Students’ Approach to a Lectured Topic

Abstract

Introduction 

This is a multiple-case ethno-phenomenological study that explores how students approach a topic that is presented during a lecture. A topic is considered any material the professor or class discusses, regardless of whether it is related to the preplanned material for the lecture. We are interested in the factors that play a role in students’ approach to the topic, and whether any pattern can be observed across students’ innate attitudes towards the lectured topics. Innate attitude is understood as natural attitude [1], but restricted to the context of lectures.

Methods 

Over a period of two years, across ten different lectures, data of phenomenological (descriptive experience sampling [2]) and ethnographic (lecture diaries) nature were collected from ten participants. All were students of cognitive science, roughly familiar with the aforementioned phenomenological method, and are considered co-researchers for their contribution.

Descriptive experience sampling [2] was conducted at random moments during the lecture, with the focus on students’ attention, feelings, thoughts, sense of the atmosphere and environment, and perception of the professor.

Lecture diaries were written using a semi-structured format. Students submitted documents with rough descriptions of their behaviour and more detailed descriptions of their experiences, organised by time stamps that were selected by each student. A time stamp referred to the time of a generally one-hour-long video of the corresponding lecture. These videos were filmed to help students recollect their experiences from the lectures.

This ecologically valid data lay the groundwork for the subsequent analysis through the means of qualitative coding.

Results 

Results are expected to show that students’ attitude toward a lectured topic is influenced by situational factors, such as the degree to which a student is interested in the then lectured topic, and by the individual’s unique and personal attitude that comes through in lecture environments. Any reoccurring pattern across multiple individuals in the latter would point in the direction of the existence of types.

Conclusion 

This study offers a new insight into students’ experiences of lectures with the focus on how they approach a lectured topic and thus provides a better understanding of how we learn and what motivates us to learn. Such insight could therefore inform future lecturing styles.

Reference

[1] E. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, F. Kersten, Trans. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983. 

[2] R. T. Hurlburt and S. A. Akhter, “The descriptive experience sampling method,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 5, no. 3–4, pp. 271–301, 2006. doi: 10.1007/s11097-006-9024-0.