BARRIERS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION OF FOREIGN STUDENTS AT THE LUBLIN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

During the course of their studies, students have an opportunity to take a semester at a university abroad. It is usually done within the Erasmus+ programme. Another popular form of education is to continue master degree studies at a university abroad after finishing bachelor level studies at a university at home. This results in a big number of foreign students studying at the Lublin University of Technology (LUT). This phenomenon is especially noticeable at Computer Science (CS) studies. During the winter semester of 2017, ninety nine foreign Erasmus students have come to study CS at the LUT. The number of foreign students is rising – during the two preceding semesters we had respectively 78 and 52 students. Because of such significant numbers of students, it was necessary to identify barriers they encountered during their education, in order to prepare a plan of their reduction. This should make it possible to improve the educational offer and improve foreign students’ living and learning conditions during their stay in Lublin. Meetings with Erasmus students allowed to identify the main issues. They were: language problems, unequal level of students’ IT skills, financial problems and a long term of staying away from home.

The goal of this paper is to examine the scale of the challenge faced by LUT CS students and examine if they have serious problems while staying in Lublin and attending CS courses. To asses this we have put forward four working hypotheses:
H1. For some LUT Erasmus CS students using a foreign language is a problem.
H2. Living far away from home is difficult for LUT Erasmus CS students.
H3. Finances are a problem for LUT Erasmus CS students.
H4. LUT Erasmus CS students have various level of preparation for our courses.

To confirm these hypotheses we have surveyed a group of 23 CS Erasmus students and interviewed them about their experiences in the research area.

The results, obtained in the survey analysis, revealed that students answers are varied. Over a half of them noticed some problems with communication. This shows that the LUT should execute additional language tests before accepting students for English language studies.
A problem of living away from home was raised by a small group of students. Most of them had no serious problems. The same situation concerned finances. One group of students declared that the Erasmus project subsidies are enough to pay for their stay in Lublin. The other group, having similar number of respondents, answered that they had to use their own money on top of the subsidies.

A more serious problem that was raised in surveys was an unequal level of students’ education before starting CS courses at the LUT. A significant number of students noticed this problem, and this was confirmed by lecturers. This shows the necessity of testing students before the course and dividing them into groups according to their level.

The case study confirms that a part of the foreign students community have the problems mentioned above. The scale of these problems varies and there are possibilities of improving the situation in many areas.