Students Speak: A Qualitative Investigation of Undergraduate Students’ Experiences

Abstract

Many factors affect students’ experiences in university. In late 2007, the University of Regina was involved in a labour dispute with its CUPE 1975-01 employees, resulting in a partial service disruption for students. As one of the assignments for a senior undergraduate class on qualitative research methods in psychology, students conducted one-on-one semi-structured interviews with 10 undergraduate students (5 male, 5 female) in order to gain an in-depth understanding of their experiences at this institution. Questions addressed their educational experiences, their perceptions of the institutional model at this campus, and their experiences during the recent strike of the university’s support workers, including the nature of the information communicated to them and how they were affected by the job action. The data collected from the interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using Grounded Theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008), a qualitative research technique in which major themes emerge through systematic coding and analysis of the data. The major findings and their implications for students are discussed. This study is an in-depth examination of the experiences of undergraduate students at the University of Regina.