Education

This paper discusses the results of the first comprehensive longitudinal study of qualification retention, completion and progression in tertiary education in New Zealand. Of the cohort of domestic students who started a qualification at a public tertiary education provider in 1998, 40 percent had gained a qualification by the end of 2002, 9 percent were still studying, and 51 percent had left without gaining a qualification.

Research on students' approaches to learning in higher education has consistently demonstrated a range of influencing factors. This Masters research used interviews on the basis of an investigation of the factors influencing learning from a sample of postgraduate students in a New Zealand university. The findings from this study showed that the influence of students' prior knowledge and learning orientations was important and this supports the literature in this field. The contextual factors, which include lecturers, choice and integration of courses, and assessments were found to affect students' approaches to learning and were responsible for the variability of learning orientations.

This study reports on students' and lecturers' perceptions of using wikis as a platform for conducting assessed group projects in two postgraduate Master's level university courses. The results highlight the fact that student attitudes to group work, in general, are mixed, and that the use of wikis per se is not enough to improve these attitudes. On the positive side, students found wikis useful for arranging information and sharing knowledge, while instructors thought wikis made managing and marking group work easier and more effective. Other issues related to using wikis as a collaborative learning tool in higher education are also considered.

Cooperative education, a form of experiential or work-integrated learning is common in tertiary educational institutions worldwide, but less so in New Zealand.  How well do such programs work? What infrastructure is needed to ensure learning actually occurs? Are graduates of work-integrated learning programs able to satisfy employer needs? This chapter synthesizes decades of work around such issues, and details research initiatives that provide valuable insights into how students learn science on in the workplace, how their skill development matches that desired by employers, and best practice for management of work-integrated learning in science and engineering.

‘Student engagement’, defined as students’ involvement with activities and conditions likely to generate high-quality learning, is increasingly understood to be important for higher education quality. This report presents the first insights into students’ engagement in higher education in Australasia.