Course Materials For Students Research Articles

Repositioning Sketches in Visual Communication Design Education

Sketching is a technique conducted as the first phase of creating an artwork and design. As an activity that is carried out at the beginning of the creation, sketching activities are often overlooked and are considered not necessary to be stored or even appropriately mastered. This argument is based on the assumption that the main purpose of making artwork and design is only for the final result. This research traces back the important role of the sketching process in education in the Visual Communication Design Study Program (DKV). The method applied in this research is a descriptive qualitative method In the scope of phenomenological hermeneutics, which is a method to describe a natural or man-made situation or phenomenon. For providing a description, literature reviews, documentation, an interview, and observation into urban sketcher community members. Through this research, it can be presented that the Urban Sketcher Manifesto can be applied in sketch drawing materials within the scope of academic learning. The benefits of the Urban Sketcher Manifesto to students include the ability to capture dynamic atmospheres with perspective determination, observe the organic gestures of living creatures, practice drawing spontaneously, effectively, and efficiently, and become accustomed to annotating drawings and storytelling through sketches. The results of implementing the Urban Sketcher Manifesto in course materials for students include strength in lines, understanding of composition, the grasp of impressions rather than reality, and good coordination between mind and hand. In this research, sketching is repositioned as a process that cannot be ignored in the work of drawing illustrations or visual designs. In sketch drawings, the benefits can also be seen in various interactions experienced, such as interactions among fellow students, interactions with localresidents, interactions with the atmosphere of the location, and interactions with the observed objects. The result of the research is expected to engage discourses for up-to-date Visual Communication Design education

Personalized Recommendation of Educational Resource Information Based on Adaptive Genetic Algorithm

The abundance of online educational resources has made it increasingly difficult for students to identify the correct learning materials in recent years. Overcoming the information overload that has emerged in the new education systems is possible via a tailored recommendation system. It encourages students to look for new ways to get around the subject matter and to use information from all across the world. Because of this, many academics are working to create learning systems that incorporate methods for creating a unique learning experience for each user. Therefore, our proposed approach was to create an appropriate learning route for each student, and they are using Educational Resource Information Based on an Adaptable Genetic Algorithm(ERI-AGA). Evidence from studies shows that the suggested technique can provide relevant course materials for students based on the specific needs of students to help them study better in a Web-based system. Personal recommendation engine, pre-processing and learning-based model development, and implementation of the recommendation system will be researched. Participatory budgeting PB-level data storage and processing as well as the ability to suggest in real time will be studied. The capacity to make real-time suggestions and the storing and processing of PB-level data will be investigated. It was critical to check the system’s availability by running associated tasks and performance tests. The comparison values demonstrated that ERI-AGA was a reliable and accurate assessment procedure.

Understanding Mathematics Instructors' Perceptions of OER: A Mixed Methods Study

The adoption of open educational resources (OER) in an institutional setting has been shown to reduce the cost of course materials for students, minimize inequities, and allow instructors to customize course materials. This study tapped into instructors’ perspective of limited adoption of OER in a Mathematics department at a land-grant University in the Southeastern United States. A convergent mixed-methods study was conducted to determine how Mathematics instructors used both commercial and open-license course materials, and how OER were perceived within the Mathematics department, as well as to gauge barriers to the adoption of OER. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected by a preliminary survey administered to the Mathematics department and follow-up semi-structured interviews with voluntary participants. The results show that there are numerous barriers that deter Mathematics faculty from the use of OER, including content quality, time concerns, and difficulties customizing content. Additional themes derived from the interviews were that textbook adoption for the lower-level mathematics courses is often determined by a department-level committee, but mathematics instructors have attempted to integrate OER in their teaching. The findings of this study provided practical implications for raising mathematics instructors’ awareness of OER and identifying the action plan for implementing OER in mathematics classrooms.

Identifying ESP Course Materials for Students of Magister Management: A Needs Analysis

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is an approach in teaching English that is relevant with the students’ field of study, it is made specifically for students’ learning and language use including its objective and content This study aims to explore the target and learning needs of students in Magister Program of Management (MM) by employing need analysis method. A descriptive analysis using a quantitative approach with forty-eight students of the Magister Program of Management (MM), which consist of 37 males and 10 females. The study results illustrated that the awareness of the need of target and learning needs will determine what is considered as acceptable and reasonable contents in the language courses. These acceptable and reasonable contents have to be the basis in designing ESP., material course, since students’ needs will determine the learning outcomes, and will be useful for their future jobs.

Developing ESP Blended Learning for Academic Purposes of Course Materials for Students of English Education Study Program at Languages and Arts Faculty, Universitas Negeri Medan

Industrial Revolution 4.0 has influenced many sectors, which are now a lot changes entering to human life by the presence of information technology.The use of power and data in the massive digital technology has become unlimited caused by its development at this present time. This study is aimed at developing the appropriate blended course materials of English for Specific Purposes for students of English Education Study Program, Languages and Arts Faculty, Universitas Negeri Medan. This study is focused on ESP Blended Learning Course Materials for Students of Seventh Semester of English Education Study Program. Research and Development (R & D) design is applied through six stages, there are 1). collecting information and data, 2). data analysis, 3). new materials design based on the needs analysis, 4). experts validation, 5). new material revision, and 6). final product. The instruments of collecting data are by applying two strategies: interview and questionnaires. The results show that the materials used in the 7th semester of English Education Study Program is developed through the implementation of the R&D simplification. The response of questionnaires signified low standard for the students after being analyzed. This results of the study developed ESP Blended Learning Course materials which focused on the following materials: Models and Teaching Strategies in ESP; Language Features: Linguistics and Grammar; Language Skills (Listening, Reading, Speaking, and Writing); Genre Text in ESP (Descriptive Text, Procedure Text, Analytical Exposition Text, and Argumentative Text).

Breakout Session: Leveraging Licensing to Increase Access

The Affordable Course Materials Initiative (ACMI) is a library-driven program established by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), designed to leverage existing library resources, encourage open educational resources (OER) content creation, identify cost-effective digital projects and modify existing license agreements in order to create reduced cost course materials for students, as an alternative to rising commercial textbook costs. The faculty incentivized program encourages instructors to partner with the library to leverage free or low-cost resources, adjusting syllabi and assignments as needed. ACMI’s two-year pilot resulted in convincing evidence that the service supported a broad and diverse range of campus disciplines, achieved substantial cost savings, served as a catalyst for community building with multiple stakeholders, and gained campus administration recognition with an ongoing commitment of financial support to permanently integrate the initiative as an ongoing component of library services.

Not So Scary: Using and Defusing Content Warnings in the Classroom

ABSTRACTContent warnings — notices to students that class material may evoke their past traumas — have become entangled in (over)heated debates about the role of free speech on campus. Critics denounce content warnings as silencing tools intended to promote censorship, preclude discussion of difficult topics or punish professors who hold unpopular views. Supporters too often conflate content warnings with broader demands for classroom “safe space” that fail to recognize the distinct features of posttraumatic stress as a form of mental illness. In this article, I reconceptualize content warnings as a way to facilitate access to course material for students with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I then offer a set of concrete strategies for employing content warnings in political science courses. These strategies aim not only to support students struggling with trauma but also to de-escalate the controversy around content warnings by emphasizing how such warnings work to encourage engagement, access, and discussion.

Reducing the Costs of Course Materials

ABSTRACTThe University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and University of Toronto (U of T) describe their respective library-driven programs to reduce the cost of course materials for students—the Affordable Course Materials Initiative (ACMI) at UCLA and the Zero-to-Low-Cost-Course Program (ZTLCC) at U of T. With the same goal of reducing costs by leveraging existing library resources, each library approaches that cost reduction differently. UCLA uses financial incentives to help drive faculty participation in reducing costs, whereas U of T works to reduce overlap in licensing costs while encouraging use of these already-paid-for resources. The following provides an overview of each program along with guidelines for implementing a similar program.

The Benefits of Faculty-authored Course Materials for Students and Faculty

The Benefits of Faculty-authored Course Materials for Students and Faculty

Perceived Benefits of Service Learning: A Comparison of Collegiate Recreation Concentrations

Service learning is becoming a more utilized method of instruction in collegiate settings, and holds the potential to provide a deeper, more transferable meaning of course material for students. The purpose of this research was to examine if therapeutic recreation (TR) concentration students perceived service learning to be more personally and academically beneficial than non-TR concentrations in a collegiate recreation program. Undergraduate and graduate students in a recreation program at a regional, American university were asked to complete a survey in a class with a service learning component. A total of 307 surveys were completed, for a response rate of 76%. Results showed that the TR students perceived service learning as more personally and academically beneficial than the non-TR concentrations. Due to the scant amount of research available related to cognitive and affective effects of service learning on collegiate recreation students, this study will help bridge the gap between academia and the recreation workforce. The results of this study support future implementation of service learning at the collegiate level, specifically in recreation-related academic departments, and highlights possible discrepancies between TR and non-TR concentrations in the effectiveness of service learning on personal and academic outcomes.

Textbooks in Academic Libraries

ABSTRACTIn response to the rising costs of course materials, some academic libraries are evaluating and adjusting the ways in which they provide access to textbooks in all formats. Some popular initiatives include cultivating and promoting print textbook reserve collections, the acquisition of ebooks and etextbooks as alternatives to print, and Open Educational Resources (OERs). This column highlights initiatives at a variety of academic libraries designed to help mitigate the cost of course materials for students. Incorporating interviews and studies from the literature, projects at institutions such as North Carolina State University, George Mason University, and East Carolina University are highlighted, including some discussion of the challenges and benefits of each project.

Creating Open Textbooks: a unique partnership between Oregon State University Libraries and Press and Open Oregon State

This article presents Oregon State University’s experience launching an innovative Open Textbook initiative in spring 2014. The partners, Open Oregon State and the Oregon State University Libraries and Press, aimed to reduce the cost of course materials for students while ensuring the content created was peer-reviewed and employed multimedia capabilities. This initiative sought to showcase existing and emerging disciplinary strengths of the University thus creating unique course content that could be shared globally. This article briefly describes the U.S. landscape for open textbook creation and adoption. It demonstrates how this unique partnership has developed, covering barriers and benefits, and what the future could hold for new projects.

Integrating web applications to provide an effective distance online learning environment for students

Abstract The Human Physiology online course offered by the Department of Physiology at the University of Toronto ( www.physiology.utoronto.ca ) offers a quality online learning experience and promotes flexibility to its students in terms of time and location, allowing self-directed learning within a semi-structured frame-work. The online course population has expanded, including a more heterogeneous group of students. In addition to the traditional pre or current healthcare professionals (postsecondary students), there are now international students, working adults seeking career advancements, teachers, and even those just taking the course for personal interest. The course aims to use web tools to support and increase accessibility for all of these educationally and socially diverse students. Course material for students consists of 51 didactic lectures delivered in a video format (available to students for 24 hours, each day of the week for streaming) and a virtual lab experience. There are several sources of course support for students such as a 24/7 discussion board that is monitored by instructors and teaching assistants (an academic and peer support network), virtual tutorials with a teaching assistant (java applet chat) and instructors are always available to students by email. Frequent online quizzes were another feature that was very effective in both enhancing learning experience and improving student performance. Analysis of student data, student surveys and course evaluations from the online course suggested it was just as, if not more effective than the in-class course equivalent. The framework of this course can be easily adapted in creating an online course in any post-secondary discipline.

Development of Interactive Courseware for Learning Basic Computer System Components

A computer assisted learning approach was developed to enhance course material for students to learn about computer components, through the use of multimedia courseware. Recent advances in software authoring packages have made the production of CD-ROMs an efficient and effective educational strategy. Problem statement: This study reports on the development an evaluation of this courseware related to the learning basic computer system components through the use of courseware (iC-COM). The purpose of the study was to evaluate a courseware for learning basic computer system components. The basic components of iC-COM included an interface, graphics, sound effects, narration and video. Approach: The iC-COM was developed based on the ADDIE instructional system design model. The research instrument was the courseware evaluation in the form of questionnaire that consisted of various attributes included content, interactivity, navigation and screen design which distributed to 50 computer system and support programme students of Kolej Komuniti Jasin. Results: Based on the results, it was shown that the analysis results of each questionnaire item mean ranged from 3.5 to 3.8. Conclusion/Recommendations: For future enhancement, it is recommended that iC-COM will be integrated into web-based platform so it can be accessed easily anywhere.

Students as Practitioners in a Service Learning Context

IntroductionMentoring and teaching content can be powerful ways to enhance understanding and retention of course material for students (Amaral & Vala, 2009); however, developing useful mentoring experiences that incorporate course content can be challenging in a university context. As such, this article focuses on the use of students as mentors to adolescents through the incorporation of family life programming within traditional undergraduate instruction. Specifically, we present a case example of an advanced adolescent development course where students had the opportunity to collaboratively develop and lead a prevention program curriculum for at-risk youth. The class was designed to provide an in-depth study of adolescent development extending over an existing three-semester life course development sequence for students with a particular interest in adolescence. A careful review of peer-reviewed empirical research on adolescent development, and a translation of those concepts into practical elements of providing services to adolescents are fundamental components of this course. Service learning is employed as a way to provide services to the local community, while giving students the opportunity to implement the curriculum that they developed as part of the course. Here, we present the theoretical and empirical bases for using service learning, and in particular the strategy of mentoring, to enhance course understanding and application of course concepts. Finally, we present a case example illustrating the strategies employed, lessons learned, and evaluation of the reflective observations of the students.Kolb's Model of Experiential LearningOver the past several decades, Kolb and Kolb (2005) have developed and refined models of experiential learning that argue for the balance of content and experience alongside reflection and action. The goal of adult learners, they argue, is to become integrated into the profession by developing an ability to access both components of each these dialectic processes. Integrated learning, that which combines experience with conceptualization, has been found to improve adaptive flexibility to both experience based and concept based learning situations (Mainemelis, Boyatziz, & Kolb, 2002). Complementary dialectics balance the tension between conceptualization and experience with the tension between reflection and action. Individuals with learning styles that balance these dialectics have been found to have improved flexibility, and thus, are viewed as more sophisticated learners (Mainemelis, et al., 2002). Transactions between the individual and the environment establish and maintain learning styles (Kolb and Kolb, 2005). Accordingly, the duty of education would be to provide transactions that facilitate the development of balanced learning strategies. Service learning, which typically incorporates reflection, is an educational strategy that promotes experience to complement academic concepts, and reflections that situate actions in a social and academic context. Thus providing service learning experiences that integrate active reflection has the potential to stimulate more sophisticated learning for students.Using Kolb's model of experiential learning (Kolb and Kolb, 2005), Ethridge and Branscomb (2009) chronicled the active learning processes of children and adults by having university students implement an anti-bias curriculum with young children. Service learning is grounded in experiential learning, and provides a natural opportunity to use experiential education to expand on course information and use advanced cognitive skills. In fact, experiential education has been found to be an important component of guidance and teaching personal skills and development (Roaten & Schmidt, 2009). When students develop experiential activities they learn the value of using such a strategy and become comfortable with experiential processes. Students in Ethridge and Branscomb's (2009) study reported that development and leadership of experiential anti-bias program sessions helped to facilitate not only their understanding of the content but also the process of active learning for students, and reflection on their own biases. …

Designing a project management e-course by using project based learning

The aim of this study is designing an e-course system for Project Management courses. The primary objective of the system is providing course materials for students and increasing the course success. The e-course platform will assist the students for changing their negative feelings with positive ones such as when they feel anxiety, feel of failing the course or having pre convinced attitudes for the course. The e-course platform will has “Cognitive Learning Tool”, “Learning Cards for Key Terms”, “Key Term Matching”, “Cognitive Concept Maps” and “Online Adaptive Examination” modules inside. For analyzing the students’ needs a survey was conducted. Survey is organized based on to the first eight steps of project based learning approach. Survey results show that validity of survey is high (Cronbach's alfa, 0.86), and also significant correlations obtained between factors. These results state that e-courses should be supported with project based learning approach and real life projects.

Clearing the Misty Landscape: Teaching Students What They Didn't Know Then, But Know Now

The central goals of teaching are to educate students about the course material and stimulate their intellectual development more generally. Yet faculty have few avenues to assess teaching effectiveness on these fronts, and students have few opportunities to reflect upon their own growth as scholars and citizens. This article details an exercise that can be used in the classroom to accomplish active reflection on the educational experience for both teachers and students. While the exercise described in this paper has been employed in a small advanced undergraduate seminar in sociology, it can be adapted for both larger classes and courses in other disciplines. This two-part exercise reinforces the value of investing in education, stimulates critical thinking, and encourages the retention of course material for students.

Service-Learning in Introductory Chemistry: Supplementing Chemistry Curriculum in Elementary Schools

The pedagogy of service-learning is becoming an accepted method of connecting college classrooms to the community. A service-learning course component has been successfully incorporated into the second quarter of Introductory Chemistry (Chem 120) at Kalamazoo College. Students in Chem 120 design inquiry-based laboratory experiments related to course material for students in grades K–6. The Chem 120 students then conduct these experiments with assigned classes at a local elementary school. This project reinforces course material for the college students while supplementing the elementary school's science curriculum and exposing children to topics they otherwise would not learn. In addition to providing a context for college students to make connections between textbook concepts and real life processes, this project also offers a chance to improve other skills, such as problem solving and communication. Surveys of the Chem 120 students and comments from the elementary school community demonstrate that the project is successful overall and is a way to interest students at all levels in chemistry. This paper discusses the methods used to conduct and assess this service-learning project, survey results, comments from the elementary school community, and the effect of this project on the number of chemistry majors at Kalamazoo College.

Consumer Behavior Classroom Exercises That Really Work

In this article, I describe 5 in-class exercises for use in consumer behavior and related courses. These exercises represent involving and challenging applications of course material for students and have successfully stimulated active participation in small-group and full-class discussions in a variety of academic programs in a European setting.

Hospitality Marketing: Textbook Selection and Course Content

The selection of a textbook can have a major impact on the potential success of instruction. Educators have the professional responsibility to provide the most appropriate course materials for students. The authors provide an overview of those factors that are important to consider when selecting a hospitality marketing course textbook.