Ayman Belhiyad
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A B S T R A C T
In higher education, students’ interactions are crucial to their learning in general and to their character development in particular for various reasons. Students’ interactions can be at different levels such as student students’ interactions, student-teachers’ interactions and student-faculty interactions. Knowing the importance of students’ interaction, the aim of this study is to investigate the correlation between students’ interactions and their character in Moroccan higher education. Student’s interactions, in this study, refer to students’ interactions with their friends and classmates, teachers and the administrative staff while students’ character is defined in this study as their morals, ethics, values and citizenship. The main research question answers the question if there is a statistically significant relationship between students’ interactions and their character. 220 students filled in the online questionnaires to study the targeted correlations in addition to 17 students participated in the focus groups to elicit their opinions about their interactions among themselves, with their teachers and the administrative staff in relation to their character as well as the underlying correlations. This study is mixed methods research in that both questionnaires and focus groups are implemented to answer the aforementioned research question. The quantitative data revealed a positive correlation between students’ interactions and their character while the qualitative date confirmed previous quantitative results concerning such correlations. The results suggested that university presidents, deans, faculty staff, teachers and policy makers have to be cautious about the importance of students’ interactions in developing students’ character as well as the positive correlation students’ interactions have with their morals, ethics, values and citizenship.