In this paper, we introduce 'Concept Questions,' a weekly writing assignment that has been incorporated into multiple upper-level engineering courses at a single university with the intent of enhancing students' conceptual understanding of the course content. To explore the influence of this activity on students in these courses, we compared…

The Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) continues to be applied in a wide range of pedagogical situations. However, the question remains as to how well a researcher understands the conceptual basis behind the tool they choose. This essay provides a compact and comprehensive view of the conceptual basis for the development of the original SPQ, and…

This paper investigates the learning experience of Chinese students' learning experience in the business Faculty of an Australian university. Chinese students are often characterized as "rote learners" or stereotyped as "reduced Other". Areas of concern are limited to addressing the differences in learning styles, language, and…

Physiology courses are considered to be challenging for students to master due to the highly conceptual nature of the discipline and the substantial cognitive effort required to understand disciplinary knowledge. Students must choose appropriate learning strategies to develop their understanding, as their choices may influence both their…

Research into self-regulated learning has traditionally relied upon self-reported data. While there is a rich body of literature that has extracted invaluable information from such sources, it suffers from a number of shortcomings. For instance, it has been shown that surveys often provide insight into students' perceptions about learning rather…

International students report higher sociocultural and academic stress when settling into a new university compared with their local counterparts. Three disciplines in the health professions collaborated to create a transition program addressing international student health and well-being in Australia. Commencing students and senior student…

First-year university students (n = 199) completed an online questionnaire that queried their purchase of paper books and eBooks for university study and personal interest. The questionnaire also required students to rate their learning characteristics including reading strategies, study self-regulation, learning control beliefs and achievement…

This study is an investigation of the epistemological beliefs and study habits of students undertaking first-year courses in Biological Chemistry and Biochemistry. In particular, we were interested in the relationship between students' epistemological beliefs about learning and knowledge, approaches to learning, and achievement. The study adopted…

Conceptions of learning and strategies used by 15 indigenous students in three Australian universities were studied longitudinally over three years. Their academic achievements were good, but at a high cost in terms of time and effort. In spite of the fact that almost half of the students expressed higher-order (qualitative) conceptions of…

Among 207 Australian final-year nursing students, higher academic grades in the senior year were related to student intention to understand the material or to "achieve," and to the ability to generate alternative learning strategies with changing task demands. Relationships between scores on the Study Process Questionnaire and the…

Learning processes, as measured by the Approaches to Studying Inventory, contributed to the prediction of freshman grades of 181 Australians. Other measures, such as college entrance examinations, locus of control, and student background characteristics, had less predictive ability. (GDC)