Approaches to Studying and Perceptions of University Teaching - Learning Environments : Concepts , Measures and Preliminary Findings

This paper introduces work on a major ongoing research project being carried out collaboratively between Edinburgh, Durham and Coventry Universities in Britain. The main concepts and conceptual frameworks being used in the project are introduced, along with a brief summary of a literature review used to define the most salient aspects of teachinglearning environments in higher education. The remainder of the paper describes the development and initial analyses of two questionnaires completed by students. The first of these – the Learning and Studying Questionnaire – given towards the beginning of a course unit, covers students’ learning orientations and their reasons for studying that unit, and also contains an inventory assessing typical approaches to learning and studying. The second questionnaire, the Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire, completed towards the end of the unit, contains a short version of the inventory but focused specifically on the unit being studied. The main section of this questionnaire concerns students’ perceptions of the teachinglearning environment. It also asks about the demands made by the unit, and what students believe they have learned from it. Finally, students are asked to rate their academic progress; assessment grades are being subsequently collected from the institutions involved. Analyses of the initial data sets obtained have identified the main factors within the items concerned with students’ perceptions of teaching-learning environments and indicate the relationships that exist between these and their reported approaches to studying. 1 BACKGROUND TO THE PROJECT In 1999, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for the United Kingdom established a Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). Within Phase 2 of that programme, nine large-scale projects were established in 2000, one of which focused on teaching and learning in higher education. (Phase 3 of the programme will be concentrating on the post-compulsory stages of education.) The Programme Committee had produced guidelines for applicants, including the need to strengthen ‘research-based’ teaching through establishing partnerships with practising teachers. That was thus one of the aims of the higher education project on “Enhancing teaching-learning environments in undergraduate courses” (the ETL project – see http://www.ed.ac.uk/etl) that provides the main focus of this paper. The ETL project is now nearing the end of the second of its four years’ duration and involves two forms of collaboration. The research team is drawn from three universities – Edinburgh (which is the lead institution), Coventry and Durham. The other collaboration is with colleagues in up to 20 departments, drawn from five subject areas – electronic engineering, cell and molecular biology, economics, history, and media and communication studies – chosen to ensure contrasts in subject matter and approaches to teaching and learning. The departments have been chosen to represent all the main institutional types found in Britain – ancient, civic, 1960s, and 1990s, together with a further education college carrying out degree-level work. The project is working with departmental partners to investigate ways of encouraging greater engagement of students in their studying and promoting higher quality learning. Although the initial focus is on understanding the influence of teaching-learning environments, the project is committed also to developing materials to help departments monitor the teaching-learning environments they are currently providing with a view to enhancing them. Specifically, the project is expected to provide: