How do students spend their time?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09684889710165134 |
| Pages | 85-89 |
| Published date | 01 June 1997 |
| Date | 01 June 1997 |
| Author | Karen Innis,Malcolm Shaw |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Introduction
Student autonomy and independence in
learning are concepts which appear to be
assuming more and more importance in
higher education – often seen, perhaps mis-
takenly, as one possible solution to the eco-
nomic ills that are being visited on the sector.
Stronger academic arguments for student
autonomy and independence were, however,
evident in the Enterprise in Higher Education
Initiatives (EHEI) of many Universities in the
early 1990s, see for example a range of contri-
butions from Leeds Metropolitan, Manches-
ter Metropolitan, Kent and Wolverhampton
Universities in Tavistock Institute (1992) and
were also espoused in the manifesto of the
Higher Education for Capability movement,
see HEC (1996). These concepts are now
becoming much more firmly established in
the fabric of higher education in particular
through the notion of graduate attributes as
suggested by the very recent work of the
Higher Education Quality Council (HEQC)
(1996).
It was initially in 1991 that staff involved in
the EHEI at Leeds Metropolitan University
began to be particularly concerned that an
increase in student autonomy meant a reduc-
tion in the opportunity for staff to monitor the
study and work patterns of students. In any
case, little systematic work seemed to have
been done up to that time to find out what
students did in their private study time. It was
decided to carry out a pilot study based on the
use of individual student learning logs and
follow-up structured group interviews as
reported briefly in Shaw (1992). The work of
this initial project has been developed,
refined, generalized and scaled up in recent
years, through a series of cross-university
initiatives at LMU, into the most recent
survey which is reported here.
The overall purpose of the research project
seems relatively straightforward – to discover
how students spend their weekly study time.
However it is important to define clearly what
is considered to be study related (i.e. the
business of the university) and what is
nobody’s business but the student’s. In the
event we attempted to discover how and
where students spent all their time on
campus, but only how and where they spent
study-related time off-campus. As we shall see
later, problems of definition were largely
avoided by identifying precisely the range of
85
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 5 · Number 2 · 1997 · pp. 85–89
© MCB University Press · ISSN 0968-4883
How do students spend
their time?
Karen Innis and
Malcolm Shaw
The authors
Karen Innis is Market Research Manager in
Communications and External Relations at Leeds
Metropolitan University, UK.
Malcolm Shaw is Teaching and Learning Development
Manager in the Academic Quality and Development
Division at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.
Abstract
Describes the development, management and organiza-
tion of a major cross-university project designed to
discover how students spend their study-related time.
Identifies critical strategic decisions both in diary instru-
mentation design and implementation and points out
matters of general principle that might usefully inform
similar ventures in other contexts and settings. Outlines a
range of important results and gives some indication of the
major implications that these findings have in the broader
university context.
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