Abstract:

Students’ approach to learning can be modified by several factors like personal, contextual, or perceived factors. One of the most important contextual factors is the subject, as students can vary their approach to learning depending on several elements related to the subject. Along a university program students vary their approach to learning for adaptation and in response to the different subjects they enroll in. In the present work, the students’ approach to learning was assessed in the same group of students in two different subjects taken consecutively in the second and third years of the bachelor’s degree of Biotechnology employing the R-SPQ-2F questionnaire. Although a slight decrease in the deep approach and an increase in the surface approach was observed, differences were not significant indicating that students maintained their approach in both subjects and along time. No differences were observed regarding gender or language used as medium of instruction. Students showed a higher deep approach than surface approach in both subjects and independently of gender or language. On student basis, most of the common students of both subjects showed an increment of surface approach in the third-year subject comparing to the subject taken previously in the second year. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was high for the main factors but lower for the secondary factors supporting the existence of two different approaches. The indication of a decline in deep approach and the increase of surface approach, as also has been in other studies in the same program, suggest that efforts could be taken to revert these dynamics, even the reason is not the subject itself, while the whole program. Teaching and assessment methodologies could be adopted in both subjects to force students to take a deeper approach to learning. This information can be used to improve teaching and assessment methodologies to achieve better academic results resulting in improved outcomes.

Keywords:

R-SPQ-2F, Deep approach, Surface approach, motivation.