In August, I attended a series of workshop about "Helping students to become good learners", organised by Educational Development Centre. I would like to share some of the techniques that I had learned and applied in my class.
To our students, especially Stage One students, having lectures and tutorials is a totally new experience different from their secondary school education. Therefore, during the first lecture, I distributed them two sets of notes to tell them the purposes of lectures and tutorials and to suggest some actions to be taken before, during and after lectures and tutorials. These notes are short and easy to understand, but they do inform our students that they will experience a brand new learning journey with practical suggestions.
I am teaching psychology, and students always expect that there will be a lot of "psychology tests" in my classes. In order to fulfill their expectations, in the first tutorial, I gave them a short questionnaire on the topic "Are you working towards good learning?" This questionnaire consists of 20 questions, and students had to find out whether they were taking a "deep" or "surface" approach towards learning. During the debriefing, I shared with them that, in the learning journey, lecturers are only the facilitators, and that they also have to take responsibility for their own learning process. I encouraged them to become deep learners by preparing more before lectures, doing revisions right after lectures, and seeking help when in need. This was a great experience as students could reflect on their own learning approach and find ways to learn better.
In order to facilitate students to learn more and deeper, I distributed them photocopies of a "Learning Review Table" right after the first lecture. This table consists of three columns, and students are required to write down materials that they "understand" under the first column, materials that they "don't understand" under the second column, and then materials that they "want to know more" under the last column. I suggested my students to fill in this table when they were revising the course materials. The table also includes some useful tips on guiding and phrasing students' questions to train them to ask questions.
Learning is not always easy, but I do hope that, with some tools and techniques, we can facilitate our students to become good learners!