(673) TACKLING CLASSROOM APATHY AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN A DEVELOPING WORLD CONTEXT AT PWANI UNIVERSITY

摘要

Our students often appear to lack motivation and initiative and only expect to receive learning, rather than be active participants in the construction of their own knowledge. There is an apparent lack of interest in doing any work beyond what is absolutely required for a passing grade. Teaching is often a unidirectional monologue from the lecturer, with little or no feedback as to what is making sense to the students or what is requiring discussion or clarification. Teachers find this frustrating but feel helpless to do anything about it. Part of the problem is that both teachers and students have grown accustomed to this type of educational environment and are not inclined to put in the effort required to find ways to change it. Here we present some techniques that we have applied and that we believe can alleviate this problem and can make the classroom environment more interactive and more conducive to the development of higher level learning skills such as critical thinking, analysis, application and evaluation of information.