Collaboration between Faculty Members and School Counselors: An Experience from a Case-based Course

This article describes the experience in Spain of a specific collaboration between university teachers and school counselors, which used case-based approaches in a teacher training program. The collaboration ran for four years and involved 300 graduate students, two university teachers, and six school counselors. Three basic features enabled this collaboration: a) horizontal relationships, b) a spirit of mutual help and confidence, and c) autonomy. The outcome of the experience can be evaluated in terms of both the case-based teaching process itself and its impact on student learning and the professional development of teachers and counselors involved.     

Designing a flashcard with knowledge pills for learning to solve chemistry exercises

Nowadays, universities tend to promote more learner-centred learning, creating a more interactive and motivational environment for students and teachers. This paper describes an expanded framework to help chemical educators to construct a quiz for solution of chemical exercises in their courses. The novelty of this contribution is that the proposed tool combines a flashcards-based method with knowledge pills. The framework has three levels: definition of problem for a teacher; the quiz; use of the quiz for the student. The tool could provide predefined or automatically generated exercises of chemicals. Students could practise where and whenever they like via the Internet. Theirs answers would be registered automatically by the tool and if the students have doubts about any of the questions, they can see a knowledge pill with a teacher explanation about the solution of the exercise. Moreover, they would be able to check their scores from the tests. Once the flashcards were designed and produced, the opinions of other lecturers and students about them were considered. Both groups considered that the tool could be useful to improve the students’ learning process. For future work, this design will be used with the students and its effectiveness will be analysed.     

Bridging the Gap between Academic Research and Regional Development in the Basque Country

The discussion in this article focuses on how the gap between academic knowledge and regional development can be bridged, creating conditions for change processes between researchers and regional agents. Institutional entrepreneurs can create regional development organisations and research organisations, but in order to fulfil regional needs it is necessary to create processes where researchers and practitioners can connect and create a mutual change process. The analysis shows how new organisations have been used to create conditions for knowledge co-generation processes, a change in the language used and new work methods between researchers from Deusto University and Orkestra and regional actors over a period of 11 years in the Basque Country.     

Desaturation Patterns Detected by Oximetry in a Large Population of Athletes

Optimal exercise performance in well trained athletes can be affected by arterial oxygen saturation failure. Noninvasive detection of this phenomenon when performing a routine ergometric test can be a valuable tool for subsequent planning of the athlete's training, recovery, and nutrition. Oximetry has been used to this end. The authors studied 339 athletes performing a similar exercise trial under well controlled environmental conditions. Maximum speed, oxygen uptake, and heart rate levels were simultaneously measured. From the obtained data, six patterns were found: (a) athletes in whom oxygen saturation is constant (≥ 95%) during test execution; (b) athletes displaying a progressive desaturation with incremental exercise intensities; (c) athletes presenting a transient desaturation in the anaerobic threshold region; (d) athletes starting with a mild-to-moderate desaturation at the beginning of the test, but reaching normal saturation values at the end; (e) athletes displaying mild-to-moderate desaturation levels throughout the whole test; and (f) athletes displaying a transient desaturation in the anaerobic threshold region and a new desaturation at the end of the test. In conclusion, it is believed that establishment of desaturation patterns by validated oximetry could be a first approach to evaluate the adaptation of the cardiorespiratory system to exercise intensity, helping to improve results.     

How clicker use facilitates existing pedagogical practices in higher education: data from interdisciplinary research on student response systems

This article identifies how clicker use can support or augment existing principles of good teaching across different disciplines in higher education. While many of these principles will be familiar to instructors, the link between student response system (SRS) use and existing pedagogical methods is still often unclear, even for scholars who are well read in the literature. Functioning as a resource for both novices and instructors who have already incorporated clickers into their courses, this article synthesizes existing literature and offers empirical data from five courses in three disciplines to show how SRSs can be used to support contemporary pedagogical goals. The authors discuss five exemplary practices, providing sample clicker questions along the way, to show how clickers can be used to facilitate active learning in large courses.     

Course Format and Student Learning Styles: A Comparison of Political Science Courses

ABSTRACT

This study investigates whether differences in learning styles exist between students in online and face-to-face (FTF) sections of political science courses taught by three instructors. Some studies suggest that student preferences regarding online or FTF formats are influenced by their preferred modes of learning. Independent learners, for example, may prefer online courses since they provide individualistic opportunities to study outside of the traditional classroom. This study uses original survey data to assign students one of six learning styles in order to assess whether independent learners are more common in online courses. Our analysis finds no significant differences in independent learners when comparing the two formats. This finding runs counter to studies that argue that independent learners tend to prefer online courses. In fact, the only learning style where we observe a meaningful difference among online and FTF formats is among dependent learners. Contrary to expectation, students enrolled in online versions demonstrated a greater tendency toward dependent modes of learning. Further survey responses suggest that student lifestyle drove course format selection rather than learning style. These findings have important implications for universities that increasingly turn to online courses to address decreasing enrollments and attempt to remedy the high attrition rates associated with those courses.     

Memoria y competencia inferencial en niños: un estudio preliminar

Resumen

Se contrasta la hipótesis de un posible efecto de facilitación mediante la representación previa de unas premisas sobre la competencia lógica de niños de nueve años. Los resultados no permiten confirmar la incidencia de ese efecto cuando la tarea exigida está por encima de la competencia lógica actual de los sujetos.     

Memoria incidental e intencional en preescolares

Resumen

En general, se ha mantenido que los niños en edad preescolar recuerdan mejor en tareas de aprendizaje incidental que en las de aprendizaje intencional. En este estudio se ha reexaminado esta cuestión y se ha visto que no existe tal diferencia. Niños de 3 a 5 reconocieron de modo semejante una serie de objetos y dibujos, tanto si se les había advertido previamente que debían recordar como si no. El estudio ha demostrado asimismo, y en concordancia con otros trabajos, que el recuerdo no es independiente del nivel de conocimiento ni de la edad del niño. En virtud de estos resultados se hace una interpretación de la memoria infantil acorde con la teoría de los niveles de procesamiento.