Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) in an introductory course in chemistry
- Authors: Brown, Stephen , White, Sue , Wakeling, Lara , Naiker, Mani
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice Vol. 12, no. 3 (2015), p. 1-12
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- Description: Approaches to study and learning may enhance or undermine educational outcomes, and thus it is important for educators to be knowledgeable about their students’ approaches to study and learning. TheApproaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students(ASSIST) – a 52 item inventory which identifies three learning styles (Deep, Strategic, and Surface), was given to first year undergraduate students undertaking an introductory chemistry course. Completed inventories (n=103, 85% response), included 30 BSc Biomedicine, 15 BSc Food and Nutrition, 22 BSc Geology, 18 BSc Science students, and a further 18 students on unnamed BSc pathways. The dominant learning style adopted was the Surface approach, with a mean score (SD) of 2.94 (0.54). The preference of the surface approach was consistent for all BSc pathways.There was a higher mean score for the strategic learning style in males (n= 59) compared to females (n=44) with no gender-based differences in either the deep or the surface learning styles.A surface approach may not necessarily indicate a lack of interest in chemistry, rather chemistry may be perceived as being peripheral to the students’ interests – this may be a problem when students with a diverse range of career aspirations study common content in large, first year introductory courses. Identifying students that adopt a surface learning style at an early stage in the undergraduate education journey is an important step in effectively targeting educational resources aimed at enhancing students’ learning habits.
Attitude to the study of chemistry and its relationship with achievement in an introductory undergraduate course
- Authors: Brown, Stephen , White, Sue , Sharma, Bibhya , Wakeling, Lara , Naiker, Mani , Chandra, Shaneel , Gopalan, Romila , Bilimoria, Veena
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Vol. 15, no. 2 (2015), p. 33-41
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- Description: A positive attitude to a subject may be congruent with higher achievement; however, limited evidence supports this for students in undergraduate chemistry – this may result from difficulties in quantifying attitude. Therefore, in this study, the Attitude to the Study of Chemistry Inventory (ASCI) – a validated instrument to quantify attitude, was used to measure attitude to chemistry in 125 undergraduates studying an introductory course in chemistry, as part of a BSc Chemistry major. The 13 week course contained 4 summative assessments: practical (PRAC), tutorial (TUT), on-line web-based learning (OWL), and a final exam (FE). Sub-scales within ASCI which quantify the ‘affective’ and ‘cognitive’ components of attitude were determined. Firstly, for all 125 students, weak correlations (r) between the affective scale score and FE (r=0.275, P<0.01) and TOTAL (r=0.228, P<0.05), were recorded. Secondly, a low achieving (LA, n=48) and a high achieving (HA, n=77) group were identified using a cluster analysis procedure. The HA group scored higher than the LA group in PRAC, OWL, FE and TOTAL (all P<0.001), but the clusters were not different in their scores for either the affective or the cognitive components of attitude. There was no correlation between attitude and achievement in the HA group, and only one weak positive correlation (0.409), between the affective score and achievement in the LA group. We suggest that although a positive attitude may be an important part of the undergraduate experience, it is at best only weakly associated with achievement in undergraduate chemistry.
Approaches to study in undergraduate nursing students in regional Victoria, Australia
- Authors: Brown, Stephen , Wakeling, Lara , Naiker, Mani , White, Sue
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship Vol. 11, no. 1 (2014), p. 1-10
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- Description: In developmental research to devise a strategy to identify students who may benefit from assistance with learning habits, approaches to study were explored in undergraduate nursing students (n=122) enrolled in a compulsory first-year course in physiology at a regional Australian university. The course constituted 30 credits (25%) of their first year of study. Using the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory (ASSIST), students were identified as adopting a deep (n=38, 31%), strategic (n= 30, 25%), or a surface (n=54, 44%) approach to study. Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha [