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To understand what differences exist between first year biology and final year biochemistry students in University College Dublin so that measures can be taken to address those needs. It examines student's awareness and use of different sources of information for their course‐work, their use of the (E‐) library, why they visited the university library, the type of assistance they had received in using the library as well as the type of instruction they would like to receive in the future.

A questionnaire was designed and administered to both sample groups to investigate the information‐seeking behaviour of these students in different years of their studies.

The study highlights the positive aspects of seeking information from the student's perspective as well as the barriers they encountered when seeking course‐related information. The findings show that there are differences in the extent to which sources of information are used by students in different years of their studies. Apart from web sites and web‐based lecture notes, lack of awareness is the primary reason why undergraduate biology students did not use the library's electronic databases.

The study does not distinguish between third and fourth year students in the final year sample.

One of the key recommendations is that bibliographic instruction should meet the specific information needs of first year biology and final year biochemistry students as well as greater liaison between faculty and librarians in the area of collection development and information literacy.

This paper establishes the importance of a cross‐sectional study in understanding the difference in students' information needs in different years of their studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and understand whether students who complete a work placement as part of their degree course achieve a better classification of degree than those students who do not include a placement.

The study was conducted by extracting the profiles of computing students from the database of a UK based university. Data collected included the marks and academic performance throughout the course of the students’ degree, educational background, age and gender. In total, the profiles of 290 students were analysed to understand the impact of a work placement on their degree.

The results show that 58 per cent of those students who had been on a work placement achieved an upper second or first class degree, whereas only 37 per cent of non‐placement students achieved the same academic standards. Furthermore, this study also established that this result is not because work placement students are academically more capable to begin with, as originally believed by many researchers.

Direction for further research would involve investigating different cohorts of students and in different subject areas. However, the initial findings from this study could be used as a starting point in an attempt to encourage students to include a work placement as part of their degree.

Rather than simply performing a comparison of degree classifications between the placement and non‐placement students, this study goes further and investigates student performance during their entire three or four year degree course. Furthermore, this study also considers influences such as age, gender and educational background on the results.

There is strong evidence that year-long work placements make students more employable and produces better academic performance. Despite this, UK participation rates remain stubbornly low. The authors examine the influence of academic performance on students' willingness and ability to complete work placements.

This study’s novel conceptual framework distinguishes students by their intentions regarding work placements indicated at enrolment as well as whether they completed a work placement. The authors use a sample of 226 business and economics students, employing propensity score weighted multiple regression to analyse the influence of academic performance.

The results indicate that academic performance has a significant influence on the decision to include a work placement option at enrolment. For those students who do pursue work placements, first-year academic performance had a significantly positive impact on their ability to secure a placement job. Finally, completion of a work placement was beneficial to final year academic performance.

Work placements are beneficial. Since low academic performance deters students from pursuing such opportunities, universities may need to communicate the benefits better to encourage greater interest. Further, universities need to realistically manage the expectations of students with low academic performance who want to do work placements and provide targeted support during the application process. Furthermore, alternatives to work placements should be provided.

This research adds to the literature investigating the influence of academic performance through academic self-concept on students' investment decisions to include a work placement in their degree study and in students' ability to secure a work placement.

The main objective of this study is to discuss the needs and the information utilization patterns of periodical literature amongst the pre‐final and final year undergraduate students in Nigerian universities. As a result, the study attempts to solve the following problems: What are the information needs of undergraduate students in relation to periodical literature? How do they go about seeking such information needed in periodical literature? How do they make valuable use of the information available to them in such periodical literature? What should the university libraries do to meet the information needs of these students in relation to periodical literature?

The researcher aimed at studying periodical literature use by the pre‐final and final year undergraduate students in Nigerian universities. It is impossible to sample the entire population hence a cross‐sectional descriptive Survey design was employed as the most suitable because the population under study was fairly large and heterogeneous. A questionnaire was designed to know the attitude, interest and value of the pre‐final and final year undergraduate students. In order to have an accurate assessment, questionnaire was designed and distributed to collect vital information from the undergraduate students. Also, observation and direct oral interviews were also employed to supplement the information provided through the questionnaires collected.

Findings show that 70 per cent respondents used the library once every week, undergraduate students need and utilize periodical literature materials for their information needs, the general purpose of using periodical literature was mainly for research among others.

Useful in determining the periodical use by students as well as assisting serials librarian in planning.

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of undergraduate students toward plagiarism and its change (if any) during their four-year study at a Pakistani university.

The students who participated were majoring in electrical engineering; there were 106 first-year students and 127 final-year students. The students were asked to complete a plagiarism attitude scale (Harris, 2011) survey and reveal their attitudes toward plagiarism.

Rasch analysis was conducted on the scale to optimize its measurement qualities. Analysis indicated no significant changes in the attitude of the students, which remained very lenient and soft toward plagiarism despite the strict policy of the higher education commission of Pakistan and the university. These results indicate that the students lacked an understanding of what constitutes as plagiarism. Therefore, more awareness toward the ethical aspects of plagiarism is needed to reduce academic misconduct.

Plagiarism is an academic offense yet very few studies have been conducted to understand the perceptions of the students in order to minimize it.

Placement-based learning is claimed to benefit educational outcomes in undergraduate programmes, with students gaining employability skills and the application of skill-sets in “real world” situations. Most courses incorporate experiential learning; however, work placements remain exclusive to the aims of the academic programme. The purpose of this paper is to explore the changing learning motivations between students enroled on: a practical-based programme, involving work placement (BA adventure education (Ad Ed)); and a study-based programme (BSc sport and exercise science (SES)). In addition, motivation was examined between courses at each year.

A 44 item Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire was completed by first and final year undergraduates studying BA Ad Ed and BSc SES courses in the academic year 2011/2012. Questionnaires were triangulated with focus groups, lecturer observations and statistical analyses.

Learning motivation was influenced by: knowledge of academic grades; link between theoretical content and work experience; opportunity for reflection; and multidisciplinary nature of degree programmes. Furthermore, the majority of final year Ad Ed students showed understanding of the job market, degree transferability and career availability upon graduation.

Where placement experience prepares British undergraduate learners for employment and provides insight into career demand, placements may also demotivate, particularly where careers do not necessitate degree qualification.

Despite the availability of retail management graduates, retailers continue to recruit graduates from any discipline. A key issue, therefore, is to what extent are retail degrees developing the competences of prime importance to retailers? Conversely, considering retailer graduate recruitment objectives, how well do students understand retailers’ priorities amongst competences in graduate selection? As a relatively recent management profession, do the retail competences differ from other more established management disciplines such as finance? This paper examines these issues through the results of a survey of employer and undergraduate perceptions of competence development in undergraduate degrees. Findings suggest that retail degrees provided a high level of perceived competence development. However, the strongest focus was not necessarily on those competences the retailers most wished to see in applicants. Furthermore, the competence profile of placement work was no closer to the retailers’ selection priorities than that of academic work. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main implications for retailers and retail management degrees.

The aim of this paper is to gauge the ethical views of male and female final year Accounting students in South Africa and to compare the results with similar studies performed in Australia and Ireland. The study also discusses the desirability of including an ethics course in the Accounting curriculum as a strategy to improve the ethical standing of the accounting profession. The most important self‐reported factor that influenced students’ ethical behaviour was the fear of getting caught. It was recommended that professional accountancy bodies should be more transparent in respect of their disciplinary procedures in order to discourage unethical behaviour. Ethics training initiatives should also address whistleblowing, and whistleblowing should be encouraged. Furthermore, universities should integrate ethics more fully into all courses in the Accounting curriculum of prospective professional accountants.

Civil engineering students at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology generally find the final year research project very daunting. In most cases it is the first time that they are not “learning” passively by sitting in lectures, receiving notes and worked out examples, memorising the material and then writing an examination to demonstrate their “competency”. Suddenly learning comes by doing, and they are faced with the challenge of executing a significant research project. For students who do not have good management skills, this becomes a very difficult task. To address this problem, staff have, over the past decade, integrated project management with the research project to the extent that it has now become one subject with two final year credits. This means that students learn how to use project management skills to manage the research project, which runs over one year. Project management skills integrated with a rigid structure, complemented by lecturer support in a web‐based e‐learning environment, has been developed to assist students in completing the research project. This has proved to be very successful and students have commented that without the newly acquired project management skills, they would not have been able to complete the projects on time. The results indicate that the integration of project management skills can relieve the role reversal entrapment problem. However, interventions to prepare the students more adequately must be considered over the first three years of study. The paper presents the historical background to the problem, an overview of how the revised methodology is being implemented, and it indicates how e‐learning is used to manage the course.

This conspectus attempts to achieve three objectives: