Quality And Time – The Time Budget Of University Students
Author(s):
Lars Ulriksen (presenting / submitting) Christoffer Nejrup
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
22. Research in Higher Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

22 SES 14 B,

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-25
15:30-17:00
Room:
K5.05
Chair:
Jaakko Kauko

Contribution

In the European Higher Education Arena, ECTS points are used as the common currency for counting and exchanging study activities. ECTS points refer to learning outcomes and the workload associated with these.  ‘Workload is an estimation of the time the individual typically needs to complete all learning activites’ (European Commission, 2015, p. 10) in class as well as outside. Often one ECTS point is set to correspond with a certain amount of study hours which also indicates that students are expected to spend a particular number of hours per week as full-time students.

The Eurostudent survey (Hauschildt, Gwosc, Netz, & Mishra, 2015) showed that in most of the countries bachelor students spent between 30 and 40 hours per week on taught studies and personal study time (figure 6.5). Depending on how many weeks that make up an academic year this may match the number of hours that equals 60 ECTS points, but according to a report issued by the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Research this is not the case in Denmark (Udvalg for Kvalitet og Relevans i de Videregående Uddannelser, 2014). Therefore, the time budget of Danish students was identified as a problem for the quality of Danish higher education and the government has named the number of study hours students spend per week a key figure in the national higher-education policy. Higher-education institutions are therefore expected to launch initiatives to increase the study intensity of their students. However, understanding why students allocate more or less time to their study efforts is important to prevent political, institutional and pedagogical initiatives to be detrimental to student learning and hence to quality, because the initiatives are founded in an insufficient or simple diagnosis of the reasons behind the workload students invest.

The objective of this paper is to more fundamentally explore what makes students spend their time the way they do.

A key theoretical concept underpinning the study is that of the implied student (Ulriksen, 2009) claiming that any higher-education teaching and learning context implies a particular study practice of the students in order to succeed. This study practice concerns how students engage in class (e.g., remaining passive, patient and attentive) and how they study outside class, but also what students find interesting or what they believe is the perspective of the study. These implied study practices and inclinations are implied through the teaching and learning activities as well as through the study structure.

Secondly, we conceive the students’ engagement with their studies as a process of negotiation where students try to make sense of what they mean through a continuous process of interpretations of what they meet and consequent and subsequently try to engage in a way that balance what they meet with what they expect (Holmegaard, Madsen, & Ulriksen, 2014). Hence, the students’ study practices develop in an encounter between form, content and culture of the study programme and the students’ expectations and experiences and the study repertoire they have developed.

Based on this, the purpose of the paper is to explore how students spend their time as students and what affects their time-budget practices. How does the students’ priorities emerge from the encounter between their experiences and expectations and the implied student of the programme? Hence, the study may not only inform institutional initiatives and national policies, but also contribute to a more fundamental understanding of how the curriculum design and the teaching and learning activities affect students’ way of studying.

Method

The methods used for studying time budgets have each their shortcomings (Ruiz-Gallardo, Castaño, Gómez-Alday, & Valdés, 2011). Danish studies of students’ time use usually use surveys where students are asked to state the number of hours spent on different activities the previous week or in an average week. We decided to apply an alternative approach to see if the reported number of study hours differed from previous studies and because we found them more valid. The present study adopted a mixed-methods approach. A mandatory fourth semester course at each of four bachelor programmes was selected: one in the humanities, one in social sciences and two in the sciences. At one of the first lectures, students were asked to respond to a paper-based survey about their time budget similar to those used in other Danish studies for comparison. Students were also asked to volunteer to register their time use using a mobile app during two weeks – in the beginning and at the end of the semester – to compare time budgets using two different methods. In the mobile app, students could register in eight categories covering study activities in class and outside, other activities (with or without perceived relevance for the study), paid jobs and other. For the second week two categories (exam and preparing for exam) were added. In total 292 students completed surveys, 85 students commenced registration, and 76 completed two weeks of registration. Finally, the second author carried out anthropological fieldwork at the four programmes using the selected courses as entry points. The fieldwork combined participant observations with semi-structured, qualitative interviews and one workshop at each programme. 25 students were interviewed at the beginning of the semester and five of these were re-interviewed at the end. As a part of the first interviews, the interviewees were asked to make a schedule showing their activities and time use during a week. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and the observations were documented in a field log. With inspiration from thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), the qualitative data was analysed focussing on themes and patterns generated from the data. The mobile registrations were analysed using simple statistics as mean, median and standard deviation.

Expected Outcomes

Preliminary findings show considerable variations in the students’ time budgets between study programmes, between students at the same study programmes and between the first and second week of registration. Students at the two science programmes spent substantially more hours on study-related activities than did students at the two non-science programmes. Students at the social science programme and one science programme spent noticeably more time studying during week 2 preparing for exam, which was not the case for the two remaining programmes. Finally, at the social science programme there were students spending less than 13 hours at study-relevant activities, while others spent more than 36 hours. These findings calls for closer studying of students’ time use, but they also support Herrmann, Bager-Elsborg, Hansen, and Nielsen (2015) in questioning whether talking about the average student is meaningful. The qualitative data suggest that whether the students expect the teaching and learning activities to be relevant or not affect their time-budget priorities. The sense of relevance was also related to whether the students experienced a coherence between the study activities and the competences they believed would be required at the labour market – and if the students had clear ideas about what competences would be relevant at all. The programmes imply that the students themselves are able to establish the sense of relevance and that this, therefore, is not necessary to do in the teaching. Apparently, this is not the case, and this difference between the implied student and the actual students could cause students to direct their efforts elsewhere. Measures taken by policy makers and institutions to increase students’ time used on studying should address the students’ experience of relevance and coherence and they should take into account the variety in different dimensions rather than targeting all students with the same actions.

References

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. doi:10.1191/1478088706qp063oa European Commission. (2015). ECTS Users' Guide. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/repository/education/ects/users-guide/docs/ects-users-guide_en.pdf Hauschildt, K., Gwosc, C., Netz, N., & Mishra, S. (2015). Social and Economic Conditions of Student Life in Europe : Synopsis of Indicators. Eurostudent V 2012-2015 Retrieved from Bielefeld: http://www.eurostudent.eu/download_files/documents/EVSynopsisofIndicators.pdf Herrmann, K. J., Bager-Elsborg, A., Hansen, I. B., & Nielsen, R. B. (2015). Mere undervisning, større studieintensitet? En multilevelanalyse af 7.917 studerendes tidsforbrug. Dansk Universitetspædagogisk Tidsskrift, 10(18), 35-50. Holmegaard, H. T., Madsen, L. M., & Ulriksen, L. (2014). A journey of negotiation and belonging: understanding students’ transitions to science and engineering in higher education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 9(3), 755-786. doi:10.1007/s11422-013-9542-3 Ruiz-Gallardo, J.-R., Castaño, S., Gómez-Alday, J. J., & Valdés, A. (2011). Assessing student workload in Problem Based Learning: Relationships among teaching method, student workload and achievement. A case study in Natural Sciences. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(3), 619-627. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.11.001 Udvalg for Kvalitet og Relevans i de Videregående Uddannelser. (2014). Høje mål. Fremragende undervisning i videregående uddannelser. Retrieved from København: http://ufm.dk/uddannelse-og-institutioner/rad-naevn-og-udvalg/tidligere-rad-naevn-og-udvalg/kvalitetsudvalget/publikationer/samlet_rapport_web_01-2.pdf Ulriksen, L. (2009). The implied student. Studies in Higher Education, 34(5), 517-532. doi:10.1080/03075070802597135

Author Information

Lars Ulriksen (presenting / submitting)
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Christoffer Nejrup
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

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