Upgrading the teaching process through estimation of students preferences for elective subjects in it field

It is widely familiar that students nowadays are growing up and maturing surrounded by the Internet and digital technology. The digital age is utterly the reality of the present time, and, among all others, it has found its way in the field of education. In this paper, we strive to reveal how much do the digital technologies and the mere concept of digitalization influence the students when they are choosing among various elective subjects in the field of Information Technologies (IT). The main concern of our research is to comprehend whether students are guided by the broad set of opportunities that the digital age is offering them, or are they rather guided by the plain benefits as the high frequency of exam achievements or the least possible amount of time they would need to prepare the exam. This paper addresses significant issues regarding the above-presented topic: what attributes do students prefer while selecting an IT elective subject and how do students develop preferences for elective subjects. The objective of our research is to identify the attributes and their respective levels which have the potential to influence students’ preferences and choices in selecting an elective subject. In order to organize the research, we have performed interviews with master degree students, which have guided us through the identification of the factors that most impact students’ preferences. The study was conducted in the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, across students in the second or third year of studies, who are about to choose their elective subjects for the following semesters. They expressed their preferences on specifically developed two-to-three levels for each set of different attributes related to an elective subject. We used the conjoint analysis to capture profiles of elective IT subjects for all the attributes and their levels. The results of the conjoint analysis identified the frequency of exam achievements and the time students take to prepare the exam to be more important attributes than some digital features as the use of the licensed software or digitally enhanced learning.