Abstract:
Infants and young children appear to be propelled by curiosity, driven by an intense need to explore, interact with and make sense of their environment. Unfortunately, as they grow, their passion for learning often seems to shrink and learning becomes associated with drudgery instead of delight. Awareness of students' attitudes and beliefs about learning and what facilitates learning can assist lecturers in making lessons meaningful and interesting to students. This paper describes a very well received laboratory course which I conduct using Labview. It seeks to provide reasons for the high level of motivation of students in the course and concludes with suggestions on teaching/learning strategies that will make laboratory experiments highly interesting. This proposed paper will look at what and how the problem-based approach is implemented in the lab sessions. This approach encourages open-minded, reflective, critical and active learning. While it is arguably a very effective approach in promoting student learning and interest, it cannot guarantee students learning. As may be expected, the motivated students generally learned much more than the less motivated one.