Abstract
Advising systems play an important role not only in the student development process but also in student retention. Academic scholars across the world have been emphasising the presence of an effective student advising system as one of the requirements of a standard educational set up. To ensure student satisfaction with the advising system, institutions conduct satisfaction studies to monitor the effectiveness of their system and to understand key issues such as influencing factors and the association between demographic and influencing variables. The current paper addresses these key issues. A survey was conducted during Fall 2012 with students from across the GCC at three colleges in Muscat, Oman, to identify the factors influencing student satisfaction with advising system. In our study twenty-six variables were formed into five factors. The results show that student satisfaction with the advising systems is highly influenced by ‘feel good’, ‘critical situations’ and ‘IT’ factors. It was also found that satisfaction is independent of gender but not of the education level: lower level students were found to be more satisfied with advising systems than the students at the higher level. Student satisfaction has a significant positive correlation with training/orientation on advising and perceived quickness in solving students’ problems.
Citation
Al-Asmi, K. and Thumiki, V.R.R. (2014), "Student satisfaction with advising systems in higher education: an empirical study in Muscat", Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 3-21. https://doi.org/10.18538/lthe.v11.n1.154
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014 Khalfan Al-Asmi and Venkat Ram Raj Thumiki
License
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
Acknowledgements
Publisher's note: The Publisher would like to inform the reader that the article “Student satisfaction with advising systems in higher education: an empirical study in Muscat” has changed pagination. Previous pagination was pp. 1-19. The updated pagination for the article is now pp. 3-21. The Publisher apologises for any inconvenience caused.