I am reading “What you do is less important than how you do it: the effects of learning environment on student outcomes”, Bonem, Fedesco, and Zissimopoulos 2019 (Learning Environment Research).

They survey a large number (14,000) students across a variety of disciplines and find students ” in highly autonomy-supportive learning environments experience significant increases in satisfaction of students’ basic psychological needs, student motivation, course evaluations and academic performance”.

They reference “self-determination theory” and distinguish between courses where the focus is on pressuring students to think like the instructor (controlling), and courses where students have more ownership of the course, with their thoughts and feelings welcome.  See Ryan and Deci 2017 for information about the learning benefits of autonomy-supporting environments (environments where students “learn more conceptual knowledge, have a deeper understanding of the content, and retain information longer”).

In terms of course outcomes, autonomy, competence and relatedness are named as basic psychological needs (they say to see Deci and Ryan 1985 and 2000), and they are rated, via surveys, for each course in the study.

• Autonomy: Options and choices can create a sense of autonomy.
• Competence: A sense of competence is also important: this is about student perception of their progress.  Perceiving progress can lead to motivation, which can lead to improved progress.
• Relatedness: This is about feeling like other people in the course (instructor and students) care about them and that they are contributing to the course.

The measure of learning environment for each course in the study was set by a learning climate questionnaire (LQC, 6 questions):

1. I feel that my instructor provides me choices and options.
2. I feel understood by my instructor.
3. My instructor conveyed confidence in my ability to do well in the course.
4. My instructor encouraged me to ask questions.
5. My instructor listens to how I would like to do things.
6. My instructor tries to understand how I see things before suggesting a new way to do things.

They also use a basic psychological needs survey (7 items are about autonomy, 6 about competence and 8 about relatedness):

1. I feel like I can make a lot of inputs in deciding how my coursework gets done.
2. I really like the people in this course.
3. I do not feel very competent in this course.
4. People in this course tell me I am good at what I do.
5. I feel pressured in this course.
6. I get along with people in this course.
7. I pretty much keep to myself when in this course.
8. I am free to express my ideas and opinions in this course.
9. I consider the people in this course to be my friends.
10. I have been able to learn interesting new skills in this course.
11. When I am in this course, I have to do what I am told.
12. Most days I feel a sense of accomplishment from this course.
13. My feelings are taken into consideration in this course.
14. In this course I do not get much of a chance to show how capable I am.
15. People in this course care about me.
16. There are not many people in this course that I am close to.
17. I feel like I can pretty much be myself in this course.
18. The people in this course do not seem to like me much.
19. I often do not feel very capable in this course.
20. There is not much opportunity for me to decide for myself how to go about my coursework.
21. People in this course are pretty friendly towards me.

My impression is that the LQC was used to grade the learning environment of the course, and then the basic psychological needs survey was used to create dependent variables.  It doesn’t seem surprising that 1, 5, 8, 11, 13, 17, 20 of the basic needs survey (the autonomy questions) would be closely related to the LQC questions, so it seems worth focusing on the relationship between the LQC score and other outcomes of the course.

The course rating, the instructor rating, and the student rating of knowledge transfer each has a   positive relationship with the learning environment rating.

Looking at regression coefficients (see Table 3), competence seems perhaps more important than autonomy.  Competence looks to be closely related to autonomy, though, and also to a “self determination index”.  In the self determination index, students rate agreement with the following statements:

1. Because it allows me to develop skills that are important to me.
2. Because I would feel bad if I didn’t.
3. Because learning all I can about academic work is really essential for me.
4. I don’t know. I have the impression I’m wasting my time.
5. Because acquiring all kinds of knowledge is fundamental for me.
6. Because I feel I have to.
7. I’m not sure anymore. I think that maybe I should quit (drop the class).
8. Because I really enjoy it.
9. Because it’s a sensible way to get a meaningful experience.
10. Because I would feel guilty if I didn’t.
11. Because it’s a practical way to acquire new knowledge.
12. Because I really like it.
13. Because experiencing new things is a part of who I am.
14. Because that’s what I’m supposed to do.
15. I don’t know.I wonder if I should continue.
16. Because I would feel awful about myself if I didn’t.
17. Because it’s really fun.
18. Because that’s what I was told to do.

I suppose that this paper ends up setting up a list of 13 or so factors that are worth investigating further (6 learning environment questions and 7 autonomy questions), as well as highlighting the importance of what the authors are terming autonomy, competence and relatedness.