Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 3, Issue 1, Article 3(June, 2002) Wheijen CHANG, Alister JONES and Rainer KUNNEMEYER Interactive Teaching Approach in Year One University Physics in Taiwan: Implementation and Evaluation Previous Contents Next

Conclusion and Discussion

Based on the findings of this research, the outcomes of an interactive teaching approach compared with traditional teaching were found to be significant in three areas.

Firstly, the new teaching approach was found to successfully promote interaction and learning engagement, including concentration, thinking, and discussion. Secondly, the program developed the learners' perspectives of their own learning. The students in the intervention group seemed to shift their focus from teaching performance to their own learning when assessing the course. They became more aware of the learning barriers and took more responsibility for their own learning. This aspect of the outcome was mainly found from the open-ended questionnaire survey and the interviews. Thirdly, the results of the closed-question survey indicate that the ITP is beneficial to the affective learning outcomes, which included promoting interest, enjoyment, and satisfaction with the course. These results are consistent with similar studies in western countries³⁴.

Finally, however, there was no evidence to show that the intervention teaching achieved better performance in traditional tests. The academic achievement of the intervention group was found to be as "poor" as that of the traditional group.

This research also has implications in the following two areas:

Firstly, the findings from this study reveal the critical role of the interactive teaching approach in promoting learning engagement as well as broadening the students' perspectives of learning. These two learning outcomes are also emphasised by many other education researchers³⁵.

Secondly, in spite of many of the lecturers' hesitations about modifying the traditional lecturing under the restrictions of the existing teaching environment³⁶, this study showed that the implementation of an interactive teaching approach is feasible under the same teaching resources and students' situations. Although the intervention program was as short as three weeks, the outcomes were found to be promising, in developing students' metacognition as well as affective outcomes without sacrifying their academic performance in traditional assessment.

In the context of an Asian country, this study has indicated the feasibility of promoting interaction within the existing teaching environment of university physics and the strengths of this new teaching approach, which expects to challenge the prevalent adoption of didactic lecturing by many physics lecturers. Based on this pilot study, an extension of the implementation of the ITP as well as modification of the traditional academic assessment tools are suggested. It is expected that a further research may help to reveal the strengths of the interactive teaching design as well as provide information for modifying the teaching design to better fit to the contexts.