A study in general education: How a field trip for Chinese tea tasting motivates students’ learning

One challenge of teaching general education (GE) coursesto non-majors is how to motivate their learning. This study aims to demonstrate how active and engaging pedagogy can motivate student instudying GEcourses, through a case study of a public university in Hong Kong. As part of a GE course, a field trip, a good bridge between ordinary life and academic environment and well consistent with the course topic, was conducted as an optional activitywhichto improve students’ learning motivation.Learning motivation section of Motivated Strategies of Learning Questionnaire was used to assess students'learning motivationbefore and after the field trip,all students (n=156) of the GE course were invited as the experimental group, and the students of another related GE course (n=97) were invited as the control group. The results show that the field trip can positively influence students’ learning motivation.This study demonstrates that a carefully planned, meaningful field trip can play an important role in sparking student interest and give students personal experience that would confirm their theoretical understanding.