A Study in General Education: How a Field Trip for Chinese Tea Tasting Motivates Students' Learning

2016 International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and Education  
One challenge of teaching general education (GE) courses to non-majors is how to motivate their learning. This study aims to demonstrate how active and engaging pedagogy can motivate student in studying GE courses, through a case study of a public university in Hong Kong. As part of a GE course, a field trip, a good bridge between ordinary life and academic environment and well consistent with the course topic, was conducted as an optional activity which to improve students' learning
more » ... Learning motivation section of Motivated Strategies of Learning Questionnaire was used to assess students' learning motivation before and after the field trip, all students (n=156) of the GE course were invited as the experimental group, and the students of another related GE course (n=97) were invited as the control group. The results show that the field trip can positively influence students' learning motivation. This study demonstrates that a carefully planned, meaningful field trip can play an important role in sparking student interest and give students personal experience that would confirm their theoretical understanding.
doi:10.20431/2349-0381.0301017 fatcat:4gna7pqsyzhdnmshfstus6wd2y