Abstract

Globalization has permitted technical progress in the field of communications which enable the users to access and exchange information at any time and from any place in the world, which has largely facilitated the speeding up of the production, as well as the sharing of goods, services, capital flows and also ideas. In the present scenario there is a need for learning to be more creative and generative and the focus of learning process shifts from teaching to self-directed learning, and learning as one time event to learning as a lifelong process. All this calls for the definition of educational programmes on a competency based approach, which implies that there should be focus on students achieving a stated number of clearly defined skills or competencies at the end of their course. In higher education as students’ progress in a course their conception will move from one of acquiring “discrete packages of information” to one that constitutes a change in themselves and the world around them. Many of the students come from school backgrounds that fail to prepare them for demands of higher education. The fact that many students did not get the point of what they were studying simply because they were not looking for it. They are looking for the facts they thought they would be tested on. They are not looking for the meaning of the text. In a sense, for them, at least as they perceived the situation, the meaning of the text stood in direction relation to the way they expected to be assessed. They are taking what has become known as a “surface approach” rather than a “deep approach” to learning. There are many factors that influence the way students learn. It is possible for educators to foster high quality learning outcomes through active learning by giving students opportunity to demonstrate the quality and integrity of their learning facilitating a desirable approach.

Keywords: Approaches to learning, Deep approach, Surface approach.

[1] Faculty, Dept. of Commerce, Vimala College, Thrissur

[2] HSST, St. Joseph’s Higher Secondary School Avinissery,Thrissur