LEARNING CURVES: INSIGHTS AND CONFLICTS TOWARDS MORE EFFECTIVE LEARNING

A study was done in an endeavour to understand why there is such a high failure rate of students in engineering studies. The results of the study point to a plateau in the infancy of the learning curve. The plateau was found to be related to the apparent conflict between the theories of Behaviourism and Constructivism. A detailed analysis, spanning data collected over a 5 year period, of the way in which students master new knowledge and skills revealed a period of stagnation after the new study material were introduced. This plateau in the learning curve is direct result of the phase that students pass through during which students need to integrate the rule-based knowledge and skills into their own belief system. During this phase the rule-based knowledge and skills need to be fully mastered through a process of repeated application, as required in a behaviourist setting, in order for the students to transcend to the meta-cognitive level, the way that constructivists intended, where rules can be bent or even broken. This is the conflict between inside-the-box and outside-the-box way thinking. This conflict was explored and a resolution reached by integrating the two theories into different phases of learning.

In this paper the results of the study are presented and a new combined teaching and learning methodology for curriculum design is proposed. The new combined methodology also includes the theories of just noticeable difference, the Guttman scale and the application of analytic hierarchical networks and processes. Furthermore, methods on how to present and measure study outcomes in a time constrained academic environment is introduced, some insights are shared on how prevent setting students up for failure and ultimately empowering students to take responsibility for their own education so as to bridge the knowledge gap created by the rapid increasing expansion of new technological advances.