Abstract:

Introduction:
At present, and when compared to previous years, the student profile that access the Degree in Physiotherapy at University of Vigo has considerably changed. Currently, a high number of students come from “Vocational training” or other “University degrees”, and in many cases active workers, and not only, for the most part, from High School. Based on the latter circumstance, the learning strategies used by those “new” students and how much they are motivated could be important factors related to their academic performance throughout their university studies.

Objectives:
To analyse total and gender difference on the use of learning strategies and motivation of year 2 students of the Degree in Physiotherapy and its correlation with academic performance in different subjects.

Method:
Cross-sectional descriptive study. The Spanish version of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) by Pintrich et al. (1991) has been used. The study has been carried out at the end of the first semester of the academic course 2015-2016, and 36 of 50 enrolled year 2 physiotherapy students have participated in it. The average age was 21.44 ± 5.88 years.

Results:
84.6% of the participants were women. In relation to the MSLQ, significant positive correlation was observed between the scores achieved in the motivation and learning strategies scales (p<0.01), with no differences by gender for both scales. There are statistical differences regarding the way of access to the university and the grades achieved in the different subjects, but not for the total academic record. Additionally, there is a positive correlation between the scores achieved in each scale (motivation and learning strategies) and the total academic records.

Conclusions:
As could be expected, on one hand, those second year physiotherapy students at University of Vigo who appear to score high in motivation also do in learning strategies; and, on the other hand, and those higher scores are significantly associated with better total academic records, although there is no significant correlation with the grades achieved for some of the subjects. Total academic records and the grades achieved in different subjects appears to the correlated with the way of access to the university. Those results seems to indicate the need of a further analysis to determine how motivation and the use of different learning strategies could lead no better academic records and how to understand a better record in itself.

Keywords:

Learning strategies, Motivation, Academic performance, High Education, Physiotherapy.