Learning contract

Various learning contracts (formal agreements between the instructor and a student) enhance students’ commitment to learning and enable attainment of more personalized learning objectives. This can be pivotal for increasing the feeling of belongingness of  some non-traditional students whose experiences, skills and aspirations may differ from the more traditional student groups.

The attachment provides an example of a learning contract, which has been used with nursing students at Laurea University of Applied Sciences. It also includes important statements of confidentiality that are important to consider while the nursing students are trained or completing their internships in partner health care organisations.

A learning contract allows to build on a student’s earlier competence level, and to agree on the student’s personal learning objectives which are in line with the common learning goals but adjusted to suit the respective student. This may be an important self-esteem factor for diverse students with non-traditional study backgrounds. A learning contract also places the responsibility of reaching the learning objectives on the student.

Source: Laurea University of Applied Sciences