Changing The Mindset: The Lecturer’s Responsibility When Presenting A First Year Course.

Students entering tertiary education are coming from a predominantly procedural learning (rote) background and are unprepared to perform in a predominantly conceptual thinking (relationship between items of knowledge) environment. Since 2004 changes have been implemented in the Electric Circuits course to develop both conceptual and critical thinking. This has resulted in an increased pass rate for the course. However, analysis of the exam papers and second year success revealed that the student’s were optimizing their success by leaving out sections of the work that they regarded as “difficult”. As all the sections are the essential basic knowledge required for the second year courses the course and the final exam was divided into four topics all of which must be passed to pass the course. Initial results indicate that many students have changed their preparation process to comply with the new rules.