Bye, Bye, Hotel Mama, Bye, Bye Good Grades? Living in a Student Room and Exam Results in Tertiary Education

The “Talk-to-Me” MOOC intervention for suicide prevention and mental health education among tertiary students: Protocol of a multi-site cross-over randomised controlled trial

Cohabiting has been associated with a number of problems including sexually transmitted diseases and HIV and AIDS, abortions, sexual abuse and violence, low academic performance, increased cost of medical care and unwanted pregnancies. However, there is little documented information on the extent and the factors influencing cohabitation among the youth and especially among tertiary education students. This study therefore sought to fill this gap by investigating factors that lead to the prevalence and practice of cohabitation by tertiary education students. The research adopted the interpretivist philosophy. The qualitative research methodology was employed in order to understand in greater detail the behaviors, attitudes, opinions, and beliefs of the respondents on cohabitation among tertiary education students. The study used the survey research design. Primary research was conducted using questionnaire surveys that were administered to tertiary education students who participated at the Tertiary Education Sports Association of Zimbabwe in July 2016. There were 100 questionnaires distributed and 78 questionnaires were returned making 78% response rate. The respondents were randomly sampled to participate in the study. The study reflects that cohabitation among the Tertiary education students is quite common. The study noted that it is mostly caused by lack of accommodation, problems with roommates, lack of privacy and the need to be close and intimate with one's lover. In results cohabitation exposes students to premarital sex and other consequences such as unwanted pregnancies, abortion, complications and sexually transmitted infections. The study recommends that tertiary education students should be enlightened during orientations about the dangers of cohabitation. Parents should be encouraged to visit their children and find where and whom they live with while in school.

Mental illnesses are the greatest health problems faced by younger people. As a group, tertiary education students demonstrate higher levels of distress than their age matched peers who are not tertiary students, making them an at-risk group for the development of psychopathology. Therefore, this study investigates existing theories of resilience in order to determine how it may be promoted in tertiary education students. Data relating to affect, depression, anxiety, distress, and resilience were collected from 1072 tertiary education students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of this study found that positive affect was responsible for approximately 25% of the variance in depressive symptoms but less than 10% of the variance in symptoms of anxiety in tertiary students. The results further showed that positive affect was responsible for 21% of variance in overall distress and the 15% of variance in resilience. The findings of this study suggest that positive affect is more closely associated with symptoms of depression than with symptoms of anxiety in tertiary students. The results further suggest that positive affect may be a useful tool for relieving symptoms of depression and overall distress, and improving levels of resilience in this population.

Review question/objective The aim of this systematic review is to present the best available evidence on teaching and learning strategies or methods preferred by 'Generation Y' health care professional students. The specific review question to be addressed is: What are the teaching and learning strategies or methods preferred by ‘Generation Y’ health care professional students? Objectives The quantitative objective is to identify teaching and learning approaches and activities preferred by ‘Generation Y’ students in health professional tertiary education, reported by students. The qualitative objective is to describe the meaningfulness of teaching and learning approaches and activities preferred by 'Generation Y' health professional students in tertiary education as reported by students. Inclusion criteria Types of participants This review will focus on health professional students in tertiary education from 2000 onwards. Health professions to be included are as follows: medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, medical radiation science, nutrition and dietetics, oral health and podiatry. Students must be identified as 'Generation Y' or an associated generational label including the 'Millennials', the 'Next Generation', the 'Net Generation', the 'Digital Generation' or the abbreviated title 'Gen Y'. Types of intervention(s)/phenomena of interest For the purposes of this review teaching and learning strategies are defined as any curricula design, formative or summative assessment, feedback mechanisms or innovative technological approaches or course structure used in the educational curricula of health care professional students. For the purpose of this review teaching and learning methods are defined as any educational task, activity or process which aims to engage students to construct meaning, or develop the knowledge, skills or attributes to meet the learning objectives of a course or program and contribute to graduating competence. The quantitative component of the review will consider studies that investigate teaching and learning strategies utilized in the development of ‘Generation Y’ health professional students. The qualitative component of this review will consider studies that report on the experiences or views of health professional ‘Generation Y’ students, regarding teaching and learning strategies or methods. Types of outcomes This review will consider studies that include the main outcome measures of teaching and learning which is the construction of meaning and the attainment of skills, knowledge and attitudes that meet the learning objectives set contributing to the achievement of practice competence. Other educational outcome measures such as student satisfaction and student engagement in the teaching and learning process will also be included. The qualitative outcomes of interest will incorporate the students self reported experiences of learning approaches.

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which gender and age account for the variations in the environmental perception of tertiary education students in Enugu Geographical Area, Enugu State. Methodology: Three research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a correlational research design. The study was conducted in Enugu Geographical Area, Enugu State. The population of the study comprised 29,364 tertiary education students in Enugu Geographical Area, Enugu State. The sample size of the study was 760 tertiary education students in Enugu Geographical Area of Enugu State. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to draw the sample size. Structured questionnaire developed by the researcher was used for data collection. The instrument was titled "Environmental Perception Scale" The instrument was validated by seven experts. Cronbach Alpha was used to establish the reliability of the instrument. Findings: The instrument yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.77. Data collected were analyzed using mean score and standard deviation for research question one while linear regression was used to answer research questions 1-2. Regression ANOVA was used to test the null hypotheses. Unique Contributor to Theory, Policy and Practice: The findings of the study showed that the tertiary education students have positive perception of their environment in Enugu geographical area; that 46% of variation in students' environmental perception is attributed to students' gender with R value of 0.68 and value of 0.46 and there is a significant difference between gender and tertiary education students' environmental perception and that 42% of variation in students' environmental perception is attributed to students' age with R value of 0.62 and value of 0.42 and there is a significant difference between age and tertiary education students' environmental perception. Based on the findings of the study, relevant conclusions were drawn.

This chapter investigates the factors of becoming self-employed among tertiary education students in East Coast Malaysia. Among others, three motivating factors obtained a positive response; intention to upgrade income to a higher level, be independent at work, and acquire more satisfaction as an entrepreneur. Self-administered questionnaires adapted from a previous research were distributed to tertiary education students in East Coast Malaysia. 104 questionnaires were analyzed and found to be usable for this study. Generally, the results of the study indicated that the respondents had a positive interest towards becoming self-employed with a very significant level through the research findings. This is a good sign to the related tertiary education institutions and country as a whole in which most of the future graduates are interested in being independent entrepreneurs. Thus, Malaysia will be able to increase the statistics of those who are self-employed among tertiary graduates. Not only that, the Ministry of Education can emphasize more activities, programmes and courses that are able to develop the skills to become entrepreneurs among tertiary education students.

Tertiary education students experience higher levels of distress than the general public and their age-matched peers. Preventive health programs targeting tertiary education students are needed to combat high levels of distress in this population. This article investigates strengths-based theories of resilience which state that improvements in coping with stress also improve resilience. It utilized hierarchical regression to determine the amount of variance in mental health and resilience outcomes associated with the stress management resources, namely paying attention to the present moment (mindfulness) and engaging in personally meaningful activities (engagement), in a sample of 1,072 Australian tertiary education students. The results found that mindfulness and engagement are negatively associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety and positively associated with psychological well-being and resilience in tertiary education students. We also found that the amount of variance in mental health outcomes associated with engagement and mindfulness is additive. When a second stress management resource was added to the modeling, the amount of variance in the measured mental health outcomes explained by the coping resources increased. These findings help to provide a conceptual framework that can be used to design resilience training programs in tertiary education students to address the high levels of mental health disorder in this population.

Background and AimsFunctional constipation is very common with heterogeneous symptoms that have substantial impact on patient quality of life as well as medical resources which are rarely reported as life-threatening. The aim of this study is to examine the prevalence and symptoms characteristic of functional constipation (FC) by using Rome III diagnostic criteria among tertiary education students with an intention to introduce treatment in the future.MethodsDemographic, socio-economics characteristics and symptoms of FC using the Rome III criteria were sought using a questionnaire administered to Malaysian students in a tertiary education setting. Other data obtained were the general health status, lifestyle factors and anthropometric measurements. Using a simple random sampling method, a total of 1662 students were recruited in the study with a response rate of 95.0%. Sampled data are presented as frequency and percentage and stratified accordingly into categories for Chi-square analysis.ResultsThe prevalence of functional constipation among the students was 16.2%, with a significantly higher prevalence among women (17.4%) than men (12.5%). Hard or lumpy stool, incomplete evacuation, anorectal obstruction and straining were reported as the commonest symptoms experienced. Type 3 was the most frequent stool consistency experienced among the constipated individuals (35.2%). Only 4.4% of individuals reported having less than three defecations per week. Using univariable analysis, FC was significantly associated with sex (odds ratio: 1.48, 95% CI: 1.06–2.06) and age group (odds ratio: 1.34, 95% CI: 1.01–1.79) with P value < 0.05 significance level. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, only sex was found significantly associated with FC (adjusted odds ratio: 1.53, 95% CI: 1.08–2.17, P < 0.05).ConclusionsBased on the prevalence rate, constipation is a common problem among tertiary education students (16.2%), with significantly more prevalence among the female respondents. Early detection of symptoms and further intervention studies focusing on treatment recommendation in improving the symptoms are essential.

ObjectiveThis project sought to characterize levels of distress in Australian tertiary education students during the COVID‐19 pandemic.MethodsAdvertisements were placed on multiple participant recruitment and student run websites associated with various tertiary institutions. Level of overall distress was assessed with the K‐10 so that comparisons could be made with previous research. A total of 1072 tertiary education students 18 years or older participated in the study.Results70.9% of tertiary education students studying in Australia displayed elevated levels of psychological distress during the pandemic, with 23.01% of the sample reporting extreme levels of distress.ConclusionsMore tertiary education students experienced severe distress during the COVID‐19 pandemic than adults in the general population, as well as before the pandemic. Implications: Services are needed to help tertiary education students cope with elevated levels of distress associated during the COVID‐19 pandemic.

The objective of the paper is to highlight the need of adjusting the skills of tertiary education graduates to the requirements of the present global world, which entails the idea that higher education should be aimed at developing abilities that will facilitate communicating within and across a variety of communities, ethnicities and cultures. In the paper it is postulated that tertiary education graduates should be equipped, inter alia, with the skill of transcomunicating based on the idea of equality of cultures and languages. Due attention is paid to the role of study abroad programmes in the aforementioned process. Accordingly, the research part of the paper delves into the influence of the Erasmus+ mobility on the development of transcommunication among tertiary education students and rests on the analysis of the material gathered during interviews with learners who participated in the international student mobility conducted within The Erasmus+ Framework. The research results point to the key role of experiential learning held in territorial contexts in the process of developing the skill of transcommunicating among the research participants.

Research anxiety is one critical factor that may hinder the research activities of students, and variables like grit and emotional intelligence are factors that may exert influences on anxiety levels as well as the research performance of students in the tertiary institution. Thus the study looked into the predictive power of grit and emotional intelligence on the research anxiety experience of tertiary education students. It adopted the correlational research design. To direct the study, three null hypotheses and three research questions were developed. The study's population included all 5,765 undergraduate students at the University of Port Harcourt. A sample of 294 was drawn using stratified random sampling. The Research Anxiety Questionnaire, Emotional Intelligence Appraisal, and the Grit Scale were the instruments used. The validity of these tools was guaranteed. The Cronbach alpha method obtained high-reliability coefficients for the three instruments. Data were analyzed using simple and multiple regressions. The result revealed that grit and emotional intelligence independently and jointly significantly predict the research anxiety experience of students in tertiary education. Considering findings, it was suggested that students in tertiary education receive training that focuses on developing both their grit and emotional intelligence. This essential training could help students to become more resilient in the face of challenges and setbacks, as well as better equipped to manage their emotions in high-pressure academic situations.

An active lifestyle is a way of life that incorporates regular exercise and healthy nutrition to improve overall well-being. Any activity that gets you up, down, sideways, and moving is considered part of an active lifestyle. This study evaluated the barriers to an active lifestyle before the pandemic among tertiary physical education students at Surigao del Sur State University (SDSSU)—Tandag Campus. The goal of this study was to discover the barriers that each student has, as well as the reasons why students are not physically active for a variety of reasons. The method used in this study was a descriptive-quantitative design with the use of a researcher-made questionnaire administered to the tertiary physical education students to collate the data relevant for interpretation. Based on the findings, the non-availability of fitness equipment, facilities, and resources were the top barriers for students before the pandemic. Students' self-motivation, encouragement, and self-support are the student coping strategies before the pandemic. Lifestyle habits have been dramatically altered given these unprecedented times due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This research assessed the factors affecting social media usage by tertiary education students in Ghana. The technology acceptance model underpinned the study. A total of 513 tertiary education students selected from across the country completed a set of questionnaires using Google Forms. Frequencies, percentages, means, independent samples t-test, and ANOVA were used as the analytical framework for the study. Although respondents were very highly aware of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, they were less aware of platforms such as Flicker, SoundCloud, Evernote, Pinterest, 2go, and MySpace. In addition, respondents reported that the extent to which social media was used for information sharing, entertainment, education, interpersonal connectivity, and social bonding was high. The level at which social media was used for self-promotion, impression management, self-disclosure, and self-documentation, and displaying creativity was moderate. The major factors respondents considered when using social media platforms were the convenience of the platforms, their experience with the platforms, their perceived usefulness, social influence, and the cost of the platforms. Despite their importance, legal risks and privacy issues did not strongly feature in the factors respondents considered before using social media platforms. Significant differences existed in the respondents’ views on the factors affecting their social media platform usage based on age. Tertiary education students in Ghana are advised to maximise their use of social media platforms for educational purposes. Finally, to avoid inconveniences, Ghanaian tertiary education students should pay increased attention to the legal implications and privacy issues associated with social media adoption.

This article presents the development of fabricator competency for engineering students in tertiary education during the seamless era. This study explored the approach to synthesizing, designing, and developing fabricator competency. The study identified six key components of fabricator competency: 1) Knowledge of materials, 2) Problem-solving and design, 3) Using design software, 4) Using hardware and machines, 5) Safety knowledge and awareness, and 6) Communication and publication. This study emphasizes the importance of human potential development, specifically in the case of engineering students in tertiary education. A competency framework for a fabricator in the seamless era has been developed by synthesizing, designing, and developing fabricator competencies based on published research on fabricator competency.

Learning economics can be challenging for most tertiary education students. The main issues in learning economics are a low visualization skills and difficulty memorizing, leading to the inability to comprehend the economics concept and its application. Therefore, this paper determines the criteria and priority used by tertiary education students in choosing digital game-based learning tools in macroeconomics. This study administered a pair-wise comparison survey to 72 tertiary education students in UiTM Perak Branch Tapah Campus. Their judgements were then analysed by a multi-criteria decision-making method, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Three main criteria consisted of ‘Environment, Motivation and Persuasion Factors’ were identified, which had five sub-criteria each. The results found that ‘Learner Focus’, ‘Negotiation’, ‘Autonomy’, ‘Compatibility’ and ‘Prior Knowledge’ sub-criteria are the top five priorities in choosing DGBL tools. Thus, prioritising on these criteria will ensure high usage of DGBL tools and high students’ academic performance in the future.