• Frontpage
  • Bloggers
  • Archive
  • About
Inside

Our new students are curious and motivated to learn!

Bild av Gerd Altmann från Pixabay

10.10.2019 Education, Projects, Research, Student Life

During the first week of this semester, all new students (N=678) in our bachelor programmes were invited to participate in a survey called Me and My Knowledge. The students completed the web survey during scheduled sessions, and (most probably) due to this arrangement, we managed to collect 521 responses, out of which the major part is complete.

Our sincerest thanks to all participating students!

With 71 statements, the web survey may have been a bit challenging but still, the participants managed to complete it in about 11 minutes on average. We gained a very good response activity of 76.2%, varying across degree programmes between 52.6% and 100%.

The mean age of the respondents was 23.1 with the median of 21, indicating that most students are around 19-22 years of age but that we also have a number of students aged over the whole scale up to 50+ (in statistics this is called a right skew, where the distribution curve shows a long right tail). Out of the population’s 38 nationalities the sample contains 32, representing all (populated) continents except Australia. 78.8% have received their basic education in Swedish or Finnish, and 21.3% in some other of more then 20 languages.

I can learn how to learn!

Students believe in ability to learn how to learn.

The statements regarding the students’ views on knowledge and learning, on critical thinking and on study motivation are basically not analysed singly but instead, they are used to compute various sum variables, indicating traits and attitudes such as how much you trust authorities, how you feel about building your knowledge together with others and what motivates you to study. A first glance on the data suggests that our new students (in general) believe strongly that each individual can learn how to learn; this is promising considering that Learning Competence is one of the learning goals of the course Introduction to University Studies.

critical thinking

We need to support the development of critical thinking skills

Further, our students also believe strongly that you can build your knowledge by reflecting upon previous knowledge and new information. The students’ Critical thinking skills show a good start but can certainly be improved.

The indicators expressing study motivation also look promising. Our students are highly motivated and seem to find pleasure in learning. The motivation factors will provide interesting starting points for further discussions around the question ‘what actually motivates me?’

As mentioned in this project’s Privacy Notice for Scientific Research (External link), no results are reported on individual level but only in terms of group-wide trends. Still, we will be able to identify differences e.g. based on previous education or across degree programmes, which will provide teachers, study counselors and developers valuable information for improving our education, both on programme and course level.

This study is part of the larger project Knowing and Learning in the Postdigital, and will be followed up by further data collections; quantitative data using surveys but also qualitative data e.g. in the form of reflection diaries from the course Introduction to University Studies. We are very much looking forward to analysing the reflection diaries since, whereas survey data provides meters about to which extent our students think ‘this or that’, the reflection diaries will provide a deeper description into what is contained in ‘this or that’. The follow-up surveys will also collect background data that are important in providing various perspectives for analysing data, e.g. across which groups to compare and how to interpret the results.

From the above, we hope all students understand how important it is for Arcada to gain as complete data as possible from all the various data collections. Therefore, we sincerely hope that students participate also in all future data collections within Knowing and Learning in the Postdigital.

Tore Ståhl
Educational Researcher

To cite this blog: Ståhl, T. (2019, October 9). Our new students are curious and motivated to learn! [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://inside.arcada.fi/pedagogerna/our-new-students-are-curious-and-motivated-to-learn/
#feedbackmatters

Bild av Gerd Altmann från Pixabay

Pedagogerna

Denna blogg är arkiverad och inaktiv.

Contact details

  • E-mail: support.elearning@arcada.fi

More by the same author

  • 05.08.2019 Toteemi Summer Reflections from Arcada
  • 23.03.2019 Framtidens lärandekontext –tankar om robotar, kodning, AI och soft skills
  • 12.03.2019 Knowledge sharing and collaboration as a part of the Toteemi project – Smart learning at Novia University of Applied Sciences
  • 01.11.2017 Jobbar du studentcentrerat redan det första studieåret?
  • 19.06.2017 Open Networked Learning – #ONL172
More posts by Pedagogerna

AuthorPedagogerna

Tagscritical thinking, epistemic beliefs, feedbackmatters, learning, motivation, pedagogik

Meet our bloggers

Business / Business / Liiketalous

  • 28.04.2022
    Vem köper mat på nätet i framtiden?

Arcada 25

  • 19.05.2022
    Hur kan teknologi främja tillgängligheten i samhället?
  • 21.04.2022
    Därför är innovativt entreprenörskapstänk en framgångsfaktor
  • 31.03.2022
    Digitala tvillingar inom ingenjörsvetenskapen – vad är det och varför behöver vi dem?

International Student Ambassadors

  • 03.02.2022
    Arcada – A Truly International Experience in Helsinki
  • 06.12.2021
    Why I Chose Finland as My Study Destination (and Would Do It All Over Again)
  • 09.02.2021
    Two Things You Should Know About Studying in Finland and at Arcada

Arcada Research News

  • 21.10.2021
    Märi-projektet framskrider och når delmål
  • 01.06.2021
    Lohkoketjuekosysteeminen tarkastelua hallinnan ja adoption näkökulmasta
  • 19.02.2021
    MäRi – sociala robotar som agenter i vården

The NURED Project

  • 28.02.2020
    Ending the NURED Project: final products, and final thoughts.
  • 30.09.2019
    The NURED Final Seminar – WELCOME!
  • 13.06.2019
    The NURED Roadtrip – Discussions about developing nursing curriculas across the Baltic Region

Kultur och media / Culture and Media / Kulttuuri ja media

  • 18.05.2022
    How can small museums innovate on digitalisation?
  • 30.11.2021
    Boom-boom-boomer – kolla hit, detta är politik!
  • 29.11.2021
    Silmän liikkeiden tutkimisesta – osa 2

Cookies Availability statement

© 2022 Yrkeshögskolan Arcada