AS THEY BEGIN a new term, students doing Hong Kong-China business studies at Polytechnic University can expect to behave as they would in the workplace, finding solutions to business problems rather than jotting down notes.
One question they will tackle is whether to advise an American electrical components company to enter the China market via a joint venture or a wholly-owned subsidiary. The students' focus on real-life situations - presented in the form of imaginary problems set by their teachers - reflects a growing shift away from lecture-oriented curricula on campuses.
One of the three teachers for the course, Professor Howard Davies, from the department of management and marketing, abides by the problem-based learning (PBL) approach, using it with both postgraduate and undergraduate students. 'I use it partly on everything I do,' he said.
The teaching approach, first developed by the medical school at Canada's McMaster University in the late 1960s, has become widespread abroad, especially in the US and Australia, and has been adopted by disciplines outside health sciences, from management, social work to architecture. Students are split into teams and expected to discover knowledge and insights through addressing problems.
'In a PBL scenario, the lecturer is a facilitator of learning and does not provide information. The whole idea is to produce independent learners, to get students to think like a professional instead of thinking like a student,' said David Johnston, head of the Hong Kong Centre for Problem-based Learning, based at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and set up in 2000 with $6 million funding from the University Grants Committee.
While PBL is yet to be a dominant trend here, local universities are ahead of their counterparts in the region in terms implementing it, according to Dr Johnston, whose centre will close at the end of this year when funding dries up.