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How do year 4 students learn electronic circuit design?
Author
Ma, Jian-Guo
Supervisor
Murphy, Jim (James Raymond)
Abstract
Electronic Circuit Design 11 (E443) is a Year 4 subject in which little new knowledge is introduced. Rather, the purpose is to help students understand how to design electronic circuits at the system level. It is integration of knowledge, concepts, principles and skills they have learned over the past four years' undergraduate study.
Therefore, students' approach to learning is very important. The approach adopted will help them to build their own understanding about the subject. This is crucial to their success.
The Study Process Questionnaire (Biggs, 1987) was used to investigate the learning approaches of both Year 1 and Year 4 students. Results show that over one third the students of both groups are deep learners. The largest group is in the middle range, with no apparent preference for either the deep nor surface approach. Interestingly however, around 27% of Year 4 students are surface learners compared with 18% of Year 1 students.
After four years' training it should reasonably be expected there would be an increase in deep learners and decrease in surface learners. It is seen that this did not happen from the survey results. These results force us to speculate about the teaching, curriculum, labs, learning attitudes of students, etc.
In the past, the infrastructure of the country is a manufacture-based (and partially trading-based) economy. The infrastructure needs a lot of simply trained graduates with a strong sense of their discipline to follow instructions of mass-production lines exactly. Therefore, "robotized" workers, not innovative workers, were produced and welcomed by these kinds of industries. to meet the demands, educational institutions produced such "qualified" engineers. Thus all curriculum, labs, teaching activities and so on were designed to such requirements. This might be one reason why more students become surface-learners after years' training.
However, now as the nation, like others, is changing to knowledge-based global economy. The government is promoting the "Learning Nation. Thinking School" policies This means that our curriculum, labs, teaching activities must "in the future [cater] to such growth industries as information technology, biotechnology and entertainment, and that will require more creativity in our education." [12]. To achieve these objectives, recommendations are presented.
Therefore, students' approach to learning is very important. The approach adopted will help them to build their own understanding about the subject. This is crucial to their success.
The Study Process Questionnaire (Biggs, 1987) was used to investigate the learning approaches of both Year 1 and Year 4 students. Results show that over one third the students of both groups are deep learners. The largest group is in the middle range, with no apparent preference for either the deep nor surface approach. Interestingly however, around 27% of Year 4 students are surface learners compared with 18% of Year 1 students.
After four years' training it should reasonably be expected there would be an increase in deep learners and decrease in surface learners. It is seen that this did not happen from the survey results. These results force us to speculate about the teaching, curriculum, labs, learning attitudes of students, etc.
In the past, the infrastructure of the country is a manufacture-based (and partially trading-based) economy. The infrastructure needs a lot of simply trained graduates with a strong sense of their discipline to follow instructions of mass-production lines exactly. Therefore, "robotized" workers, not innovative workers, were produced and welcomed by these kinds of industries. to meet the demands, educational institutions produced such "qualified" engineers. Thus all curriculum, labs, teaching activities and so on were designed to such requirements. This might be one reason why more students become surface-learners after years' training.
However, now as the nation, like others, is changing to knowledge-based global economy. The government is promoting the "Learning Nation. Thinking School" policies This means that our curriculum, labs, teaching activities must "in the future [cater] to such growth industries as information technology, biotechnology and entertainment, and that will require more creativity in our education." [12]. To achieve these objectives, recommendations are presented.
Date Issued
2000
Call Number
T65 Ma
Date Submitted
2000