Asmaa Amin Hussein
University of Duhok

Abstract

This presentation aims to provide a number of the major challenges encountered during the application of the Bologna Process (BP) by some of the colleges at the University of Duhok (UoD). The Bologna Process, mainly a European education reform process designed to offer high quality tertiary education in European regions, was initially introduced into the University of Duhok in 2019 through a series of intensively- organized workshops.

Three years after its implementation in a selected number of college departments at UoD, a number of challenges to the application of BP have arisen that call for immediate attention. Some of these challenges are related to the large sized classes, mostly yielding poor student performance and dissatisfactory learning outcomes, lack of proper infrastructure to meet the requirements of teaching within the guidelines of the BP, shortage of teaching staff, and the number of examination attempts to which a student is entitled to eventually obtain the required ECTS’s, the Kurdish student and study culture, etc. In addition, the processing of the students’ records and credits, constitutes yet another challenge.

These challenges were deduced through semi-structured interviews consisting of open-ended questions that were conducted with the Heads of five departments adopting the process in the university. In addition, a questionnaire was constructed and distributed to the teachers in these departments to gather the quantitative data related to these challenges.

To account for these and other challenges, the present work provides some recommendations for a better application of the Bologna Process at the University of Duhok.