How Undergraduate Students Learn

SUMMARY The prime purpose of an educational institution is to prepare graduates for both industrial and research-oriented employment. In each case, the graduate must have a capacity for lifelong learning. The course content and process are interlinked parts of learning. Three standard questionnaires were used to assess how students learn. The ‘study process questionnaire’ (SPQ) showed that there was a significant proportion of surface learners but thai this percentage can be modified by adopting certain teaching methodologies. The ‘course experience questionnaire’ (CEQ) indicated that a good memory is not sufficient to pass examinations, but also showed that the workload was too heavy and that assessment methods tend to control the approaches to learning adopted by students. The ‘learning style inventory’ (LSI) showed that students have adapted their learning style to match course emphases. To accommodate the different types of learner, lecturers need to change their teaching paradigm from one where lecturers stand outside the students' learning context, to one where lecturers are intimately involved in the learning context.