Higher Education Classroom Research Articles

Use of DISC behavioral profiling and training: An innovative pedagogical strategy to enhance learning and future career opportunities in sport management and sport coaching higher education classrooms

Implementing effective training and education programs is of critical importance for sport management and sport coaching academic education programs. This exploratory ­­­­­research examined the implementation and effectiveness of DISC behavioral profiling in sport management and sport coaching classrooms at the university level. Over four academic years (eight semesters), pre- and post-tests were collected from multiple samples of sport management and sport coaching students (N = 216) at two universities in the United States. Students received a personalized DISC behavioral profile and educational activities were used to enhance the value of the behavioral profiling initiatives. Using pre- and post-activity surveys of the knowledge and skills gained during in-course activities, paired sample t-test showed positive and significant results for 11 of 16 measured areas. The findings suggest that behavioral profiling tools and activities within sport management and sport coaching curricula can enhance student’s self-awareness and help develop leadership skills which will prepare for future career opportunities. Limitations and opportunities for future research are also presented.

Teaching gender in and through uncertainty

Where higher education classrooms can be sites of both cultural contestation and epistemic violence, this article examines the critical and ethical value of building uncertainty into our teaching of gender. The reflective piece draws on my own experience in a new subject at Monash University, and situates this one very small site of knowledge production within the wider processes that shape the (neoliberal) Australian university, and the discipline of sociology. I elaborate a theoretical framework for embracing epistemic uncertainty that is informed by feminist pedagogies and begins with a feminist provocation, and present my practical strategies for organizing knowledge within this framework, as well as the strategies of the students themselves. An analysis of the students’ project work (collaborative virtual exhibitions) reveals their capacity to navigate uncertainty through an interpersonal and contextualized approach to knowledge, and produce new learning spaces which unsettle harmful truths and make material new realities.

Technology in the Pandemic: Rupturing the Aura of Higher Education

Framed by Benjamin’s (2008) concepts of aura, technological reproduction, and miniaturization, this paper argues that technology provides students with greater opportunities to take control of their learning in ways that were not possible when education took place largely on-campus, in the higher education classroom. Post pandemic, digital technology has influenced, and will further impact, the way in which we teach and communicate with our students. Educators emerging from pandemic pedagogies need a deeper understanding, and more judicious and effective use of technologies for learning. By understanding and using technology in these ways, educators can help students become more empowered, collaborative, and critically reflective. A lack of readiness for emergency online learning has been replaced with a sense of acceptance that educators must incorporate digital tools into their practice for both educational and communicative purposes. This means that our intellectual and social attachment to the physical classroom as a place for learning and communicating is not as strong as before. Far from being a eulogy for the physical classroom, this paper aims to interrogate the proliferation of technology, and the broad implications for higher education. It argues that the use of technology may help diminish the historical power and aura of higher education and intellectual pursuits, thus undermining the traditional overt and covert control of the institution as an ideological state apparatus. Nevertheless, this shifting educational landscape brings new challenges and questions about the historical aura of higher education, and the concomitant evolution of teacher student relationships and power structures through technology implementation. While maintaining optimism about educational technology, this paper urges educators to consider the broader context of our educational settings, and argues for prioritising critical engagement with technology that aims to utilise its potential for collaboration, empowerment and critically reflective inquiry.

Unpacking the interaction between foreign language learners’ emotion, cognition, and activity in the flipped classroom in higher education: A perezhivanie perspective

Few studies have investigated learners’ emotional experiences and the interactions between emotion, cognition, and activity in the flipped foreign language classroom (i.e., a mixed teaching mode that combines in-class teaching and off-class self-directed learning). This study, from the perspective of perezhivanie (a concept from sociocultural theory), addressed these research gaps by exercising a longitudinal narrative study on a total of 32 Chinese-as-the-first-language university students of English who attended a 15-week English course with this teaching design. Among them, eight focal students were randomly selected for further evidence of the characteristics of the interactions between emotion, cognition, and activity. The results showed that the participants experienced more of positive emotions than negative emotions in the flipped classroom (FC) context, which supports the efficacy of the pedagogy. But most importantly, complex interactions between emotion, cognition, and activity were revealed. Generally, (negative) positive emotion, cognition, and activity were interconnected; however, what is also evident is that learners’ emotions either promoted or inhibited their cognitive functions, and positive and negative emotions did not necessarily correspond to positive and negative activities, respectively. This is due to the presence of dynamic, developmental, and historical sociocultural mediators in learners perezhivanija, be it teacher, peers, technology, teaching materials, teaching activities in an FC, or the learners’ previous English learning anecdotes, etc.

Establishing Rapport in Higher Education Classrooms

Teacher-student rapport has been discussed in previous research, but the communicative behaviors that foster it have yet to be identified. The current study looked at several teacher communicative behaviors to determine which are the best predictors of rapport building. The results suggest that students feel rapport is most influenced by a socially supportive teacher. Using humor and demonstrating homophily aid in building rapport as well. These findings suggest that teachers should strive to be socially supportive, humorous, and perceived as similar to students. However, nonverbal immediacy was not found to be a significant indicator of rapport. Studies have indicated that immediacy is an important characteristic for teachers to have, but these findings do not indicate that this characteristic has a positive influence on rapport building between teachers and students. In addition, teacher clarity was found to reduce rapport. This finding is interesting because instructors are taught to be clear, but this characteristic appears to have a negative effect on rapport built between teachers and students. Keywords: rapport, social support, homophily, teacher clarity, humor, immediacy Si des recherches antérieures ont abordé le rapport enseignant-étudiant, elles n’ont pas encore identifié les comportements communicatifs qui le favorisent. La présente étude s'est penchée sur plusieurs comportements communicatifs de l'enseignant afin de déterminer lesquels sont les meilleurs prédicteurs de l'établissement d'un rapport. Les résultats indiquent que les étudiants estiment que le rapport est le plus influencé par un enseignant qui les soutient socialement. Le recours à l'humour et la démonstration de l'homophilie aident également à établir un rapport. Ces résultats suggèrent que les enseignants devraient s'efforcer d'apporter un soutien social, d’avoir de l’humour et d’être perçus comme semblables aux étudiants. Cependant, l'immédiateté non verbale ne s'est pas avérée être un indicateur significatif du rapport. Des études ont indiqué que l'immédiateté est une caractéristique importante pour les enseignants, mais ces résultats n'indiquent pas que cette caractéristique a une influence positive sur l'établissement de rapports entre les enseignants et les étudiants. De plus, on a constaté que la clarté de l'enseignant réduisait le rapport. Ce résultat est intéressant car on apprend aux enseignants à être clairs, mais cette caractéristique semble avoir un effet négatif sur les rapports établis entre les enseignants et les étudiants. Mots clés : rapport, soutien social, homophilie, clarté de l'enseignant, humour, immédiateté

STORYBOARDING: A MODEL TECHNIQUE FOR THE LANGUAGE LEARNING PROCESS

The current paper mainly focuses on three objectives: introduces the concept of storyboard teaching, highlights its usefulness in higher education as a variant in online and offline courses or as an adapting teaching materials tool according to the learners’ needs and context of learning, and then recommends its use in the classroom especially in language and literature, mixed with other innovative teaching techniques. Moreover, the current paper focuses on how storyboarding provides platforms for the students to be active, creative, and critical thinkers and learning is not limited to only remembering while they analyze their works, reflect, and progress. The researchers have highly recommended incorporating the storyboarding technique in the higher education classrooms and fusing it with other innovative techniques to make a classroom interesting, engaging and interactive. Adding the storyboarding approach, students get motivation, feel confident and competent after the completion of mapping out their ideas visually, cognitively and creatively.

The power and promise of collaborative teaching: crossing boundaries in a higher education classroom

ABSTRACT This paper describes an example of collaborative teaching between a university professor and a community advocate with lived experience with the criminal justice system. Inspired by bell hooks’ concept of boundary crossing, we describe the course logistics and the possibilities that collaborative teaching holds to challenge traditional notions of justice and power in the university classroom.

Nursing faculty perceptions of student faculty interactions

Objective: Student-faculty interaction outside the classroom in higher education is a well-studied phenomenon and is linked directly to office hours. Research has shown the significance of these interactions on student success; however, underuse of office hours remains a problem. Historical research has examined perceptions of students while fewer address faculty. There is limited investigation into nursing, where students must be successful on high stakes NCLEX testing after graduation. This study investigated nursing faculty perceptions of student-faculty interaction outside the classroom in relation to office hours.Methods: A qualitative design elicited responses from full time nursing faculty at one university school of nursing in the southeastern United States. Ten participants were interviewed using a semi-structured script. Data analysis revealed nursing faculty perceptions in relation to office hours.Results: The following themes emerged in relation to office hours and nursing faculty perceptions: (a) “At any point my door is always open”, (b) “I like having that flexibility, it does help”, and (c) “I’m basically 24/7. I really am”. Technology was embedded throughout the themes. Some limitations existed, such as reflexivity of the researchers, small sample size, and final sample bias.Conclusions: Findings from the study can guide policies in higher education, specifically the way office hour mandates are implemented. Increasing student-faculty interaction outside the classroom is a worthwhile goal that is important in schools of nursing where success on high stakes NCLEX testing reflects the integrity of the school.

“Karenism” and the Problem of White Women: Reflections on Quotidian Forms of White Vigilantism in the Classroom

Following emerging sociological critiques of hegemonic femininities and calls for embodied research that troubles long standing assumptions about academia as a “safe haven,” this essay provides critical reflections on quotidian forms of gendered racism and vigilantism in the classroom. Specifically, I draw on undergraduate student engagement with “Cat Person,” a short story about a “bad date” that was published in the New Yorker in 2017 and is now considered essential reading for the #MeToo era. By bringing pop culture artifacts and autoethnographic reflections into conversation with what philosopher Barbara Applebaum refers to as the “pedagogical practice of comforting discomfort,” I examine forms of Karenism that emerge in higher education classrooms, particularly for women of color faculty. I argue that in an institutional context where class-privileged white women most readily access narratives about violability and fragility, they are better positioned to summon pedagogical forms of comforting and care.

Lecturers’ Perspectives on Mobile Learning in Higher Education: Experiences and Implementation Barriers

This paper reports the experiences of university lecturers towards mobile learning from two points of view: (i) lecturers’ needs and experiences in relation to mobile learning design and implementation, and (ii) possible barriers to their adoption in higher education classrooms. The findings from a qualitative case study that conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 lecturers from a developed and developing country contexts revealed; the need for strong commitment from institutional leadership, presence of an institutional and national mobile learning policy, a culture of innovation and willingness to revise the traditional curriculum to incorporate the new mobile pedagogies.

Does racial diversity improve academic outcomes? A natural experiment in higher education classrooms

This paper estimates the causal effect of racial diversity on academic outcomes in a higher education classroom setting. I exploit a natural experiment where first-year college students in a mandatory writing course are assigned to discussion conferences with varying racial compositions. Within-classroom diversity is effectively random conditional on scheduling availability. I find that a higher degree of classroom diversity increases GPA at graduation, improves first year grades of female students, and affects the major choice of white students. I develop a trimming procedure to bound estimates and account for selection into the sample of completers. My results highlight the potential value of racial diversity in higher education and contribute to the debate over race-based admissions policies.

‘EMI is like a durian’: Chinese students’ perspectives on an ideal English-medium instruction classroom in higher education

This paper reports a qualitative study of what constitutes an ideal EMI classroom from the perspective of university students. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 26 university students from various disciplines at a large public university in China. The analysis reveals three core themes, which were perceived to be integral to an ideal EMI classroom: 1) an integration between content, language, and learning strategies, 2) a process-oriented course design permeated with a translanguaging approach, and 3) moving beyond specific EMI classrooms with a future and community orientation. This paper argues that EMI needs to be approached as a full educational experience with multiple dimensions (i.e. cognitive, social, and affective), through which, students gradually build up their professional knowledge and disciplinary literacy as well as foster their sense of belonging and direction in their situated subject field.

Pronoun practices in the higher education classroom

Abstract Pronouns are a crucial linguistic resource for transgender and nonbinary people, and educators are in a unique position to support trans and nonbinary students by implementing affirming pronoun practices for their classrooms. This paper outlines concrete strategies for creating a trans-affirming pedagogy in the context of higher education. The strategies discussed detail modelling pronoun introductions, collecting pronoun information, navigating pronoun misuse, and considerations related to curricula and classroom contexts. Pronoun practices are an essential step towards making the classroom an affirming place for transgender and nonbinary students to thrive.

Student Veterans’ Perspectives of Higher Education Contexts: Beyond the Non-traditional Student

An increase in student veterans on campuses creates issues similar to the growing population of other nontraditional students, yet unique experiences for this population. Although higher education environments are working to provide on-campus support for military populations, student veterans continue to report issues with communication, understanding, and support for their military service. This study investigated student veteran experiences of the higher education classroom on a southeastern university campus. Overall, the majority of participants reported positive interactions with professors but struggled with peers and schedules. Included are implications for working with student veterans in higher education.

Re-Examining "Media Effects Debate": Students' Off Task Mobile Device Use in Cameroon Higher Education Classrooms

Mobile devices have become an inevitable part of the classroom. But how do we ensure that these mobile devices do not negatively influence learning? This study set out to examine what higher education students do when on their mobile devices while in class, why they do this and recommendations were made at the end on how to ameliorate this situation. The study revealed that students bring several mobile devices to class which are frequently involved in off task activities related to communication and seeking information. Moreover, the study revealed that this involvement differs by different academic majors. However, comfortable language does not have an effect on the students' behaviour. Furthermore, it was reported that the reasons for these off task activities are both teacher and student inclined. Thus, to cultivate a more favourable environment for learning in the presence of mobile devices, both teachers and students have a major role to play.

SCALE VALIDATION FOR TEACHER EDUCATOR’S CONCEPTIONS ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION CLASSROOM

The aim of this research was to validate a scale to assess teacher educators' views and challenges on teaching for social justice. To develop and operationalize the initial item pool, a comprehensive examination of the relevant literature was done. The quantitative scale addressed the basic values of social justice. Democracy, diversity and equity are the core values of social justice. 58 items were drafted initially and sent for experts’ opinions. After their feedback, eight unnecessary and unclear items were removed from the tool. For the scale, a total of 50 items were finalized, divided into four domains: 24 items under democracy, 6 under diversity, 10 under equity and 10 regarding challenges. The scale was given to 60 teacher educators from four public sector universities via a survey. Confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis were used to verify the scale's validity and reliability statistically. The loading values for the factors ranged from .897 to 0.521. The pooled items were reduced by 05 items, resulting in a total of 50 items in the final edition. The completed scale demonstrates appropriate reliability and validity across social justice value criteria. This scale, in theory, can help identify the obstacles of addressing social justice in higher education classrooms. The scale for teacher educators' concepts of teaching for social justice could be useful in determining how social justice values are practiced in higher education classrooms.

Students’ Perceptions of Corrective Feedback in EFL Classrooms in Higher Education

Feedback in general represents an essential aspect of the teaching and learning process. As such, it is also seen as closely connected to students’ academic achievement and development. This study examines students’ perceptions of three types of corrective feedback, such as explicit correction, elicitation, and recasts. Additionally, it aims to show the correlation between the academic achievement of students and corrective feedback. A self-designed questionnaire was used to collect data from a random sample of 37 students who attend Business English as a foreign language course. Analysis of the data showed that there is no correlation between corrective students’ perceptions of corrective feedback and their academic achievements. The study showed that students who get corrective feedback don’t feel embarrassed when being corrected, they also like it when they are corrected and see corrective feedback as help in improving their weak areas in language. Despite the lack of a correlation between students’ perceptions of corrective feedback and their academic achievement, this study recommends teachers use corrective feedback with students because students see it as a positive tool in language learning.

Using social mobile learning to stimulate idea generation for collective intelligence among higher education students

The importance of social networks has increased in recent decades, yet the use of social learning in higher education is nascent. Little is known how to foster high levels of social learning discourse among students in higher education classrooms. To address this gap, the present study analyses the use of a mobile application (Soqqle) for sharing student-generated content and peer-to-peer communication. Students from Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia uploaded videos linked to assessments and received feedback from their instructors and peers through social engagement features (e.g., comments, likes). The majority of students reported that the social learning experience promoted idea generation, increased creativity, and improved attention. These results indicate that integrating online platforms and mobile applications can promote social learning. The findings have important implications for educational practice because many educational institutions have adopted online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hands-on activity vs. high-tech tools in the higher education classroom to improve student satisfaction and loyalty in professional programs

Hands-on activity vs. high-tech tools in the higher education classroom to improve student satisfaction and loyalty in professional programs

RETRACTED: Proposing an emancipatory pedagogy of body-mapping in higher education: Theory and practical integration of arts-based research as a form of Action Research for Transformation

Drawing from Paolo Freire and bell hooks, we reconceptualize the arts-based method (ABR) of body-mapping as a form of Action Research for Transformation (ART) in the higher education classroom. As such, we connect emancipatory education and culturally responsive teaching to propose an emancipatory pedagogy of body-mapping—a form of ART facilitating the inclusion of students’ culturally situated knowledge and experience within multicultural contexts.