Student Centered Learning At USM: What Lecturer And Students Think Of This New Approach?

Abstract

Student-centered learning (SCL) is currently attracting a great deal of research attention internationally, driven by the growing concerns of educators of ideal teaching and learning methods. This study aims at investigating the lecturers and students’ view of practicing SCL in the teaching process. Data was gathered through survey from 58 lecturers and 128 students of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). Results shows that lecturer and student perception about lecturer role were the highest mean ( = 4.05; 3.81) by doing their part effectively, used all SCL teaching methods such as lecture, lecture discussion, cooperative learning and others, except for on-line discussion. The student is more motivated and responsible in their learning, as peer learning and peer teaching are part of the teaching practice at USM. Student involvement in curriculum content, teaching method, evaluation method and able to give feedback on the quality of the education process had create a positive learning environment with access to facilities, interaction in the class without any problem to cover the content syllabus by having SCL guideline. Assessments given are based on the ability of the student that had led students to play their role in SCL effectively. However, the lecturers had not enough experience in implementing the SCL and need more training or workshop in SCL. These results have important implications for successful practicing of SCL in Malaysian universities, particularly USM for greater understanding on what we want student to learn and what they actually learn. The details of these implications are elaborated in this paper.

Keywords: student-centered learning, lecturer and student view, Universiti Sains Malaysia