Essay on Feminism in Dubliners - 1321 Words

| Feminism in Dubliners | Mrs. Atkins; English A3 Tuesday, May 25, 2010 James Joyce’s book of short stories entitled Dubliners examines feminism and the role of women in Irish society. The author is ahead of his time by bringing women to the forefront of his stories and using them to show major roles and flaws in Irish society, specifically in â€Å"Eveline† and â€Å"The Boarding House†. James Joyce portrays women as victims who are forced to assume a leading and somewhat patriarchal role in their families. He uses them to show the paralysis of his native land Ireland, and the disruption in social order that is caused by the constant cycle of abuse that he finds commonplace in Ireland. Joyce is trying to end the Victorian and archaic view of†¦show more content†¦This is seen when the narrator speaks about the story of the field that Eveline, her brothers, and another family’s children used to play on which was bought by a man from Belfast in order to build a house. Another example, is how she and her brothers would p lay out in a field, and her father would come to â€Å"hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick† (34). This also symbolizes the discord of family relations, and the premature annihilation of her childhood innocence by her father and the premature end of innocence that is caused by abusive men to their children in Ireland. Eveline is also denied the basic right to love and affection by her own choice. She finds a man who loves and values her, and is the exact opposite of her abusive father. Frank represents the opportunity for escape and a break in the cycle. She finally has an opportunity for a new life, and she chooses to stay in Ireland to take care of her father and brothers. Eveline’s choice to stay in Ireland, rather than to leave with Frank can be seen as a result of the lack of self-worth and mental constraints set on her by her father, which parallels the fact that Ireland’s paralysis is caused by the abuse of male authority roles. Eveline feels tied to her father, in the same way a hopeless chained animal who knows no better than to wait patiently and endure. The illusion of captivity was so complete that even though she had an opportunity to escape her ‘cage’, she chose to stay in it.Show MoreRelatedCriticism Of The Dead By Margot Norris1093 Words   |  5 PagesAnnotated Bibliography 1. Johnson, Jeri. Joyce and Feminism. The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. Ed. Derek Attridge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. 196-233. Print. This source is a criticism piece that is explaining a point of view that relates Joyce to feminism. Johnson is comparing the masculine and feminist characters, and the asking the question of where are these happy, successful, independent female characters, why do we connect Joyce and feminism and what do they have in common to connect thoseRead MoreEssay on Narrative Style and Character in James Joyces Clay609 Words   |  3 PagesMaria the suppressive spinster in his short story Clay. This particular approach influences the reader to sympathize with Joyces flawed character, while ironically pointing out the particular flaws and directing them towards Irish society. Dubliners is a collection of short stories by James Joyce in which the author utilizes the everyday experiences and rituals of the Irish middle and lower class to publicize his disdain with the Irish society and the political views adopted by the Irish peopleRead MoreFrankenstein and Araby Essay1469 Words   |  6 Pagesidea of â€Å"othering† of Elizabeth Lavenza in the gothic novel Frankenstein. In a similar manner, the female character in Araby that is Mangan’s sister is also othered. The short story Araby by James Joyce illustrates the quest that a middle class Dubliner boy initiates to win his love interest over. Since Mangan’s sister cannot come for the bazaar Araby, the boy promises to bring her something back but he fails in doing so. Throughout the novel, Mangan’s sister is portrayed as â€Å"other† in contrast

Essay On The Things They Carried - 1058 Words

â€Å"The Things They Carried† provides a personal view into the minds of soldiers, and tells us the emotional and psychological costs of war. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is stationed in Vietnam in the middle of the war. He seems to be a man in love, or more like a man in love with the idea of a lady named Martha. He ends up changing from a love struck, blind man into a firm, leading soldier. In this story, the characters do the things they do because of desires and motivations. In â€Å"The Things They Carry,† Tim O’Brien underlines the setting, items that characters â€Å"humped† (O’Brien, 2009, pg. 3) or carried, and the characters themselves to set the theme. The story takes place during the Vietnam War, during what was supposed to be a†¦show more content†¦(O’Brien, 1990) In addition, all the men had steel helmets that weighed five pounds each. Tim O’Brien also includes the items and weight that each of the other soldie rs in Jimmy Cross’s platoon carries. Rat Kiley’s â€Å"canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including MM’s for especially bad wounds for a total weight of nearly eighteen pounds.† (O’Brien, 2009, pg. 5) Henry Dobbins carries a twenty-three-pound unloaded M-60 with approximately fifteen pounds of ammunition draped on his body. Henry Dobbins also carried â€Å"his girlfriend’s pantyhose wrapped around his neck as a comforter.† (O’Brien, 1990) Mitchell Sanders carried the Kiowa, an illustrated New Testament and condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of top-notch dope. Ted Lavender also carried tranquilizers and extra ammunition because â€Å"he was scared†. (O’Brien, 1990) All men have â€Å"to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier†. (O’Brien, 2009, pg. 3) Psychological burdens of war were just as real as the physical burdens of the soldiers. Those who were blessed enough to survive the war, struggle with confusion, anger, guilt, and lack of resolution. â€Å"They all carry ghosts†, (O’Brien, 1990) created by the fickleness of war including the â€Å"burden ofShow MoreRelated Things They Carried Essay: Strength in The Things They Carried980 Words   |  4 PagesStrength in The Things They Carried  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Everybody has to deal with adversity at some point in their lives. The adversity that they go through varies from person to person. For First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, he had to make it through the Vietnam War alive. In the short story, The Things They Carried, where Cross draws his strength from is somewhat unclear. He seems strong at the beginning of the story, but then again, he also seems to be gaining strength towards the end of the story. ThisRead More the things they carried Essay1091 Words   |  5 Pages The things they carried,by Tim Obrien nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;quot;Oh man, you fuckin trashed the fucker. You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like fuckin Shredded Wheat.quot; I chose to start off my essay with this particular exert from the book because I think that it very much represents the story in itself. Azar said this, after Tim (supposedly) killed a Vietnamese soldier with a hand grenade. It shows that in times of war, how callous men can becomeRead MoreEssay on The Things They Carried515 Words   |  3 PagesThe Things They Carried The Things They Carried, by Tim OBrien, is a generalization of his own experiences in Vietnam although the story itself is a work of fiction there is still much to be learned from it. Through the actions of soldiers in The Things They Carried we can begin to explore the effect war has on the human condition and the toll it plays on their minds. Some of the themes in the book, The Things They Carried, are bravery and what true bravery is, truth and how the manipulationRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay1015 Words   |  5 PagesThe text, ‘The Things They Carried, is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lesseningRead MoreEssay On The Things They Carried1624 Words   |  7 PagesFor the seventeen Soldiers portrayed in â€Å"The Things We Carried† by Tim O’Brien, the physical pain was very minimal weight to carry compared to the emotional scars that they will carry throughout their entire life. This story does an amazing job portraying full human emotion that anyone put into a situation would feel, such as heavy guilt, sadness, anger, lack of motivation, perseverance, horror, and false security. All of these are notorious feelings that every soldier back in history, and now stillRead More The Things They Carried Essay2450 Words   |  10 Pagesand extremely prosperous. The 90’s were fraught with media propaganda about the economy and international relations. This media coverage made many Americans feel that they were invincible. The media never really covered the Middle East where things were about to boil over and hatred for the U.S. was about to get primetime attention. On the morning of September 11, 2001 the United States got a rude awakening to this hate that is held for our â€Å"invincible† country. This awakening came asRead More The Things They Carried Essay1107 Words   |  5 Pagesstory an example of this is Tim O’Brien’s â€Å"The Things They Carried†. As the story goes on it shows not only the literal meaning of what they carried but also symbolically the burdens that they had mentally. In the literal sense O’Brien talks about what different members of a platoon in Vietnam carried. This helps him to move to a more symbolic sense at the end of the story. He starts by talking about necessities and slowly moves on to what they carried to remind them that there was a world out sideRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay1603 Words   |  7 PagesThe Things They Carried, every soldier carried something different; different equipment, different memories, and different guilt. Their equipment would change as they travelled through the book, but one common thing that the soldiers would all be forced to carry is the weight of losing one of their own. Though it might weight differently from man to man, changing depending on how well they knew the soldier, it is a weight they all felt. Though several soldiers died in The Things They Carried, theRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay2626 Words   |  11 PagesAmerican History. During this time a lot of young people were a nti-war, they were sick of losing people they loved to violence. Though the war still needed to be fought so men became soldiers freely or because they were drafted. In the story â€Å"Things They Carried†, soldiers are faced head on with the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien shows how the men carry the weight of physical objects through out the war. The men bog themselves down with physical objects that they do not necessarily need yet, they can dropRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay1838 Words   |  8 PagesChristian Hernandez Professor Sarah Cantrell English 1102 â€Å"The Things They Carried†: Emotional side The story of The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien gives a good outlook on how the Soldiers feel and think during the war . The story describes the different things that the soldiers carry with them while at war. O’Brien talks about the different items in great detail such as weight, color, shape and size but he also gives extraordinary details about not only their personalities

Taking a Look at Chalino Sanchez - 1959 Words

I. Background Chalino Sanchez was born and raised in la Chilla known as â€Å"el rancho† the ranch. Chalino had six brothers, and a sister, named Juana. Chalino lost his father at age six, and lived in poverty at a young age with his mother Sannorina Felix. and siblings. It was always a struggle they either had to pick tomatoes or become a drug trafficker in Sinaloa. Chalino would tell his mother â€Å"don’t worry, with my body and voice in California you will not be without† page 23 in the book â€Å"A Chronicle Play of Fulgor and Death†. In a world so cold that â€Å"blood burns like fire† and the only way to get someone back is to revenge. Chalino never thought his arrival to California was going to be in a blink of an eye. Chalino persuaded the American dream he promised his mother that when he moved to California he would make it to the spot light, using his voice and body. Keeping in mind his sister’s rape. He wanted a better life, for his family than living the life in Mexico. Julian Camacho Segura is the author of â€Å"A Chronicle Play of Fulgor and death.† Julian Camacho Segura journey began from Mexico, back to the United States. Julian was born in El Centro California in 1969, raised in Inglewood, California in the rancho Del Cantinela. â€Å"Julian says† Most of the book is fiction but a lot is not because Chalino did, for example, buy cassettes in Lennox where his grandfather saw him because the ladies would sell in front of the laundrymats where he worked,† recalled Segura. Julian

Emotional And Social Performance Of Children With Anxiety...

Children with anxiety disorders struggle with tasks on a day to day basis that children without anxiety disorders do not even consider thinking about. Marni L. Jacob, Cynthia Suveg, and Monica R. Whitehead put on a study that tests the relationships between emotional and social functioning in children with anxiety disorders. This study is interesting to me personally because I know what it is like to constantly struggle with anxiety. I have generalized anxiety disorder. Due to this, researching about anxiety has always something I have been curious about and wanted to do. Collective research throughout the years have correlated relations between emotion related discrepancies and maladaptive social functioning. Although there has been an occurrence of emotional and social challenges in children with anxiety disorders, minimal research has actually examined the variables in tandem in experimental samples of youth (Jacob). Emotional and social performance inefficiency are most likely going to increase the functional impairment linked with youth anxiety disorders. Consequently, it may hinder the successful mastery of essential developmental milestones for the children who struggle with anxiety. Thus, the study of relationships between emotional and social functioning in children with anxiety disorders is definitely necessary. I inferred the author’s prediction to be that children who struggle with anxiety disorders and social functioning challenges also struggle withShow MoreRelatedMental Illness Affects Numerous Individuals In America,1424 Words   |  6 Pagesto Costea (2011), â€Å"†¦31% of American women and about 17% of men have a 12-month prevalence of at least one psychiatric disorder, and of those 65% are mothers and 52% are fathers†. However, research focuses on the individuals suffering from a mental illness, and often overlooks the patient’s children and the distress the parents’ mental illnessmay cause on their children. Children of parents with a mental illness deal with a complex life that is filled with challenging parent relationships and an exhaustingRead MoreEssay about Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD)1173 Words   |  5 PagesSocial Anxiety Social Anxiety Disorders is defined as a marked and persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to unfamiliar people or possible scrutiny by others (Cuncic). People who do not believe in this disorder think that it’s just shyness that is being pathologized (Cuncic). Just because you may be a little shy or a bit nervous on occasion doesnt mean that you have this condition. Social Anxiety Disorders are psychological problemsRead MoreAnxiety Disorders And Its Effects On Children And Adolescents843 Words   |  4 PagesAnxiety Disorders are a common phenomenon in children and adolescents. Research studies have identified both a biological and environment bases as well as the interplay between risks and protective factors determine the development of anxiety disorders. It is relevant that intervention strategies are research-based, as this will ensure the implementation of effective treatment plans. Because of managed care enterprises, it is essential that intervention strategies utilized are researching-founded;Read MoreChild Neglect Is A Type Of Child Maltreatment1076 Words   |  5 Pagesnutrition, health care, physical, emotional, education, and housing needs. There are many types of neglect in harsh areas and torn families that come for children. Physical signs of neglect include swellings/fractures/burns, dental pain or decay, faltering weight, an d developmental delay. Other signs include chronic nappy rash, poor hygiene, and severe and persistent immunizations. Neglect can cause several psychological, social, and emotional issues for children. These include attachment issues,Read MoreEmotional And Behavioral Disorders Impact Today s System Of Learning1459 Words   |  6 Pagesconducted through centuries on the numerous types of emotional and behavioral disorders. From today s research of the disorders, mankind as a whole has a better understanding and can adapt to situations when under pressure of the existence of a disorder. Emotional and behavioral disorders impact today’s system of learning. Jean Cheng Gorman suggests from her research that having a deeper understanding of the emotional and behavioral disorders is the best way of maintaining the control of productiveRead MoreEffects Of Anxiety On Adolescent Women1681 Words   |  7 Pages The Effects of Anxiety on Adolescent Women Zoon Fonville Eastern Florida State College Fall 2015 Total Word count 2195 1684-157 references=1504 Body WC The Effects of Anxiety on Adolescent Women Research This paper includes five articles that report results from research conducted to observe how adolescents, specifically female, are affected by the anxiety disorders. Blumenthal, Leen-Feldner, Babson, Frala (2011) stated â€Å"Adolescence is a key period in terms of the onsetRead MoreHow Anxiety Affects Student Performance1346 Words   |  6 PagesHow Anxiety Affects Student Performance Sloan E. Williams Greenville Technical College 10-18-16 â€Å"Surpassing even depression, anxiety is the most common form of mental illness in the United States. It’s estimated that approximately 10 percent of teenagers and 40 percent of adults suffer from an anxiety disorder of some kind† (11 Facts About Anxiety). Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.You may feel worriedRead MoreBehavior Disorders1059 Words   |  5 PagesBehavior Disorders (Emotional Disturbance Pg 207-210) I. Facts: * Behavior disorders include mental health problems with a focus on behaviors that both identify emotional problems and create interpersonal and social problems for children and adolescents in the course of their development. * Currently, students with such disorders are categorized as having a serious emotional disturbance, which is defined under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Public Law 101-476, as follows:Read MoreStuttering Is A Communication Disorder That Involuntary Effects The Fluency Of Speech1479 Words   |  6 PagesStuttering Stuttering is a communication disorder that involuntary effects the fluency of speech. Disfluencies in speech include both â€Å"nonstuttered† and â€Å"stuttered† disfluencies. â€Å"Nonstuttered† disfluencies include interjections, revisions, phrase repetitions, and other. Everyone produces disfluencies in their speech at times making â€Å"nonstuttered† disfluencies more typical in speech. â€Å"Stuttered† disfluencies are less typical and include word repetitions, sound/syllable repetitions, prolongationsRead MoreEssay On Psychiatric Disorders1260 Words   |  6 PagesA growing literature demonstrates that early diagnosis of psychiatric disorders between children can reduce the risks of adverse psychosocial outcomes, in adulthood. The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between adjustable risk factors and psychiatric disorders, between children and adolescents, in a developing country with life style transition. Totally, 13,486 students, aged 6–18 years from all provinces of Iran, were included in this study. The fuzzy decision tree (FDTs) was

An Ode Poem Free Essays

An Ode Poem Adam Smith ENG 125 Prof. McFarland January 17, 2012 For my assignment this week I chose to write about is A Morning Song by Eleanor Farjeon. This poem is in the form of an ode which is also another form for a Lyric poetry. We will write a custom essay sample on An Ode Poem or any similar topic only for you Order Now â€Å"Odes are imaginative, expressed with a meditative, intellectual tone, but do not have a prescribed pattern† (Clugston, 2010). I chose this poem because it was not only written well. It is sort of like the poetry I write. I want to describe this poem in my own words, because it is beautiful and heartwarming. One of the elements of this poem that I liked was the content of the poem. This particular poem had a lot of content in it but the main one was morning. It was a poem about the beginning of the day everything that deals with the morning. Like the dew on the grass, or the smell of the fresh air. It told of how a very sunny bright morning would like through the eyes of the lord and how the bird spoke and everything. Another element of the poem I like is the form in which it is written. Rhyming in poetry is pretty common in most poems. A† rhyme is a similarity in the sound of stressed syllables in words at the end of lines of poetry† (Clugston, 2010). The rhyming form is this poem is that of an ABAB style form. In other words the words at the ends of lines 1 and 3 are the same and the ones at the ends of 2 and 4 are the same. Another element I loved was the theme of the poem. After reading several times it was clear that the theme was morning time and everything that has to with it being morning. To me the theme was set in the first line of the poem. â€Å"Morning has broken, like the first morning† ( Farjeon,1957). That right there is what I think set the theme and or tone for this well written poem. These three elements here help me understand the poem and what it was really about. It took me several times to read this poem. Once I read a several time I got what it meant and how the poet wanted me as the reader to comprehend it. It was a very beautiful poem in its own way. These elements didn’t affect my opinion or my reaction to this poem. I think that they helped me more to understand it better. The elements that I wrote about were more for me as the reader to not only understanding the poem, but made it easier to read. They really didn’t cause me to focus one just one thing. Like I said earlier I had to read it several times so I eventually looked over everything in the poem. The wording and the way the poem was written was exceptionally brilliant in its own way. In conclusion this is probably one of the most beautiful poems I have ever read. I have read a lot of poems in my life and written them as well. This poem is what we at poets call and Ode which means it’s sort of lyrical in a sense. I hope I did this paper well and it was an honor to write about the poem. References: Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, California: Bridgepoint Education, Farjeon, E. (1957). A morning song. In Children’s bells. Oxford, UK: Oxford Uni–versity Press. How to cite An Ode Poem, Papers

Principles of Project Management for Project - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about thePrinciples of Project Managementfor Project Selection. Answer: Project management refers to the process which the team achieves through the specific objectives and goals according to some criteria of success in a project. From the current module I have learnt regarding project management principles, project selection and project initiation processes. The module also helped me to learn the various project management approaches as well as the models that are used in practical field. The process of project planning and stakeholder management also helped me to gain insight and in-depth knowledge regarding the risk management as well as project scheduling processes, monitoring and controlling a project as well as the closing a project. The module that has been covered, helped me to understand regarding the project managements multi dynamic way. The clear and concise reading with practical examples as well as worked out problems helped me to understand the subject to its core and also changed my learning approach. First the lecture notes were read by me along with the demonstration provided by the lecturer. I discussed the subject topic with my groups and peers also searched on the Internet that helped me competent in learning the current subject module. The subject matter that I found difficult to understand was project scheduling in which different types of network diagram was included such as the program evaluation and review technique (PERT) and critical path method (CPM) were used to draw the network diagrams and hence provide a project schedule (Turner, 2014). I did research on the Internet as well as read several books and practiced numerical problems regarding the project scheduling that helped me to get a clear grip on the subject. I also discussed this subject with my teacher and lecturer to clear the doubts that helped me to overcome the challenge. Project scheduling helps me in my career as a project manager and it also helps me to schedule the project precisely in order to avoid any kind of delay in the project. My major strength is to analyze any risk regarding a project precisely as well as accurate scheduling of a project incorporating adequate safety factors. Monitoring and controlling of projects are also my strengt h, however my major weakness are project planning in which I need a little guidance to start off as well as stakeholders management that I find a bit difficult to understand. According to Kerzner (2013), the leadership style essential in project management are sharing a vision in which the project managers inspires the team members as well as shares a common vision and objectives with the entire project team. A good communication skill is also required to communicate with people at all levels regarding the goals, responsibility, performance, feedback and expectations. It also helps them to guide the team members (Schwalbe, 2015). A good leadership in a project manager also provides towards commitment, demonstration as well as towards ethical practices. The value of a project within the team that is very essential in creating awareness regarding enthusiasm of the project is also an effective leadership quality to be present in the project manager. Technical competencies are the final and most important leadership quality that should be present within the project manager as technical competency helps solving complicated problems as well as technical problem s in the construction field during the project execution. In projects that have a constraint of tight budget the leadership style that is essential is communication and financial ability in the project manager to execute the project with tight control over the budget as well as communication with the construction workers and other stakeholders during negotiations in the money. As per Walker (2015), for projects having a tight time constraint, the project manager needs to have a project scheduling leadership quality in which expertise technical knowledge and experience is required that will enable the project manager to schedule the project with high precision and accuracy. My leadership style are that I have good communication skill, a team working ability, a sound technical knowledge as well as time management ability that will help me to schedule the project within time and allocated budget as well as ensure that the project is executed on time without any kind of additional risk. My communication skill will ensure that I communicate with my team members as well as construction workers clearly sharing project values and objectives with them. My technical knowledge will also make me competent in understanding the various design and drawings of the project and determine the most economical method of construction. References Kerzner, H. (2013).Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley Sons. Schwalbe, K. (2015).Information technology project management. Cengage Learning. Turner, J. R. (2014).The handbook of project-based management(Vol. 92). New York, NY: McGraw-hill. Walker, A. (2015).Project management in construction. John Wiley Sons.

The Importance of Lectures and How Students Value and Perceive Lectures free essay sample

The importance of lectures and how students value and perceive lectures Umea University, Research Methodology on Business Administration Group 9 Introduction3 Research background3 Research topic4 Choice of subject4 Research purpose4 Limitations5 Theoretical framework6 Introduction6 Learning Orientations and Theories6 Previous research7 Theory Conclusion9 Criticism of sources10 Methodology11 Epistemology and Ontology11 Research Strategy12 Preconceptions and values12 Research design13 Collection of data13 Analyzing of data14 Truth criteria14 Ethical considerations15 Results16 Analysis19 Discussion21 Conclusion22 Reference list23 Introduction Research background The articles we have found online have been conducted in other countries where the student- and/or teacher mentality might differ from their Swedish counterparts. Most of the previous research in this area tends to be focused on how lectures are not an effective tool for student learning (Buckles amp; McMahon, 1971, p. 141) or focusing on the fact that students are not attending lectures (Massingham amp; Herrington, 2006, p. 4). The difference between their studies and ours is that our research will focus more on what students actually gain, in terms of knowledge, from lectures and how they perceive the value in attending them. We will write a custom essay sample on The Importance of Lectures and How Students Value and Perceive Lectures or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This is because it is more or less a proven fact that you do not gain a lot of knowledge from attending lectures (Buckles amp; McMahon, 1971, p. 141), (Dunn. 2002), (Smith. 2003, 1999b) and a lot of students do not attend them (Massingham amp; Herrington, 2006, p. 84). The change in technology has also changed the way teachers teach and students learn. Years ago, students had to attend lectures in order to obtain important notes and not missing out on important information. Some students may feel that none of this is necessary nowadays they can obtain most of the material presented during lectures as they are always posted online, and certain universities offer their students audio recordings of lectures (Massingham, Herrington, 2006, p. 85). A problem can arise when teachers see their lectures as their primary education tool, they tend to view lecture slides and exercises as supplements to those lectures, whereas students tend to believe those supplements can be substitutes for attending the actual lectures. This brings students to question whether or not it is worthwhile going to campus at all. We believe students are not always aware of what they are missing out on when they skip lectures, which is an interesting aspect that we are trying to capture when asking what benefits students perceive they gain from lecture attendance. Courses at university level tend to focus on lectures as its primary teaching technique, this is in contrast with theories such as Sensory stimulation and Cognitive orientation that shows that lectures are one of the more ineffective teaching forms (Dunn. 2002), (Smith. 1999b). What then, is the reason for the central position lectures and lecture attendance has in university education? Our research aim is to find out what students can hope to gain by attending lectures and how they perceive those benefits and if ttending lectures are important for student learning. It has to be acknowledged that there is a difference in teaching styles today compared to thirty years ago, what have changed dramatically is that education has changed from something being valuable in its own right to merely a means to an end. Herrington and Massingham has found that students today are no longer applying to courses in the thirst for knowledge but rather as an uninteresting way to gain a proper qualification and then a good job. Massingham, Herrington, 2006, p. 84). In recent times teaching styles has changed from a constructivist approach, that teachers facilitate and guide the process and students create their own meaning of information to an instructivist approach, which implies that teachers conduct a passive teaching style in that students receive information and individually process the information through repeated practice and learn the â€Å"right† answer and regurgitate someone else’s meaning. Students today might simply be bored by the instructivist teaching style they face in many universities, and that they may be better off with a constructivist approach that enables them to understand new information in increased depth and detail (Massingham, Herrington, 2006, p. 84). Whether or not lectures are done in a instructivist or constructivist way does not necessarily mean that the whole course outlay is done in that manner, however, our research is solely focused on lectures, making the chosen approach used in lectures reflect in part how students perceive those lectures and what they gain from them. Research topic This thesis explores the attitude students at the International Business Program has regarding lectures and gives an understanding on how they perceive the relevance of lecture attendance and its benefits. Our research question will be: †Are lectures important for students to gain new knowledge? How do students perceive the benefits of attending lectures? We want to investigate if lectures are an important source of gaining knowledge of the subject at hand, what benefits lectures bring to students and how students perceive those benefits. We will focus on a quantitative survey with questions egarding the benefits of lectures that students are attending and if they believe it has any significance of their academic performance. We will then gather the material, evaluate it and develop a conclusion. Choice of subject We all have academic backgrounds and have studied almost four semesters here at Umea University. We have felt that some of the lectures we attended have not been really constructive or rewarded us with significant knowledge. This has spurred our interest in the actual importance of lecture attendance and what students gain from attending them. We will analyse published reports of previous studies on subjects such as students’ attitudes on attendance, reasons for absenteeism and student learning styles to verify our own theoretical assumption. We will conduct a survey through the internet to first- and second year students in the International Business Program regarding their individual attendance rates and reasons for attending- and missing class. The data collected will be evaluated and analysed and we will then form a conclusion where we can establish the main reasons for missing class and what value students’ see in lectures. We hope this can benefit lecturers to better pinpoint what student needs they should focus on fulfilling and what they can do to increase the motivational factors driving students’ to feel they need to attend class. Research purpose We all have academic backgrounds and have studied almost four semesters here at Umea University. We have felt that some of the lectures we attended have not been really constructive or rewarded us with significant knowledge. This has spurred our interest in the actual importance of lecture attendance and what students gain from attending them. We will analyse published reports of previous studies on subjects such as students’ attitudes on attendance, reasons for absenteeism and student learning styles to verify our own theoretical assumption. We will conduct a survey through the internet to first- and second year students in the International Business Program regarding their individual attendance rates and reasons for attending- and missing class. The data collected will be evaluated and analysed and we will then form a conclusion where we can establish the main reasons for missing class and what value students’ see in lectures. We hope this can benefit lecturers to better pinpoint what student needs they should focus on fulfilling and what they can do to increase the motivational factors driving students’ to feel they need to attend class. Limitations There are certain limitations to our research, amongst them is the fact that courses have different layouts with variations in both the quality and quantity of its lectures. Lectures are mandatory in certain courses and/or involve practical exercises which further influence students attendance. These limitations are somewhat dampened by our choice of sending the survey solely to IBP students in the first and second year, as they are studying the same programme. An aspect that can limit our research is the fact that the quality of lecturers’ ability to capture the audience, hold interesting lectures and the teaching style they employ, will greatly influence what students learn from the lecture and what benefits they perceive that they gain from attending it. This has the potential of causing variations in the answers of our respondent and is, again, one of the reasons we have chosen IBP students for our survey. Theoretical framework Introduction There are certain limitations to our research, amongst them is the fact that courses have different layouts with variations in both the quality and quantity of its lectures. Lectures are mandatory in certain courses and/or involve practical exercises which further influence students attendance. These limitations are somewhat dampened by our choice of sending the survey solely to IBP students in the first and second year, as they are studying the same programme. An aspect that can limit our research is the fact that the quality of lecturers’ ability to capture the audience, hold interesting lectures and the teaching style they employ, will greatly influence what students learn from the lecture and what benefits they perceive that they gain from attending it. This has the potential of causing variations in the answers of our respondent and is, again, one of the reasons we have chosen IBP students for our survey. Learning Orientations and Theories To start of this theory part we will take a look at some of the theories brought up in Lee Dunn â€Å"Learning and Teaching Briefing Papers Series† (2002). The Sensory stimulation theory states that learning occurs when the senses are stimulated and that stimulating multiple senses will yield greater learning outcome (Dunn. 2002). These senses are of differing importance when it comes to acquiring knowledge, listed in the order of   how much   knowledge an adult have gained from them they are; seeing/sight 75%, hearing 13% and taste, touch and smell 12% (Dunn. 2002). Straight away we can see that sight is by far the most important sense to stimulate and hearing ending up on a second place with much less importance when looking at the percentage. According to this it is reasonable to believe that reading would be a great source for gaining new knowledge since sight will be the dominant sense, however as stated in the theory activating multiple senses at once will be even more effective. Group exercise/problem solutions would by this reasoning be the most effective tool since it will not only activate the sight sense but also hearing when undertaken as a discussion when solving them. Lectures on the other hand start off lacking by using hearing as its dominant sense, however most lecturers do try to activate the seeing sense as well with the aid of powerpoint slides and overhead projectors, but according to this theory it is reasonable to state that lectures are not an especially effective learning outlet. In his work â€Å"Learning theory† (2003) M. K. Smith brings up four orientations to learning; behavioral, cognitive, humanistic and social/situational. We will analyze these orientations in the light of their relevance and significance when it comes to the importance of lectures and what students gain from those lectures. It must be mentioned that the Reinforcement theory and Cognitive-Gestalt approaches from Lee Dunn’s work is practically the same as the behaviourist and cognitive orientations from M. K. Smith’s work, they are based on the same psychological/theoretical foundations and they will be analyzed later in the text. The behaviourist orientation or Reinforcement theory focus on changing behaviour in a desired way through reinforcements and the environment and it is based on the behavioural school of psychology (Smith. 1999a)(Dunn. 002). Learning can be defined as a change in behaviour (Smith. 2003), this concept by itself is somewhat vague but through lectures the teacher can influence how we behave and by extension what we learn. For example just by attending all lectures student behaviour has been changed (or maintained), by encouraging or discouraging (which is reinforcements) certain behaviour such as; literature reading, class participation and exercise work, the lecturer changes the way students study and the way they behave (Dunn. 002). Changing behaviour and creating an environment suitable for learning is something that is best done in personal interaction. This indicates that lectures are a good tool for achieving the goals of a behaviourist orientation. Changing the students? behaviour and thereby enabling them to learn is something that would make lectures important and by extension create value in attending them. The cognitive orientation focus on act/process of knowing, internal mental processes, perception and insights (Smith. 1999b). This cognitive approach to learning is focused on problem/exercise solving, processing that information and other insights (Dunn. 2002). This is something that is not suitable for a crowded lecture environment, exercise and problem solutions and other internal mental contemplations can of course be done later after lectures and at home, however this approach still does not favour lectures as a important learning tool. The humanistic orientation focus on self fulfillment and actualization and the idea that persons study to improve themselves and reach their potential (Smith. 1999c). The act of attending lectures is something that can make a student feel like they have achieved something during the day, creating encouragement for further lecture attendance and studies. This sense of self fulfillment is something that is not exclusive to lectures and lecture attendance, indeed any hard day’s work in studies, be it writing or reading is bound to manifest in a feeling of self fulfillment. The social/situational orientation focus on interactions between people and social observations and the fact that people learn by observing others and participating in social activities (Smith. 999d). In the aspect of lectures and the benefits of attending them, this orientation is of considerable importance, since lectures is the main instance for social gatherings in an educational context. We will use these learning orientations and the Sensory stimulation theory to analyze the results of our survey, we believe that these orientations/theories will be valuable tools for u nderstanding and analysing the students’ perception of lectures and the value it brings them. These orientations/theories will also help us analyse and explain contradictions that might appear in our research. Previous research Regarding the subject of lectures and learning outcome, Buckles and McMahon states in their article that †lectures which cover only the assigned reading material are of no marginal value to students’ learning †. Their research explores the value of lectures in elementary economics (microeconomic theory in specific) and conducted an experiment to either confirm or reject their given hypothesis stating that lectures indeed did not significantly improve student comprehension (Buckles amp; McMahon, 1971, p. 140). Their experiment consisted of a class with students randomly divided in two groups. One group of students were assigned to a control group which attended lectures and studied the programmed text and the other, the experimental group, did not attend lectures but were assigned the programmed text (Buckles amp; McMahon, 1971, p. 139). Their experiment consisted of a †dummy variable† to indicate the absence or presence of a categorical effect that may change the outcome, in this case class attendance. They had set an acceptance level of 0. prior to the test, and in none of the regressions was the coefficient of the dummy variable for attendance significantly different from zero (Buckles amp; McMahon, 1971, p. 140), thus the analysts accepted their hypothesis of lectures do not aid the students learning in microeconomic theory. Sara Dolnicar’s research (Dolnicar, 2005) investigates the reasons for and patterns of lecture attendance by students and she conducted a study to gain more understanding into what drives students’ to lectures. Her study design was composed of an initial exploratory stage where she interviewed 100 andomly selected students to gain insight into the motivations and reasons for lecture attendance, and from that information she created a two-page questionnaire. The survey was handed out to six different faculties on campus and the final sample consisted of 612 students answering questions regarding the current course in which the survey was assigned to, which means that the evaluation considers students studying different programs and courses. This is a good indicator as to see what drives our preferred target group, commerce students, to lectures compared to other programs such as science students. The students were provided with a list of reasons for attending lectures and were presented with the same list twice, once for the subject in which the survey was conducted and once for all subjects in general. The result showed only minor differences from the subject-specific to the general subject evaluation of students, and that the main reasons for students attending lectures are to find out what they are supposed to learn (75%), find out about assessment tasks (52%) and not to miss important information (68%). It was found that science and arts students were the faculties with the highest attendance rates and commerce/business students had the lowest attendance rates. This must be interpreted with care as some science classes consisted of as low as five students and their lectures may involve more practical exercises and different learning requirements than commerce’s predominantly theoretical approach. Dolnicar conclude in her article that the main difference from earlier studies in lecture attendance is a major shift in motivation compared to the 1970’s where factors such as stimulation of interest, gaining knowledge and enthusiasm dominated as opposed to todays motivations as those mentioned in her survey results. Furthermore, the quality of lecture and lecturer proved to have a significant positive correlation, as can be expected. She also grouped the student motivation responses into two extremes; †Idealist† who enjoyed attending lectures and consisted mainly of arts students and can be characterised as being older; and †Pragmatics† who only wanted to obtain the right amount of information they needed to be successful in the subject and were mostly found studying commerce and characterised as being younger (Dolnicar, 2005, p. 111). Peter Massingham and Tony Herrington explore questions as to whether lecture attendance matter and examines the performance and attitudes towards lectures. As lecturers themselves, their research motivation was to find reasons for students absenteeism to better engage students in the learning process (Massingham amp; Herrington, 2006, p. 96). Their case study consisted of five elements including a survey conducted on a class consisting of 172 students in the Faculty of Commerce, a research paper, a mid term exam, class participation and a final examination. The survey consisted of questions regarding student non-attendance for lectures and tutorials where they would grade the different alternatives on a likert scale from 1 to 5. The result showed that the main reasons for missing lectures and tutorials included being: busy, sick, at work, bored, technology alternatives (material available online) and the teacher. Excluding the lifestyle factors, the biggest influences on student attendance are their attitudes to learning and motivation such as †the topic was boring† and †I don’t like the subject† (Massingham amp; Herrington, 2006, p. 96). To investigate the involvement in learning process they developed measures such as breadth and depth of learning, where breadth was measured in terms of attendance and depth in terms of class participation. For mandatory classes, such as tutorials, lifestyle factors had the most influence on non-attendance (breadth) such as sickness or work, while motivational factors were most influential regarding participation (depth) at tutorials as lack of interest or motivation act as barriers to tutorial learning (Massingham amp; Herrington, 2006, p. 96). As for lecture absenteeism, where attendance is voluntary, the motivational factors dominated reasons for non-attendance. Interestingly enough, the process-, style- and personality of the teacher proved to be the major influential factor concerning student attitudes for attending lectures. There is a significant amount of students who do not attend because they sense they †can pass the subject without learning†, †the lectures are boring† and feel that lectures are a waste of time. This highlight the importance that a good relationship with the student and teacher is vital for student learning- process and outcome as a teaching process that can spur students’ motivation may change their attitude towards lecture and may be more prone to attend. In the end, Massingham and Herrington conclude that attendance has a clear impact on performance in that students who attend lectures and tutorials performed better on all assessment tasks, especially the final examination. In their discussion they suggest that students’ whose attitude towards learning is †inappropriate† (those who see no value in the teaching aspect in lectures) might have been developed because †they have experienced a level of success in educational environments that do not support deep understanding and a ’thirst’ for knowledge and understanding† (Massingham amp; Herrington, 2006, p. 8). They advise that the teaching-centred approach of today, where students receive knowledge and instructions, should shift to a more student-centred approach where students can put knowledge into real life context and get a more in-depth understanding of the information they receive. In relation, students who are absent from class gather their necessary information from material available online which in a sense serves the same purpose as the teacher-centred approach, where information is memorised and replicated for the sole intention to pass assessment tasks and exams. In order for these students’ to attend lectures, the teachers’ attitudes towards teaching and technology need a change for the subsequent change in students’ attitude and approach. This may well induce non-motivated students’ to start attending class if they perceive the teachers’ learning process during lectures can fulfill a certain type of value they cannot  get a hold of online. Theory Conclusion Based on these theories our hypothesis is that lectures are relevant for student learning but not in the way we first expected and not in terms of pure knowledge gain. We believe students will say that lecture attendance is important for their learning while also stating that they do not gain a lot of new knowledge from attending them. The sensory stimulation theory express in clarity that lectures are not an effective method for gaining new knowledge since lectures use hearing as its dominant sense stimulation which has been proven inferior to sight, this is also backed by cognitive orientation that favours factors more suitable for problem solutions and contemplations. What speaks in favour for lectures is the behavioural and social orientations, we believe that the benefits brought up by these orientations is not about gaining new knowledge from the lectures. We believe that lectures becomes important for students by enabling teachers to use reinforcements to make students more effective at acquiring their own knowledge and by providing a framework and stability in the learning process. Lectures also provides a valuable social setting where students can improve their knowledge. This correlates to Massingham amp; Herrington’s article stating that students’ attitude and approach to lectures are highly influenced by the teaching style applied in class, as a constructivist teaching method can induce students’ to actively participate in solving problems, process the information in their own way and use it in real life context and thus get a deeper understanding of the subject at hand. This would change the â€Å"pragmatic† students, who aim to obtain just the right amount of information to be successful in the subject, to â€Å"idealist† students who genuinely enjoy attending lectures based on a change in motivational factors. We do not imply that lectures should be eliminated entirely, but rather replace the instructivist approach to a more constructivist one. Criticism of sources Smith, M. K. (2003) â€Å"Learning theory†. This is an general article about learning theories and is by no way specific to lecture attendance and its benefits however the orientations described in it is still important tools for analyzing lectures and they make for a solid theory foundation that we can build on. We deem that this article and its author in a credible and reliable source. Lee Dunn â€Å"Learning and Teaching Briefing Papers Series† (2002). This article has relevant and good theories and it is a credible source. This article is however quite short and not very thorough in some aspects, so we have mainly used it as supplement to other theories. P. Massingham and T. Herringtons (2006) â€Å"Does Attendance Matter? An Examination of Student Attitudes, Participation, Performance and Attendance†. S. G. Buckles amp; M. E. McMahon (1971)â€Å"Further Evidence on the Value of Lectures in Elementary Economics† limit themselves to one class which can be seen as insufficient to consider it a decisive study. The fact that it is quite old can also prove to be a factor as, (Dolnicar, 2005) in particular point out, that student mentality has changed drastically since the 1970’s where students’ motivation factors such as stimulation of interests, enthusiasm and gaining knowledge dominated (as opposed to respondents in her survey) would infer different results had the research been conducted in recent times. S. Dolnicar (2005) â€Å"Quality in Higher Education; Should We Still Lecture or Just Post Examination Questions on the Web? the nature of the shift towards pragmatism in undergraduate lecture attendance†. Methodology In our survey we want to understand to what extent students appreciate lectures as a way of learning, and also what factors affecting whether or not a student attends lecture. We want to know about how students pass their exams, since in our time here at the university we have experienced that there are not necessarily a clear correlation between lecture and a passing grade that can be traced back to lecture alone. Although it can be hard to just ask questions regarding how much you are attending lecture and what grades they got on the last exam, because the students that are having a high degree of attendance might also be the most diligent students and might also study very hard outside of lecture. Therefore we will focus more on how each and every student think on how and from where their way of learning is. We will focus on attendance rates in the general sense, as a previous study found no significant deviations from the subject-specific to the general evaluation of students (Dolnicar, 2005, p. 07). Epistemology and Ontology â€Å"An epistemological issue concerns the question of what is (or should be) regarded as acceptable knowledge in a discipline. † (Bryman amp; Bell, 2007, p. 16). Bryman amp; Bell proposes that there are different stances including Positivism, interpretivism and realism. Our epistemological stance is a bit ambiguous because we share a lot of the characteristics with positivism in the sense of how we conducted the survey, but an interpretive epistemological stance regarding how we have interpreted the results and how we have analyzed it. We think in our case that it is impossible to adopt a full positivist way of conducting our research, but we have some positivistic elements, because we have used a quantitative survey approach and the questions did not leave any room for â€Å"open questions† to the respondents of our survey, but rather had prepared answers were they could choose among alternatives. furthermore, we have used some statistical features in order to achieve our analysis, but the nature of our subject calls for an interpretive approach, since â€Å"People and their institutions is fundamentally different from that of natural science† (Bryman amp; Bell, 2007, p. 7). Since we are are dealing with people and how they perceive lecture, we would propose that we have used a mix of these epistemological stances. In our ontological considerations we believe that our target group has constructionism as ontological position. Constructionism means that a social phenomena and their meanings are continually changing (Bryman amp; Bell, 2007, p. 23) which we think is true since, how the students view the lecture as a way of learning depends on several factors including what kind of teachers they had up to present and what teachers they will have in the future. Also, how the talks goes among the students of how to learn and among several other variables. Furthermore, for us as researchers, the ontological position are also constructionist. Since we change how we look at things whilst we are writing this report and acquiring new knowledge. Research Strategy We are going to do a quantitative survey through the internet. We saw this as the because it is a fast and easy way to get answers for our study. A quantitative survey is a good tool to get many responses in a timely manner and we can collect the data and analyse the answers in an easy way. A quantitative survey might also be good when handling sensitive topics. Although we are not sure whether this topic is sensitive for people or not. furthermore, the way this topic can be sensitive should not be ignored. Our respondents might think that their personal opinion about lectures and their attendance habits are very personal. Although if we however conducted a qualitative survey we would hold their answers for our self due to ethical reasons, but since we are in the same class (or the same program) and they might not want to share their true opinions about the subject, a quantitative approach is therefore appropriate. urthermore, a major disadvantage using a quantitative survey is that the ability to probe answers are limited. With the right questions we can acquire a fair picture using our survey, regarding how students perceive lecture. With a quantitative survey method it is easy to find a common denominator for how they are learning and their attitudes towards lecture in general. Our assumption about the results is that student will state that they do not gain a significant amount of new knowledge by attending lectures whilst still stating that it is important for their learning outcome to attend them. This is due to them gaining benefits mentioned in our hypothesis that gives them greater structure in their self studies and a social learning environment that will be more effective for their learning outcome, these benefits are not easily realized compared to pure knowledge gain. We will use a quantitative research approach in order to confirm or reject our own assumptions in the theory part. We have decided to make our sample students from the International Business Program that is studying in their first and second year. Firstly because we have very good access to that group of people, and we understand their situation, which is very useful for us in order to get a deeper understanding of the responses from the survey. Furthermore, we believe that we will get a high response rate from that group since at least the people in our class are in the same situation as we are and understand how important it is for us to get responses. As far we understand are the structure of courses and especially programs are very different, for example science students might need to go to lectures in order to access to lab due to security reasons or if there is a highly practical course and lecture is the main way of learning. We think it is important to limit our sample to a rather homogeneous group, because how students perceived lecture as a way of learning depends very much on what type of subject they are studying. Preconceptions and values â€Å"Values reflect either the personal belief or the feelings of the researcher† (Bryman amp; Bell, 2007. p. 29). We would like to think that all research should be value free and objective, but on the other hand it is very hard to keep the values that a researcher hold totally in check. Many researchers nowadays instead chose to write about their values and preconceptions that might have influenced the research (Bryman amp; Bell 2007, p 30-31). Our preconceptions and beliefs about the subject can be very useful for the reader of the research to be aware of because whether we want it or not it will affect the research either consciously which we of course try to avoid but also subconsciously, which are harder to evade. We believe that lecture is not always the best way of learning nowadays when technology enables us to get information on whatever subject existing in the world in a few seconds, and that lecture serves more as a structural tool to understand what is important in a course. furthermore, lectures can be a very good way to understand how a subject relates to reality when lecturers are providing examples which can be used to understand theories and concepts. Although the way of how lecturers are providing examples are highly individual and therefore not something that are general for lectures as a whole. Lectures can also be used to enable interest in the subject when a teacher are passionate about it and can communicate in a clear and entertaining manner. Our experiences in our life can affect a lot of things in our research, everything to the choice of subject and to how we interpret the results of the survey. As we wrote earlier, we will try to have an open sense and try to avoid being bias in our approach. Research design In order to answer our initial question as just as possible we need give a thoughtful consideration on how to approach this social research thesis. Hence we have to ensure that the relevance and the functionality of the observed data is consistent with our initial question. Practically this means that we have to grasp the core essence of our thesis and adapt the research so that all evidence presented will answer the question as unambiguously as possible. In our study we are conducting social exploratory research and thereby strive to find explanatory evidence and patterns in social phenomena, hence we are answering the question ‘what is going on here? without explicit expectations. Another important issue in our interpretation of the results is that we should not confuse causation with correlation, since the implication is indeed very different and can have huge impact on assumptions. Especially since human social behaviour is complex and arguably has high amounts of unknown variables it can be problematic to arrive at rational and logical causal statements. Therefore most causal assumptions in social science is probabili stic rather than deterministic. Essentially this tells us that in in our analysis we can not make completely justified deterministic explanations but only state and improve probabilistic explanations. Hence we can claim that a certain factor may increase the likelihood of a specific outcome but never give certainty about outcomes. Collection of data Our research is latitudinal, which means we will do our survey in order to explore students attitudes towards lecture at a specific point of time. The respondents were people from International business program year 1 and 2. 6 people did the survey, 64 % male and 36 % female. Although we did not try to aim any specific gender. We made the survey through a website on internet, after that we linked the survey to a secret facebook group with only people in IBP class 1 and 2. We posted the link in that group since that is the fastest and cheap way to reach our target sample without any interference from other people that do not study the International business program. More over, the members of the group are closely controlled to study IBP. The survey was open to answer for five days, after that we removed the link and it was no longer possible to answer. The questions and answers can be found in the results part. We asked questions to understand how students perceive lectures as a way of learning, by asking different questions if they think lecture is important for their learning outcome. Further in the questionnaire we ask them to say what role lectures play for them. The second question was suppose to explain the answers from the first one by letting the student rank prepared alternatives according to how relevant they thought they were. We also asked questions regarding their own attendance rate, to see if their view of lecture correspond with their own actions. Analysing of data Our prime tool to analyze our result from the survey is SPSS. This due to the fact that this program is very user friendly and well suited our purpose. We have chosen exploratory data analysis as approach to analyze our set of data. This due to the fact that this approach encourages its users to search for patterns and main characteristics in data sets, and therefore fulfills our criterias and research objective. Regarding our set of data we could use all the participants that completed the entire survey. We suspect that approximately twenty persons aborted the survey mid way through or simply failed to submit the results, since theses results always will remain unknown we will not consider them. Furthermore as we have stated before we cannot make deterministic explanations but solely probabilistic explanations due to the essence of our paper. This is especially important since it will hugely effect on how we look upon and try to explain our research. Truth criteria One of the fundamental cornerstones when conducting research it that the containing information and its conclusions can be justified as both reliable and valid. Essentially these two factors is measurements in which tells us whether the research can be justified or not. Validity addresses the concerns regarding unjust or misleading indicators, this can both be indicators that is false but also those that might not truly be relevant to the addressed problem or phenomena. To sum up vality tells us if the indicators used really can or should be used to measure the studied concept (Bryman amp; Bell, 2007, p. 65). The validity of our survey can be argued to infinity and beyond. This due to the fact that our field of subject is indeed social science. As stated in the research design we do not try to imply that we have found an all grasping formula or conclusion that could include or be applied in all scenarios. We rather suggest that our research shall investigate and hopefully bring light upon the probability and likelihood of a specific outcome related to our chosen research field. This matter however should not be seen as something that necessarily should lower our validity, but rather the opposite. Arguable since we are well aware and have acknowledged the limitations as well as the sensitivity of our research we better than many others should be be able to tell and justify what indicators and factors that should be included to help our research. This statement could further be justified by to the fact that we have done tremendous research regarding the subject. To some degree researchers much always rely on previous and not self tested results. In that sense we have put some of our research’s validity in the hands of previous researchers results. However in the end we are the have ones that holds accountability in this research. In our selection of valid sources we have tried to mainly rely upon consensus gentium and our own ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. With the same justification as we stated towards the concern of viability we also use to argue that our research also can be looked upon as reliable. Ethical considerations Ethical issues might arise in different stages when conducting a study, although we have not experienced any ethical dilemmas due to the nature of our study. Furthermore, We have made our survey anonymous due to four ethical principles â€Å"whether there is harm to the participants, lack of informed consent, invasion of privacy, or whether deception is involved† (Bryman amp; Bell, 2007, p. 132). The first point to discuss is if its harm to participants it might be unethical, depending on what ethical stance you possess. Harm can entail a number of faces: physical harm, harm to participants’ development or self esteem; stress, harm to career prospects or future development (Bryman amp; bell 2007, p. 133). If the study was not conducted anonymous and that our results leaked in some way, it might had resulted in harm to the participants in terms of reputation or in future employment opportunities. For example, you answer questions regarding how many lectures you attend, which might be sensitive for some people. When we presented the survey for our participants we simply provided them with the information that we did a study regarding lectures. Surely the participants could by analyzing our questions get a hint on what kind of matter we were intending to research. Our belief was however that we would keep our impact on the results to a minimum amount by not revealing our agenda and research field to clearly. Results The amount of respondents that started our survey was in total eighty-seven unique persons. However the actual amount that completed the entire survey ended up being sixty-six participating respondents. That gives us an overall reach to approximately 48% of our entire segment, and a response rate equal to nearly 36% of the segment. Of the respondents 64% was male and 36% was female. This tells us that is was also eighteen more males than females. The outcome from the survey will be presented question by question. Q2. How many lectures do you attend on average? (% of total amount) Here the respondents had to choose between the following alternative answers, 100-80%, 80-60%, 60-40%, 40-20% and 20-0% attendance. The outcome was distributed followingly: Q3. Do you perceive that you get value from attending lectures? The alternative provided to this question was, Always, Almost always, Sometimes, Rarely and Never. The outcome was distributed followingly: Do you consider it important to attend lectures for your learning outcome? On this question the respondents could choose to grade the mportance as either, Highly important, Important, Neutral, Unimportant and lastly Highly unimportant. On this question the results was disturbed followingly: Q5. Please indicate your average level of satisfaction with: In this question we asked the respondents to rate the satisfaction on the following topics, Overall education experience, Overall lecture level, Teaching quality at lectures and Class environment during lectures. The responses was distributed accordingly: Q6. During a course by which medium do you think you learn the most? (Please distribute 100% between the available options). In this question the respondents needed to allocate 100% between the following learning mediums, Course book, Internet, Slides, Earlier knowledge, From peers and Other. The outcome from this was: Q7. Rate the following on a 5 to 1 scale the influence these variables have on your learning during lectures (5 being â€Å"very much† and 1 â€Å"almost zero†) The variables we asked to be graded on the scale was, Teaching style, Motivation, Class environment (Ex quiet or noisy) and Lack of discipline. The respondents answered followingly: Q8. Would you like to have more available lecture hours? The available answers was simply either Yes or No. The response was the following: Q9. Grade the following factors in accordance to their level of significance on your decision making whether to attend a lecture or not. The factors that we asked the respondents to grade was, Bad weather, Lack of sleep, Inconvenient time of day, Part time work, Distance to school, Personal interest in course, Other plans, Relations with classmates, Size of class, Use of relevant examples in lectures, Availability of lecture material online, Quality/clarity of lecture, The lectures ability to communicate, The lectures ability to engage/entertain and lastly Lack of motivation. The grading that we asked the participants to use was Very insignificant, Insignificant, Neutral, Significant and Very significant. The result was following: Q10. Kindly distribute the occasions when you have decided to don’t attend class as either justified or unjustified in percentage (100%). In this question we asked the participants to allocate the occasions when they did not go to lecture as either justified or unjustified according to their own perception and values. The result that we acquired was: Q11. Kindly rate the accuracy of the following statement when considering what role the lectures fulfill for you. This time we asked them to consider different roles that lectures can be seen as and thereafter make them rank their answers depending on if they agree or disagree with the statement. The roles we used in the question was Highlighting the main importance of the course, Give clarification and wholeness to the subject, Inspiration/motivational source, Good way to learn, Meetingplace for peers and friends, To feel better reduce stress/guilt and To structure your self studies. The options they could use to rank the statements was, Agree, Somewhat agree, Neutral, Somewhat disagree and Disagree. The result was following: Analysis As this is a social study we have not conducted as hypothesis test with confidence intervals, instead we have analysed answers with our hypothesis to see if they match. We concluded our theory part with the hypothesis that students will not gain a lot of actual knowledge from attending lectures, rather they would gain other benefits from attending them, such as social, structural and general improvements in their self studies (Smith. 003, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c, 1999d). This hypothesis was based on the cognitive orientation from Smith’s work and the sensory stimulation theory from Dunn’s work together with (Massingham amp; Herrington, 2006), these theories favoured other learning methods over lectures. The results from our survey are fairly accurate following this hypothesis, when looking at question 4 were 68% of respond ents was neutral or stated that it was important to attend lectures for their learning outcome. This is in contrast with question 6 where the respondents said that only 15. 55% of their course knowledge was gained from lecture attendance and question 3 where 86. 37% of respondents was neutral or felt that they did not perceive that they get any value from attending lectures. This controversy can be explained by using the different learning orientations. The fact is that respondents feel that they do not get any pure knowledge from lecture attendance whilst they still feel that it is important for their learning outcome to attend lectures. If we look at the sensory stimulation theory and the cognitive orientations they confirm that in terms of pure knowledge lectures should not be very affective. The behavioural and social orientations on the other hand brings up other positive aspects gained through lectures then just pure knowledge. By attending lectures and work with learning in a social environment, students will not only learn from each other but the lecturer will be able to influence their study techniques and enable them to create better consistency in their studies (Smith. 2003, 1999a, 1999d). We believe, with backup from these orientations, that these other positive aspects are the reasons for respondents stating that it is important to attend lectures whilst they also state that the only gain a small amount of knowledge by doing so. One thing that is a bit harder to explain is the fact that the respondents stated that it was important to attend lectures for their learning outcome but still they did not perceive that they gained any value from doing so, we believe that this is because the benefits we mentioned above is more intangible than actual knowledge and therefore harder spot, creating this contradictory situation. The â€Å"teacher style† and â€Å"motivational† options in question 7 were the dominant factors regarding influences of learning during lectures, which brings the questions as to why lectures received such a low response rate in question 6. This can be a result from an instructivist teaching style (where students’ passively accept information and knowledge from the lecturer and later work alone and regurgitate the accepted information and concepts) (Buckles amp; McMahon, 1971, p. 141) that affect the low response rate for lectures in question 6. The answer might have been different had a more student-centered style been applied, where students gain a deeper understanding of new information through close interpretation of new knowledge and more extensive executions of theories and concepts. The answers in questions 7 do not themselves tell us what students feel the actual lectures give them, but what influence them most in learning during lectures, and since lectures play only a minor role as a learning medium we can conclude that a more teacher-centered style is performed during class, that is they receive the necessary information and process it at home. A students motivation is also a factor when it comes to learning influences as the teacher-style cannot capture the students’ interest or attention if it does not require their immediate involvement. In question 11, respondents felt â€Å"Highlighting the main importance of the course†, â€Å"Give clarification and wholeness to the subject† and â€Å"To structure your self studies† were the main values fulfilled when attending lectures, compared to â€Å"Good way to learn† and â€Å"To feel better-Reduce stress/guilt† which respondents felt lectures did not entirely satisfy. This further confirm our hypothesis that lectures are not especially effective in the case of students gaining additional comprehension of the subject (Buckles amp; McMahon, 1971, p. 141), but more as a way to enhance your self study structure and get a clear overview of what you should focus on during your self studies. Additionally, it proves that students’ are attending lectures for other purposes than an expected learning outcome and according to our survey students’ perceived value in attending lectures are to obtain information to take on the applied literature with a proper approach. Discussion After conducting this survey and looking at lectures in the light of a more solid theoretical background that we now possess, we have all started to change our view of the importance of lectures and what we gain from attending them. We have previously believed, as most of our fellow students do (as shown in the survey), that the perceived benefits gained from lecture attendance are of slim value. This thesis paper has shown us that this is not the case, lectures are of great value in the regards that they create a social educational environment and enable the lecturer to influence our study technique and the way we conduct our studies, even if these benefits are difficult to spot and easy to underestimate. In the regard of actual knowledge gain, lectures are still lacking when compared to course literature and exercise work, this leads us to the problem that students will only attend lectures if they perceive any value in attending the class. This value is based on the teachers competence, process and generating understanding (Massingham, Herrington, 2006). A problem then occurs when the reality is that most lecturers at university level are either Ph. D. students or scientist, both with some pedagogical education, but it is not as extensive when compared to gymnasium and high school teachers. In both the Ph. D. student and scientist case they are required to perform these lectures by their universities, so it is reasonable to believe that this tends to make lecturing a secondary priority for them, which is bound to create a certain lack of motivation as well. These factors can create a certain lack of competence in the teaching aspect and the lecturers ability to generate understanding, which will have a negative impact on the overall quality of the lecture and the benefits students gain from attending them. When looking at lectures in this light it is easy to imagine that the actual benefits gained from attending lectures are easily forgotten and mitigated by uninspiring lecturers. Conclusion Our research purpose was to find out if students experience lectures as a good means of gaining knowledge and whether students perceive lectures as beneficial or not when it comes to education and academic outcome. We found through research papers and our own survey that the actual knowledge gained from lectures are, as we expected, lower than what it is gained from other sources such as; course literature reading, problem/exercise solutions and course web page. Students still perceived that it is important for their learning outcome to attend lectures and this due to the structural and social learning benefits discussed in our hypothesis. During our research we acquired a comprehensible overview of what could possibly be modified in the IBP lecture structure. A more student-centered approach could be applied in order to get students to actively participate in subject-related theories and concepts to gain a deeper understanding on how to interpret them in real life, and thus get a more essential view of topics of the courses.