GRF 2011

Project Objectives

1. To investigate students’ perceptions of generic skills in two specific disciplines in higher education. This includes their rationale, awareness, prior experiences, expectations from the university and their experiences in relation to learning outcomes, learning and teaching activities, assessment and engagement on the acquisition of generic skills acquired during their undergraduate programme.
2. To investigate teachers’ perceptions of generic skills in two specific disciplines in higher education. This includes their rationale, awareness, prior teaching and previous learning experiences, expectations from students and the learning outcomes, learning and teaching activities, assessment and engagement from their courses. Their understandings of their role, purposes and priorities, and how these relate to practice will also be investigated.
3. To analyse the discrepancy between students’ and teachers’ perceptions on the skill-set, including the alignment of the skills’ learning outcomes, the learning activities, and the assessment of generic skills during the programme in each discipline.
4. To identify the type of courses and teaching and learning approaches on the development of generic skills in each discipline that are currently used in the universities, which are perceived to be more successful/or less successful in respect to skills transfer, student engagement and the feasibility of adding value to the undergraduate programmes.
5. To analyse the discrepancy between the two disciplines on generic skills including the teachers’ and students’ perceptions.
6. To summarise the findings in terms of a curriculum design framework for generic skills in each discipline to guide the process of course design on the learning outcomes, the learning and teaching activities, and assessment under which skill transfer is most likely to occur.

Project Outcomes

A survey on students’ perceived importance and competency on 8 types of generic skills was developed and validated. Representative sample of 1,232 from HK first year engineering students completed the survey. It was revealed that engineering students find themselves in need of these skills for their future career as they understand the importance of these skills but have not yet acquired these skills competence level. From our focus group and interviews, the majority of the students felt generic skills are better developed through extra-curricular and out-of-classroom activities such as internship, community service-learning and hall education. The findings from the Teacher Survey suggest that while HK engineering teacher staff acknowledges the importance of generic skills to students’ future career, there was a wide range of perspectives on whether generic skills should be formally assessed and credited. All the findings were integrated to inform the development of curriculum design framework for generic skills, accounting for both students’ and teachers’ perceptions. The purposed needs which will advance our work towards a research-informed approach to generic skills development.