Abstract—A quantitative study addressing student’s
perceptions of three higher education institutions CORE
curriculum within the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study
utilized survey methodology to collect the perceptions of
students across all four levels of freshman, sophomore, junior,
and senior students. The data collected was analyzed using
percentages for descriptive statistics and T-test for identifying
relationships between the dependent and independent variables,
the strength of the relationships was determined using (phi)
since the variable were all categorical. The literature review of
the following study will cover the Role of CORE curriculum in
post-secondary education. The frame work of the current study
is that the students’ perception of their university curriculum
affects the effectiveness of the learning process, and is to be
considered in universities curriculum reviews. The major
findings of the study show that students confidence levels with
their CORE curriculum is greater than that of the overall
curriculum, English courses ranked first in confidence level
followed by Math courses and finally Natural science courses.
The CORE curriculum model utilized affected students
responses in relation to the level of agreement for the need to
add new courses to the CORE curriculum, where students from
universities apply the scholarly discourse model reported a
higher agreement. Universities are recommended to provide
additional resources to the Match course, and additional
resources and knowledge base to the Natural Science courses.
Limitations of study are the sampling strategies utilized in
deciding the sample and the sample size. Recommendations of
future research on students perceptions of universities
curriculum and its importance in curriculum reviews, also a
duplication of the following research is encouraged.
Index Terms—Curriculum review, CORE curriculum,
workforce preparation.
Ali M. Alghazo is with the Education and Development from Southern
Illinois University at Carbondale, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (e-mail:
dr.alialghazo@gmail.com).
Cite: Ali M. Alghazo, "CORE Curriculum and Students Perceptions: Approach to Curriculum Review," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 5, no. 8, pp. 620-624, 2015.