STUDENTS’ READINESS FOR ONE-SEMESTER INTERNATIONAL ACADEMIC MOBILITY – A COMPARATIVE STUDY AMONG POLISH AND UZBEK COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS

Many countries from the European Union and Central Asia are expanding their student mobility programmes as an element of their higher education systems. Those programmes support such mobility organisationally and financially.

The paper presents the results of research among Polish and Uzbek students of Computer Science (CS), aimed at detecting their perception of the opportunity to participate in a one-semester international academic mobility.

During the study mainly four hypotheses were tested:
H1. CS students have a positive attitude towards the mobility programme.
H2. CS students want to take part in academic exchanges.
H3. CS students perceive the international exchange programme as an opportunity to gain knowledge and skills, and enhance their future position in the labour market.
H4. Family reasons and a sense of terrorist threat are the primary causes of the students’ lack of desire to travel.

The research was carried out by a questionnaire among CS students of two universities: the Lublin University of Technology (Lublin, Poland) and the National University of Uzbekistan (Tashkent, Uzbekistan). The study involved 130 Polish and 90 Uzbek undergraduate CS students in different years of study. The same research methodology, survey and results processing were used in both studies.
The paper presents the detailed research methodology, study results, and discussion concerning differences between the perception of the problem by the Polish and Uzbek students.

Knowledge of English among Polish students is better than among the Uzbeks. 61% of Polish students rated their knowledge of English as good and very good, while only 49% Uzbeks thought so. On the other hand, Uzbek students showed a much greater willingness and readiness to participate in one-semester international academic mobility. Expectations and fears of both groups about international academic exchange are presented in the paper.