**4.3 Improving study skills**

*Theorizing STEM Education in the 21st Century*

How do the students and mentors experience the programme integrating courses? Some results from the mandatory survey of PIC2 at the end of the academic year 2018/2019 are shown in **Table 5**. In each of these five questions, the students should answer on a Likert scale from 1 to 7 whether they agree or not to a statement. In the scale, 1 means *totally disagree* and 7 means *fully agree*. The same questions have been asked for a sequence of years, and the results are

We can see that already from year 1, the students understand the aims of the seminars. They also, throughout the 3 years, appreciate listening to elder or younger students. The interviewed students confirmed this and even expressed that sharing an experience that could evoke change was the main benefit of the

The students value the programme integrating course more and more during the course of the course. At the end of the course, a majority of the students rank the fruitfulness of the course to 6 or 7 on the Likert scale. Increase of the knowledge of the education through PIC is also something that students rank higher in the third

The student interviews showed that discussing the courses of the programme and how they link to each other was considered to be an important part of PIC, where the mentors were seen as gateways to change things. Some interviewed students considered some seminar topics to be nontechnical and far from what they chose to study and therefore not that valuable. The interviewed mentors confirmed that a few students' attitudes towards some topics were disappointing. Some mentors expressed that discussing these topics could be out of their own comfort zone. The proportion of students answering below 4 (i.e. were negative) to the fruitfulness of the 8 first seminars of the course varied between 8% (master programmes topic) and 28% (learning objectives, criteria and assess-

Some of the interviewed students expressed that timing of the reflection assignments always was the worst possible—when all parallel courses had assignments due. One should note that the students get the assignment about 10 days before the

Experienced mentors expressed that they were fortunate to be able to follow the development of their students throughout the 2 or 3 years of the course, to be able to learn their names, which is often not possible in the ordinary courses where the

I feel that I am better at writing reflections now than when I started the programme 3.8 4.4 5.2

My knowledge of the education has increased considerably through PIC 4.4 4.8 5.4 Overall, the programme integrating course has been fruitful 4.8 5.0 5.6

*Results from the survey 2019. The students were asked how well they agree with a set of statements on a Likert scale from 1 (I totally disagree) to 7 (I fully agree). The mean values of the answers are shown in the table.*

**Year 1**

**Year 2**

5.8 5.9 6.1

5.9 5.9 6.0

**Year 3**

deadline and that the assignment will take about 3 hours to complete.

I understand the aims of the seminars and activities of the programme integrating

It has been interesting and rewarding to listen to students from other years at the

**4.2 Experiences of the course**

almost stable.

year than in the first year.

number of students is often over 200.

course.

ment topic).

**210**

**Table 5.**

course

seminars

Hedin and Kann [30] have studied the effects of the programme integrating course PIC2 with respect to study skills. The course starts with a learning-to-learn module, consisting of the following parts:


The evaluation shows, among other things, which effects the students believed the study skills had after trying them (see **Table 6**). No significant change was found in how satisfied the students were with their overall study technique immediately after the initial module, but in the long-term, 77% of the students believed the course had promoted their ability to analyse and adapt their study habits [30]. The proportion of students who believe that PIC has promoted this is largely the same in different years and in different surveys.
