INTERPRETING THE LEARNING DIFFICULTIES AND PROBLEMS STUDENTS FACE FROM

2. “STUDENT VOICE” AS TOPIC

5. INTERPRETING THE LEARNING DIFFICULTIES AND PROBLEMS STUDENTS FACE FROM

We can conclude of the motives of ﬁ rst-year students in Education that beyond general interest they are not characterised by specialised professional needs. Their image of the professional career is undeﬁ ned, their vision of the future is based on irrelevant knowledge in many cases, the erroneous conceptions are highly characteristic, primarily in terms of identifying with the teaching profession. The ratio of social motives and expectations are low (which is understandable as the social network is just forming in the ﬁ rst year), and the role of models is less dominant, contrary to the ﬁ nancial security (employment) motives. The effect of the prior student role and typically the secondary school experience are detectable. Students are divided in terms of formulating their expectations in connection with the training programme, and typical or dominant expectations are not detectable in connection with their studies at the training programme in Education.

5. INTERPRETING THE LEARNING DIFFICULTIES AND PROBLEMS STUDENTS FACE FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF THE TRAINING PROGRAMME

5.1. The goal of the inquiry

This part of our study intends to present how students who were the ﬁ rst and second to enter the Bologna protocol view their own training programme in Education, how they experience those difﬁ culties that derive either from the differences between the education forms and learning paths of secondary and higher education, or from acquiring new, specialised competences, or from the relocation of their learning experience and conceptions into a new environment.

5.2. Difﬁ culties in connection with time management

In the expectation questionnaires of 2006 and 2007 78% of the students⁴ wrote some kind of an ending to the sentence “It poses difﬁ culties for me to...”. The answers categorised as timetable and time management projected two paths for the research team: revising the organisation of teaching one the one hand, and the fragmented tasks on the other hand. A large number of feedback poured in from the ﬁ rst-year students of both years connected to the organisation of teaching, and about the same proportion of them (2006: 13% and 2007: 11%) felt that they have difﬁ culties in managing and organising their time in the new teaching and learning environment. Besides time management difﬁ culties, almost a third of the students of the year 2006 expressed difﬁ culties in connection with the timetable (Figure 4), while this did not appear independently in the answers of the students of 2007 (Figure 5).

There are such utterances behind these as follows:

“It is difﬁ cult for me that I frequently have to stay at the university until 8 pm”, or “lessons last for one and a half hour and it is hard to concentrate”.

“... at a daytime university lessons are held in the afternoon with no lessons in the morning, or with 3 to 4 hour breaks between them...”

“So far I haven’t gotten used to spending my entire day at the university and having less time for other things.”

Figure 4: Relative frequency distribution of difﬁ culties experienced by students of the Education training programme (year 2006)

4 In both years 28% of students did not answer this question.

Figure 5: Relative frequency distribution of difﬁ culties experienced by students of the Education training programme (year 2007)

What we see here is that the student struggles with the new schedule that is different from the one in secondary schools, as Boud et al. (2001; quoted by HAMMONd et al. 2010) also described it. The research team also realised that entering a new teaching-learning environment is also accompanied by getting to know and creating that routine that accompanies “university life”.

Students put it this way:

“It poses difﬁ culties for me that I got into a different environment.”

“I have difﬁ culties because I do not have enough experience.”

“I have difﬁ culties in adapting to this totally different and thus unusual lifestyle, to university lifestyle.”

It is not just the long pauses between courses that disturb students, but coordinating different courses is also problematic, especially after the ﬁ xed timetables of secondary school years:

“Coordinating external practices and university lectures and seminars.”

“We had a lot of external practices this term and in the meantime we had to perform here at the university as well. Managing my time caused problems, to perform well at the practice and turn up for university lectures as well as many times as possible. I guess that this can be a problem for someone who has just graduated from high school as well.”

Although students are free to compile their timetables, but this timetable is constrained in many aspects (many courses have prerequisite courses, and it is advisory to take some courses in given terms for making adequate progress etc.), and this is why they may feel that their schedule is burdensome.

Naturally, it is also a great change I their lives that school does not last from 8 am to 3 or 4 pm but occasionally they ﬁ nish at 8 pm and they have a lot of absolutely free time before noon or even whole days. Understandably, it is strange for them that they may have breaks of 3 or 4 hours and as ﬁ rst-year students they may not consider how these idle periods could be used effectively for the beneﬁ t of their studies (e.g. by going to libraries).

It is interesting that although an optimally arranged timetable, realising a personalised schedule strengthens the well-being of students (KONU, LINTONEN & RIMPELA 2002; quoted by URBÁN 2004: 109; cf. Chapter 6), they hardly get any support in this respect, and moreover, they have full independence. Our ﬁ ndings concerning the problems in connection with scheduling indicate that students have to make a lot of efforts in order to get used to “university life”, as creating a new type of routine and strategies for tackling difﬁ culties can take even years (KISS 2007, 2009).

Considering time management in connection with university students, we cannot neglect students’ life outside the campus. “University life”

requires a lot freer, self-regulated type of learning, besides the fact that many of them enter the labour market already during the time of their studies, temporarily or even permanently. According to the data acquired, while 52%

(11 students) marked that they deal with the science of Education besides the compulsory tasks, this is true for only 18% (4 students) of the second-year students. This does not necessarily mean that students lose their interest in dealing with professional issues in the course of the training, as it is possible that their adult life becomes multi-dimensional, as results show that while 32% (7 students) work besides studying, in the case of second-year students this ratio is 52% (11 students).

It also emerged in connection with time management how a more ﬂ exible timetable and the credit system that enables a more varied set of learning paths affects personal relationships (that are also decisive factors in terms of subjective well-being). A training programme with a more regulated curriculum (having no credit system) provides less freedom for its students in taking up courses, but as a compensation it is beneﬁ cial for forging a steady company of friends, while the more ﬂ exible credit system often results in the spread of “social solitude” as Ritoók & Vajda put it (1999; quoted by KÉZDY

2007: 52). By the implementation of the module based higher education that is constructed of the credit system, the formation of lifelong learning attitude was attempted to be planted in students through building on their own interests, however, the question emerged whether students (especially

at the beginning of their training) are able to take advantage of this freedom of choice (KISS 2007).

Typically there is less attention diverted towards the introduction of students into a new form of education, even though, and our ﬁ ndings support this, it would be worthwhile to support ﬁ rst-year students entering higher education more in terms of creating their timetables, preparing them for the difﬁ culties that arise from the tasks connected to the courses and organising their timetables among other things, and also it would be beneﬁ cial to start connected courses (e.g. with the help of tasks that build on one another).

These aspects of students’ workload proved to be useful in terms of compiling the subjects and subject grid of the Bachelor training programme in Education, and in creating the student support “systems”, tools, learning forms etc. (see Chapter 7). These ﬁ ndings were important sources of those principles, based on which the RBA working group transformed the training grid of the programme which is in effect since the academic year 2011/2012.

It must be mentioned here that the action research did not intend to ﬁ nd and could not have found a solution for the difﬁ culties connected to timetable organisation, as the creation of the timetable of the training programme has an effect on the whole scope of the organisation and would need the consideration of other aspects as well.

5.3. Difﬁ culties in connection with requirements and workload

In terms of the students who started their studies in 2006 (see Figure 4) and the students of 2007 as well (see Figure 5) we see that beyond the seemingly unsystematic timetable framework, the problem of using their time well manifests in the execution of tasks as well:

“we have a lot of deadlines to meet”

“there are a lot of practical home assignments”

“what is difﬁ cult for me is to prepare for all classes in a way that I really would like to”

Bearing in mind that students have less workload at the end of the ﬁ rst term (exams, seminar papers, portfolio) teachers put emphasis on mid-term assignments, however, student feedbacks indicated that the majority of those who are at the beginning of the programme experience coming up to expectations and requirements, the fragmentation of tasks and the numerous and multi-directional activities an utmost difﬁ culty in the framework of

the seemingly unsystematic timetable they compiled independently. The development of the identity is continuing during adolescence, and this is accompanied by experiencing performance crises (KÉZDY 2007), as it is concluded from the investigations of Bound et al. (2001), and Kézdy (2007) and Hammond et al. (2010) the average of performance crisis is the highest for ﬁ rst-year students, which may correlate with the new, unusual system of requirements among other factors. Students reﬂ ected on their performance in the following ways:

“What he felt as a problem was that he could not read all the set literature for the exam and really lacked self-conﬁ dence in connection with exams. He always experienced it as a failure when he submitted some papers after the deadline expired because he started to write them too late. […] Because of this being late with assignments I asked him how he manages his time. Does he learn in advance? How long before the deadline does he start? When he starts something does he complete it right away or does he complete it in smaller bits? To what extent can his attention be distracted? He told me that he did not learn in advance, although he should have, as things got really condensed by the time the exam period arrived. He started the assignments which he could not submit in time 2 or 3 days before the deadline, and typically it was a drawback that he had to do some other subject as well at the same time. He gives priority to that task which is harder for him. I also got to know that he usually completes tasks in stages, but his attention is not so easily distractible when he is at work.”

“The problem of K. in the course of learning was that she did not have the time to read all the assigned literature and books that were required.

We concluded during the discussion that she has time management problems.”

As a consequence of this, it occurred that teachers got together and reconsidered the assignments and tried to share the common elements.

There were such teacher initiatives that several teachers expected a major assignment together from the students, and they gave assessment on different aspects of the completed assignment in the framework of their own courses. As far as the research team is concerned, these solutions were not incorporated on an institutional level, but on a lower level exciting solutions were created.

We inquired the students in spring 2008 in the complex student questionnaire about how clear the goals, requirements and assignments of the courses are for them. Students had to mark their answers between

the two extremes: completely clear in all of them (1) and unclear in all of them (6). The answers showed a similar pattern in all three ﬁ elds for both years (Table 4 and 5). The answers reach an average over 2 and a standard deviation of about 1 or lower for both years. This means that students agree that “for most courses the goals, requirements and assignments were clear”.

Approximately to the same proportion did students mark the “there were problems in terms of some courses” and the “on many courses these were unclear” options. At the same time none of them marked the “on most courses these were unclear” and the “on none of the courses were these clear” options. So there are students for whom it poses more difﬁ culties to interpret goals, systematise assignments and fulﬁ l the requirements and some for whom it poses less, possibly, due to the fact that this training programme is not their only major, as the above quoted examples suggest as well.

Table 4: Mean values and standard deviation of answers provided for the statements in connection with the goals, requirements and assignments of courses

(2008, ﬁ rst-year students) (n=26)

In terms of the courses how clear were... Mean Standard deviation The goals, that is what they are good for? 2.653 1.056 Requirements, that is what did they expect us to learn? 2.36 0.952 The assignments, that is what to do when? 2.48 0.962 Table 5: Mean values and standard deviation of answers provided for the statements

in connection with the goals, requirements and assignments of courses (2008, second-year students) (n=21)

In terms of the courses how clear were... Mean Standard deviation The goals, that is, what are they good for? 2.55 0.887 Requirements, that is, what did they expect us to learn? 2.704 1.093 The assignments, that is, what to do when? 2.675 0.949 In the same questionnaire students had to decide about statements in connection with workload how characteristic these are of them on a ﬁ ve-point scale (1=absolutely not characteristic, 5=absolutely characteristic).

The pattern of the answers shows similarities between the ﬁ rst and the second-year students, and moves towards medium values (Table 4). The answers suggest that the most characteristic is that the expected tasks on the seminar courses require a lot of time for both year groups and they ﬁ nd it difﬁ cult to arrange their time in a way that they prepare for all

classes equally. However, the majority of the second-year students think that assigned tasks and activities are useful and are willing to complete them. Standard deviation is between 1 and 2, which means that there are no signiﬁ cant differences between the answers of students, they are more or less of the same opinion.

Table 6: Mean values and standard deviation of answers provided on statements in connection with university workload (2008, ﬁ rst-year students) (n=26)

Statements Mean Standard

deviation

I have a lot of classes this term. 2.500 0.860

I think I prepare enough for the different courses. 2.730 0.919 I feel that I do not have enough time to prepare

thoroughly for each seminar during the term. 2.650 1.056 I feel that I do not have enough time to prepare

thoroughly for each exam during the term. 2.423 1.064 I can arrange my time in order to prepare well for all

seminars. 2.44 0.916

I deal with the science of Education in addition to my

compulsory assignments. 1.961 0.999

I feel the usefulness of the assignments I get on the

different courses, so I like to deal with them. 2.961 0.598 The expected assignments for the seminars require a

lot of time to complete. 3.384 0.637

Table 7: Mean values and standard deviation of answers provided on statements in connection with university workload

(2008, second-year students) (n=21)

Statements Mean Standard

deviation

I have a lot of classes in this term. 2.809 1.030

I think I prepare enough for the different courses. 3 0.836 I feel that I do not have enough time to prepare

thoroughly for each seminar during the term. 2.428 1.028 I feel that I do not have enough time to prepare

thoroughly for each exam during the term. 2.428 0.676 I can arrange my time in order to prepare well for all

seminars. 2.333 0.966

I deal with the science of Education in addition to my

compulsory assignments. 2.476 0.872

I feel the usefulness of the assignments I get on the

different courses, so I like to deal with them. 3.190 0.601 The expected assignments for the seminars require a

lot of time to complete. 3.190 0.872

At the Bachelor training programme in Education some courses attempted to aid students beyond the mentoring system in the socialisation into the programme, to fulﬁ l tasks and requirements that match the training type, for example the above mentioned Effective learning and the Teaching learning courses. In the ﬁ rst term students got acquainted with the specialities of learning at the university among other things, and wrote a self-reﬂ ection at the end of the course titled Learning and Me, about how they experienced their learning during the ﬁ rst term. In the second term, as a continuation of the course Effective learning, in the framework of the course Teaching learning students developed the learning skills of their peers on the basis of the peers’

problems, with personalised tasks. The following quotes demonstrate that in tackling difﬁ culties connected to learning at the university and especially in struggling with fulﬁ lling requirements, cooperation with peers is a really important factor for students (see Chapter 5).

“This task really taught us a lesson. I think we learnt a lot from one another and about one another as well. I have had the feeling so far that we were going to be or already are a good team, but now, thanks to this task too, I know that for sure.”

“I presented the working process in detail, so that through which steps my list of tasks for the term has been completed. It was a real joy that I could do this with N. I didn’t know what to expect from the course.

I thought it was hard in the beginning, but then I could solve it and compile a good set of tasks. I learnt that the best solution against anxiety is meticulous preparation.”

“The most useful, pleasant and at the same time the most problematic thing was cooperative work. We got on even better with one another during the task, even though we were not a bad team before either. This fact can have a good impact on our further studies. But working together means conﬂ icts as well. We experienced that I guess. But the wind of the smaller storms eventually blew the common sail forward. Managing our time is still our weak point, but we still have 4 terms ahead of us to practise.”

“During this term I got closer to internalising the process of pair work.

I learnt a lot about writing essays, managing time and about the methods of growing fond of subjects I don’t like (thanks to T). I never expect anything from a course, I have no expectations. I fulﬁ l the requirements

In document Training Programme and Organisation in the Bologna Process of Hungarian Higher Education: The BaBe Project (Pldal 107-112)