2018-02-06Staff Report 2 Staff Reporter Windhoek-The privately-owned International University of Management (IUM) has attained another praiseworthy milestone when it developed 30 new qualifications for the current academic year that started recently for its students. IUM that has grown in leaps and bounds since it was founded with a handful of students to its current student population, which amounts to thousands, completed a review of its 32 registered qualifications last year in collaboration with a group of experts and its stakeholders. IUM spokesperson, Mekeloye Nambili stated, “With regard to the reviewed qualifications, 2018 will be the year of transition from the old to the new curriculum. Some students will not be affected in any way because they will be allowed to complete their final year of study by continuing with the old curriculum up to the end of 2018. For the rest of the students, the university made special transition arrangements in order to ensure that no students will be disadvantaged during the transition from the old to the new qualifications.” “Students will be allowed exemptions and credit transfers from the old to the new qualifications with due recognition of relevant prior learning. In addition, students will be given extra opportunities and extra assistance to make up for modules not successfully completed in the old curriculum. One such extra opportunity is the Transition Summer School which was held from 15 to 26 January 2018 at all IUM campuses,” she further elaborated. Its purpose, was to assist students with the transition to the new curriculum by giving them an opportunity to complete any outstanding courses/subjects or levels of study/qualifications. The Summer School was attended by students who, in particular, had enrolled in the certificate, higher certificate, higher diploma, and degree qualifications and had one or more outstanding subjects in the first, second or third year in one of the following programmes – Business Administration, Business Information Systems, Finance Management, HIV/AIDS Management, Human Resource Development and Management, or Travel, Tourism and Hospitality. “Students who had been on a break in studies for three years or less were also eligible to attend. The Summer School provided students with an intense short revision of subjects,” she said. The IUM Summer School concluded with Second Opportunity Exams which started on January 29 and will end on February 9. “Generally, summer school is a form of education provided by universities all over the world during the summer vacation/ holiday, with courses usually lasting for a few weeks. Summer school was, especially, designed to provide opportunities to students who needed the extra help in order to move up to the next level of study,” Nambili stated. The most important reason for hosting a summer school is to give students a better chance of doing well in supplementary exams. The extra guidance helps cement what students have already learned and build on it which gives them a deeper knowledge to draw upon in an exam context. Summer school is offered worldwide and at renowned universities such as University of Oxford, Stanford University, University of Cape Town and University of Namibia. IUM has also scheduled a Transition Winter School from July 16 to August 3 for the same purpose and to cater for students who might have missed the Transition Summer School. IUM students are drawn from 28 different countries, such as Angola, South Africa, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana, Tanzania, Kenya, Sri Lanka and St Lucia, among others. 2018-02-06Staff Report 2
