3.3. Thematic analysis of student suggestions
Students’ responses to “How can the learning agreement and its use in this course be made more useful for future years?” were analysed following a thematic approach. Two authors of the study coded the text responses following a codebook (Table 3). In the following we report the inter-rater agreement for each code individually using Cohen’s Kappa at the end of the first round of coding across nine codes/categories. e.g.,Improve clarity k = 0.562 (Moderate agreement); More class discussion k = 0.586 (Moderate agreement); No modifications k = 0 (No agreement); More student-centred k = 0 (No agreement);More strictly enforced k = 0.382 (Fair agreement); Adapt to the context k = 1.00 (Almost perfect agreement); Keep it updatedk = 0.465 (Moderate agreement); Other k = 1.00 (Almost perfect agreement); Easier to read k = 0.633 (Almost perfect agreement). As it can be seen, No modifications and More student-centred codes did not reach agreement between the two coders at the end of the first round of coding. Improve clarity, More class discussion, Keep it updated codes reached Moderate agreement.More strictly enforced code reached a Fair agreement. All disagreements were thoroughly discussed and resolved during a second round of coding to reach a consensus.
Results of the thematic analysis reveal that a relatively high number of students indicated that no modifications are required (16.67%), a few students did not provide an opinion (3.33%), some felt that strictly enforcing the terms of the existing agreement would improve it (8.33%), while others mentioned the need to keep adapting the learning agreement to the context of specific courses and current societal views on GenAI (5%). 51.66% of suggested improvements related to helping students better understand and adhere to the learning agreement. Examples include improving the clarity (28.33%) of the learning agreement with specific examples, providing additional time in class to discuss it in more detail (18.33%), incorporating regular reviews and updates to the learning agreement to facilitate adherence (3.33%), and making the text more concise to increase readability (1.67%). 11.67% of suggested improvements related to better supporting student autonomy and participation in defining and applying the learning agreement. In other words, they suggest making the learning agreement more student-centred rather than teacher-centred (11.67%).