Key Factors Influencing Part-time MBA Students' Academic Performance:Personality Type And Learning Approaches

The application of concepts and understanding of management discipline is vital for graduate management students during their training program, as they will hold intellectually demanding positions in the industry such as consulters, market researchers, advertisers, policy makers, chief executive officers etc. Consequently, they are expected to adopt deep learning approaches with the intention of achieving high academic performance. Hence previous research has well documented that deep/surface approach to learning and the personality type represent an important construct in order to describe students'learning experience in high education contexts, and in trying to understand differences in students'educational achievements.Talking about graduate management students, they are required to go beyond the rote memorization skills that characterize surface approach and develop deeper research and analytical skills in pertinence with their educational experience and personal development. It is, however, not clear why some MBA students are able to acquire greater levels of academic performance than others.In this regard, an individual's personality represents dispositions in the way the individual interacts with his/her environment, and is thus a factor in determining the number and nature of experiences an individual has, and, in how they interpret those experiences. Furthermore, in the five-factor theory (FFT) personality is seen as a system in which an individual's characteristic adaptations are developed through dynamic processes that mediate his/her personality traits and experience. One of these dynamic processes is learning. Consequently, an individual's personality traits are considered good predictors of his/her future training and learning performance, as personality traits show a longitudinal consistency across the entire lifespan.From this perspective, the present study's aim was to examine the link between personality types and approaches to learning of part-time MBA students and to describe their influence on these graduate management students'performance. Thus the research found a number of relationships between academic performance of MBA students, in pertinence to their types of personality, based on the Big Five traits, and their adopted approach to learning (deep/surface). Due to a fierce competition in today's business environment, MBA students have to learn not only the knowledge in extensive fields such as accounting, marketing, finance, economics, management and information systems, but also the skills of teamwork, communication and leadership are part of their immense training. Moreover, they are supposed to acquire the skills for dealing with international business, multiple cultures, merger and acquisition and so on. Hence, it is a real challenge to complete the MBA education in a more profound way. It becomes, even more difficult and challenging task for a part-time MBA student who is compelled to work full time, as he has a family to feed, and attends school at night or on weekends to earn the degree. For such a case, it becomes a prerequisite that the skills must be learned in less time and with greater efficiency.The part-time MBA students are supposed to perform lower than their counterparts in the full-time program due to a low degree of qualification and motivation, in some cases. With no aim to compare between the two programs, in this study, the part-time MBA students' performance can be seen as, particularly, relevant to their individual personality type and approaches to learning. Thus, driven by a strong desire to obtain the MBA degree as a sine qua non for joining managerial ranks from a technical job function, the part-time MBA students are characterized, in most cases, by a relatively considerable age and maturity with high motivation, rich practical experience and a pertinent seriousness.Despite their perseverance to succeed in their study program, the part-time MBA students might face several factors frustrating their attempts to optimize their academic performance outcome (i.e. their success of studying, in terms of grades and credits). Among these factors personality type and learning approaches could significantly influence the part-time MBA students' academic performance. Sometimes these graduate students might approach their study course inappropriately using the learning material in a different way to the designer, due to an increasing workload and time pressure. Though attending the same course and even having the same lecturers, they also may differ in the way to deal with the learning task due to divergent personality characteristics. For example, conscious and extrovert students are likely adopting a deep approach to learning in order to excel in their studies, while those with high degree of neuroticism are likely adopting a surface approach to learning, which is associated with a negative or low academic performance.Given the differences amongst students and the efforts from MBA programs stakeholders to train high qualified MBAs, the importance of investigating the influence of personality type and approaches to learning of MBA students'academic performance could be more relevant to participants in MBA training programs in China where the Confucianism ideology impacts on the way management education develops and students are stereotyped as rote learners using knowledge assimilation for the mastery of principles instead of critical analysis. Some pervious research contend that language difficulties, individual personality traits and prior socialization experiences could partly explain students'resistance to change in learning context, in the great region of China. However, such dubious claims are thought to have originated from reports of Asian students as "rote learners" who are passive and complaint, contrary to traditional Confucian belief, which has been reported placing great value on education both in terms of learning and as a process itself.Additionally, due to changes underpinned by the globalization event worldwide, particularly in China, in socio-economic and global contexts, learning and instructional paradigms, and the educational reforms which affect school organization, curriculum, and assessment methods the stereotyped view of Chinese students as passive rote learners can be questioned further. In addition, the importance of study subjects with regard to learning in a second language may lead to a surface approach (SA) and the anecdotal information of rote learning in Chinese learners may be explained by the nature of curriculum and the teaching environment rather than an inherent characteristic of the student. Consequently, Chinese local MBA students are expected to master their course content and concept through the medium of their first language, in relevance to their own educational and cultural context.While the above mentioned claims require further critique, it is acknowledged that cultural contexts may be an important influence on learning. Consequently, studies which examine the application and outcomes of different learning approaches in different cultural contexts are necessary. The earlier analysis provides a strong impetus to examine the impact of personality type and learning approaches on part-time MBA students'performance, taking Chinese MBA students as a case of study.A conceptual framework adopted from Biggs's'3p model of teaching and learning' was constructed to guide this investigation. The model conceptualizes student learning as an integrated system comprising three components:presage, process, and product factors.Presage factors refer to variables that exist prior to the actual engagement in learning, such as prior knowledge, intelligence, values, and personality characteristics, etc. The process phase consists of factors developed during the learning process, namely students' motives and strategies for learning. Product factors refer to the nature of student's learning outcomes, such as academic performance indicators and the development of learning skills.The study's representative sample consisted of208part-time MBA students who participated in the MBA program, provided by Zhejiang University during the2010/2011academic year. The MBA Center of Zhejiang University allows many employees, from various manufacturing and service industries, to keep working while earning their degrees through part-time MBA studies during evenings and weekends. Therefore the perfection of this program, widely recognized across China, and its relevancy to this reputable university, make it a good model for this research.Developing a good new questionnaire, specifically, for graduate students may require considerable time, effort and skills. Therefore, the use of already available questionnaire on a different sample is preferred when the questionnaire has been tested and its reliability and validity have been established. For instance, there are existing questionnaires to measure Big Five personality traits and approaches to learning, which are standardized, tested and validated, such as the short Five-Factor Personality Inventory of the International Personality Item Pool and the revised R-SPQ-2F (Revised-Student Process Questionnaire-2Factors). Hence both questionnaires have been adopted by the present study to measure personality variables and approaches to learning of part-time MBA students.With regard to students'academic performance, it is clear that one systematic way to measure student learning would be to compare measures of student competencies at the beginning and end of their educational experience. In MBA students'case, the entrance exams and the cumulative (Cum) GPA, which represents a student's overall performance in the duration of time of the study's program, could be the best indicators of their academic performance.The research findings are illustrated trough the practical application of the study's framework which has demonstrated significant effects of the Big Five personality traits and learning approaches variables on the part-time MBA students'performance.It is clear that, the Big Five personality traits have a direct association with learning approaches. Hence the adoption of deep-learning strategies is directly influenced by the three personality traits of extraversion, conscientiousness and openness.From this analysis, it seems that the five personality traits are directly related to students'approaches to learning, which directly influence their academic performance. Hence part-time MBA students who register high scores on extraversion, consciousness and openness traits tend to achieve high academic performance. On the other hand, those who display high scores on agreeableness and neuroticism traits tend to have low or negative performance.These findings translate the study's expectations fitness with its hypotheses tests except for agreeableness trait (H2d) that has been found significantly and positively correlated with performance indicators of MBA students. Thus, it is clearly shown that the degree of association between personality types and learning approaches of part-time MBA students could significantly influence their performance. Therefore an understanding of the links between personality type and learning approaches of part-time MBA students may provide useful insights for the teachers and the curriculum designers to develop an adequate training strategy in order to enhance such graduate management students'performance. Apart from other factors, such as the learning environment, other ways should be considered to enhance the deep learning of MBA students that impacts positively upon their academic performance:for example, making these students aware of the influence of their personality traits on their learning strategies. This is an interesting finding as it seems that the MBA educational system doesn't favor a special kind of student. The perception of learning tasks is, nevertheless, related to the attitude of students and may offer an opening for educators to work on these attitudes in reliance on students'types of personality.Additionally the present study findings perhaps challenge the anecdotal information of rote learning in Chinese learners, which may be explained by the nature of curriculum and the teaching environment rather than as an inherent characteristic of the student.From the study results, several conclusions can be deduced:Firstly, there is a strong impact of personality traits on the learning approaches of MBA students. Secondly, differences in personalities between the respondents are noticeable based on the measure using the five factor model of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness. Thirdly, the degree of performance of part-time MBA students is significantly relevant to their types of personality and learning approaches.In spite of the limitations of this study, the results are supposed to be of a great importance for applied researchers willing to carry out more research about the role of personality and learning approaches in enhancing MBA students'performance.