Have a Look Around: The Effect of a ‘Push’ Activity on Future SAS Use

Abstract

Although mandatory regular use of self-access centres is surprisingly common, this goes against the purpose of them to foster autonomous learning. However, some students never consider using such resources without being pushed to do so. In order to create an opportunity to discover a self-access station (SAS) at one Japanese university, a single assignment was designed and implemented requiring students to visit the SAS in order to answer questions related to its use and facilities. Thereafter, an end-of-term questionnaire was conducted to investigate how the assignment affected student awareness and use of the SAS, and whether they would have visited the SAS had there been no task. The results show that awareness of the SAS was raised. However, most students did not use the SAS post-assignment and indicated they would not have used it without the assignment. Reasons provided suggest time constraints, location, and issues of comfort to be contributing factors.

Keywords

• self-access centres
• mandatory use
• opportunity
• discovery
• awareness
• evaluation