A face in a sea of faces: exploring university students’ reasons for non-attendance to teaching sessions

In the past 20 years, the landscape of Higher Education in the United Kingdom has changed considerably. With the prospect of tuition fees spiralling above £9,000 per year, per student, it is important to explore the impact this has upon the student experience. In spite of the vast financial investment current students make towards their education, student attendance and engagement remain low. The present study therefore adopted a qualitative approach using focus groups to explore reasons for non-attendance at university teaching sessions. Four key themes emerged; these surrounded issues about a sense of belonging to university, views of the teaching (material taught and the personality and method of the tutor), perceptions of being a consumer and external pressures. This research suggests that universities should pay particular attention to the reasons why students do not attend and possibly change practice, providing more support where appropriate.     

Teaching the assessment of normality using large easily‐generated real data sets

A classroom activity is presented, which can be used in teaching students statistics with an easily generated, large, real world data set. The activity consists of analyzing a video recording of an object. The colour data of the recorded object can then be used as a data set to explore variation in the data using graphs including histograms, quantile–quantile plots and scatterplots, and to indicate possible formal analyses.     

The effects of passive and active learning on student preference and performance in an undergraduate basic science course

Active learning is based on self-directed and autonomous teaching methods, whereas passive learning is grounded in instructor taught lectures. An animal physiology course was studied over a two-year period (Year 1, n = 42 students; Year 2, n = 30 students) to determine the effects of student-led seminar (andragogical) and lecture (pedagogical) teaching methods on students' retention of information and performance. For each year of the study, the course was divided into two time periods. The first half was dedicated to instructor-led lectures, followed by a control survey in which the students rated the efficiency of pedagogical learning on a five-point Likert scale from one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree). During the second period, students engaged in andragogical learning via peer-led seminars. An experimental survey was then administered to students using the same scale as above to determine students' preferred teaching method. Raw examination scores and survey results from both halves of the course were statistically analyzed by ANOVA with Newman-Keuls multiple comparison test. By the end of the study, student preference for peer-led seminars increased [mean ± SD: (2.47 ± 0.94)/(4.03 ± 1.36), P < 0.04], and examination scores significantly increased [mean ± SD: (73.91% ± 13.18)/(85.77 ± 5.22), P < 0.001]. A majority of students (68.8%) preferred a method that contained peer-led seminars and instructor-led lectures. These results may indicate that integration of active and passive learning into undergraduate courses may have greater benefit in terms of student preference and performance than either method alone.     

中国纪录片的典型表达与分析

纪录片是一门影视纪实艺术,是现代电影的母体。电视技术的发展为纪录片提供了外推动力,而纪录片进入电视领域也为电视节目的种类和各类节目的内容与表现形式做出了不可替代的贡献。当下的纪录片更加重视情节和内容的彰显,对技术上的艺术表现形式提出了更加细致的要求。科技的迅猛发展和社会的不断变迁,为纪录片的发展带来了新的机遇和挑战：高科技有助于创作者更好的实现自己的想法,同时为纪录片降低了成本,扩大了群众基础;网络等新媒体为纪录片的发展、提供新的平台。