Students as learning experience designers: The effect of student-driven approaches in a Hong Kong study

Student-driven approaches have generated positive results in student development. This study reports a Students as Learning Experience Designers (Student-LED) Project as one example of employing student-driven approaches to develop learning abilities, leadership skills and reflective habits, in the context of the new senior secondary curriculum reform in Hong Kong. In such reform, schools are encouraged to offer other learning experiences (OLE) to facilitate students’ all-round development. This Student-LED project can be seen as pioneering in its cultural context and for the target participants. Students in Hong Kong were traditionally described as lacking independence, which seemed to contradict the premise of student-driven approaches. The present study as a pilot shows that Hong Kong secondary school students could potentially benefit from a student-driven approach. Sense of autonomy and positional leadership opportunities were found to be important factors to student learning. The concerns of students and teachers during the process were also identified through reflective statements. This study provided some insights into the use of student-driven approaches with Hong Kong learners. Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.