Abstract
The study examines university students’ course preferences and their relations to learning approaches, apparently for the first time, to gain insight how different course designs are experienced by students with different learning approaches. The data includes students from two universities and fields: business (n = 467) and social sciences (n = 313). The attributes in preference measurement were selected on the basis of previous research and focus groups discussions and choice-based conjoint analysis was used. The learning approaches were measured using Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire developed by Entwistle and Ramsden. Social science students valued more interesting, challenging and time-consuming courses than business students, who valued more relevant and easier courses requiring less time. Social science students scored higher in the deep approach. The relationship between preferences and approaches was strikingly similar in the two universities: strategic students prefer relevance and deep learners challenge in both universities. An exception was that interesting courses were related to deep learning among social science students, and to the surface approach among business students. Further studies should extend our understanding of what interesting means to different kinds of students. The results give tools to design courses that enhance students’ learning and offers new insights to learning approach research.
Highlights
Educational institutions function in increasingly competitive environments
We studied the relationship between course preferences and learning approaches by, firstly, identifying groups with different preferences using k-means cluster analysis
The data was gathered in May and June of 2010, from BIZ students at the AaltoUniversity and from SoS students at the University of Helsinki
Summary
Educational institutions function in increasingly competitive environments. Attracting and retaining motivated and skilful students is vital for universities (e.g. Soutar and Turner 2002). How to engage students has become an important issue at universities, demonstrated for instance by different teaching strategies: for instance promoting to seek understanding instead of just passing courses (Biggs and Tang, 2007) and activating teaching methods, such as collaborative learning (Macfarlane and Tomlinson, 2017). Perceptions of the learning environment have been studied as course experiences, reactions to the different aspects of courses, such as appropriate assessment and workload, clear goals and standards, good tutoring and preferences for lecturers’ personalities (Entwistle and Ramsden, 1983; Richardson, 2005, Richardson, 2006; Cano et al, 2018). While previous studies have operationalized the learning context in a variety of ways, the target for evaluation has always been the Course Preferences and Learning Approaches students’ current experience of the learning context. We know much less about students’ course preferences - what attributes students prefer before taking the course—which are the focus of this study
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