A student’s time is a valuable resource shared between family, work, recreation and education. Meaning that they have to divide their time to ensure they stay physically, emotionally and mentally healthy. All students have a duty to themselves and the university to be present at the campus at least 1 day a week. This is because the learning environment in which universities function is face to face learning such as tutorials and lectures. To get to the campus involves some form of transportation, this is the main topic for me research.
This research assignment taught me that organising and time management skills are a must-have. My one saving grace was the Gantt chart below. It allowed me to keep track of where my project should be in what week, I’ll admit I didn’t always use it but when I need to track my progress and found out what was next on the list of things to do this was my best friend.
After conducting this research, I have discovered that the majority of the students enjoy their commute to the university. Most would describe it as relaxing and calming. This was a big shock at first, then I questioned who are the main people answering the question with those answers. The most common response with that answer was the students that walked to university. Extended travel students found that the travel was stressful, often stating that it could be boring if they had nothing to do.
Finally, the project overall taught me that everyones experiences travel differently, so enjoy it others would rather have a short commute. In order to give them more free time to work on study, longer work hours or just relax. If I was to conduct this research assessment again, I would use a combination of survey research and analytical studies along with focus groups. I would make my sample size-selective instead of random as I believe that will help with accuracy. The results overall were what I had expected with a couple of surprises such short travellers being the bulk of the sample size. Therefore, the results matched my predictions that shorter distance travellers didn’t mind their commute. Finding it as a happy experience with the majority of them uses public transport or walking. Extended distance travellers were found to dislike the distance and often referred to it as being a disadvantage to their overall university experience and effecting their mental health by increasing their stress levels.
Ruby Jones 