One hundred and eleven (111) students completed the ASSIST questionnaire, more than two thirds of the students registered for the module (162). As in the previous two case studies, this was a captive audience attending their final seminars; data was gathered from six such seminars corresponding to six student groups ranging from ten (10) to twenty-six (26) students each. Furthermore, ninety-two (92) provided identification so that their scores of the questionnaire are examined in conjunction with their VLE usage. With regards to the responses to ASSIST, I recorded six missing responses of six students and two missing answers of a second student, which were coded as ‘3’, i.e. ‘unsure/doesn’t apply to me’ and processed further. Table 6.3 presents the descriptive statistics for the revised ASSIST inventory.
Table 6.3: Descriptive statistics for the 12 subscales of the revised ASSIST inventory (Management)
Subscales Mean Standard deviation Coefficient alpha (α)
Seeking Meaning 15.21 2.95 0.65
Relating to Ideas 15.22 3.06 0.65
Use of Evidence 15.86 2.69 0.65
Interest in Ideas 14.55 3.16 0.60
Deep Approach total 60.83 9.74 0.86
Organised Study 14.16 2.77 0.40
Time Management 14.69 3.46 0.73
Alertness to Assessment 16.23 2.52 0.52
Monitoring Effectiveness 16.97 2.61 0.71
Strategic Approach total 62.06 9.13 0.84
Lack of Purpose 11.79 4.34 0.77
Unrelated Memorizing 12.58 3.18 0.52
Syllabus Boundness 14.32 2.94 0.51
Fear of Failure 15.57 3.38 0.67
Surface Approach total 54.26 10.22 0.81
The possible score on all 12 subscales is from 4 to 20, possible score on total of scales is from 16 to 80, N=111.
The mean score on the scale measuring the strategic approach was the highest amongst the mean scores of the three (62.06), followed by the mean of the deep approach scale (60.83); scores of the surface approach scale presented the lowest mean (54.26). Reflecting the requirements of the subject pedagogy, the subscale of Use of Evidence presented the highest score on the
deep approach, whilst Monitoring Effectiveness was the highest one for the strategic approach and Fear of Failure for the surface approach. Internal consistency scales measured by Coefficient alpha (α) (Cronbach, 1951) was found at .86 for the deep, .84 for the strategic, and .81 for the surface scale. As in the previous two cases, I proceeded with an examination of whether three distinct approaches were reproduced by the findings. A confirmatory factor analysis on the scores of the twelve (12) subscales was computed using principal axis factoring and oblique rotation. Table 6.4 displays the important factor loadings on the twelve (12) subscales.
Table 6.4: Factor loadings for the 12 subscales of the revised ASSIST inventory (Management) Factors I II Deep Approach Seeking Meaning .762 Relating to Ideas .775 Use of Evidence .815 Interest in Ideas .610 Strategic Approach Organised Study .711 Time Management .594 Alertness to Assessment .684 Monitoring Effectiveness .678 Surface Approach Lack of Purpose .696 Unrelated Memorising .665 Syllabus Boundness .628 Fear of Failure .423
All loadings smaller than .30 in absolute magnitude were suppressed. Loadings replicating subscales of approaches are in bold. Method: principal axis factoring and oblique rotation (delta set at zero), N=111.
Salient loadings on two of the interrelated subscales of the inventory were found, thus the principal axis factoring produced two distinct approaches to learning. The first factor accounted for 39.6% of the variance and presented strong loadings on all the relevant subscales of the deep approach scale as well as all the subscales of the strategic approach scale, with Organised Study being the subscale with the strongest loading of the strategic approach. The subscale with the stronger loading on the deep approach was the Use of Evidence subscale (.815). The second factor (16.6% of the variance) produced strong loadings on all the subscales related to surface approach, with the strongest
loading on the Lack of Purpose subscale (.696). No other loadings were observed above .30 in absolute magnitude. The results of the factor analysis point to the existence of a single approach consisting of all the elements of the deep and the strategic approach as these were captured by the ASSIST questionnaire.
6.3.3 Web logs analysis
As I stated in the introduction of this chapter, at the beginning of the academic year the university upgraded the VLE system to a newer version, which was a merge between the platform previously known as WebCT (called ‘Oasis’) and the one known as Blackboard. The upgraded system offered more advanced tracking facilities some of which I decided were not directly useful for this research. Despite students’ consent, I decided not to use all of the advanced features of the new tracking facilities; this choice has been explained further in the Methodology chapter (see section 3.4 on developing an ethical framework) and is revisited at the final chapter. Students’ logs remained separate since the tracking functions of the new version produced one log for each individual student. Eighty-four (84) cases were further processed after the first round of analysis of the ASSIST questionnaire, based on students’ consent to examine questionnaire data in conjunction with their logs recording online usage. Students’ questionnaires without identifying data or others with identification but incomplete data were excluded from this round of analysis. Graph 6.1 presents the proportion of usage for key elements of the online module environment. More than two thirds of the total sessions of all students who logged on the system did so to access the Content Folder and individual files including the videos recording the lectures. The Assignment and the Web Links areas attracted respectively 7% and 6% of the total of students’ sessions. Some other areas were accessed to a smaller extent; these included the sections that contained results of module assessments (My Grades and Assessments sections, 4% and 3% respectively) and the ‘Who is online’ (3%) a facility designed to encourage synchronous communications amongst students.
From the data of students’ usage of the system, it becomes evident that students prioritised access to the module learning materials (offered mainly in the form of video recordings), the assignments and some other items such as the
introduction to ‘rich pictures’ which was identified as a key component of the lecturer’s teaching strategy and a distinct element of thinking and practising in Graph 6.1: Overview of the VLE usage in Management (hits)
Total hits 40,848
the subject area. It is noted that lecture slides of the first lessons (mostly before Christmas) were accessed far more extensively than the ones of the later lectures; this is a reflection of how the lecturer organised the module presence on ‘Oasis plus’.
6.3.4 Approaches to learning and use of the VLE in Management: