Tertiary student perspectives on factors affecting their learning: Task based learning at the Hong Kong Institute of Education

This paper critiques two factors which affect Tertiary student learning: firstly of student attribution, secondly that of the learning process. Student attribution, the student perspective, is here reported in terms of the results of three student-based self-research tasks specifically: “Moving from Secondary to Tertiary level learning”, “Attention giving and getting in the HKIEd classroom” and “How do I study?” As the research methodology employed includes self-selection and self-reporting, the results obtained reveal this cohort of Tertiary students’ perspectives on the factors which affect their learning. To critique these perspectives as exemplars of student attribution a contextualising demographic framework is provided. The paper then considers these students’ learning process, specifically the learning process incorporated within the above three self-research tasks. Considered in terms of a learning process these tasks reflect ongoing developments within the HKIEd which seek to explore and develop the application within Tertiary education of Task Based Learning (TBL). A critique is drawn which reveals TBL as an effective agent for reaching beyond what teachers teach to understand why students learn what they learn. Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.