First-Year Experience in the COVID-19 Situation and the Association between Students’ Approaches to Learning, Study-Related Burnout and Experiences of Online Studying

The aim of this study was to explore the association between students’ approaches to learning and their experiences of study-related burnout in their first year of higher education. The objective was also to explore these association with a person-oriented approach by examining various learning profiles and their relation to experiences of study-related burnout and experiences of studying during the COVID 19-situation. The participants in this study were 384 first-year life sciences students who answered a questionnaire at the end of first year with Likert-type and open-ended questions. K-means clustering and ANOVA analyses were used to examine the profiles and differences in their perceptions of burnout. Students’ experiences of studying were analysed qualitatively and differences between profiles were examined with Chi Square analysis. The results of this study show that an unreflective approach to learning is most strongly related to experiences of burnout and that experiences of online studying differed between profiles

Understanding procrastination: A case of a study skills course

Procrastination is consistently viewed as problematic to academic success and students' general well-being. There are prevailing questions regarding the underlying and maintaining mechanisms of procrastination which are yet to be learnt. The aim of the present study was to combine different ways to explain procrastination and explore how students' time and effort management skills, psychological flexibility and academic self-efficacy are connected to procrastination as they have been commonly addressed separately in previous studies. The data were collected from 135 students who participated in a voluntary time management and well-being course in autumn 2019. The results showed that students' ability to organize their time and effort has the strongest association with procrastination out of the variables included in the study. Psychological flexibility also has a strong individual role in explaining procrastination along with time and effort management skills. Surprisingly, academic self-efficacy did not have a direct association with procrastination. Interestingly, our findings further suggest that time and effort management and psychological flexibility are closely related and appear to go hand in hand and, thus, both need to be considered when the aim is to reduce procrastination. The implications of the findings are further discussed.Peer reviewe

First-year pharmacy students' prior knowledge correlates with study progress and reveals different dynamics of misconceptions

The varying levels and quality of students’ prior knowledge pose a challenge for instruction at university. Due to the scarcity of studies in pharmacy, in this study pharmacy students (N=126) prior knowledge of biosciences was measured at the beginning of their first study year using a questionnaire comprising ten multiple choice questions and a case task. The results of multiple-choice and open-ended questions revealed serious gaps and different-level misconceptions in students’ answers partly related to the absence of elementary knowledge. The level of prior knowledge correlated with study progress measured at the end of the first study year. The study’s findings suggest that it is possible to identify students at risk of delayed studies using this kind of relatively light pre-test. Problem-solving tasks such as case descriptions can be used to detect potential misconceptions. The pedagogical implications of these results are discussed.Peer reviewe

Case processing in supporting the development of expertise in pharmacy - an eye movement study

The purpose of this study is to utilize process-level analyses to investigate pharmacy students’ reasoning during solving a written case task that handled acute patient counseling situation in the pharmacy. Participants’ (N = 34) problem-solving processes were investigated using the eye-tracking method together with written tasks and 2nd (n = 16) and 3rd (n = 18) –year students’ processes were compared. The text included semantically different level sentences: task-relevant sentences including essential information for the solution and task-redundant sentences that contained irrelevant or misleading information. The results showed that students differed in their performance and only four 2nd year students solved the case correctly, whereas almost all of the graduating students were successful. Further, most of those students, who ended up with a correct solution had presented a correct working hypothesis already after reading the first text page. Generally, the average total reading times did not differ between the comparison groups. However, better-succeeding students read significantly longer the very first task-relevant sentences of the case task indicating that they were able to focus on relevant information and discard the task-redundant text parts. Based on the results, pedagogical suggestions for advancing higher education are discussed.Peer reviewe

Argumentation and processing knowledge in open-ended assignment tasks : Challenges and accomplishments among pharmacy students

Students in higher education have been shown to have difficulties in developing their critical thinking skills, such as analysis and problem solving, reasoning and argumentation. Open-ended tasks offer opportunities for students to develop their own interpretations of various sources, to critically analyse domain-specific knowledge and utilize that knowledge in their argumentation. This study focuses on the ability of new Master's students (n=37) to utilize pharmaceutical knowledge from different sources in producing written arguments and counter-arguments in the context of open-ended assignment task. The data were analysed by qualitative content analysis. The results showed that there was substantial variation in how students analysed and processed pharmaceutical knowledge as well as how they utilized that knowledge in their argumentation. While some students were able to provide comprehensive analysis of the different sources, others superficially analysed and processed the sources and struggled to generate convincing arguments. Students' written responses were typically one-sided: only a few students provided counter-arguments associated with the pharmaceutical problem-solving situation presented in the task. Understanding the nature of the challenges in argumentation and knowledge processing encountered by pharmacy students can help pharmacy educators to modify their pedagogical practices to better support students' learning. Practitioner Notes 1. University students even in Master program level may have challenges related to argumentation and processing knowledge 2. The challenges in argumentation and processing knowledge should be taken into account and should be enhanced and practiced from the beginning of the studies. 3. Critical thinking and argumentation should be integrated into the intended learning outcomes, learning and teaching activities, the contents of the courses, and assessment.Peer reviewe

The value of academics' formal and informal interaction in developing life science education

Concerns have been expressed that the engagement shown by committed individuals is not fully utilized by their organizations while there is insufficient knowledge of which conditions facilitate teaching collaboration and lead to improvements in university education. Portfolios of 43 life science academics applying to enter to the University of Helsinki Teachers' Academy were analyzed through content analysis. Five categories of interactive or collaborative practices emerged from the data: (1) Interacting with peers for personal development, (2) Sharing good teaching practices, (3) Teaching together, (4) Producing educational artefacts, (5) Developing education systematically. The practices occurred in both formal and informal settings, and both settings were present in all categories. In contrast with the formal practices, the informal practices were described in an enthusiastic way. The engagement shown by the scholarly teachers was mostly realized in informal settings. There is probably unrealized potential in the scholarly teachers' teaching-related practices through which they could contribute to the development of teaching in academia. Formal communities related to teaching should be developed to promote deeper collaboration and to foster the participants' feeling of personal commitment and ownership.Peer reviewe

University students’ interest and burnout profiles and their relation to approaches to learning and achievement

School burnout has been studied extensively in schools but its relation to learning and studying processes at the university level is still an under-researched topic. The purpose of this study is to explore burnout and study interest profiles among university students and how these profiles differ according to approaches to learning, academic achievement and gender. The data were gathered from 538 first-year life science students. Five profiles combining students' interest and relevance and school burnout components were found. The results showed that students representing the Exhausted and inefficacious and Burned-out not interested profiles scored higher on surface approaches to learning than students who experienced less burnout. In addition, burnout profiles differed according to the credits earned and study success. There were also differences in the gender distribution of the profiles, as women were overrepresented in the burnout and exhausted profile.Peer reviewe