Exploring the Gurteen Knowledge Café approach as an innovative teaching for learning strategy with first-year engineering students

Abstract

This study explored a learning approach based on the Gurteen Knowledge Café to encourage collaborative learning in a first-year Mathematics module. The rationale for carrying out this exploration was to empower students to become active, responsible and critical learners. The study was carried out with 32 first-year Electrical Engineering students at a South African university of technology, who were divided into five groups and engaged in mathematics tasks structured in the form of activity sheets and the general pedagogy was guided by social constructivism. Written responses, classroom activity observations and questionnaires contributed to the data. The activities involved five tasks on hyperbolic functions in preparation for first-year Calculus. Findings emanating from the data analysis indicated that this approach to collaborative learning provided positive attributes which aided effective Mathematics learning and learning in general.