Make the food take away
Totally skip lunch
Likely (45%)
Less likely
(40%)
Rarely
(15))
Findings
The causes:
Insufficient time
1hr = break time (total time given)
5mins = to the FC
15mins = queue time
15mins = ordering food
20mins = consume food
5mins = back to class
Utilization of tables/chairs
Clearing table:
Short of manpower is one of the most challenging face by cleaners. A lack number to clear could hardly manage to keep up with the continuous large amount of students occupying and reoccupying the seats and tables. Most area is not easily to be cleared with the overcrowding students all around.
Misused:
Not all seats have been used, most of the spaces were occupied by their laptops, bags and some even their tray. Naturally no one seems to clear their table at all after each meal. There are even students who would loiter even at a peak hours not giving up relentlessly to the jam pack timing.
Mindsets:
Many of us would not share or would occupy an empty seat on a table sharing with the others.
Large number of students:
As many of them used up all of the tables and chairs, those who also want to have their lunch may not have any enough time to eat. One of the causes of a crowded food court is due to the same lunch time. In addition, there are also long queues and that may lead to long waiting time. An alternative way to find seats and have lunch is by having packet food.
DISCUSSION (Note: not compulsory, teams that work on this section are graded more favourably and there is no need to relate your findings to other studies since there is no literature review)
We took a step back looking at the situation as a whole, from ground up. The mind set of where to go for lunch, where to buy or if all fails what student would do.
We discover on different outcome that could lead to the lack of seats. It became interesting when we notice on social behaviour among students in a crowded food court. (E.g. when a table have 4 seats and 3 is occupied would you taken up that seat if you need one?) . This is a point we observe that tables are use in form of groups, where not all seats is been used utmost.
Most normal behaviour we understand long queues means something worth waiting to buy but if the line move too slowly this could also slow the amount of the student using the food courts in the end. (So how long will you able to wait to satisfy the long queue and the hunger? It’s a race against time!)
For every satisfying conquest of ending battle in the food court, plates, bowls and other items are left on the table waiting to be cleared for the next group of student. Many tables occupying and re-occupying, we wonder would it be quicker if we just did the cleaning for faster usage of the seats.
CONCLUSION
We believe hunger is a strong motivation for us to create or our biggest flaw of all. Even though we are uniquely different from one another all became familiar to each other when urge for food comes in mind. There would be some who would care and realize too well to share, while some use them as if they had gain a plot of land. The system of lunch time is less than perfect but everyday student would endure to wait, to either take the challenge for a seat or just give up overall. Our thought to the conclusion, even with the rules in queuing and courtesy in providing seat for the next person is totally limited. We concur careful planning in the schedule dividing the time between 1st, 2nd and 3rd years student might at least give a fighting chance for having a decent lunch period.
Date : 29th July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester 1
Conducted by :
Nur Azlin Mohd Afendy p0623407
Nur Afidah Binte Afandi p0733078
Tang Tat Chong p0741060
Mohamed Hizam p0763701
Fazli
Sheila p0759010
Jingxian p0748588
Flex p0661094
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Our main aim of the study conducted was to the find out how students react and behave in a situation where there is a crowded food court and they needed that time to have their lunch. Ultimately, to further support the aim of the study, research questions posed by the group had to be answered.
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) Why students hang around the table after eating?
b) What are the areas where the student cannot find seats?
c) How does the student overcome this lack of seats during lunchtime?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. The research is conducted in all food courts in Singapore Polytechnic. The research takes a total of four weeks to complete. The research stretches from 9th July 2008 to 30th July 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Non participant observation of about 5 groups of students’ behaviours in a crowded food court during peak hour, taking a total of 5 observation sessions of 15 minutes each. An example of an observation in this study is shown in Findings.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of selected random students in the crowded food court, taking an average of 10 minutes per interviews. An example of an interview in this study is shown in Appendix A.
Data Collection and Analysis Methods
After, we had conducted the interviews for our questions; we obtained a wide different and similar answer. We have written data to give our interviews more credibility. Using the data collected we made our analysis and compile the data.
Subsequently analyzing what we have, we drew a mind map for understanding.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Interviews
b) Sharing Data
FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The condition that causes overcrowding during lunch hour at a certain food court is as follows:
i) Timing
In this study, it is shown that all the students studying in SP are having the same lunch break. Due to this, during lunch break almost every time students need to wait for a long time before they can get a seat. Sometimes students will attend lesson late because of overcrowding at food court.
ii) Peers
Student likes to have lunch together with their friends. Therefore many of them will have lunch in big group and it is hard to find seats for big group. Many will continue waiting in food court for seats. If they get sick and tired of waiting then they will proceed to buy packet food and eat somewhere else.
iii) Area
One of the factors is that after their last lesson, students will prefer to go to the nearest food court to have lunch. If a certain area of students has the same lunch break, then there will be an overcrowding of students at that particular food court.
The above findings answer the first, second and third sub research questions for this study.
b) Categories that will help in solving the overcrowding of food court during lunch hour. They are cohesiveness and social psychology. This answers the fourth sub research question for this study.
i) Cohesiveness
The strength of the relationships that link members of a group together and are essentially what keeps people in a group or causes them to stick together.
After lesson, students will always gather together and they will proceed to have lunch together. This will result in students having lunch in big group or as a class. This will make their bonding even closer and they can discuss their school work together and if they encounter any problems they will solve it together. Having lunch in big groups is good and fun but the only problem is that it is hard to find table for such a big group in a crowded food court.
Furthermore, every time when we are eating in food court we can see that group of students eating in food court are always in big group of 4 and above. Even if there’s table, it only can fit 4-5 persons. If they sit separately, slim chances that they can sit side by side. Some students when gotten a seat and had their lunch, they will sit and wait till their next lesson is about to start then they will leave their seat. Only a minority will quickly finished their food and give up their seats for others. This will only add on to the problems of overcrowding of students at a certain period like lunch hour.
ii) Social psychology
The scientific study of how individual thinks about, interact with, and influence each other.
Students would rather go to the nearest food court to have their lunch, as they wouldn't want to waste their time travelling to another food court which will eat into their one hour lunch break time. Moreover, they will also consider where is the next location they'll be going to and then decide where to eat for their convenience. Furthermore, all students in Singapore Poly are having the same break time at 12noon. This leads to overcrowding of students at a particular food court.
Eg. Students from business school will usually have their lunch at Food court 6. They are seldom seen in other food courts as most of their lectures are held in business block. And with the same break time for all Singapore Poly students, every food court will face the same problem, Overcrowding. Business students wouldn't want to waste their time travelling back to business block where their lectures will be held at from the other food court which they had their lunch earlier on. As it is time consuming and inconvenient for them to do so.
Food courts in SP preferred
FC1
5.13%
FC2
5.13%
FC3
20.51%
FC4
28.21%
FC5
5.13%
FC6
35.90%
Waiting queue timing
Time
5mins
10mins
15mins
20mins
Peak Hours
Fast
Average
Moderate
Worst Scenario
Choice in a crowded food court ended up in
Wait for a table
Make the food take away
Totally skip lunch
Likely (45%)
Less likely
(40%)
Rarely
(15))
Findings
The causes:
Insufficient time
1hr = break time (total time given)
5mins = to the FC
15mins = queue time
15mins = ordering food
20mins = consume food
5mins = back to class
Utilization of tables/chairs
Clearing table:
Short of manpower is one of the most challenging face by cleaners. A lack number to clear could hardly manage to keep up with the continuous large amount of students occupying and reoccupying the seats and tables. Most area is not easily to be cleared with the overcrowding students all around.
Misused:
Not all seats have been used, most of the spaces were occupied by their laptops, bags and some even their tray. Naturally no one seems to clear their table at all after each meal. There are even students who would loiter even at a peak hours not giving up relentlessly to the jam pack timing.
Mindsets:
Many of us would not share or would occupy an empty seat on a table sharing with the others.
Large number of students:
As many of them used up all of the tables and chairs, those who also want to have their lunch may not have any enough time to eat. One of the causes of a crowded food court is due to the same lunch time. In addition, there are also long queues and that may lead to long waiting time. An alternative way to find seats and have lunch is by having packet food.
DISCUSSION (Note: not compulsory, teams that work on this section are graded more favourably and there is no need to relate your findings to other studies since there is no literature review)
We took a step back looking at the situation as a whole, from ground up. The mind set of where to go for lunch, where to buy or if all fails what student would do.
We discover on different outcome that could lead to the lack of seats. It became interesting when we notice on social behaviour among students in a crowded food court. (E.g. when a table have 4 seats and 3 is occupied would you taken up that seat if you need one?) . This is a point we observe that tables are use in form of groups, where not all seats is been used utmost.
Most normal behaviour we understand long queues means something worth waiting to buy but if the line move too slowly this could also slow the amount of the student using the food courts in the end. (So how long will you able to wait to satisfy the long queue and the hunger? It’s a race against time!)
For every satisfying conquest of ending battle in the food court, plates, bowls and other items are left on the table waiting to be cleared for the next group of student. Many tables occupying and re-occupying, we wonder would it be quicker if we just did the cleaning for faster usage of the seats.
CONCLUSION
We believe hunger is a strong motivation for us to create or our biggest flaw of all. Even though we are uniquely different from one another all became familiar to each other when urge for food comes in mind. There would be some who would care and realize too well to share, while some use them as if they had gain a plot of land. The system of lunch time is less than perfect but everyday student would endure to wait, to either take the challenge for a seat or just give up overall. Our thought to the conclusion, even with the rules in queuing and courtesy in providing seat for the next person is totally limited. We concur careful planning in the schedule dividing the time between 1st, 2nd and 3rd years student might at least give a fighting chance for having a decent lunch period.
An exploratory study of why the foodcourts in Singapore are very packed during peak periods.
Title : An exploratory study of why the foodcourts in Singapore
Polytechnic are very packed during peak periods.
Date : 30th July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester 1
Conducted by : Muhammad Fazil (P0628866, DEEE/FT/3A04),
Hoo Chan Hung (P0764658, DME/3A03),
Gan Ze Hao Alex (P0720193, DBIT/FT/2A/02),
Syirin (P0707480, DAC/FT/2A/02),
Siti Wahidah (P0730301, DEC/2B),
Looi JieHui (P0720474, DBIT/FT/2A/11),
Foo Dun Jie (P0727301, DCMD/FT/2A/02),
Zhen Zhen (P0663111, DMA/2B/21)
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
The aim of this study is to achieve a better knowledge on why the food courts are very crowded during peak periods such as lunch time even with six foodcourts build around Singapore Polytechnic; and hopes to provide a better understanding on why this is a problem and to provide possible solutions to ease the current problem.
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) Why are there not enough tables and seats to accommodate the students and lecturers?
b) Who are using the foodcourts?
c) When is the food courts crowded?
d) Where are the crowded food courts?
e) How do the students deal with the crowding?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study is conducted in Singapore Polytechnic food courts by various students from different schools. This study takes the total of 3 weeks to complete. The research stretches from 9 July to 23 July 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Non participant observation of the students’ behaviours in different food courts, taking a total of two observation sessions of 30 minutes each over a period of five days.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of the sixteen students taking an average of 5 minutes per interviews.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding
b) Noting relations between variables
c) Finding intervening variables
d) Clustering
FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The conditions that causes the foodcourts in Singapore Polytechnic to be overcrowded are as follows:
i) Types of lecturers
In this study, it is shown lecturers are considerate as they just use the eating areas for just eating. They do not use the tables for marking papers, chit chatting, and playing game. We overheard them saying ‘Lets talk in our office’, and left the place instead of sitting at the foodcourt and occupying the seats.
ii) Types of students
There are many different types of activities that the students did in the foodcourt besides eating. There are the students who simply eat and go off as soon as their done eating. The rest of the students stay in the foodcourt to do other activities. They do activities such as playing games, cards, talking, studying, reading comic and looking at eye candy. Even though there are other students around waiting for seats, they continue to do these activities. They pretend that they are not aware of their surroundings.
b) Three categories of coping behaviours employed by students in the various food courts evolve from this study. They are named as the categories of procrastinating behaviours respectively in this study.
i) Procrastinating Behaviours
Procrastinating behaviours are subdivided into self procrastinating behaviours and group procrastinating behaviours.
Self-procrastinating behaviours
Undesired course of actions of individuals
Individuals sometimes feel that they are obliged to “reserve” seats for their friends who are not present in the food court at the point in time. They will occupy the empty seats first and wait for their friends to come. This is something we generally observe among individuals.
Inconsideration
Upon observation, we realised that some students are inconsiderate in their actions. For instance, a student who comes to the food court alone to have his lunch is found utilising an empty table for four. He could have occupied an empty table for two users instead. Meanwhile, for other large groups, they have to wait until the individual user gives up the space in order for them to occupy it. This self-centred, inconsiderate and procrastinating behaviour of students lead to the overcrowding problem of food courts.
Group procrastinating behaviours
Group procrastination
During lunch time, many students are found doing other activities instead of having their lunch. These activities include studying, talking and playing games. It is commonly known that the principal activity in a food court is to eat, but most students utilize the space to complete tasks that are unnecessary. Students who realise that other groups are waiting for empty seats are ignorant of their surroundings. They do not bother to give up their seats.
Deliberate actions
Students are observed to portray deliberate ignorance and negligence towards other groups who are waiting for the seats. Actions include, averting their gaze towards another direction and also, intentionally keeping themselves occupied by checking the time once in a while and text messaging someone through their mobile phones.
ii) Delusive Behaviours
Delusive behaviours are divided broadly into two subcategories- self-deluding behaviours and teacher deluding behaviours.
Self Deluding Behaviours
Refusal to give up seats
They presume that others will give up their seats for those who are waiting for seats. They also presume that it is their rights to use the seat as they wish after they finished their meals. They presume that they have the rights to occupy the seats unless someone asks them to leave. They presume that it is everyone’s personal rights to find a solution for them when they cannot find a seat.
Refusal to eat outside school
They presume that it is too much of a rush for them to go out of school to eat and avoid the crowded foodcourts. They presume that other people would go out of school to eat. They presume they have the rights to eat at the foodcourts built in the school and it is their rights to eat in school. They presume there is enough seats in foodcourts as there are 6 foodcourts in SP. They presume that they do not have enough time to go out of school to eat and go back in time for lesson. They presume that the food outside is not as nice as the food in school. They presume that it is too much effort to go out somewhere to eat and find that it is more convenient to eat somewhere near, which is SP. They presume that they are too tired to go out of school to eat.
Refusal to check answers
There are instances where some mathematics anxious students leave their final solutions as they are without checking if they are correct. In most cases, they present their solutions in an appropriate number of mathematical steps. When the teacher asks them to check their solutions from the correct answers provided at the back of their textbooks, they do not do it. They are also not interested in comparing their answers with their classmates. Instead, they will go straight to the next question. If the teacher comes by and ask them if their answers are correct, they will usually give responses like, “check later”, “think so”, “should be correct” etc. A quick check by the researcher on their answers usually yields incorrect ones.
Peer Deluding Behaviours
Group behaviour influencing individuals and other groups
While in the food-courts, we often see many people clustered in groups hogging the seats. As time passes, these actions became justified as they are being done in groups. Therefore other students, whether in groups or as individuals will come to having the mindset that hogging the seats after their meals is a normal thing to do. Therefore with the cycle of the students influencing others again and again, it becomes a peer deluding behaviour.
Deliberately dragging eating time.
They will drag the time they take to eat in order to occupy their seats for the full break time so that they would not have to find another spot to sit down to wait for their break time to end. They would also occupy the seats and take their time to eat when they have other friends that are on their way to occupy their seats. They are being considerate to their friends by helping their friends reserve the seats, however, they are being inconsiderate to the other people who are waiting for their seats. When they reserve the seats for their friends, the people who are waiting for their seats have to wait for a longer time as the seats would then be occupied by their friends.
Pretend others will give up their seats for people waiting
Often in food courts, people tend to occupy their seats after their meals with the mindset thinking that other people will give up their seats rather than they themselves give up their seats. They will pretend not to have eye contact with those who are waiting for seats, engross in doing their own things, or even asking their friends to buy some drinks or desserts to give them a reason to occupy the seats.
Bags occupies seats
Students leave their bags on the seats to reserve the seats for themselves while they purchase their food. There are also students who put their bags on seats because they refuse to put their bags on their lap or on the floor. This is due to the fact that they find it uncomfortable to put their bags on their lap while eating. They find that they want to enjoy their meal in comfort and use the seats to place their bags. They also have the mentality that they have the rights to occupy as many seats as they have to. When there are lesser seats around certain tables, even if that table is not occupied, people cannot settle down and eat simply because there is no seats available.
Small group, big table
There are students who occupy big tables but they are only a small group of students. They take up more seats than they need to, and they are unwilling to share the seats with other people. They cause the foodcourt to require more seats than it really required. They occupy these seats by telling other people that they have friends coming or by putting their bags on the seats. They show unfriendliness to others in order to keep them away from asking for seats.
iii) Outsiders occupying seats
Students from other schools come to our foodcourts to occupy and compete for seats with students in the foodcourt. They cause the foodcourts in SP to have even more students in the foodcourts than it is originally built to handle. They come to our foodcourts to eat because it is a lot cheaper. They are, however, inconsiderate to the students in SP.
DISCUSSION (Note: not compulsory, teams that work on this section are graded more favourably and there is no need to relate your findings to other studies since there is no literature review)
From a social psychological viewpoint, crowded foodcourts can cause a drastic change on students and lecturers. By skipping lunch cause of the crowded foodcourts, students tend to only have their lunch during the evening time that is close to their dinner time. Cause of this students go hungry during lesson times and tend to be distracted away from class activities. Hungry man brings up and angry man thus causes students to be frustrated and tend to get angry easily over simple matters. Crowded foodcourts also causes students to take away their food and eat at corridors and at study areas which is so troublesome. Due to this there is a lack of study area too. It would be so great if there is a strict rule imposed by higher authority stating clearly that “Eating must be done in eating areas, studying must be done in study areas, gaming must be done outside school…” this will really help as well as if measures are taken to increase the foodcourt areas and setting up more chairs and tables. After all, every student pays for the school fees. They should all get to enjoy their lunch on the comfort of the chairs and tables in the foodcourts and not on the floors and study areas!
CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of the crowded foodcourts in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, three categories of coping behaviours of students at crowded foodcourts are used. They are the categories of procrastinating behaviours, delusive behaviours, which achieve the aims of easing the crowded foodcourts so that all can have their time of lunch. Knowing the use of such behaviours, teachers and students can better understand the behaviours of their current problem faced at foodcourts. Nevertheless, if the teachers and students do not see the use of having to know and solve the problem of the crowded foodcourts, this study will remain a research article that serves the sole purpose of pleasure reading.
Polytechnic are very packed during peak periods.
Date : 30th July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester 1
Conducted by : Muhammad Fazil (P0628866, DEEE/FT/3A04),
Hoo Chan Hung (P0764658, DME/3A03),
Gan Ze Hao Alex (P0720193, DBIT/FT/2A/02),
Syirin (P0707480, DAC/FT/2A/02),
Siti Wahidah (P0730301, DEC/2B),
Looi JieHui (P0720474, DBIT/FT/2A/11),
Foo Dun Jie (P0727301, DCMD/FT/2A/02),
Zhen Zhen (P0663111, DMA/2B/21)
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
The aim of this study is to achieve a better knowledge on why the food courts are very crowded during peak periods such as lunch time even with six foodcourts build around Singapore Polytechnic; and hopes to provide a better understanding on why this is a problem and to provide possible solutions to ease the current problem.
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
a) Why are there not enough tables and seats to accommodate the students and lecturers?
b) Who are using the foodcourts?
c) When is the food courts crowded?
d) Where are the crowded food courts?
e) How do the students deal with the crowding?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
This study is conducted in Singapore Polytechnic food courts by various students from different schools. This study takes the total of 3 weeks to complete. The research stretches from 9 July to 23 July 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Non participant observation of the students’ behaviours in different food courts, taking a total of two observation sessions of 30 minutes each over a period of five days.
b) Selected informal open-ended interviews of the sixteen students taking an average of 5 minutes per interviews.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Open Coding
b) Noting relations between variables
c) Finding intervening variables
d) Clustering
FINDINGS (use diagrams or tables to supplement your report when needed)
The findings for this research are as follows:
a) The conditions that causes the foodcourts in Singapore Polytechnic to be overcrowded are as follows:
i) Types of lecturers
In this study, it is shown lecturers are considerate as they just use the eating areas for just eating. They do not use the tables for marking papers, chit chatting, and playing game. We overheard them saying ‘Lets talk in our office’, and left the place instead of sitting at the foodcourt and occupying the seats.
ii) Types of students
There are many different types of activities that the students did in the foodcourt besides eating. There are the students who simply eat and go off as soon as their done eating. The rest of the students stay in the foodcourt to do other activities. They do activities such as playing games, cards, talking, studying, reading comic and looking at eye candy. Even though there are other students around waiting for seats, they continue to do these activities. They pretend that they are not aware of their surroundings.
b) Three categories of coping behaviours employed by students in the various food courts evolve from this study. They are named as the categories of procrastinating behaviours respectively in this study.
i) Procrastinating Behaviours
Procrastinating behaviours are subdivided into self procrastinating behaviours and group procrastinating behaviours.
Self-procrastinating behaviours
Undesired course of actions of individuals
Individuals sometimes feel that they are obliged to “reserve” seats for their friends who are not present in the food court at the point in time. They will occupy the empty seats first and wait for their friends to come. This is something we generally observe among individuals.
Inconsideration
Upon observation, we realised that some students are inconsiderate in their actions. For instance, a student who comes to the food court alone to have his lunch is found utilising an empty table for four. He could have occupied an empty table for two users instead. Meanwhile, for other large groups, they have to wait until the individual user gives up the space in order for them to occupy it. This self-centred, inconsiderate and procrastinating behaviour of students lead to the overcrowding problem of food courts.
Group procrastinating behaviours
Group procrastination
During lunch time, many students are found doing other activities instead of having their lunch. These activities include studying, talking and playing games. It is commonly known that the principal activity in a food court is to eat, but most students utilize the space to complete tasks that are unnecessary. Students who realise that other groups are waiting for empty seats are ignorant of their surroundings. They do not bother to give up their seats.
Deliberate actions
Students are observed to portray deliberate ignorance and negligence towards other groups who are waiting for the seats. Actions include, averting their gaze towards another direction and also, intentionally keeping themselves occupied by checking the time once in a while and text messaging someone through their mobile phones.
ii) Delusive Behaviours
Delusive behaviours are divided broadly into two subcategories- self-deluding behaviours and teacher deluding behaviours.
Self Deluding Behaviours
Refusal to give up seats
They presume that others will give up their seats for those who are waiting for seats. They also presume that it is their rights to use the seat as they wish after they finished their meals. They presume that they have the rights to occupy the seats unless someone asks them to leave. They presume that it is everyone’s personal rights to find a solution for them when they cannot find a seat.
Refusal to eat outside school
They presume that it is too much of a rush for them to go out of school to eat and avoid the crowded foodcourts. They presume that other people would go out of school to eat. They presume they have the rights to eat at the foodcourts built in the school and it is their rights to eat in school. They presume there is enough seats in foodcourts as there are 6 foodcourts in SP. They presume that they do not have enough time to go out of school to eat and go back in time for lesson. They presume that the food outside is not as nice as the food in school. They presume that it is too much effort to go out somewhere to eat and find that it is more convenient to eat somewhere near, which is SP. They presume that they are too tired to go out of school to eat.
Refusal to check answers
There are instances where some mathematics anxious students leave their final solutions as they are without checking if they are correct. In most cases, they present their solutions in an appropriate number of mathematical steps. When the teacher asks them to check their solutions from the correct answers provided at the back of their textbooks, they do not do it. They are also not interested in comparing their answers with their classmates. Instead, they will go straight to the next question. If the teacher comes by and ask them if their answers are correct, they will usually give responses like, “check later”, “think so”, “should be correct” etc. A quick check by the researcher on their answers usually yields incorrect ones.
Peer Deluding Behaviours
Group behaviour influencing individuals and other groups
While in the food-courts, we often see many people clustered in groups hogging the seats. As time passes, these actions became justified as they are being done in groups. Therefore other students, whether in groups or as individuals will come to having the mindset that hogging the seats after their meals is a normal thing to do. Therefore with the cycle of the students influencing others again and again, it becomes a peer deluding behaviour.
Deliberately dragging eating time.
They will drag the time they take to eat in order to occupy their seats for the full break time so that they would not have to find another spot to sit down to wait for their break time to end. They would also occupy the seats and take their time to eat when they have other friends that are on their way to occupy their seats. They are being considerate to their friends by helping their friends reserve the seats, however, they are being inconsiderate to the other people who are waiting for their seats. When they reserve the seats for their friends, the people who are waiting for their seats have to wait for a longer time as the seats would then be occupied by their friends.
Pretend others will give up their seats for people waiting
Often in food courts, people tend to occupy their seats after their meals with the mindset thinking that other people will give up their seats rather than they themselves give up their seats. They will pretend not to have eye contact with those who are waiting for seats, engross in doing their own things, or even asking their friends to buy some drinks or desserts to give them a reason to occupy the seats.
Bags occupies seats
Students leave their bags on the seats to reserve the seats for themselves while they purchase their food. There are also students who put their bags on seats because they refuse to put their bags on their lap or on the floor. This is due to the fact that they find it uncomfortable to put their bags on their lap while eating. They find that they want to enjoy their meal in comfort and use the seats to place their bags. They also have the mentality that they have the rights to occupy as many seats as they have to. When there are lesser seats around certain tables, even if that table is not occupied, people cannot settle down and eat simply because there is no seats available.
Small group, big table
There are students who occupy big tables but they are only a small group of students. They take up more seats than they need to, and they are unwilling to share the seats with other people. They cause the foodcourt to require more seats than it really required. They occupy these seats by telling other people that they have friends coming or by putting their bags on the seats. They show unfriendliness to others in order to keep them away from asking for seats.
iii) Outsiders occupying seats
Students from other schools come to our foodcourts to occupy and compete for seats with students in the foodcourt. They cause the foodcourts in SP to have even more students in the foodcourts than it is originally built to handle. They come to our foodcourts to eat because it is a lot cheaper. They are, however, inconsiderate to the students in SP.
DISCUSSION (Note: not compulsory, teams that work on this section are graded more favourably and there is no need to relate your findings to other studies since there is no literature review)
From a social psychological viewpoint, crowded foodcourts can cause a drastic change on students and lecturers. By skipping lunch cause of the crowded foodcourts, students tend to only have their lunch during the evening time that is close to their dinner time. Cause of this students go hungry during lesson times and tend to be distracted away from class activities. Hungry man brings up and angry man thus causes students to be frustrated and tend to get angry easily over simple matters. Crowded foodcourts also causes students to take away their food and eat at corridors and at study areas which is so troublesome. Due to this there is a lack of study area too. It would be so great if there is a strict rule imposed by higher authority stating clearly that “Eating must be done in eating areas, studying must be done in study areas, gaming must be done outside school…” this will really help as well as if measures are taken to increase the foodcourt areas and setting up more chairs and tables. After all, every student pays for the school fees. They should all get to enjoy their lunch on the comfort of the chairs and tables in the foodcourts and not on the floors and study areas!
CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of the crowded foodcourts in Singapore Polytechnic. From this study, three categories of coping behaviours of students at crowded foodcourts are used. They are the categories of procrastinating behaviours, delusive behaviours, which achieve the aims of easing the crowded foodcourts so that all can have their time of lunch. Knowing the use of such behaviours, teachers and students can better understand the behaviours of their current problem faced at foodcourts. Nevertheless, if the teachers and students do not see the use of having to know and solve the problem of the crowded foodcourts, this study will remain a research article that serves the sole purpose of pleasure reading.
An exploratory study of the thoughts of Singapore Polytechnic students who skip classes as to why they do so.
Title: An exploratory study of the thoughts of Singapore Polytechnic students who skip classes as to why they do so.
Date: 8th July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester 2
Conducted by: Group: I.M. - Su, Kwan Teck, Ken, John, Jia Yin, Fiona, Ariff
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why do Singapore Polytechnic students skip classes?
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
How often do students skip their classes?
What kind of classes do students skip?
How do students feel when skipping classes?
What are the consequences that they encounter for skipping classes?
What are the reasons for them skipping classes?
How important are lecture and tutorial classes to them?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
The research is conducted in Singapore Polytechnic by observation of the students of several courses in SP. The research takes a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 8th July 2008 to 29th July 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Selected informal open-ended interviews of the fourteen skipping-class students taking an average of 5 minutes per interviews.
b) Attending the classes the students skipped to observe the teaching environment, ultimately to find out what the reasons are behind them skipping these classes.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Clustering
b) Observational Data - Conducted in several classes of the interviewees.
c) FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:
The psychological categories that evoke their skipping classes are as follows:
1) Boredom
Most of the students seem to have short attention spans, doing something else instead of listening to the lesson. Learning in a dull teaching environment contributes greatly in shortening their attentiveness to the lecture. A further breakdown of this category pinpoints the roles each character in the teaching environment plays in making the class a ‘boring’ one, resulting in students skipping them:
a) The teachers (includes lecturers, tutors and practical-lesson teachers)
In this study, it is shown that teachers with monotonous voices, ‘drawling’ slangs and unconcerned teaching attitudes evoke boredomness towards some of the interviewed students. A lecturer without concerned teaching attitudes will have his students with thoughts of neglection towards the lesson and the subject.
b) Peers
In a few tutorial classes observed, there was no student participation; no student in the classes asked the teachers any questions regarding what was being taught in those lessons, making the teacher the only vocal person in the class; ultimately making the lesson atmosphere dry and dreary, since there was only listening and no conversation.
2) Influences/Distractions
Ø Peers
Observations in a few lecture classes have shown that students commonly skip classes with their close classmate friends. It is noted that it is always the same group of people who are absent in the class observed. Affirmation was provided from interviews with a certain group of class-skippers, saying that they sometimes skip a class to have longer lunchtime.
Ø Leisurely activities
For after-school leisurely activities where time is concerned (eg. catching a movie) students will skip classes to make time for their activities.
3) Inconvenience
a) Timetables
i. Long breaks
When interviewed, some students claim that the reason they skip their lessons is because their classes are not scheduled as effectively in their timetables as they would like them to be. Some students have two- to three-hour breaks in between their lessons, and they do not fancy the idea of waiting in school for hours for their next lesson, since they cannot go home during those breaks.
ii. Lessons too early and/or too late
Some students complain that they have too many lessons starting at 8am every week. Of these students, most of them have trouble waking up early (self-claimed). Students also complained having to attend school from 8am-5pm for some schooldays, claiming these are the ‘long days’ of the week, and because of that, it would be self-declaredly ‘excusable’ for them to skip some classes, most of the time either their 8am-10pm or 3-5pm class.
iii. Schooldays with only one lesson
In the third year cohorts’ timetables especially, there are a few certain days (typically Fridays) where they only have one class for the entire day, be it lecture or practical class. Because of this, students find it impractical to come to school only for two hours of one lesson, especially for those who live further away from the west-side of Singapore, and also those whose everyday-journey to school involves long tedious/tiring MRT train-rides or traffic jams.
b) After-school activities
i. Part-time jobs
A few interviewed students have random-hours part-time jobs on certain days.
4) Ignorance
From this study it is found out that some students skip the classes they cannot understand. They decide that they might as well not attend certain lectures which, in their opinion, they most likely would not be able to absorb anything out of. These might be a few reasons why they do not understand their lectures:
a) Lecturers not clear in explaining
i. Teaching pace too fast
Some students take a longer time comprehending complex concepts, ideas, techniques, workings and/or formulas.
ii. Incomprehensible accent
Some lecturers, especially engineering lecturers, have accents that are difficult to understand. In a certain interview with a 3rd year engineering student, he said that he and his classmates always skip one particular lecture class conducted by a China-accented lecturer, and together they would crash a different lecture of the same module with a different class every week.
b) Students not trying hard enough to concentrate
i. Some students admitted in their interviews that they do not understand their lecturers because they are not concentrating hard enough in their lectures in the first place. But they assure that when the time comes they will study whatever they are required to know on their own before their exams. Therefore skipping their classes is not a problem.
ii. Procrastination
Although these students do not understand their lectures and do not attend them, they still procrastinate learning what they were supposed to have learnt should they have gone to their lectures. This cycle of procrastination will only lead to ignorance of the particular module which lectures they keep skipping.
5) Self-assurance
Self-assurance is a trait some class-skippers have. A few interviewed students, who are relatively doing well in their studies so far, say that they only skip lessons, provided that they really know and understand what is going to be taught in the lecture. They will (or try to) ensure themselves that they will not be at a losing end ultimately.
DISCUSSION
From a social psychological point of view, the bigger part of the reason why students skip classes is due to their own characteristics, although the teaching environment in which they are, can be at fault to a smaller extent. Most students have small attention spans, and learning in a dry learning environment contributes greatly in shortening their attentiveness to the lesson. While one can argue distractions are everywhere and that it is just a matter of whether the student can overcome it or not, boredom acts as a great catalyst in aiding a student to succumb to the distractions in his present teaching environment, eventually boredom creates dislike of the student towards his/her lesson, ere go skipping it next time. While peers can be great motivators and tutors to students, they can also become distractions, and strong influences for students to skip their lessons. While school is the staple livelihood of students, students still have other things to do besides school, some of which for entertainment’s sake, others necessities. Either way students might skip class to attend to these activities. A student who is not good at a subject and yet is forced into learning it can be discouraging for him/herself, because students are generally averse to the subjects they dislike.
CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of Singapore Polytechnic students frequently skipping classes. From this study, five categories of psychological factors as to why students skip classes evolve. They are the categories of boredom, inconvenience, influences, ignorance and self-assurance which achieve the aims of avoidance of classes. This student-psychology study is especially important for teachers/lecturers so that they can better understand the thinking of their own class-skipping students thus remind them more effectively how important school must be to them, improve their teaching skills and maintenance of their teaching environment.
However, by doing this it might not be sufficient to solve the problem. A better solution to overcome this problem would be to build a long-lasting and good teacher-student relationship. Relationships are a critical component of learning. More often than not, the type of relationship students have with the teachers will indirectly affect their level of attendance during lessons. It is most likely the case that students will be motivated to attend lessons where they can interact and communicate effectively with people (teachers and fellow peers) whom they respect and feel comfortable with. With a good teacher-student relationship, the probability of students skipping lessons will be relatively smaller as they know their lessons would be enriching and fun.
Date: 8th July 2008, AY 2008/09, Semester 2
Conducted by: Group: I.M. - Su, Kwan Teck, Ken, John, Jia Yin, Fiona, Ariff
AIM OF STUDY
The aim of this study is to answer the main research question as below:
Why do Singapore Polytechnic students skip classes?
This main research question is fragmented into the following sub questions:
How often do students skip their classes?
What kind of classes do students skip?
How do students feel when skipping classes?
What are the consequences that they encounter for skipping classes?
What are the reasons for them skipping classes?
How important are lecture and tutorial classes to them?
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS
The research is conducted in Singapore Polytechnic by observation of the students of several courses in SP. The research takes a total of three weeks to complete. The research stretches from 8th July 2008 to 29th July 2008.
The forms of data collection for the research are as below:
a) Selected informal open-ended interviews of the fourteen skipping-class students taking an average of 5 minutes per interviews.
b) Attending the classes the students skipped to observe the teaching environment, ultimately to find out what the reasons are behind them skipping these classes.
The forms of analysis used are as follow:
a) Clustering
b) Observational Data - Conducted in several classes of the interviewees.
c) FINDINGS
The findings for this research are as follows:
The psychological categories that evoke their skipping classes are as follows:
1) Boredom
Most of the students seem to have short attention spans, doing something else instead of listening to the lesson. Learning in a dull teaching environment contributes greatly in shortening their attentiveness to the lecture. A further breakdown of this category pinpoints the roles each character in the teaching environment plays in making the class a ‘boring’ one, resulting in students skipping them:
a) The teachers (includes lecturers, tutors and practical-lesson teachers)
In this study, it is shown that teachers with monotonous voices, ‘drawling’ slangs and unconcerned teaching attitudes evoke boredomness towards some of the interviewed students. A lecturer without concerned teaching attitudes will have his students with thoughts of neglection towards the lesson and the subject.
b) Peers
In a few tutorial classes observed, there was no student participation; no student in the classes asked the teachers any questions regarding what was being taught in those lessons, making the teacher the only vocal person in the class; ultimately making the lesson atmosphere dry and dreary, since there was only listening and no conversation.
2) Influences/Distractions
Ø Peers
Observations in a few lecture classes have shown that students commonly skip classes with their close classmate friends. It is noted that it is always the same group of people who are absent in the class observed. Affirmation was provided from interviews with a certain group of class-skippers, saying that they sometimes skip a class to have longer lunchtime.
Ø Leisurely activities
For after-school leisurely activities where time is concerned (eg. catching a movie) students will skip classes to make time for their activities.
3) Inconvenience
a) Timetables
i. Long breaks
When interviewed, some students claim that the reason they skip their lessons is because their classes are not scheduled as effectively in their timetables as they would like them to be. Some students have two- to three-hour breaks in between their lessons, and they do not fancy the idea of waiting in school for hours for their next lesson, since they cannot go home during those breaks.
ii. Lessons too early and/or too late
Some students complain that they have too many lessons starting at 8am every week. Of these students, most of them have trouble waking up early (self-claimed). Students also complained having to attend school from 8am-5pm for some schooldays, claiming these are the ‘long days’ of the week, and because of that, it would be self-declaredly ‘excusable’ for them to skip some classes, most of the time either their 8am-10pm or 3-5pm class.
iii. Schooldays with only one lesson
In the third year cohorts’ timetables especially, there are a few certain days (typically Fridays) where they only have one class for the entire day, be it lecture or practical class. Because of this, students find it impractical to come to school only for two hours of one lesson, especially for those who live further away from the west-side of Singapore, and also those whose everyday-journey to school involves long tedious/tiring MRT train-rides or traffic jams.
b) After-school activities
i. Part-time jobs
A few interviewed students have random-hours part-time jobs on certain days.
4) Ignorance
From this study it is found out that some students skip the classes they cannot understand. They decide that they might as well not attend certain lectures which, in their opinion, they most likely would not be able to absorb anything out of. These might be a few reasons why they do not understand their lectures:
a) Lecturers not clear in explaining
i. Teaching pace too fast
Some students take a longer time comprehending complex concepts, ideas, techniques, workings and/or formulas.
ii. Incomprehensible accent
Some lecturers, especially engineering lecturers, have accents that are difficult to understand. In a certain interview with a 3rd year engineering student, he said that he and his classmates always skip one particular lecture class conducted by a China-accented lecturer, and together they would crash a different lecture of the same module with a different class every week.
b) Students not trying hard enough to concentrate
i. Some students admitted in their interviews that they do not understand their lecturers because they are not concentrating hard enough in their lectures in the first place. But they assure that when the time comes they will study whatever they are required to know on their own before their exams. Therefore skipping their classes is not a problem.
ii. Procrastination
Although these students do not understand their lectures and do not attend them, they still procrastinate learning what they were supposed to have learnt should they have gone to their lectures. This cycle of procrastination will only lead to ignorance of the particular module which lectures they keep skipping.
5) Self-assurance
Self-assurance is a trait some class-skippers have. A few interviewed students, who are relatively doing well in their studies so far, say that they only skip lessons, provided that they really know and understand what is going to be taught in the lecture. They will (or try to) ensure themselves that they will not be at a losing end ultimately.
DISCUSSION
From a social psychological point of view, the bigger part of the reason why students skip classes is due to their own characteristics, although the teaching environment in which they are, can be at fault to a smaller extent. Most students have small attention spans, and learning in a dry learning environment contributes greatly in shortening their attentiveness to the lesson. While one can argue distractions are everywhere and that it is just a matter of whether the student can overcome it or not, boredom acts as a great catalyst in aiding a student to succumb to the distractions in his present teaching environment, eventually boredom creates dislike of the student towards his/her lesson, ere go skipping it next time. While peers can be great motivators and tutors to students, they can also become distractions, and strong influences for students to skip their lessons. While school is the staple livelihood of students, students still have other things to do besides school, some of which for entertainment’s sake, others necessities. Either way students might skip class to attend to these activities. A student who is not good at a subject and yet is forced into learning it can be discouraging for him/herself, because students are generally averse to the subjects they dislike.
CONCLUSION
In order to provide the most effective solution to a problem, there is a need to understand the problem thoroughly. This applies for the case of Singapore Polytechnic students frequently skipping classes. From this study, five categories of psychological factors as to why students skip classes evolve. They are the categories of boredom, inconvenience, influences, ignorance and self-assurance which achieve the aims of avoidance of classes. This student-psychology study is especially important for teachers/lecturers so that they can better understand the thinking of their own class-skipping students thus remind them more effectively how important school must be to them, improve their teaching skills and maintenance of their teaching environment.
However, by doing this it might not be sufficient to solve the problem. A better solution to overcome this problem would be to build a long-lasting and good teacher-student relationship. Relationships are a critical component of learning. More often than not, the type of relationship students have with the teachers will indirectly affect their level of attendance during lessons. It is most likely the case that students will be motivated to attend lessons where they can interact and communicate effectively with people (teachers and fellow peers) whom they respect and feel comfortable with. With a good teacher-student relationship, the probability of students skipping lessons will be relatively smaller as they know their lessons would be enriching and fun.
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