Teaching & Learning Facilities
Graduate studies at METU NCC are conducted within new or recently-built educational buildings, together with well-equipped laboratories and a developing research library.
Classroom infrastructure
Most graduate classes – seminars, lectures, tutorials, supervisions, labs – take place in one of the three designated academic blocs. Occasionally some lectures are held in the Cultural and Convention Centre (where there is also a SmartClass) or the Library.
Most classes are conducted in seminar and lecture rooms reserved for graduate studies, complete with audio-visual facilities and data projection as well as internet connectivity. The main format of the classrooms is either a seminar room of chairs and desks arranged in a large circle or U-shape or, for larger lectures, a traditional lecture theatre of parallel and tiered benches and desks facing the instructor.
Students are also encouraged to use the audio-visual, data-projection and internet if appropriate to their class work.
Class size
Our aim is to ensure the highest quality and standards of graduate study, and therefore our ambition is not to pack as many students in as possible. Quality will always trump quantity. As a result it is our intention to keep graduate classes relatively small, ensuring that students can engage properly and effectively with their classmates but also, especially, their professors. Whereas in many universities graduate classes may number 30, 40, 50 or more students in each class, at METU NCC we shall keep graduate classes down to less than 20 students. Often graduate classes, especially elective classes, may have no more than 6 students which allows for more detailed engagement and higher quality studies.
Conduct of Classes
Most graduate classes take one of two forms: Either a single three-hour seminar/lecture once each week, or a combination of a two-hour plus one-hour seminar/lecture each week.
For each course a Course Outline will be issued to all registered students at the beginning of the course. The level of detail in the Course Outline may vary, but all course outlines will at minimum indicate how, when and in what location the course will be taught; the aims and objectives of the course; the organisation of the course; the essential materials required in the course; and how the course will be assessed.
Although seminars and lecturers are compulsory in the graduate programs we encourage an active and voluntarist participation in classes. The instructors want you to attend classes and participate because you are actively interested in your chosen field of study. Thus as well as (didactic) instruction given by the professor, students should feel able to contribute ideas to discussion, offer different approaches to given problems, and to openly share ways of studying with fellow students and faculty staff.
All class participants – students and instructors alike – should of course arrive at the class in a timely manner, properly equipped with appropriate class materials, and having prepared in advance for the class. The requirements of each class will have been set out by the course instructor in either a course outline issued at the beginning of the course and/or in course handouts distributed directly to students in previous weeks.
The Library
The Campus Library makes an essential contribution to the teaching and learning, scholarship and research undertaken in the graduate programs. In addition to its function as the primary source of course texts, the Library is developing as a research library and its growing collection of materials reflects well the interests of the graduate programs. In addition to books and journals held by the Library it also provides one of the most comprehensive range of electronic subscriptions to a wide range of journals and other research publications and databases to be found in the wider region.