Revisiting the predictive power of approaches to learning on academic performance at university level

Vigentini, L. (2012) Revisiting the predictive power of approaches to learning on academic performance at university level. In: 17th European Learning Styles Information Network Conference, Cardiff, 26-28 June 2012, p. 403.

Abstract

The past few decades have seen a strong shift toward a massification of education (OECD), the growing importance of the information society (Eisenberg 2008) and knowledge economies (Woodridge, 2005), all of which promoted an increase in the number of students going into University. However, especially in the last few years, these trends only remarked that the Higher Education sector in the UK is in crisis. In the grip between the big increase of fees across the sector and the high likelihood of prolonged unemployment, the new generation of students are turning into customers of higher education institutions and they come to expect more and better. The squeeze on university budgets also lead to a decrease of teaching staff, often shifting to a bigger ratio of students per teacher and heavier workloads for individual members of staff. Critically, however, results from national surveys (i.e. National Student Survey, International Student Barometer etc.) provide a mixed picture of students’ learning experiences. Yet, the belief that there is scope for personalised instruction in the modern educational system is an important dimension as students should be able to maximise their return of investment in a particular institution with better grades and a better learning experience. To be able to respond to students’ needs it is essential to know more and understand better our students. However, in this landscape, it is quite difficult for a university teacher to know their students beyond the level of an anonymous face attending their lectures, often delivered in large lecture theatres. It is a fact that very few teachers explore the institutional data available to them or approach students to find more about the presence of strong precursors, or preconditions typical of particular individuals which might ultimately affect behavioural expression (in terms of motives, approaches to learning and studying and actual performance). It is essential to provide a more appropriate context to venture into the explanation of the reasons why students produce specific patterns of behaviour and we believe that a better knowledge of the individual differences between students may provide such contextualisation. In this paper we will provide a review of the differential aspects of academic performance from the literature on intelligence and personality to identify the complex relations between aspects of academic performance with individual differences. The review will show how impractical any of the tools widely adopted in theoretical research are in providing an insight into students’ performance and often the predictive power of the metrics generated is very small. Using the case of students admitted in a psychology course at a research intensive UK based Institution (sample sizes vary between 200 and 2000 depending on the analyses presented), we will provide research data showing how previous performance and type of subjects have little impact on university performance for these students. Finally, we will reconsider the importance of approaches to learning (as measured by the ASSIST, Hounsell & McCune 2005) for the cohorts studied to demonstrate a fairly strong effect on academic performance. Implications for the evaluation of courses and the use of such information to feed into students’ records will be considered to inform curriculum development.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Additional Information: Proceedings ISBN: 9783000335198
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Vigentini, Dr Lorenzo
• Authors: Vigentini, L.
• Subjects: L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education