Research done at NUS suggests three significant variables: group size, teaching method and assessment.

Group size

Since learning is better when the learner is active and able to practise applications, the learning environment should provide such opportunities. Studies show that group size affects the nature and intensity of interaction. Larger groups tend to display ‘social loafing’, i.e. individuals assuming less responsibility and making less effort in the learning situation. This may be at least partially explained by the diffusion of responsibility and greater anonymity in a larger group. Reducing group size—to not more than twenty-five—is likely to increase participation since individual contributions can be more clearly identified and evaluated.

Student-centred teaching

If effective teaching is that which enables the student to understand, think for him/herself, form his/her own judgements and ultimately, to learn independently, a natural corollary is a shift from the traditional teacher-centred to a more student-centred paradigm. This may involve some change in mindset. It may be necessary to adopt a less or non-autocratic approach which will encourage the student to question and to think independently. Student-centred teaching also involves expanding one’s repertoire of pedagogical skills and teaching modes.

Assessment

Learning is enhanced when there is prompt feedback so that a learner knows what he/she has learnt and ‘errors’ are quickly identified and corrected. Since assessment greatly influences teaching and learning, there should be close correlation between educational aims and objectives and the way students are assessed. Of primary concern then is whether assessment procedures encourage the right learning.

• Are the tests appropriate in that they match instructional objectives/content? Is the choice of assessment instruments valid?
  
• Are they relevant? Do they ask for demonstration of the knowledge/skills to be learnt?
  
• How reliable is the measurement?

Monitoring and improving testing and measurement processes will contribute to better student learning since assessment substantially reinforces or discourages certain desired goals or objectives, for example:

• If the aim is to encourage ‘deep’ learning, then assessment methods should be designed to stimulate and measure meaningful integration and internalisation of knowledge rather than facile fact reproduction. If questions merely test retention and retrieval rather than understanding and application, deep processing would seem redundant.
  
• Assessment should focus on process rather than product. Where assessment is summative rather than formative, students are likely to “respond by abandoning attempts to understand what is being learnt and study merely to fulfil short-term assessment demands.”²¹
  
• Where the final examination is the only or predominant instrument, students will gear their learning to meeting short-term assessment demands, resorting to rote-learning, ‘spotting’ of questions, and regurgitation. Current thinking is in favour of a balance of continuous and terminal assessment, thereby assessing both process as well as product.
  

21. John A. Bowden & Paul Ramsden. (1986). ‘Student Practices and Student Learning’. Research Working Paper. Vol. 86, No. 4. University of Melbourne: Centre for the Study of Higher Education