Teaching development grants final and financial report: Cultivating students’ self-reflection and self-motivation through a blended learning approach in field-learning

Field-learning is seen as a useful learning approach, enabling students to grasp concepts learned from classrooms, improve their individual social skills and practise a range of research skills (Wong, 1994; Yang, 1987). Whilst these cognitive, psychomotor and affective objectives are listed, current field-learning does not include the measurement of students’ self-reflection and self-motivation, or their conceptions of learning. This proposal aims at understanding students’ conceptions of learning using a blended learning approach. Field learning tasks undertaken by students would be shared on the e-learning platform for peer comments and feedbacks. This way of using information technologies in field-learning seeks to engage students to reflect on and be self-motivated in their own learning. Full-time students of General Education course of Hong Kong Marine Odyssey, and Science Education in Sports Science course of Principles and Practice of Health Promotion in 2014/15 are invited to participate in the project. Students will form into learning groups and each group would upload their completed field work (see Appendix III for an example) onto the Google site or Moodle. Through constructive interchanges of ideas, each group would benefit by analyzing the work of their peers, and self-reflection of peers’ comments on their own work. Added to the pre-trip discussion for an understanding of the field site, the topic under investigation and the field investigatory process, students will also be introduced the notion and strategies of reflective thinking. Probing questions to guide students’ thinking and self-reflection are designed. Students’ evaluation about the concepts learnt through blended learning approach, and its usefulness are indicators of effectiveness of this pedagogical mode. Data is collected from annotated comments and feedbacks, questionnaires and group or individual interviews.