General Education Teaching And Learning In An Engineering School

General Education has been one of the hot topics in Chinese highereducation. Furthermore, general education for engineering undergraduatesis regarded even more challenging. Given the differences of behaviorbetween Chinese and Western students, as well as the unique studypreference of engineering students, what are the challenges for Chineseengineering students to learn general education curriculums? In thisresearch, relevant analysis is conducted from both students’ and faculty’sperspectives.Adopting a case study approach, this research focuses on students andfaculties in four general education courses at Institute J. The sequentialexplanatory mixed method design is used, which consists of first collectingquantitative data on79students about their learning styles, and thencollecting qualitative data on18students and three faculties to help explainor elaborate on their studies approaches and challenges.The main findings of this study show that there are differencesbetween the Chinese students’studies approaches and the foreign faculties’expectations. Secondly, students are facing challenges in reading, listeningto lectures, participating in classroom activities and completingassignments. Thirdly, the reasons for challenges can come down to threeaspects, namely the faculties’ teaching methods, students’ attitudes andtheir language level.