Understanding Learning Today

I love this video clip from KSU, it explains so much of what it is like to work with students today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

As well as helping to explain some of the challenges facing tertiary students today, it raises a lot of challenges. For example "if students learn by doing - why are they sitting in class?" My feeling is that tertiary students are dissatisfied with the learning that they encounter at University. The whole learning system is based on 'modern' principles of information and learning, that are on the whole no longer relevant or effective. Students now are searching for a greater engagement with their studies and critical thinking that is relevant to their lives. They are searching for guides not instructors. This is a huge challenge to the church and to TSCF - are we being proactive about reading and responding to changes that I predict are coming in the education sector. We need to critically assess the way that we are teaching the bible, leadership and doing evangelism. It is no longer enough to talk at large groups of people, when research into teaching shows that passive listening is the least effective way of learning. Students are longing for genuine engagement in their lives and with their issues and for mentors and guides that can teach them by getting alongside them and helping them to learn to read the patterns of life, to read the bible, to know Jesus and to be fully who they were created to be.

I pray that the church (and TSCF) can remain proactive and ahead of the game on this issue.