Recent studies on student learning in higher education have paid attention to the relationships between characteristics of the learning environment and students' study orientations and study success. The purpose of the present paper is to examine these relationships in university level engineering education. The data were collected from Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland, by means of an Internet survey (n=394). Grade point average, credits per semester and students' qualitative evaluation of their learning outcomes were used as indicators of study success. The findings of the study indicate that students' perceptions of their learning environment were related to their study orientations which, in turn, were related to study success. Having a deep study strategy was the most important predictor of study success. Having a surface strategy, doubt about one's abilities and lack of regulation were factors negatively related to study success. Meaning-oriented and self-regulated students using a deep strategy showed the best success in their studies and externally regulated students using a surface strategy the worst. The findings of the study suggest that the learning environments in Lappeenranta University of Technology encourage deep learning.
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Tynjälä et al. (2005) studied this question.
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