Virallikattur Subramanian, Dhenesh and Kelly, Patricia
(2017)
Assessing an "incentives-driven” approach to engage undergraduate engineering students in a developing Pacific country.
[Conference Proceedings]
Abstract
The unexpected and non-linear growth of IT products has challenged the way in which students have traditionally been taught in classrooms. Innovation in teaching has been the focus for many teachers who want to keep up with burgeoning IT tools and make their classes interesting. This study focuses on using an incentive-driven approach supported by technology-based teaching methods, used in one undergraduate engineering course at a university in a developing country in the Pacific region. Students in the course are not only from different pacific island countries namely Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Tonga where they had little or no exposure to technology support but come from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Data from students were collected using online forms and analyzed qualitatively.The findings suggest that students learned better and enhanced their skills when innovative methods like group learning, Facebook groups, Peer assessments and team work were introduced. Students are motivated to learn and participate in classroom activities when incentives encourage their achievements. Students’ wish for similar teaching methods to be used in other courses highlights the need for engineering teachers in any context to focus on innovation and incentives in classrooms and for policy makers in universities to encourage such approaches in order to provide a more relevant and effective learning platform for students.
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