ABSTRACT
Universities will be faced with many challenges in the future. A significant increase in participation in higher education (Van der Zwaan 2017) has made the student population more and more diverse (Guri-Rosenblit, Šebková & Teichler 2007). The universities receive ‘criticism from the outside world’ (Van der Zwaan 2017: 5) because of the mass nature of education, the focus on effficiency and research output, and the lack of collaboration with industry. At the same time, competition in the higher-education sector has intensified, which makes the landscape of educational offferings for students ever more complex and difficult to judge in terms of quality. In this fast-changing higher education context, the evidence-based development of degree programmes becomes more and more relevant. The evidence-based discipline-specific development of teaching and learning is a key principle at the University of Helsinki, implemented to enhance the quality of students’ learning outcomes. Learning and teaching processes take place in real-life environments and are therefore very complicated in nature. Research can help identify factors that contribute to high-quality teaching and learning (see, for example, Gibbs 2017; Stensaker, Bilbow, Breslow & Van der Vaart 2017). Some findings from educational research often make sense intuitively and can even sound self-evident, but it is important, particularly in research-intensive universities, to generate empirical evidence to confirm teachers’ instincts (Lindblom-Ylänne & Breslow 2017). For example, systematic evidence has demonstrated that intrinsic study motivation, personal interest in studying, and self-regulation skills are related to study success at university (e.g. Entwistle 2009; Pintrich 2004).
