Master Degree in LIS, a comparision, 1

Since the master degree is the main postgrduate LIS course in Iran and its efficiency can have a great effect on the outcome of the LIS schools, hence on the society, I decided to write a series of posts about LIS course in UK and make some suggestion for improving the Iranian degree. What I’ll write here is based on my knwledge about MS degree at City Univ. Comparing the LIS master degree in Iran and in UK, UK one looks shorter, more efficient, more market-based and practically useful. Let me make some comparisions (my knwoledge about Iran MA & MS degree may be a little old).
1. UK Master is 1 year totally, Iranian Master is 2 years (and usually it takes students longer to finish it);
2. UK Master consists of about 10 modules and one dissertation, Iranian Master consists almost the same;
3. every module in UK consists of 10 two-hour sessios, in iran every module includes 17 ninty-minutes sessions (considering that usually no more than 14 sesseions are held by lecturer and studetns in practice);
4. the assessment of all modules in UK Master is based on the assignment and coursework (no exam), but the assessment of all modules in iran is based on the examinations;
5. Uk students write their dissertations in almost totally 3-4 month,but in iran it takes usually 1 year or more while the quality of UK theses not noly is not worse than Iranian ones but also in many cases is better;
6. there is an orientation for master theses in UK and the department usually has a plan to direct the students’ researches in a way that could be useful both for the sociaty and market and also for the research projects of the department itself. So the department help students a lot with choosing the topic. That’s one the reasons why the students are able to finish their studies just in one year;
7. there is no specialty in Iranian Master and there are just two different Master degrees (medical and nonmedical MS courses). But in UK there is a variety of specialties for master degree, e.g. just at City there are about 10 different master degrees in information related subjects.
8. the subjects and contents of the modules in UK are up-to-date and flexible. When you look at the master modules in Iran you get the impression that that is the same as the Bachelor but with a bit more specialty;
and more that I’ll write later…