Browsing by Author "Aho, Outi"

Objectives. University students learn discipline specific skills and knowledge during their studies, and at the same time they also develop many generic skills for their future working life. Therefore there are needed to theoretical understanding and studies about students' quality of learning, development of generic skills and study success. The research questions of this study were based on this kind of theoretical framework. The aim is to explore the university students' approaches to learning and their experiences of development of generic skills during their university studies. In addition, aim is to explore the relationship between approaches to learning and study success. Furthermore, this study examines whether the study success is explained by two items: experiences of approaches to learning and generic skills. Methods. The data was collected through an electronic questionnaire at the University of Helsinki. It is a part of a wide studying and working life questionnaire, which has developed and often used at the University of Helsinki. A total of 561 university students from different faculties, who had recently received their masters' degree, participated in the study. The research methods were an independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA and linear regression analysis. Results and conclusions. According to the results, the students achieved high scores both on deep approach to learning and on organized studying but lower scores on surface approach. Furthermore, the deep approach is connected both with organized studying and good study success. Students who had received a high grade in their master's thesis had, in average, a deeper approach to learning. The deep approach to learning seems to promote success in university studies. It had a positive correlation also with the experiences of generic skills. In addition, the only predictor to study success was students' ability to analyze and categorize knowledge. The results confirm that university studies can meet the demands of both the scientific knowledge and learning as well as the working life. The future challenge will still be to analyze generic skills and to take those skills into consideration when developing higher education.