What are Science and Engineering Students’ Motivations in learning Generic Skills?

Abstract

Despite a general acceptance of the importance of generic skills, it is particularly true that in the science and engineering disciplines, there is often little time to develop generic skills in the already tight timetables, and both students and teachers often overlook the importance of developing these skills. This paper presents the findings of a study on science and engineering students’ motivation for learning generic skills, which is part of a large research project on students’ perception of generic skills in Hong Kong. In a questionnaire developed to measure students’ attitude towards different generic skills, students were also asked to respond an open-ended question asking them to provide reasons for them to learn or not to learn generic skills. Content analysis was conducted to identify main themes from a total of 914 qualitative comments collected from 1232 science and engineering students. Themes that emerged on students’ motivation for learning generic skills include career needs, academic related needs, personal development and personal interest. On the other hand, perceived difficulty and time consumption emerged as the main reasons for students not want to learn generic skills. Implication of the findings on the teaching of generic skills will be discussed.