Abstract:

One of the main factors that affects the election of the student of a determinate learning approach is the subject. The environment is affected by the topic, the teaching and assessment methodology but also personal and perceived factors modulate the decision. In the present study, the student approach to learning of first year students of the bachelor’s degree of Biotechnology is assessed with the R-SPQ-2F questionnaire in two different subjects. One of them in the first term (General Genetics) and the other in the second term (Biotechnology Business Economics). Both subjects share the same students as a whole. The degree of deep approach was higher in General Genetics, but no other differences were observed regarding gender or language used as medium of instruction. High correlations were observed between the different scales of the questionnaire with high internal consistency for the main scales but lower for the secondary scales. This fact supports the existence of just two main scales as stated in previous studies. In a second phase, interviews were carried out to a selected group of students to enrich the information with qualitative data such as their perception of the activities, their strategies and their expectations in the subjects. In general terms, students maintained their approach in both subjects, indicating that the subject did not influence their approach to learning, not like in similar studies. The subjects are from different knowledge areas but the high admission mark of the students of the degree make them very prone to learn and it seems that, in this case, the subject is not a strong factor to change their initial approach to learning, however the different size of the samples in both subjects could have influenced the result. A decline in students’ approach to learning has been observed in previous studies. Care should be taken in the teaching and learning methodology to maintain and improve the deep approach of the students along the whole degree.

Keywords:

R-SPQ-2F, deep and surface approach, assessment, learning styles.