Motivating students in learning process
M Ashraf Al Haq
Very recently I joined the University Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). I am back in Bangladesh after 26 years living in different continents – learning, understanding experiencing and engaging in different forms of experiential learning and enjoying enormously. At the moment I am teaching three courses, but teaching entrepreneurship – is a real challenging one. In all courses we have to include a project study plus class participation, home assignments, quiz and midterm and above all a final exam to ensure that the student deserves a grade that he has earned through real hard and smart work. But teaching entrepreneurship gave me an added taste to incorporate a scenario, that – creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship must be incorporated through active motivation and making it interesting to students to do an individual plus a group assignment, in addition to presentation of course contents in the class and implementing those lessons learned in their assignments.
Firstly it was hard to make the students understand as the gap I had in understanding their need, and to adapt to a new challenge. But luckily in two to three weeks, they did comprehend the importance of doing an assignment, which can be challenging and can be implemented if support is there. We have Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department, Electronics, Telecommunication Engineering (ETE) department, Multimedia Science Journalism department, and all the departments are willing that the students come up with nice innovative ideas which can be created and hence will be viewed if it can be implemented in small test cases in real world. Such motivational exploration gave the students to think wise and work harder to achieve a vision to complete the task well before the semester ends. ‘As a trainer we need to inspire the trainees to share and gather and keep pace with ever evolving learning hitches that we can synchronise and visualise from a little to medium to maximum attainment of self learning goals and objectives’. Furthermore, asking questions, and making a point to raise inquisitive questions is important, in class or in home assignment, will change their thinking tremendously.
The students are in their third year from diverse background and majoring in different fields. Some of them are majoring in Human Resources (HR), some in marketing, some in finance, and some in accounting and others from multimedia department. Many students live 50 miles away, and it takes them to come to university more than three hours, and when they return back home it is well beyond ten in the night. Many students have to work more than 25 hours a week to make sure to be able to pay tuition in time, though many of them do receive a good stipend to maintain their monthly expenses.
When I was teaching in Management School of Multimedia University in the 90’s, I experienced that, what counts in teaching business students is sharing the experiencing of the real world scenario in the class room, as just theories will be soon out of their mind. As a great thinker, Confucius in 450 BC said, “Tell me and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand.” So in that notion I was particularly interested in, and that is why I want to implement and change the paradigm in the students’ learning process. Students have thus started to understand that group study and group work, motivate them to learn and share easily and make the hurdle easier to win. It was difficult just among few students at the start, and they thought to pursue individually rather than as a team, but making them understand that in the real world it is a team oriented approach, so they decided to cooperate at the end.
My firm belief is that I learn from teaching students, my philosophy is learning by sharing. I am a learner and I learn how to share what I know, and eager to learn what I do not know, at least I would not know in advance what might be the response that I will get while sharing. So I am not in a business of teaching, but learning through knowledge sharing and elaborating and just opening the concept to my students. As a master of ceremonies (MC) of a meeting, I might have less to say than more to listen and understand, similarly I want to make my class where students present the topics, share their ideas and understanding, and it is rather a student oriented than a teacher oriented class that I see as my ideal class setting.
We all are created with huge talent, vision, and creative idea. But this can only be tapped – through an external positive push to make that positivism come out. Though the semester not over yet, but I see the mission has been very nicely achieved. The fear of trial and error has eroded and a sense of accomplishment is heading as they have successfully identified key areas where they feel they can make inroads and contribute positively to society. Solomon Ibn Gabriol once said, ‘The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.’
As there is a student seminar presentation to share their findings, they are very eager to prove, what a good model they have created. I believe, ‘Inspiration needs to be transpired to action to make us motivated as a long term belief and not a short term fun’. Let me share two of the social business models that my two groups of students doing, in brief.
One group of students working on how a formula can be created to make a model rural village sustain from the present pressure of modernisation, in elaborating a chart of traditional village that might be expected when a group of eco tourists look into Bangladesh, as the country is trying its best to project as an eco friendly country to the world. The other group of students trying to promote the beauty of footpath, as the country is heading to an explosion over crowdedness in the cities, so as to incorporate the culture of hiking, biking, and enjoying the concept of promoting the ideal footpath, as a centre of business and eco-tourism, and so on, and explaining to the authority the importance of making, maintaining and managing good friendly footpaths throughout the city’s main linkage points.
If these ideas come out as good, they have an intention to join a competition organised by the Social Business group, where the winner can head to Vienna in November, and the fund providers are there with huge interest to implement such ideas or at least branding such ideas worldwide.
As I have mentioned earlier, not all will be interested, but majority took that challenge and saw an opportunity of international competition and recognition. Some students are very busy working very hard at odd hours for maintaining tuition, and many others commute from distance, but in general the overwhelming majority has an eagerness to do the individual and group competition and show the might in creating a lasting model.
The weaker and unenthusiastic students are joined with stronger ones. The mission was to create a harmonic balance, the result is diverse. In some groups, the stronger ones made the weaker ones learn and share as unavoidable mode of learning, in some groups the weaker ones are more influential in intimidating the stronger group members to flirt unnecessarily. But thankfully that came to my notice, though I admire naughtiness, but the theme must not be forgotten, and I took extra watchful eye and remedial measures so as to get the maximum attainment from all group members. I feel that I am learning through this experiment to a significant extent. ‘Inspiration is heavenly, but the guidance that we can give will motivate the learners to acquire. But the question remains, how to systematically guide and make a valuable notion to the learning processes.’
Our friendly departments such as Media Science and Journalism, electronics (ETE) departments, and many of our colleagues made the task much easier through advice, recommendation, support and help in every possible way. Our CSE (IT) department also played an important role in creating awareness and sharing ideas of exploration in making the projects happen. I thank all of them for their continuous support.
Furthermore, my advice would be that if anyone is willing to teach a course on entrepreneurship, one should take it as an extra challenge of gearing the students to come up with ideas that will change the students world view in leaning and sharing ideas and implementing it. ‘…motivation is related to a positive belief system and admiration. This will decrease the level of stress and improve the environment of leaning’.
Another issue is the conception on reward. ‘A notion of reassuring the progress and reward system, will build the inner inspiration turned motivation sustain longer.’
The writer is a Senior Lecturer, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), and can be reached at email: [email protected]
https://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/more.php?news_id=142963&date=2011-07-16
