Higher Education 27: 367-378, 1994. © 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Helping Hong Kong business students to appreciate how they

learn

HOWARD DAVIES,1 ATARA SIVAN2 & DAVID KEMBER3 J Head of the Department of Business Studies; 2 Lecturer in Tourism; 3 Project Development Officer in the Educational Technology Unit, Hong Kong Polytechnic, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Abstract. Hong Kong students enrolling in the tertiary sector exhibit tendencies to passivity and non-participation. There is also some evidence that, in common with other countries, the tertiary educational environment in Hong Kong may encourage the adoption of inappropriate approaches to learning. A programme was developed within the first year of a business studies degree with the purpose of enhancing students' approach to learning. This was attempted by making them aware of different approaches, giving them the analytical tools to examine their own conceptions of and approaches to learning and by involving them in different forms of learning experience. Most students conceived ofieaming as a quantitative increase in knowl­edge. They exhibited similar patterns in respect of SPQ scores to other Hong Kong students, scoring slightly higher than their Australian peers with respect to "deep" and "achieving" approaches and slightly lower on the "surface" approach. Evaluation of the programme was based on a range of sources including unprompted views using the "slip" technique, course evaluation questionnaires and a second administration of the SPQ at the beginning of the stu­dents' second year. The evaluation shows that student reaction to the programme was mixed, though with an overall balance in favour. The SPQ results showed.that although the mean scores for the "surface" approach rose and those for the "deep" and the ~'achieving .. approach fell, they did so to a much lesser extent than on similar programmes.

1. Introduction and objectives

Those concerned with the development of the tertiary curriculum in Hong Kong face a particular difficulty in deciding how best to help students learn. Most students enrolling in the higher education institutions have received a secondary education which places a heavy emphasis upon rote-learning and respect for the teacher. They present themselves in the classroom as passive and non-participative, forcing course planners to consider ways in which they can be helped to take a more active role in their own education. Furthermore, there is some evidence (Kember and Gow 1991) that, in common with findings for other countries, the educational environment provided by the tertiary sector leads students to become more, rather than less, adoptive of surface approaches to learning as they progress through their courses.

Course designers face a wide range of options in their attempt to cope with this problem, as reflected in the literature. The most common approach is to offer students additional courses in study skills. However, the effectiveness of such courses has been questioned and the evidence suggests that they can even have the opposite outcome to that intended. Ramsden et al. (1986), for instance, report on a study skills course intended to encourage more meaningful approaches to learning. It appears that the

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learning environment provided by the study programme as a whole gave the students the impression that accurate retention of content was the primary requirement of the curriculum. As a result they focussed on those aspects of the study skills course which assisted towards that narrow end, particularly accurate note-taking, and the outcome was an enhanced tendency to adopt a superficial "surface" approach.

While the evaluations suggest that traditional study skills programmes fail, there seems to have been more success with programmes which encouraged students to reflect upon their own approaches to learning Martin and Ramsden 1987). Work by Biggs (1989) suggests that positive outcomes are more likely to be achieved through programmes which emphasise the meta-cognitive skills of self-management, and that contention is supported by the evidence from a course described by Dart and Clarke (1991). In that initiative students were given greater responsibility for their own learning through exposure to a variety of learning experiences, they were encour­aged to reflect critically on the learning processes employed, and they demonstrated significant increases in their scores with respect to the more appropriate "deep" and "achieving" approaches to learning.

In the case reported by Dart and Clarke the students involved were studying education, and might therefore be expected to have a special interest in approaches to learning, and they had not received a Chinese-style secondary education. This paper reports on an attempt to take the approach onto more difficult ground in three ways. First, it is concerned with a cohort of Chinese students who graduated from the Hong Kong secondary system. Secondly, it is concerned with students of business studies, who have no direct vocational interest in learning as an object of study. Furthermore, evidence reported by Eley (1992) suggests that in Accounting and Law, which make up a major part of the business curriculum, students are particularly prone to adopt surface approaches and to lack deep motives and strategies. Thirdly, the initiative in question attempted to influence students' approaches to learning across the whole curriculum of a degree course, taught by stafffrom different disciplines and departments, unlike many other such ventures which have focussed on the approach to learning adopted in a single course module.

The course leader's programme in the business studies degree

The B.A.(Hons) Business Studies at Hong Kong Polytechnic is a three year full-time "generalist" business degree which enrolled 160 first year students in 1991. After six years of operation the course was re-designed to include, inter alia, the following major changes.

a) a reduction in student contact hours from approximately 20 hours per week to 15;

b) a reduction of the number of lectures from 10 per week to 6; c) the introduction of a "Course Leader's Programme" (CLP), extending over all

three years of the course.

The general objectives of the CLP, for all three years, are to provide a vehicle for course integration, links with employers, and the development of personal transfer­able skills. In the first year, however, the theme for the programme is defined as "Becoming a Business Studies Student" and a set of specific objectives concerning

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learning are defined, namely:

a) to make each student aware of the different approaches to learning which are encountered in higher education;

b) to provide each student with an appraisal of the approach to learning which they employ most often;

c) to develop students' commitment to effective learning; d) to involve the student in alternative forms of learning experience.

In order to meet these objectives the CLP took the students through three steps. The first two were explicitly concerned with aspects of learning, addressing respectively their conceptions of learning and their approaches to learning. These were intended to raise their awareness of learning as an issue and to give them the analytical tools needed for an informed examination of their own learning. The third part of the programme, which took up the largest part of the timetable throughout the year, consisted of a range of different learning activities including a computerised business game, career trait analysis, communications exercises and problem-solving techniques, as well as speakers from local industry and commerce.

Conceptions of learning

Research by various authors (Van Rossum and Schenk 1984) has found that the way in which students view learning has a major influence on the way in which they approach their studies and the quality of their learning outcomes. The first step, therefore, was to identify each individual student's own view of learning. At the first meeting of the CLP, the objectives of the programme were spelt out to all of the students, gathered in the lecture hall. In order to create a symbolic moment representing "out of school and into higher education" they were told to write the word' ','school" on a piece of paper, in both English and Chinese. They were then told to cr~mple the paper into a ball, stand up and throw it at the lecturer, who was the Dean of the Faculty. This took place amid a good deal of hilarity and the students were then asked to take a blank piece of paper, write down their name and student identification number and then write an answer to the following question, unprompted.

What is teaming?

Students were re-assured that this was not a "test" which would be marked and that its purpose was to have them reflect on the activity which would occupy them fuB-time for the next three years. Nevertheless, the initial reaction was one of bemusement, after which students began writing. After about 20 minutes, the papers were coBected and the lecturer then explained to the students that previous research (Saljo 1979; Marton et al. 1993» has identified six distinctly different conceptions of learning, which are considered to be weB established. These are:

Conceptionl. Learning as the quantitative increase in knowledge. Conception 2. Learning as memorising and reproducing. Conception 3. Learning as applying. C01lception 4. Learning as the abstraction of meaning.

Conc:eptlolll

Fig. 1. Student's conceptions oflearning (l08 cases).

Conception 5. Learning as understanding reality. Conception 6. Learning as changing as a person.

The lecturer then emphasised that higher education seeks to place less emphasis on Conceptions 1 and 2 and more emphasis on the "higher" level views, a point which was repeated in the Briefing Notes which students received later.

1\\'0 judges read the students' responses independently and allocated them to one or other of the 6 categories. Their jUdgments showed a very high level of consistency with 89% of the students' descriptions being allocated to the same category by both judges. Figure 1 sets out the results.

As the Figure shows, more than 70% of the 108 responses revealed Conception 1 -learning as the quantitative increase in knowledge. Very few students held a simple rote view of learning - Conception 2, but only very small proportions of them held views which extended to learning as application or understanding reality. None held the view that learning consisted of changing as a person.

Approaches to studying

The second stage of the process was to measure students' "approaches to studying", using well established research instruments, and to feed back those results and their meaning, in order to encourage students to adopt more appropriate approaches. The conceptual framework adopted was that developed in the work of Marton and Saljo (1976) and Biggs (1987a, b). Three approaches to learning are identified, as shown in Table 1 below.

These approaches are not claimed to be stable psychological traits which remain constant for each individual. Rather, the approach adopted depends upon the stu­dent's motivation and the teaching context. A surface approach is more likely if the student lacks interest or extrinsic motivation or if the teaching context encourages that approach through reproductive methods of assessment, formal teaching, a focus on transmitting information or an excessive workload.

Table 1. Approaches to study, motives and strategies

Approach Motive Strategy

Surface Instrumental: to pass without working Reproductive: rote learn

Deep Intrinsic: to really understand

Achieving Ego-building: to get best grades

Source: Biggs (1987a)

essentials

Wide reading: link with previous knowledge

Time management: be a "model student"

Table 2. Approaches to learning in first year Hong Kong business studies students compared with the norms

Business Students Hong Kong Norms Australian Norms

Surface 42.14 41.43 44.67 Deep 45.96 45.6 43.01

Achieving 44.68 43.0 39.48

Note: The Hong Kong norms are derived from the scores of over 5000 students on degree level courses at 5 institutions in Hong Kong, reported in Biggs (1992). The Australian norms are for 2,365 students at 10 Australian Colleges of Advanced Education and 5 Australian Universities, reported in Biggs (1987a)

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The predominant approaches adopted by the Business Studies students were measured by using the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) (Biggs 1987b) which has been used extensively in Hong Kong, whose cultural relevance has been researched, and for which Hong Kong norms are available. The SPQ consists of 42 items, 7 for each combination of the three approaches, motive and strategy. The score for each approach is made up of two components, one for the motive and one for the strategy. Table 2 shows the mean scores for the Business Studies students and their comparison with the Hong Kong norms.

As the Table shows, the business students exhibited a very similar pattern to those others whose scores made up the Hong Kong norms. They showed a slightly less marked tendency to adopt surface approaches than Australian students, in contra­diction to the stereotype of the Asian student, and slightly greater predilections for "deep" and "achieving" approaches.

Having calculated the students' scores these were fed back to them individually and a brief lecture was given by one of the educational researchers on the project team, having three objectives. The first was to explain the purpose and meaning of the questionnaire exercise they had completed, the second was to outline the desirability of developing a deeper approach to learning and the third was to help the students place themselves in context by explaining the findings of previous research. Particular attention was paid to the finding (Gow et al. 1991) which showed that in

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their first year students had a tendency to regress towards more surface approaches, possibly caused by the influence of excessive workloads, over-formal teaching and reproductive-type assessments.

Evaluation of the CLP's impact on students' learning

Evaluation of the programme draws on four different sources, of increasing degree of rigour. These are as follows:

a) informal and anecdotal evidence based on direct observation, including stu­dents' comments to internal and external validation panels;

b) student opinion as registered in mid-year, using a technique for the collection of unprompted views on the course as a whole;

c) student evaluations as collected through a formal questionnaire administered to a 50% sample at the end of the year;

d) student scores on the SPQ, administered at the beginning of their second year of study and then compared with their own first year scores and the second year scores of other undergraduates.

The anecdotal evidence raises a number of issues. When first faced with time-tabled sessions within the course, which were concerned with learning rather than the knowledge-base of Business Studies, students were undoubtedly bemused and con­fused, being unable to fathom their purpose (despite very clear and simple verbal briefings.) This may have in part been a reflection of first year Hong Kong students' lack of skill in listening to English as spoken by native speakers and they certainly appeared to become more comfortable with the concept after written Briefing Notes had been issued. Nevertheless, the complaint that "why should we waste our time on this stuff when it could be spent having more lectures on Acc<?untinglEconomicslLaw, etc" remained a theme for some students throughout the year: A majority of students certainly felt quite reasonably that to spend a number of consecutive sessions filling up questionnaires was boring and not very helpful. By mid-year, when a random selection of students met a validation panel, the general feeling seemed to be that they could see that something potentially valuable was going on but they were not quite clear what, or that the potential was being met. In terms of participation in the non-standard learning activities, such as reports on industrial visits and the comput­erised business game, the vast majority put in a good deal of effort, sometimes going to extremes, as in the case of the group which booked a student facilities room and stayed up all night taking a decision in the Game. (Other groups faced with the same problem were reported to have given up in the face of its complexity and tossed coins to decide their actions.)

In mid-year, student opinion was polled through the use of the "slip" technique (Eitington 1989). Each seminar group of approximately 20 students had been divided into "companies" of 4 or 5 students in order to play the business game, and those companies formed the basis for polling. Each group was given 5 plain white cards and 5 coloured cards and asked to record "good things" about the course on white cards and "bad things" on coloured cards. Students were told to limit themselves to one comment per card and to write that comment on the top edge of the card, so that they could all be displayed on a notice board. No further direction was given, in

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order to secure unprompted responses, and the eLP was not singled out for unusual attention. Out of the 96 cards referring to "good things", 36 referred to the eLP and of the 122 cards referring to "bad things" 23 referred to the eLP. The negative comments typically included the following:

eLP is too boring and time-consuming/reduce time spent on eLP so more can be spent on other subjects/business game is time-consuming/student-centred learning may not be a good thing at all -little care is given to the student -little direction is given/as "A "-level materials arc provided by teachers it is too demanding for year 1 students to get accustomed to self-centred study/too much pressure on student.

Positive comments included: Questionnaires help us to have a better understanding of ourselves/eLP exercises concern­ing self-understanding are useful/it is a good chance for us to understand ourselves/eLP can improve our self-awarenesslbusiness game acts as a good simulation of the business world/game is very interesting/game is very exciting and gives the opportunity for us to organ­ise what we learn/develops our human relationship skill and how to communicate/trains us how to co-operate/makes us more independent/diversify learning is good for student development.

If a "one-card, one vote" form of democracy is adopted then the "slip" technique suggests that the eLP may be judged a success in the eyes of the students, as viewed in mid-year. That result could be biassed by the students' very clear understanding that the Programme had the personal support of the Dean of the Faculty, but that bias could in turn be offset by the Dean's fervent encouragement of the students to be as critical as they could possibly be. The most appropriate overall judgement is probably consistent with the anecdotal evidence -students were appreciative of the Programme's intentions, but unconvinced of its ability to meet those intentions.

The third source of evaluation is drawn from students' opinions as elicited through a formal questionnaire. The instrument in question was devised for general use in the Polytechnic (Bannister et al. 1992) and examines the students' experience at the level of the individual course module. In order to avoid the necessity of every student completing 8 questionnaires a 50% sample was taken, so that 80 students completed the survey form in respect of the eLP. The general nature of the form meant that most questions covered non-specific aspects of the module, such as organisation and workload, and in some cases the questions were inappropriately geared to evaluate "subject" teaching. Nevertheless, the information provides some useful feedback. Table 3 compares students' views on a number of dimensions of the eLP, in comparison with their views on the traditional subject-based course modules.

Of the items covered by the questionnaire, the most relevant to the concerns of this paper are those involving "learning outcomes" and the individual question "I learned to feel responsible for my own learning". As the Table shows, the scores for the eLP on these counts were within the range scored by the other course modules, but they are in no sense strongly supportive of the effectiveness of the programme.

The fourth, and most appropriate, form of evaluation lies in the second adminis­tration of the SPQ, carried out at the beginning of the students' second year. Those results are set out in Table 4.

As Table 4 shows, the students' scores with respect to the "deep" approach, and the "achieving" approach both fell very slightly, while their scores on the "surface" approach rose very slightly. Interpretation based on those figures alone suggests that the eLP failed in its stated objective of developing students' commitment to more

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Table 3.

Dimension/Question CLPScore Poly Norms· Range for other Yr 1 units

Organisation 8.93 10.95 6.68-11.79 Motivation 8.86 10.90 8.86-10.80 Interaction 9.77 10.71 7.40-11.20 Workload 9.12 9.39 6.94-10.55 Learning Outcomes 9.38 10.34 6.80-10.89 Assessment 9.45 10.69 7.40-10.77 Individual Help 8.53 9.96 7JJ6-9.72

Responsible for my 3.29 n.a. 3.26-3.95 own learning

"The Polytechnic "norms" are means derived from responses to more than 3500 questionnaires. However, it should be noted that nearly all of these questionnaires relate to courses where the module teacher "volunteered" their module for examination. The norms are therefore almost certainly biassed upwards being drawn from modules with small numbers of students and teachers who were confident that they would score well.

Table 4. Approaches to learning in year one and year two

Year 1 Year 2

Surface 42.14 42.80 Deep 45.96 45.47 Achieving 44.68 43.35

appropriate approaches to learning. On the other hand, if the figures are compared with those for the first and second year of other courses in the same institution, a less pessimistic reading suggests itself. Figure 2 shows the scores for the Business students in comparison with the scores for those following the Accountancy degree in the same Faculty and a separate sample of2143 students from the Polytechnic, by year of study.

As Figure 2 shows, the Business students recorded a decline in their scores on the "deep" approach but that decline was less than the change measured for Polytechnic students as a whole and very much less than Accountancy students. With respect to the "achieving" approach the pattern was similar in that Business students registered a very slight decline from Year 1 to Year 2, in common with Polytechnic students as a whole (though at higher levels), and a very much smaller decline than the Accountancy students. Finally, with respect to the "surface" approach Business students registered a slight increase in mean scores, in common with Polytechnic students as a whole, but that increase was very small in comparison with the increase registered by the Accountancy students.

~ ~

375

41~-------------------------, ~~----~------------------,

41 Y.-2 y .. 2 Y.-I

SIIfacI -+- --~ -- Nmsr1rtt:t -- Jj

4S .

44

~ 43

42

--41

y .. 1 y .. 2

Fig. 2. SPQ scores of business students compared with others.

As the Accountancy students follow a curriculum whose content is very similar in nature to that followed by the Business students it seems reasonable to use the Accounting students as the most appropriate comparator and to attribute the measured differences in learning approaches to the differences in teachingflearning strategy between the two courses, including the CLP.

It is well understood that it is very difficult to secure a positive improvement in scores on the deep approach to learning, as is demonstrated in the teaching initiatives reported in Gibbs (1992). The CLP set itself a very difficult target in that, unlike most other initiatives, it attempted to influence learning approaches in all subjects taken by the Business students. As the course is strongly multi-disciplinary, involving several different Departments, with differing commitments to the enhancement of learning, the relative improvement which was secured represents a substantial achievement.

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Summary and conclusion

The Course Leader's Programme was introduced in the B.A. Business Studies in an attempt to analyse and then improve students' approaches to learning. When the students enrolled at the beginning of the year they displayed two basic characteristics. First, they held a relatively narrow range of "conceptions of learning", with the great majority of them perceiving learning as a quantitative increase in their knowledge. Secondly, their initial scores on the Study Process Questionnaire showed that they rated more highly on both "deep" and "achieving" approaches to learning than Australian students and lower with respect to a "surface" approach.

As the CLP progressed it was regarded by students with some bemusement, but they showed appreciation of its objectives, and they participated with enthusiasm in some, though not all of the activities which make up the programme. In-course feedback showed that the balance of student opinion was in favour of the programme and that they rated its usefulness and effectiveness within the same range as other course modules. A second administration of the Study Process Questionnaire at the beginning of the students' second year provided some hard evidence with respect to the development of their approaches to learning during the first year. That evidence showed that in common with students on other programmes in the Polytechnic and elsewhere they adopted a less deep approach and a less achieving approach and a more surface approach at the beginning of their second year than at the beginning of their first year. However, that effect was less marked than for Polytechnic students as a whole and very much less than for students following another, closely related, course. It appears that the changes made to the Business degree were successful in reducing the negative impact of the tertiary education environment on students' approaches to learning.

These results have a number of implications in their wider context. First, they suggest that programmes which encourage students to reflect on their own conceptions of learning and approaches to learning can have a positive effect on the learning processes adopted. Further support is provided for the finding that learning skills programmes are more likely to be successful if they adopt a metacognitive approach where students are exposed to a variety oflearning situations and encouraged to reflect upon the processes they employ in those situations. Secondly, the results suggest that intervention need not be restricted to individual subect-modules within a course. Most of the earlier studies have examined innovations which were very specific to one part of the curriculum, and which were evaluated within that narrow context. In this study, the approaches to learning being considered and measured were not module-specific but reflected the students' overall experience on a multi-disciplinary programme.

Whether the qualified success of the CLP can be taken further, yielding positive improvements remains to be seen. In the year of the research, the intake to the course reached 160, which was substantially higher than in previous years (and in later years). Difficulties with space meant that this created some difficult physical environments for some of the CLP activities. Time-tabling the CLP on Friday afternoons was not helpful in maintaining motivation. Seminar group sizes were also increased in that year from 15 students to 20, in the attempt to conserve resources. All of these factors may have tended to mitigate against the effectiveness of the programme. In the last

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analysis, the research question being investigated here is essentially "counterfactual" - how did these students' approaches to learning vary in comparison to the approaches they would have adopted in the absence of the programme? Such questions are always methodologically difficult to address, especially on the evidence from a single year.

At the more practical level, the CLP is a fully validated part of the course, to be run for the second time in 1992/3, with a number of amendments made in the light of the first experience. The number of students involved will be smaller, as the intake has been reduced to 100 and their initial academic qualifications are initially higher. More attention will be paid to briefing the students with respect to the CLP's objectives, to giving feedback, and to providing tutorial support. As the programme develops, data will continue to be collected, allowing evaluation and monitoring to continue.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Course Leader for B.A.(Hons) Business Studies, Vanessa Stott, the. Year 1 Tutor, Lisa Skwarok, and the CLP Tutors, Y-C Chan, Li Cheuk-ming, Vincent Mok and Francis Wong for their invaluable participation in this project.

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