Dear Students

I am a student at the University of South Africa doing Bachelor Of Sciences in Chemistry and Information Systems .As you all might have noticed ,Unisa has changed all College Of Sciences Environment and Technology to Year Modules .

The problem is Most of the courses have a lot of pre requisite modules that you have to pass first in order to do the next module .Unisa changing all CSET modules to year modules prolongs the time frame to which a student has to finish their course as it take one full year to do one of the most simplest courses .Therefor ,i urge you all to help me reason with the Head Department of CSET at Unisa ,to switch all Year modules to Semester modules ,like how it wwas bback then.
Since the introduction of mandatory year modules in CSET, there has been some interesting changes in the way the curriculum is structured for instance a student in the school of computing is required to take COS1511 and COS1512 simultaneously when previously COS1511 was a pre-requisite for COS1512.This was done to ensure the learner had the required prior knowledge from COS1511,that would help them succeed in COS1512.
The same with INF1520 and INF3720, one was a pre-requisite of the other
Databases II requires that you either completed ICT2621 or ICT2622 or INF2603, the reality is Databases II requires you complete Databases I in order to fully understand it and be able to complete the Assignments and have a decent year mark that will act as a safety net should you struggle in the Exam.
The issue of one taking 10 modules which have exams in one period is stressful on the student, it is not easy to properly prepare oneself for so many papers. Some papers will get priority over others especially the papers that one starts with. A student might put in all of their revision time preparing for maybe the first 4 or 5 papers for those who are desciplined but the other remaining papers might not get the same attention because of firstly how the examination timetable is usually structured whereby all exams are clustered around the same time, you find that you are writing three days in a row, when do you have time to study for such papers if you already covered your revision time studying for say the other four or five papers you started with? This means, you will have to settle for mediocre marks because you didnt have adequate time to prepare for the exams. It could also mean failing the module.
Lets talk about failing the module or modules especially failing a pre-requisite,yes UNISA does grant a second opportunity during supplementary exams but the thing about this second opportunity, its only helpful for someone who actually got 40% and above in the exam because it has been proven that, from the time one writes their Exams to the time they have to write their supplementary, their only likely to improve their marks by a meagre 10%, so if thats the case, this second opportunity might not serve everyone that fails and we should also make room for the technical issues why some people have to rewrite a module. If for instance the reason, I am rewriting its because of a technical issue such as IRIS, its not a guarantee that IRIS wont give students issues during the supplementary period, so again, is it worthwhile for such students to redo the module for another whole year on such basis? A year is very long especially if a module that you have to redo is a pre-requisite to other modules.
So how do these changes affect the student overall? Overall the student's experience will be an aweful one because with some of the changes, the student is expected to know and apply knowledge they havent yet acquired, secondly, if you repeat a major or a prerequisite, your studies will be extended by an additional year or more because one cannot move forward without the prerequisite, thirdly exam period is an overwhelming period because of all the module one has to prepare for and how do these changes affect the student when they try look for work?

For a fulltime student who has no work experience the potential employer will assume the reason why a degree of 3years took 5 years to complete was because you repeated so much, that will make a bad impression on your academic record, if your average is not good as well, that will make you less competitive. It is for these reasons why year modules should be optional not mandatory so one can take all of the above into consideration when choosing which modules to be year modules or semester modules.Therefore ,I urge you all to help me reason with the Head Department of CSET at UNISA ,to switch the mandatory year modules to be optional between year and semester module like it was last year.

Thank you for your help and consideration in reading this .