Abstract:

Learning to learn (L2L) is an important skill students are supposed to obtain from university education. This paper presents an intervention conducted among 306 freshmen participating in a Personal and Leadership Development subject at a university in Hong Kong. Students filled out a pre-intervention survey before the first lesson, reporting their propensity in 12 L2L-related dimensions, namely, meaning making, personal beliefs about learning, curiosity, self-regulated learning, reflection on learning, motivation for learning, emotion and resilience, higher-order thinking, understanding learning, learning with and from others, and engaging in augmented learning environment (Stringher, 2014). They then attended a 2-hour lecture and a 1-hour tutorial weekly and engaged in online learning activities for the subject, before filling out in the seventh week the post-intervention survey, which contained the same measures for the 12 L2L-related dimensions. 228 and 104 valid pre- and post-intervention responses were received respectively (with a response rate of 74.5% and 34.0% respectively). Paired Samples t-test shows that participants' L2L abilities significantly improved (p<.05) in all 12 dimensions. The improvements ranged from 9.2% to 22.2%. Our findings indicate that the subject was effective in enhancing students’ perception of their L2L abilities. Follow-up studies on how this shift was enabled and a deep dive into the students' perspective on L2L are recommended.


References:
Stringher, C. (2014). What is learning to learn? A learning to learn process and output model. In R. D. Crick, C. Stringer, & K. Ren (Eds.), Learning to learn. International perspectives from theory and practice (pp. 9–40). Routledge.

Keywords:

Learning to learn, Blended learning, Self-development, Generic skills, Transferrable skills, 21st Century skills.