Conference Agenda

This paper reports on a case study investigating how student-centred learning, an underlying principle of the Bologna Process (EU, 2024, p. 14), can be identified in different master’s programmes at the University of Oslo (Norway) and Salahaddin University (Kurdish region of Iraq). Both universities formally adhere to the standards of the Bologna Process in their education systems. However, in practice, they differ in various aspects, including the length of time the implementation process has been adopted, funding and resources and university ranking—often with wide gaps between them (see, for example, Times Higher Education, 2024). The study focuses on student-centred learning within supervision-related activities, particularly in connection with the master’s thesis. This focus is examined at two levels within master’s programmes: first, the organisation (formalities and guidelines) and the educational design (academic and educational content), and second, the practice of master’s supervision. Based on these examinations, the paper investigates the following research question: How can student-centred learning in master’s supervision be identified in different higher education contexts?

In the past two decades, the Bologna Process, initially promoting ‘universal education in Europe’ (Haukland, 2017, p. 261), has gained attention beyond the continent. Various universities within the Kurdish region of Iraq have recently adopted the Bologna Process, beginning in 2019 (APPRAIS, 2023). In the early 2000s, Norwegian universities, along with many universities in varying countries throughout Europe, began implementing the same uniform standards associated with the Bologna Process as a result of new higher education reform policies (EHEA, 2024). Currently, 49 countries, including non-EU nations such as Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, have all pledged ‘to pursue and implement the objectives of the Bologna Process in their own systems of higher education’ (EHEA, 2024). With numerous countries spanning thousands of kilometres now adopting the same educational standards, it is worthwhile to examine such global policies in universities at the local level. This is especially true because research related to the Bologna Process often tends to concentrate on a macro level, emphasising structures and political issues (Dysthe & Webler, 2010, p. 23).

A guide provided to institutions planning to implement the Bologna Process within their higher education systems characterises student-centred learning as ‘innovative methods of teaching which aim to promote learning in communication with teachers and students and which takes students seriously as active participants in their own learning’ (EU, 2015, p. 76). To examine how student-centred learning can be identified in the two universities, Dysthe’s (2002) supervision models will be used as an analytical tool. Her models comprise three supervision types, each characterised by distinctive features: the teaching model (supervisor-in-focus), the partnership model (student-in-focus) and the apprenticeship model (project-in-focus). The model closest to the description of student-centred learning in this context is the partnership model, which is characterised by a symmetrical relationship between the supervisor and the student. In the partnership model, the master’s thesis is viewed as a joint project between the student and supervisor, involving a dialogical relation between the two parties, with the supervisor aiming to foster independent thinking.

Dysthe (2002, p. 532) explained that the partnership model is based on a dialogical approach to learning (see Wittek, 2023). Within this framework, meaning is created through interactions between different individuals in a real-time context (Linell, 1998). When individuals in a setting share different thoughts and perspectives, their understanding is constructed and transformed (Dysthe et al., 2006, p. 302), facilitating learning opportunities. By using Dysthe’s supervision models, especially the partnership model, we can examine the type of supervision that is set up among different master’s programmes in relation to one of the Bologna Process’s underlying principles: student-centred learning.

Students make varying choices regarding how to allocate their time between a range of activities, which has important implications for their learning and development (Pace, 1981). Some studies find that undergraduate students are not sufficiently engaged in their studies and spend considerable amounts of time partying and other leisure activities (Armstrong & Hamilton, 2013; Arum & Roksa, 2011). In contrast, some other studies indicate that college students fall into a state of "poverty" during the time of independent exploration, spending "all the peak time" studying (Lingo & Chen, 2023), especially students in highly selective universities are facing overwhelming time demands (Haktanir et al., 2021). What is more, it is much harder for firs-year college students to manage time conflicts due to experiencing a critical turning point in knowledge and psychology (Armstrong & Hamilton, 2013).

There is a difference between "natural time" and "social time" according to Adam (1994), the "natural time" is fixed and divisible units that can be measured, while quality, complexity, and mediating knowledge are preserved exclusively for the conceptualization of "social time". The "social time" is organized around values, goals, morals, and ethics, whilst simultaneously being influenced by group tradition, habits, and legitimized meanings, which can explain cross-cultural and historical differences in the allocation of time. At the same time, individuals also allocate their time based on their preferences, rather than allocating their time to comply with the requirements of "social time" (Hartmut, 2010).

The concept of time provides basic theoretical clues for us to describe and understand the possible differences in time allocation among students (Fosnacht, McCormick, & Lerma, 2018; Toutkoushian & Smart, 2001). Compared with students in primary and secondary schools, the time discipline of college is weakened and has the characteristics of flexibility, although college students' time allocation is still subject to compulsory discipline. It is worth noting that flexibility is both an opportunity and a challenge for students. For instance, previous studies suggest that certain groups of students, such as low-income and disadvantaged students from underdeveloped areas, may face more constraints in discretionary time (Jaeger, 2009). Moreover, students with different level of academic performance may differ in their understandings of activities as well as differ in how they make plans and arrange priorities (Cambridge-Williams et al., 2013). In short, previous studies imply that students’ time allocation might be influenced by various factors, such as individual characteristics, family background, previous experiences in high school, and peers’ behaviors in college.

Although previous studies offer valuable insights into the influence factors of time allocation(Crispin & Kofoed, 2019), it remains unclear the characteristics of students' time allocation. Additionally, previous studies simplify comparisons between the duration students spending on different activities in a cluster or discriminant analysis(Innis & Shaw, 1997; Pike & Kuh, 2005), overlooking the push and pull of various activities that force students to make trade-off on time allocation, especially for first-year students from elite or research universities.

This paper attempts to investigate the characteristics of first-year college students’ time allocation and divide students into different types according to their time allocation. Furthermore, this paper will deeply investigate the characteristics of different types of students and analyze what factors affect students’ time allocation.

This presentation discusses the role of the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) as a key instrument for determining student workloads in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) countries. The central premise of the work is the ECTS system's assumption of a predefined amount of study time to achieve certain learning outcomes, usually ranging from 25 to 30 hours per ECTS credit (European Commission, 2015; Wagenaar, 2019). In particular, the aim is to compare the views of teaching staff on the workload determination practices with students' experiences of workload in studies, and their use of time.

An important added value of the project compared to previous research is that it considers the perspectives of both teaching staff and students. In the case of students, there is already an established tradition of research on the subject. However, this literature has been characterized by a particular disagreement on the definition of workload: while in credit systems such as ECTS, workload is mainly understood as a function of time spent studying (Wagenaar, 2019), other literature has emphasised that time spent studying and students’ perceived workload are not the same (Bowyer, 2012; D'Eon & Yasinian, 2022). Despite the broad acceptance of ECTS, the system's performance has faced increasingly serious challenges: firstly, the actual time spent on studies does not seem to correspond to the time allocated to studies as expressed in ECTS (Souto Iglesias & Baeza Romero, 2018). Time use also appears to be weakly related to students' experience of workload in their studies (Kember, 2004; Smith, 2019). Moreover, time itself is an unreliable indicator of learning: instead, both student time use and perceived workload (Herrero-de Lucas et al., 2021) and other relevant factors such as the quality of time use and student ability (Masui et al., 2013) need to be considered if we are to present reliable models of student success in higher education.

As for the teachers' perspective, previous research has been less extensive and more scattered than the interest in the students' perspective. There has been however, some guiding literature on how the workload for studies should be determined (e.g. Bowyer, 2012; Northup-Snyder et al., 2020). In addition, some comparative studies have shown that the study time estimated by teachers does not properly align with the actual time use of students (Alshamy, 2017; Scully & Kerr, 2014). Individual studies have also explored teachers' perceptions of ECTS as part of their work (Gleeson et al., 2021). Beyond these, there seems to have been little attention paid to teachers' specific ways and practices of determining course workloads and, for example, the challenges they perceive to be associated with this work.

In relation to this framework, the current study aims to:

1) map the practices, experiences and perceptions of teaching staff in determining course workloads;

2) map students' perceptions of these practices for determining workload, and their relationship to students' time use, perceived workload, and academic performance; and

3) compare how the views of teaching staff relate to data collected from students on the workload determination practices, time use, and their perception of workload.

In sum, the project aims to build a more holistic and up-to date data and theory on workload determination practices in higher education. As such, the study is part of a wider research project whose main objective is to examine problems of time in higher education theory, policy and practice.