Business management students' application of deep and surface learning

Abstract

The learning environments created in higher education institutions (HEI) are to a large extent not empowering students to meet demands of the workplace. Business management students who are only exposed to direct teaching environments are more prone to receive surface learning only than deep learning and will not develop the much needed skills such as critical and creative thinking, problem solving, communication and teamwork to function effectively in the work environment, unless they experience deep learning. The purpose of the study was to measure male and female business management students' approach to learning in three different business-related courses. A non-probability, convenience sampling method was used to gather data from 323 final-year business management students at the North-West University in Potchefstroom. The results indicate that students make use of both deep and surface learning approaches depending on the situation, but upon categorisation of the scores into low, moderate and high groupings it was found that a slight majority of the students chose to follow the deep approach to learning, with females being more inclined to follow this tendency. It is recommended that universities' learning environments be adapted so as to advance deep learning and hence accommodate the needs of future working environments.