Has the Part-time/full-time Divide Narrowed? a Preliminary Investigation into the Varying Motivations between Part-time and Full-time Students

There has been much discussion of the gap between full-time and part-time students narrowing due to many full-time students undertaking work during their period of study. Our hypothesis is that there remains a huge divide between these groups in terms of the complete learning experience and, therefore, the support to be provided by Business Schools. We approach this topic from three perspectives, namely expectations of students, their learning styles and understanding the different ways in which these groups make sense of their learning experience. We approach the topic from a number of theoretical perspectives. The psychological contract has been applied in linking employee motivation and performance. In recent years the construct has been used to explore relationships other than that of employer/employee. In this research we apply it to the student/university relationship considering whether students form a psychological contract with the university. Reality experienced on both an individual and collective basis is seen the product of a socially created process of making sense of the environment in which one operates. In order to understand how students make sense of their environment, the paper will determine the nature of sensemaking.