CHAPTER 4 DATA ANALYSIS
4.3. AT RISK' STUDENTS' INCIDENCE OF DEEP AND SURFACE LEARNING
Getting 'at risk' students to complete this questionnaire and analysing their responses was viewed as possibly providing additional insights into the students' perceptions of, and, approaches to learning. Each 'at risk' students' responses to the questionnaire was analysed and this data is presented in Appendix C.1. This data is summarised in Tables 4.2A and 4.2B below.
TABLE 4.2A ALSI: SEPTEMBER 2001
HA1 HA2 HA3 HA4 HA5
MO 49 50 42 46 47
RO 49 39 56 49 44
A O 24 32 11 4 16
LA1 LA2 LA3 LA4 LA5
MO
52 42 54 45 49
RO 43 34 37 41 42
AO 24 25 28 32 16
TABLE 4.2B SUMMARY ANALYSIS: QUALITY LEARNING AND ACHIEVING ORIENTATION (AO) USING THE ALSI: SEPTEMBER 2001
HA1 HA2 HA3 HA4 HA5 LA1 LA2 LA3 LA4 LA5
QUALITY LEARNING No
Possibly No No No No No Possibly
No No
DEEP-ACHIEVING No
No No No No No No No No No
SURFACE-ACHIEVING No
No No No No
No
No No No No
A high incidence of deep learning that is a high score on scale MO (meaning orientation) and a low incidence of surface learning that is a low score on the scale RO (reproducing orientation) indicate quality learning is taking place (Pickworth,
2001). Using this measure, only two 'at risk' students in the study demonstrate quality learning, HA2 and LA3
The low scores on the scale AO (achieving orientation) suggest that no 'at risk' student adopts a deep-achieving or a surface-achieving approach to learning.
Pickworth (2001) argues that most first year higher education students tend to adopt a surface-achieving approach to learning, however all the 'at risk' students in this study have low AO scores.
These low AO scores of 'at risk' students required deeper analysis. The AO mean is 17, 4 for the HA group and 25 for the LA group. It was expected that the HA group would have had better scores on the AO scale than the LA group. These means are also well below the mean 42, 76 on the AO scale in Pickworth's study on 746 medical students (referred to above in section 4.2.5). The designer of the ALSI instrument, Dr. Pickworth, was requested to make a comment on the AO results in this study. In an e-mail (10/8/2001) this was her reply:
The AO scale is a 'study methods' scale with a few questions addressing general attitude toward the course. The ALSI was developed with our MBChB students in mind. The 'study methods' items are important for MBChB because of the adjustment students must make to a very heavy workload. The few 'attitude' items identify students' whose morale has dropped something that seems to happen to most students at some time during the 6 year course.
The students' responses on the AO scale warranted further investigation in order to find a possible explanation for the low scores on this scale. Because 4 items out of the 12 are negatively scored (24, 27, 30 and 36), that is reverse scoring applies, a maximum high score on this scale is 8 * 5 = 40 + 4 *1 =44. The HA and LA group of 'at risk' students (except HA2) have high scores on these reverse scored items (negatively scored) and they range from 7 to15 (see Table 4.5 below) and this explains these students' low scores on the AO scale. The HA group and LA group have almost the same means, HA is 10, 4 and the LA group is exactly 10.
An understanding of the items in the questionnaire 24, 27, 30 and 36 (see Appendix C) can provide an explanation of these scores. These scores are summarised in Table 4.3. below.
TABLE 4.3: SCORES ON ITEMS REVERSE SCORED
HA1 HA2 HA3 HA4 HA5
T 9 4 12 15 12
24 2 1 5 3 5
27 1 1 1 4 1
30 3 1 2 3 4
36 3 1 4 5 2
LA1 LA2 LA3 LA4 LA5
T 10 10 9 7 14
24 2 3 1 3 4
27 30 3 3 2 1 5
36 4 3 5 2 4
In Appendix C Item 24 reads:
'Often I find myself wondering whether the work I am doing here is really worthwhile'.
Most 'at risk' students have high scores on this item, that is, most 'at risk' students responded that 'they definitely agree' and this is a score of 5 and is reverse scored (negatively scored -5) and this lowers the AO scale score.
Item 27 reads:
When I look back, I sometimes wonder why I ever decided to come here'.
Most of the students strongly disagree (score of 1 on item) with this statement and this suggests that all the students in the study do not have a problem with the course and institution. This may be contradicting the answers to item 24 above and whether this is so depends on how the students interpreted the meaning of the question. It would be expected that the answers should be the same that is if a student strongly disagreed with item 24 they would do the same with item 27 (vice versa).
Item 30 reads: 7 certainly want to pass the next set of exams, but it doesn't really matter if I only scrape through'.
This item can be used to identify whether a student adopts a surface approach to learning that is does the bare minimum needed to pass. Only two students HA2 and LA4 definitely disagree with this statement (a score of 1). This would seem to
classified in Table 4.1 A above. On the other hand the other students' responses to item 30 seem to suggest that they may have a more surface perception of learning (on the continuum deep-surface) to what has been classified in Table 4.1 A. This would need to be confirmed with more research.
Item 36 reads: 'My habit of putting off work leaves me with far too much to do'.
Only one student HA2 definitely disagrees with this statement and scores 1 on the scale. The others on the other hand because they to some extent agreed with this statement scored higher, therefore had a higher negative mark and this explains the lower AO scale score.
These low scores on the achieving orientation scale (AO) may be explained by low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and an absence of self-belief which may apply to all first year of study students and even more so when students are defined institutionally as 'at risk'. The Academic Literacy course may be experienced by these students as a stigma and this could explain the low morale of the students and thus the low scores on the AO scale.
At interviews with each student the researcher discussed their AO scale score and used the opportunity to motivate the student to achieve, to build up self-confidence
the students' examination results as these interviews were conducted before the examinations. This however is speculative and would need to be confirmed by further research.