Undergraduate students’ perceptions of the impact of teaching strategies: Case study on an intercultural comparison course in general education

Research questions: -How do students perceive the impact of faculty’s teaching? What strategies are more effective to help students engage in deep learning from the point of students? Will the same teaching practice be perceived differently? All these questions will be investigated in a pilot study on a General Education course in the Hong Kong context. -Brief introduction of the case course: The title of the case course is “Ideas, Behavior, and Identity, Intercultural Comparison” and Hofstede’s five dimensions to distinct cultural similarities and differences are used as the frame of the course. The course lecturer expects students, upon the completion of the course, to be enable to identify similarities and differences among diverse national cultures, use the five dimensions of national cultures to analyze intercultural issues in their life, demonstrate reflection on the Chinese culture in general and Hong Kong culture in specific and upon their national identities, and display the awareness of diversity and complexity of ideas and behavior among different cultures. Multiple teaching strategies are adopted, for instance, discussion on controversial issues, movie watching and discussion, case study, narrative writing, group project, extended essay, etc. The course has been offered four times and the data reported was collected from the third round of students, who enrolled the course in Sept 2011 and completed in Dec 2012. -Data collection and analysis: Interviews were conducted in June 2012, because during then students have got the grade, they are free to express their views, and the lasting impact of the teaching is also expected to be examined. The course lecturer sent invitation to all students and finally 8 students responded and participated in the interview, four Hong Kong local students and four are originally from Mainland China, six female and two male. The interviews were recorded and transcribed word by word. -Findings: It is found that 1) the most expressive learning outcome reported by students is the five dimension framework, which guides students to understand cultural event and issues in real life; 2) narrative writing is a good learning experience to trace students’ cultural values back to their childhood, family, school life, etc, which has positive influence on the understanding of and reflection on the student self; 3) students have extremely different perceptions on the discussion of controversial issues. Some students are fully engaged and favorable to the critical discussion and the willingness to express personal views. However some students have a dislike for the issue-based discussion, even they felt a strong antipathy towards students those who are from different cultural group. 4) Students have different views on the effects of video watching and discussion, case study, and group project, but the extended essay is recognized as a very helpful assignment to get in-depth understanding of a topic. 5) Students suggested that more reference should be supplemented and narrative writing could be required from two to four or five.