As reported in Chapter 3, 50 of the 79 students who were initially enrolled in the course agreed to participate in this study. Eight supervisors also agreed to participate in this study during observation of students. Five supervisors were electrical engineering teachers and three were from the School of Communication and facilitated language and communication skills during supervised PBL team meetings. During informal interviews with participants, it was found that two students who were enrolled in PBL Subject 1 and 2 were in the second year of the undergraduate robotic engineering degree course. The youngest student participant was 18 years old and the oldest was 36 years old. Of the 79 students, only four were female. All four female students participated in this study.
Gabb and Keating (2006) conducted a series of surveys which explored the experiences of students as they adjusted to this PBL setting. As the study reported on the characteristics of students who enrolled in the PBL subjects offered by the School of Electrical Engineering, its findings were obtained from the researchers and were used in the current study. The study reported that a majority of the students enrolled in the PBL subjects offered by the School of Electrical Engineering were aged 18-24
91 years. Less than 10% of the students were aged 25-30 years and only two students were above 30 years of age. Except for one student, all were enrolled as full-time students.
The study reported that 90% of the students had finished high school between 2002 and 2005. More than half of the students studied at a Government school in final year of school. Nearly fifteen percent of students had attended an independent or private schools and just over 20% of students had attended Catholic schools. Nearly 10% of students reported that they studied in a school overseas in their final year of school. The evaluative study also reported that 50% of students spoke a language other than English (LOTE) at home. An equal percentage of students were categorised as low SES according to the postcode of their home residences. One third of the students’ homes were in the western metropolitan region. From the findings of this study, it was evident that the course had a high proportion of students of low socio-economic status (SES) and with a language background other than English.
Gabb and Keating (2006) determined the socio-economic status of students using the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Socio-economic Indexes for Areas (2001) software package to compare students’ home postcodes with those of Victoria as a whole. Their findings indicated that for the PBL student cohort the average value on the Index of Socio-Economic Disadvantage was below the Victorian average. This index is most commonly used to focus on low-income earners, relatively low educational attainment, high unemployment, rental dwelling and lack of English fluency. Gabb and Keating (2006) argued that a low index value is a sign of disadvantage, but a high value reflects lack of disadvantage rather than high advantage.
Only three students had dependents and a little less than half of the students were the first in the family to attend university. They reported that a quarter of the students had previous engineering experience and that seven students had engineering work experience. Eleven students had studied engineering previously and four students had other engineering experiences.
Nearly 70% of the students were involved in some form of paid work and 20% indicated that they had not undertaken any paid work previously. They found that
92 most students who were involved in paid/unpaid work, worked between 10 and 20 hours per week. They also found that students who worked in paid/unpaid jobs were slightly more likely to have come from high SES backgrounds and language backgrounds other than English.
The overwhelming majority of the students indicated that they would either definitely or probably be able to support themselves financially during their degree course. They also found that most students had a home computer and internet access with 65% of students indicating access to broadband internet at home. However, they also found that five students had no access to internet facilities at home and two students did not have access to a home computer.
Half of the students travelled between one and two hours to reach the campus. It was also reported that two students travelled more than two hours and the rest of the students travelled either less than 30 minutes or between 30 min and one hour to reach the university campus.
Gabb and Keating (2006) found that a majority of the students chose to enrol in this course for reasons based on both intrinsic motivation (“studying in a field that really interests me” and “developing my talents and creative abilities”) and improving their prospects for getting a job (p. 13). They reported that intrinsic motivation was more highly rated by students than other reasons for joining the course. However, they found that more than half of students from a language background other than English rated meeting “expectation of my parents or family” as important (Gabb & Keating, 2006).
4.4 Summary
To summarise, the setting in which this research study was conducted and the characteristics of the participants were explored in this chapter. Key information about the design and implementation of a new PBL curriculum at the School of Electrical Engineering where this study was conducted were presented. It was found that in both first and second semester the course consisted of one PBL unit and two lecture-based non-PBL units. Information about the objectives of the course, and the course structure suggested that the School planned to teach fundamental electrical
93 engineering knowledge for solving problems in the PBL subjects through the non- PBL units additional to the workshops and support lectures for the PBL subjects. This indicated that PBL in this setting was used as an instructional strategy in conjunction with lecture-based subjects (Conway & Little, 2000).
Particular information about the PBL subjects suggested that PBL subject 1 was problem-based whereas the PBL subject 2 was project-based. Both formative and summative assessment methods were used in the PBL subjects. However, it was found the main method of assessment was summative and student learning was assessed in both PBL units by means of a portfolio that students were required to submit at the end of each semester. Information about the resources that were provided to students, including learning spaces, access to computer, internet and laboratory facilities, were also identified and presented in this chapter.
The findings of the evaluative study conducted by Gabb and Keating (2006) revealed demographic information about the student participants in the study such as their language background, socio-economic status, previous school and work experience and their type of enrolment in the course (full-time or part-time). The majority of students enrolled in the PBL subjects were aged between 18 and 24. However, the study also found that some students were mature aged and had previous engineering work experience. This study also found that nearly 70% of the students were involved in ten to twenty hours of paid work during their full-time enrolment in the course. These findings alerted the researcher to the heterogeneity of the students who enrolled in the course and guided the analysis by refining the focus about the diverse nature of students and interpreting the ways in which they participated in learning in this PBL setting.
As has been noted before, PBL was implemented as the main method of teaching and learning in the School of Electrical Engineering for the first time in the year of this study. The experiences of these first year engineering students in this newly implemented curriculum; its effects on their approaches to learning and some of their learning outcomes are presented in the following chapters.
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Chapter 5
The student: Learning approaches
5.1 Introduction
As described in Chapter 3, the main aim of this study is to investigate the student experience of a problem-based learning curriculum and to report on the learning culture that developed in this PBL setting. The aims of this chapter are to identify the ways in which individual students approached their learning in a PBL setting and the ways in which their attitudes and behaviour influenced their approaches to learning. This chapter focuses on individual students, while the next chapter focuses on PBL groups and the learning cultures that developed in each group.
Previous research has indicated that the learning approaches taken by students influence their learning outcomes. In Chapter 2, it was noted that Biggs and Moore (1993) identified three approaches to learning each with a corresponding motive and strategy. This theory provides a basis for analysing student learning approaches in any setting. However, when applying Biggs’s classification of student learning approaches in a team setting such as PBL, it is important to consider the roles that individual students take in their team, their tendencies to participate in a team environment and their engagement in learning activities as a team.
Different facilitation methods, curriculum settings and course characteristics will produce a variety of learning environments and thereby influence the learning approaches students adopt. In a group-based PBL setting the attitudes and behaviours of the individual students in each team will influence the learning approaches in that team as well as contribute to their learning cultures.
As discussed in Chapter 2, the term “learning culture” is used predominantly when describing learning that happens at a work place. In this study, the shared beliefs and theories of students in each PBL team and their approaches to learning in PBL as a team define the learning culture for that team.
95 The shared beliefs of each team will be in part determined by the attitudes and behaviours of individual students along with their individual approaches to learning in a PBL setting. As students from diverse social and educational backgrounds participate in learning, it is expected that the group learning culture will reflect this diversity as well. It is also anticipated that the learning culture in a PBL team will be influenced firstly by the attitudes and behaviours of individuals who are members of that team; secondly by the beliefs, norms and values of the individual members and the developing group beliefs, norms and values; and finally by individual perceptions of the situation that is the curriculum, the problem and the assessment system in the PBL setting.
Hence, the first research question, “What are the learning cultures in a problem-based learning environment?” focuses on the team learning cultures that develop and the ways individuals influence these team learning cultures. In this chapter particular emphasis is given to the sub-questions of the first research question.
• How do students from diverse educational, linguistic, ethnic and religious backgrounds participate in the context?
• How do the students approach learning?
• How do the students control, regulate and direct their learning?
These questions will be explored and discussed by analysis of students’ reflections on the PBL environment (which were gathered by various methods e.g. interviews) and their attitudes and beliefs (interpreted on the basis of their observed behaviours, actions and approaches while learning in the PBL environment). It is expected that the analysis of individuals’ attitudes, behaviours, actions and learning approaches in a PBL team will provide an insight into the beliefs and norms of that PBL team and the team’s learning approach. This analysis will thereby inform the learning culture of each team and the learning culture in problem-based learning more generally within that class. The theme “learning cultures in problem-based learning” will be explored in depth in Chapter 6.
The findings presented in this chapter were collected over two semesters and were drawn from the field notes taken during observations, the transcripts of the audio-taped interview data, the transcripts of video-recorded observation data and the content of
96 student portfolios. As explained in Chapter 3, the data presented in this chapter was analysed in three stages: description, analysis and interpretation. In the first phase, data from audio-taped interviews and video-taped transcripts were transcribed. Followed by this, data from the observation transcripts were merged with the transcripts of video- taped observation. In the second phase, data were then coded initially manually and then using the NVivo software application. Codes were then clustered to identify categories and sub-categories called attributes and dimensions in this dissertation. Inferences were drawn from the analysis during this phase and the data was reconstructed as cases based on individual students. The final phase involved systematic searching and manual recoding of the data presented in this chapter. During this phase, inferences were drawn about student approaches to learning in this PBL setting.
Accordingly, this chapter is divided into two sections. In the first section, cases of twelve students are presented to illustrate detailed accounts of their educational background, their expectations of studying the electrical engineering course, their perceptions of the PBL setting, the tasks that they preferred, the activities that they engaged in and the roles that they assumed. The social and learning interactions, attitudes, corresponding behaviours and the learning approaches of these twelve students are also explored and presented in their cases. Student characteristics such as peer support, commitment, initiative, planning inferred from their behaviours and their approaches when performing certain actions that help or hinder their learning in a PBL setting are also discussed here. The student cases are organised according to the learning approaches that they adopted.
In the second section, the data presented in this chapter are analysed. The attitudes and behaviours of these twelve students that influenced their approaches to learning in this PBL setting are explored here. The chapter concludes with a synthesis of findings to form a description of individuals’ behaviours in PBL teams and their learning approaches. Links are made to identify how these individuals’ motives influenced their roles in their teams and thereby their approaches to learning. Different individual learning approaches are compared to explore which roles lead to successful group learning. The attributes that are used to describe the individuals and their learning approaches will be further elaborated in the Discussion chapter.
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