Do Students’ Approaches to Learning Affect their Perceptions of Using Computing and Information Technology?

Abstract

Communication and Information Technology (C&IT) has become a key part of the teaching and learning strategy in UK Higher Education, although the level of usage is still variable across courses and institutions. As members of the Assisting Small‐group Teaching through Electronic Resources (ASTER) project team we were interested in the value of C&IT as a teaching tool. One of the aspects we looked at was student perception of using C&IT for a Virtual Seminar series in Psychology. Our research aimed to identify student learning approaches within the group and how this affected their adoption or rejection of the electronic medium. This research study involved Second Year Psychology degree level students completing a core module on biological and cognitive psychology. The module included ten seminar sessions, of which five were face‐to‐face and five used computer‐mediated communication through an Intranet Web board. The students completed the short ‘Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students’ (ASSIST) developed by Tait and Entwistle (1996). Our findings indicate only weak correlations between deep, strategic and surface approaches to learning and perception of C&IT at an overall level. However, individual measures of the deep, strategic and surface approaches to learning indicate potentially interesting relationships, and we offer suggestions on how these may assist in the design of computer‐mediated learning.