Every year, before the semester commenced, it is not difficult to find comments on the selection of subjects and teaching staff on discussion websites. In order to discover the students' conceptions of teaching, learning practices and their views of the subjects, an in-depth interview was carried out. A group of year two students were being selected in this study. Some relevant findings were discussed below.
All of the respondents realized that there was no significant difference between their learning approaches in secondary school and in community college. As they mentioned, in the community college, they tended to learn by rote and their key motivation of learning was getting good results in the school examinations so that they would be eligible to articulate into university successfully. Students stated that lecture notes were the main sources of study tools.
Furthermore, students indicated that they normally sat and listened to the lecturers during the lectures and they felt weird if they were being asked questions in the class. In fact, no one was willing to answer questions that were raised by the lecturers.
All interviewees agreed that the teaching methodology was appropriate and acceptable. However, one way teaching was found in some subjects. Students perceived that there was a lack of interaction and discussion in class.
Regarding the assessment, some students felt worried and anxious about the course assessment instruments such as examinations and assignments. Some of the respondents found that the workload was quite heavy as they had to do projects for all subjects and the deadlines of all projects fell in the same period of time.
For the end-of-term assessment, all of the interviewees reported that they mainly used the past examination papers as the primary tools for the preparation of examinations. This practice has become a norm in the college when preparing for the examinations and students found that it worked all the times. Students would neglect the importance of understanding the concepts of the core knowledge. When asked whether the examination questions were able to develop their creativity, their answers were "no".
Those findings come from only a group of students and the results may not apply to all students. Hopefully, with better understanding of student's expectation, teaching staff may find an appropriate method in teaching the class.
Acknowledgement: This study is funded by CPCE research fund.