Implementation of an innovative teaching project in a Chemical Process Design course at the University of Cantabria,Spain

This paper shows the planning, the teaching activities and the evaluation of the learning and teaching process implemented in the Chemical Process Design course at the University of Cantabria, Spain. Educational methods to address the knowledge, skills and attitudes that students who complete the course are expected to acquire are proposed and discussed. Undergraduate and graduate engineers' perceptions of the methodology used are evaluated by means of a questionnaire. Results of the teaching activities and the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed case study are discussed in relation to the course characteristics. The findings of the empirical evaluation shows that the excessive time students had to dedicate to the case study project and dealing with limited information are the most negative aspects obtained, whereas an increase in the students' self-confidence and the practical application of the methodology are the most positive aspects. Finally, improvements are discussed in order to extend the application of the methodology to other courses offered as part of the chemical engineering degree.     

Dilemmas of Participatory Enquiry: a case study of method‐in‐action

The purpose of this paper is to problematize the notion of participatory enquiry as a legitimate form of educational evaluation. Using a case study of a new teacher education program the authors describe how they negotiated and enacted an alternative evaluation methodology within a traditional context. The evaluation process was intended to actively engage faculty members and students, as well as representatives of the educational system and the broader community, in self‐reflection and self‐evaluation of their own program. The authors then attempt to turn the methodology back on itself by critically analyzing their own participatory process in terms of a number of dilemmas that arose during the three‐year course of the evaluation. These dilemmas were addressed directly as political issues of method as a means of eliciting discussion and debate about the appropriateness of various forms of enquiry in the assessment and evaluation of higher education.     

Rolling: A new technique for the practical teaching in computer science university degree

In this paper we describe a new methodology for practical teaching in the Computer Science University Degree. The methodology is based on the Rolling technique. This technique consists in assign, in a rotary process, tasks, activities and responsibilities to students along an established calendar with the aim of developing a software product. Practical teaching is supported by a student-teacher contract that describes the goal, rules, plan with stages and activities, responsibilities and even the assessment method. Students are organized in groups and teams, emulating a company organization. They develop all the activities of the software engineering process in order to obtain a commercial product (the goal). In this process, students take different responsibilities over the software verification and validation, activities and tasks, and over groups and teams leadership. Along the teaching process, comprehensive information about the working team, time invested, deliverables in each stage, and work/students assessment is gathered. The methodology has been tested for 4 years at the University of Córdoba and the results, described in this paper, have shown an improvement in the students learning as well as in the acquisition of attitudes and skills mandatory for their professional development.     

FOUR YEARS ON – A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE DIP. H.E. IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AT AVERY HILL COLLEGE, 1979–83

A thorough process of evaluation, both ongoing throughout the four years and an in-depth exercise in 1982, prior to submission of the revised course to CNAA for renewal of approval, has identified the various strengths and weaknesses of the course as a whole, and of constituent parts of the course. Of interest is the extent to which the course has attracted the mature student (75% or more of the students are mature entrants) and the success that these and the other students have had in transferring directly into the third year of degree programmes at linked institutions. Also of note is the extent to which students have been attracted to the notion of taking a broadly‐based programme of study for two years, which has enabled them to keep their options open for future direction, and the extent that students have subsequently been able to determine a direction for further study by the end of the second year. Another point of interest, and one which was entirely unanticipated, is the way that a proportion of the entrants, which was recruited via the Professional and Executive Register, obviously viewed the generalist study in a course such as this as a means of career reorientation, as well as a route back into Higher Education. All these points have served to vindicate the open policy operated in the selection of students joining the course.     

Enhancing Students’ Learning Process Through Self-Generated Tests

The use of new technologies in higher education has surprisingly emphasized students’ tendency to adopt a passive behavior in class. Participation and interaction of students are essential to improve academic results. This paper describes an educational experiment aimed at the promotion of students’ autonomous learning by requiring them to generate test type questions related to the contents of the course. The main idea is to make the student feel part of the evaluation process by including students’ questions in the evaluation exams. A set of applications running on our university online learning environment has been developed in order to provide both students and teachers with the necessary tools for a good interaction between them. Questions uploaded by students are visible to every enrolled student as well as to each involved teacher. In this way, we enhance critical analysis skills, by solving and finding possible mistakes in the questions sent by their fellows. The experiment was applied over 769 students from 12 different courses. Results show that the students who have actively participated in the experiment have obtained better academic performance.     

Are they paying attention? Students’ lack of motivation and attention potentially threaten the utility of course evaluations

Student evaluations are a common source of information used by instructors and administrators, but their utility depends on students’ motivation and attention. This paper presents evidence from two studies indicating that insufficient effort responding and lack of motivation may be problems in course evaluations. In the first study, approximately one in four students responded in an improbable way to ‘catch items’ embedded in actual course evaluation instruments, suggesting a lack of attention. In the second study, students’ responses to an online survey indicated that they doubted that their responses to course evaluations would be used by instructors or administrators. The majority of students admitted to only occasionally putting sufficient effort into their responses. Potential means for identifying insufficient effort responding and mechanisms for increasing student attention and motivation during the course evaluation process are discussed.     

语类写作法在中学生英语议论文写作中的应用

从中学英语课程标准设置的角度,探讨语类写作法在中学英语议论文写作中的应用,提出语类写作法的课堂教学模式和评估方式,对语类写作法教学实验的测试结果进行定量和定性分析,说明语类写作法的作用。     

Online Focus Group: A Tool to Evaluate Online Students' Course Experience

This study suggests that virtual focus groups can be used as a powerful research tool to evaluate students' online course experiences. Students taking courses through the Internet want to be in control of when to access their course content. They also want to be able to decide when and how they interact with their peers and professors. In other words, students are striving for flexibility. Due to the fact that online courses require a different array of preparation, infrastructure, technical support, technology expertise, and course methodology; the evaluation of student online course experience(s) requires a different evaluation paradigm. In this study, the researchers combined the focus group with the Delphi technique and were able to verify the important matters that made an impact on students' satisfaction with the online course(s) they took. The uniqueness of this study is related to the adoption of asynchronous communication into the focus group research technique.     

“5S”在项目化教学中的应用——以机电产品装配工程训练课程为例

针对现阶段高职项目化课程教学中存在的问题,以机电产品装配工程训练课程为例,将＂5S＂管理引入机电产品装配工程训练课程的项目教学,培养学生自我管理、严于律己、持之以恒的基本职业素养。对课程的教学设计、教学实施过程及实施效果进行了探索。     

Taking the grading leniency story to the edge. The influence of student, teacher, and course characteristics on student evaluations of teaching in higher education

The use of student evaluation of teaching (SET) to evaluate and improve teaching is widespread amongst institutions of higher education. Many authors have searched for a conclusive understanding about the influence of student, course, and teacher characteristics on SET. One hotly debated discussion concerns the interpretation of the positive and statistically significant relationship that has been found between course grades and SET scores. In addition to reviewing the literature, the main purpose of the present study is to examine the influence of course grades and other characteristics of students, courses, and teachers on SET. Data from 1244 evaluations were collected using the SET-37 instrument and analyzed by means of cross-classified multilevel models. The results show positive significant relationships between course grades, class attendance, the examination period in which students receive their highest course grades, and the SET score. These relationships, however, are subject to different interpretations. Future research should focus on providing a definitive and empirically supported interpretation for these relationships. In the absence of such an interpretation, it will remain unclear whether these relationships offer proof of the validity of SET or whether they are a biasing factor.     

Critical friendship as a contribution to master’s‐level work in an international programme of study

This article reports on an action research project in which the value of critical friendship for students doing research and writing their dissertations within an international master’s course has been explored. This course is run jointly by Roehampton University (London, UK), Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) together with Fontys OSO (Tilburg, the Netherlands). It describes the process and the results of working with the concept of critical friendship in this master’s course since its start in 2005. Data were collected by means of various qualitative instruments and data sources: evaluation forms after tutorial sessions, reflective logs and focus interviews. The results show that the process of engaging with the research they did was enhanced and supported by the development of critical friendship groups. A number of recommendations have been formulated, such as the importance of discussing the concept of critical friend and its philosophy with the participants and of defining roles and tasks as clearly as possible.     

Students’ Perceptions and Emotions Toward Learning in a Flipped General Science Classroom

Recently, the inverted instruction methodologies are gaining attentions in higher educations by claiming that flipping the classroom engages more effectively students with the learning process. Besides, students’ perceptions and emotions involved in their learning process must be assessed in order to gauge the usability of this relatively new instruction methodology, since it is vital in the educational formation. For this reason, this study intends to evaluate the students’ perceptions and emotions when a flipped classroom setting is used as instruction methodology. This research was conducted in a general science course, sophomore of the Primary Education bachelor degree in the Training Teaching School of the University of Extremadura (Spain). The results show that the students have the overall positive perceptions to a flipped classroom setting. Particularly, over 80 % of them considered that the course was a valuable learning experience. They also found this course more interactive and were willing to have more courses following a flipped model. According to the students’ emotions toward a flipped classroom course, the highest scores were given to the positive emotions, being fun and enthusiasm along with keyword frequency test. Then, the lowest scores were corresponded to negative emotions, being boredom and fear. Therefore, the students attending to a flipped course demonstrated to have more positive and less negative emotions. The results obtained in this study allow drawing a promising tendency about the students’ perceptions and emotions toward the flipped classroom methodology and will contribute to fully frame this relatively new instruction methodology.     

Reconstructing Imagined Finnishness: The Case of Art Education through the Concept of Place

This multidisciplinary article presents a methodology, a research project and selected outcomes from an environmental art education course for teacher students. The course is part of an art education minor at the University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. The students were asked to construct their place through an intertextual art method that provided them the means to study their place open‐endedly as a space of plural cultural meanings. Applying the results from their intertextual process, they reconstructed their place artistically. The end product was a personal work of art that included traces of their chosen places, and created a new meaning for it. The outcome is a visual space of compacted meanings from different places. Places contain history and memories important to identity construction. The results show that the intertextual reading extends the students’ concept of place as a space for relational and plural cultural meanings. Foucault's concept of heterotopia, as it applies to otherness of places and spaces, was used alongside the intertextual art method.     

A Proposal for Motivating Research

We use an experimental course collaboration that occurred in the winter of 2012 as a case study for an approach to interdisciplinary collaboration between Theatre and Humanities courses, and we argue that the theatre methodology of “devising” can serve as a particularly rich locus for collaboration between Theatre students and other Humanities students because it allows students to cooperate in generating a creative product that draws on two different areas of expertise. In this case, English students operated as critically informed advisors for Theatre students who devised original performances using a canonical text as source material. This experimental collaboration produced many of the positive results that have been discussed in previous studies concerning interdisciplinary pedagogy, including thoughtful consideration of the nature of each discipline, transferring of tools and methodologies between disciplines, increased student enthusiasm, and faculty development. However, it did not require extensive resources or curricular restructuring and thus might operate as a useful model for instructors with reservations about or limited resources for attempting interdisciplinary collaboration.     

生物学双语教学实践与思考

双语教学是学生识别和记忆专业词汇、提高英文科技文献阅读能力的有效手段。生物学双语教学实践过程中遇到“学生接受速度慢”“文科学生对理科知识理解难度大”“课程考核方式如何选择”等问题,为此,在教学过程中采取将课件调整成由含有大量中文到全英文逐渐过渡的形式,并且考核方式也选择开卷考试以降低难度,此外通过评学和评教、加强师生对课程学习效果的交流等手段来不断提升双语教学的质量和教学效果。     

网络课程教学方法思考

在网络时代的背景下,网络课程日益成为现代社会学习的一种重要形式。网络课程教学方法是网络教学中教与学相联系的重要纽带,直接影响与制约着学生的学习质量。本文首先对网络课程形式和特点进行分析,重新审视了网络教学中师生的角色,在此基础上对网络课程的教学方法进行思考,提出了网络教学中师生交互的策略,针对不同教学对象的策略,教学控制的策略以及网络教学中的情感策略。     

Use of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Moodle</Emphasis> Platform to Promote an Ongoing Learning When Lecturing General Physics in the Physics,Mathematics and Electronic Engineering Programmes at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

The Moodle platform has been used to put into practice an ongoing evaluation of the students’ Physics learning process. The evaluation has been done on the frame of the course General Physics, which is lectured during the first year of the Physics, Mathematics and Electronic Engineering Programmes at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). A test bank with more than 1000 multiple-choice questions, including conceptual and numerical problems, has been prepared. Throughout the course, the students have to answer a 10-question multiple-choice test for every one of the blocks the course is divided in and which were previously treated and worked in the theoretical lectures and problem-solving sessions. The tests are automatically corrected by Moodle, and under certain criteria, the corresponding mark is taken into account for the final mark of the course. According to the results obtained from a statistical study of the data on the student performances during the last four academic years, it has been observed that there exists an actual correlation between the marks obtained in the Moodle tests and the final mark of the course. In addition, it could be deduced that students who have passed the Moodle tests increase their possibilities of passing the course by an odds ratio close to 3.     

Evaluation of Courses by Whole Student Cohorts: a case study

In a climate of unprecedented change in higher education (HE), accurate and immediate course feedback information is vital to the management of institutions, in assisting the development of course material relevant to present student needs. Student contribution to qualitative course evaluation is commonplace although use of relatively small representative groups of students is usual. However, with class sizes increasing — between 100 and 200 is now common — the ability to acquire accurate qualitative evaluation, representatively, is a major issue. This paper describes a methodology providing opportunity for whole cohort groups of students to be involved simultaneously in the generation of feedback. It considers the effectiveness of student consultation meetings as a collection method, the utility of the results in the course development process, how the issues raised and discussed compare with matters included on a university‐wide questionnaire, and whether participating students feel inhibited in discussing matters so publicly.     

Application of cognitive apprenticeship model to a graduate course in performance systems analysis: A case study

This article reports a case study describing how the principles of a cognitive apprenticeship (CA) model developed by Collins, Brown, and Holum (1991) were applied to a graduate course on performance systems analysis (PSA), and the differences this application made in student performance and evaluation of the course compared to the previous semester. I analyzed the requirements for the CA learning environment and identified the contributions of instructor, students, and the course based on those requirments. I then applied the findings to create an authentic learning environment based on CA principles. In this case the students became performance consultants, immersed in practical application of the PSA content and methodology to authentic organizational performance issues provided by real clients. Finally, I compare student evaluation of the course to student evaluations in the previous semester, and report their responses to a set of open-ended questions concerning the application of CA principles.