Graduate-level Class Research Articles

Doing registering, gearing up, and launching: Understanding student multimodality and the process of class participation

This multimodal conversation analytic (MCA) study investigates the embodied process of student self-selection – voluntary participation - in the American graduate classroom. Student participation has frequently been a central topic of investigation in the field of educational linguistics. In American graduate classrooms, in particular, participation is considered significant and students are encouraged to make frequent oral contributions; for instance, so as to ensure that teachers can gauge how much they have learned, and to enhance student learning (e.g., Cohen, 1991; Fassinger, 1995; Rocca, 2010). Building on Kääntä’s (2014) research on students’ “doing embodied noticing” through the process of self-selection for correction initiation in the classroom, the current study analyzed 38 hours of videotaped graduate-level classes and uncovered the three main embodied self-selection stages—doing registering, gearing up, and launching—through which students tend to progress during their preparation for self-selection. It further demonstrates a variation in the form of “expedited processes”—the practices some students use to self-select earlier than others—followed by examples and discussion of how educators can turn these findings into practice and enable a wider range of students to achieve effective self-selection in a classroom.

Unravelling challenges of COVID-19 pandemic through risk and controls turnaround: the case of Dots & Lines

Research methodology The focused case is a “disguised case” developed based on a real-life apparel company in Sri Lanka. The authors have disguised the company name and have not revealed the identity of the key respondents and any data, which makes the firm obvious. However, the processes and practices reported represent the actual scenario of the company (gathered through interviews done mainly with the case protagonist, General Manager (GM) – Risk and Controls) and the authors have not fabricated any data. Case overview/synopsis Having established itself as a pioneer in the apparel industry in Sri Lanka, Dots & Lines reached the pinnacle of its performance in 2019. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, the situation turned unfavorable: global customers canceled orders by the end of the first quarter of 2020. It experienced settlement delays, increased freight charges and supply chain barriers. The virus spread among the operational staff, leading to health and safety issues and absenteeism. On April 2020, the executive committee gathered and decided to form a position titled “General Manager (GM) – Risk and Controls” and a team to turn around the company. Dots & Lines witnessed the harvest of the risk management turnaround measures pioneered by GM – Risk and Controls, from the first quarter of 2021 with impressive revenue and profit figures. It developed a pool of key strategic customers, while key performance indicators dashboards and the risk matrix provided vital insights in moving forward. Complexity academic level The case, Dots & Lines is written for use in undergraduate and graduate-level classes in business administration and management degree programs. The focus aligns with discussions on industry competition, controls and risk management. Of further importance, the case is applicable to discussions on topics in strategic management accounting courses.

Viking Spectrophotometer: A Home-Built, Simple, and Cost-Efficient Absorption and Fluorescence Spectrophotometer for Education in Chemistry

Investigating the optical properties of various chemical compounds using UV–vis spectrophotometers is an essential part of education in chemistry. However, commercial spectrophotometers are usually treated as “magic black boxes”, where the dominant majority of optical elements are hidden “under the hood”. This often limits understanding of the mechanisms behind the generation of spectral curves, which in turn may impede the ability to understand the limitations of the applied method and, in some cases, interpret the acquired data. In addition, the study of optical emission phenomena using fluorescence spectrophotometers is seldom implemented in educational laboratories due to the practical challenges and costs of the devices, which severely limit pedagogic access to this topic. For students to be more confident with these two basic spectroscopy techniques, we have developed a laboratory kit that provides a multifaceted learning experience. Starting with a basic exploration of an instrument assembly, it teaches, for example, such technical concepts as spectral resolution and detection sensitivity. More fundamentally, it enables deeper learning of the Beer–Lambert law and the notion of Stokes shift. The spectrophotometer is built from cost-efficient materials and is easily scalable, making it affordable for many educational laboratories. Due to a modular design, it is adaptable to various levels of education and has been successfully applied during high school-, undergraduate-, and graduate-level classes.

Understanding Ice Cream

What is the root cause of political polarization? In this philosophical short story, Professor Gault is having a rough day. His graduate-level class on the growing polarization in politics is just as heated and polarized as the subject they're discussing. He thinks his students are the bugs trapped in the web of rhetoric, instead of being the spider. In a daze after class, a strange woman strikes up a conversation with him and presents an alternate theory. Perhaps, she argues, the underlying foundation of our time is narcissism. Maybe politics is just fertile ground for those who want to feel like gods in a fantasy world of their own creation, where only they can fight the eternal battle of good versus evil. Perhaps polarization isn't genuine, but merely the result of narcissists attempting to wage epic battles to avoid realizing that, outside of the world they've imagined, they don't really matter.

Confronting Partial Knowledge Through a Pedagogy of Discomfort: Notes on Anti-Oppressive Teaching

Wrestling with issues of racism and colonization in the classroom requires significant nuance from dominantly positioned educators. In this article, we weave together a narrative unpacking of an uncomfortable experience in a graduate level class with an exploration of relevant theoretical literature. Our reflection on practice takes up the possibilities for anti-oppressive education to engage with the partial knowledge of educators and students. Ultimately, engaging in a pedagogy of discomfort is necessary to unsettle dominantly positioned educators and students and enable a move towards bearing witness to the unequal realities of Canadian society. In order to begin to enter more deeply into relationships of accountability between non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples, teaching moments such as these are inevitable, if not required. Keywords: anti-oppressive education, discomfort, colonialism, partial knowledge, Indigenous futurity

Los juegos de la política: Las independencias hispanoamericanas frente a la contrarrevolución

In Los juegos de la política, Marcela Ternavasio invites the reader to ponder what would have happened to the Spanish American processes of independence if the Portuguese and Spanish armies had formed an alliance to defeat them. While Luso-Spanish alliance never came to fruition, the question allows the author to dwell on “what happened in the context of what could have happened” (p. 13). Sitting at the intersection of Atlantic politics, war, and diplomacy, Los juegos de la política unearths the history of expectations, fears, and calculation that the move of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil, the restoration of Ferdinand VII to the Spanish throne, and Napoleon's defeat in France generated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.The book is divided in three parts, each addressing one specific conjuncture and the potential scenarios that this conjuncture enabled. In the first part, Ternavasio compares and contrasts the diplomatic correspondence of different agents of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns to exhume the myriad political calculations that surrounded the fate of the expedition led by General Pablo Morillo. The author shows how the final destination of the expedition (New Granada) emerged from a politization of European diplomacy in which the role of colonial agents in Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires was central. The second part explores the diplomatic negotiations over a double marriage between the Braganzas and the Bourbons and the feverish political realignments and speculation that this possibility elicited. Certainly, dynastic marriages were an established part of European diplomacy, but Ternavasio's analysis reveals the significant role that princesses, Carlota Joaquina specifically, played in forging these alliances (p. 114). Moreover, Ternavasio highlights the role that the Portuguese invasion of the Banda Oriental (present-day Uruguay) played in the international diplomatic arena by influencing the fresh political realignments that the Congress of Vienna had made possible. Finally, the third part traces how the declaration of independence of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata forced a resolution of the Luso-Spanish alliance. The intense negotiations over the type of government that the United Provinces would adopt—a republic or a monarchy—show the significant role that local powers played in the international diplomatic arena. In the end, the book dissects a political game that all players involved would end up losing. In the Banda Oriental, after building one of the most radical political alternatives of the era, the leader José Gervasio Artigas lost his political ascendance and went into exile. Moreover, in the United Provinces, the internal divisions among different regional leaders resulted in the implosion of the central government in 1820. The European powers did not fare well either. The Portuguese royal family had to leave Brazil after a liberal revolution took place in Portugal. Ferdinand VII of Spain faced the revolt of Rafael de Riego, which not only derailed a military expedition to the Río de la Plata but also reinstated a constitutional monarchy under the liberal principles of the Constitution of Cádiz.Ternavasio's methodological choices aid in the reconstruction of a highly convoluted political scenario. The author utilizes the present tense to stress the contingency of each conjuncture and to recover the level of fear, excitement, and scheming that those conjunctures generated among the European nations and the revolutionary elites in Spanish America. Likewise, the author utilizes the metaphor of politics as a game to highlight the capital importance that calculation had in the decisions that the actors made and the actions that they performed. Ternavasio successfully reveals the complicated and convoluted trajectory that absolutist and independence ideas had. In an ever-changing political and military scenario, political players constantly measured their ideological choices against hypothetical alliances that could ultimately secure political and military victory. Ultimately, Ternavasio's methodological choices reveal the profound impact that the Spanish American processes of independence had in international diplomacy. The Congress of Vienna had created a new balance of power within Europe that the revolutionary experiments in Spanish America questioned. As Ternavasio shows, the wars of independence in Spanish America forced the European powers to broaden the geographical scope of political negotiation outside Europe. In doing so, the wars played a significant role in the construction of a global and interdependent concert of nations.This book complements and expands the ideas explored in Ternavasio's previous book, centered on the figure of Carlota Joaquina. Written in agile prose, Los juegos de la política will make a fantastic addition to any graduate-level class on Latin American history. More importantly, it is a fantastic example of the potential benefits that a new diplomatic history of Latin America can offer, not just for Latin American history but for global history as well.

Educational Attainment Post-Pandemic: An Examination of Growth Mindset Language and Strategies in Graduate Students

This paper examines growth mindset, an evidence-based strategy posited by Carol Dweck (2007), within the framework of a classroom at a private, faith-based university. In a post-pandemic time where many students and people have felt adverse effects on their ability to adapt, this research studies the impact of mindset language and strategies on a student’s internal locus of control. The specific question the researchers posited was, does growth mindset language and strategies within a graduate-level class affect a student’s internal locus of control?Participants in this study were Master of Business Management students taking an online employee development course at Azusa Pacific University. The online course was modified to use growth mindset language and strategies. Changes in language focused on effort, starting with the syllabus and project instructions and continuing throughout the course. For example, language used in the weekly overviews focused on effort and explaining why effort was important.Survey results indicated that the graduate students did not report an increase in their level of growth mindset or locus of control. This is hypothetically due to the high level of growth mindset and internal locus of control already felt by the participants. This moves the focus for graduate students from mindset to the environment they are learning in, including the level of psychological safety felt by the students in the classroom.

An exhibition: One American Family: A Tale of North and South

The exhibition One American Family: A Tale of North and South was the culmination of a multi-year project that began with a graduate student’s examination of three quilt tops that once belonged to a family that had donated over 500 objects to the University of Rhode Island’s Historic Textile and Costume Collection. This family, which had deep roots in New England, became intertwined through marriage with a family from Charleston, South Carolina. The student, Rachel May, a doctoral candidate in English, became so enamoured of the quilt tops, two related swatch books and the story behind the artefacts that she continued her research for several years, finally publishing a book in 2018 titled An American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery. The book is based on documentary research, but imagines the lives of the quiltmaker, her family and the enslaved people she came to own during the antebellum period. To commemorate the publication of the book, the university sponsored an exhibition and several educational events. A graduate-level class ‘Exhibition and storage of historic textiles’ tackled the problem of how to separate the documentary evidence from the book’s fictionalized narrative, and to visualize that evidence using the artefacts in the Historic Textile and Costume Collection.

Positioning SLP Graduate Students to Meet the Needs of Vulnerable Children Virtually: Lessons from a Service Learning Project Implemented in the Fall of 2020

Service-learning is increasingly regarded as a high-impact pedagogy strategy in the field of speech-language pathology. It has been shown to mutually benefit speech-language pathology (SLP) graduate students and the communities they serve. The purpose of this study is to describe the process and impact of a service-learning-oriented assignment completed as part of a graduate-level class on school-age language disorders during the fall of 2020. Each of the 12 SLP students enrolled in the class volunteered to virtually tutor a child at risk for school failure for 10 hours. This role was a novel context for the graduate students. Analysis of student reflection papers suggested the SLP graduate students felt this experience positively influenced their ability to apply the course content and ultimately resulted in increased confidence entering the field as new clinicians.

Evolution of Tools in Undergraduate Electrochemistry Education - The Power of the Spreadsheet

Understanding of at least the rudiments of electrochemistry is a critical component in undergraduate education in chemistry and engineering. Yet, the curriculum often impresses that the most critical component is to differential the anode from the cathode, the oxidation from the reduction.Even in upper level undergraduate and introductory graduate level classes, the students are not provided tools that allow them to pose and to think about electrochemistry questions. Typical electrochemistry curriculum relies on strong algebra skills and being able to remember OIL RIG and Red Cat. This does not capitalize on the contemporary student’s most common skills: facile web searching and spreadsheet manipulation.To provide students with perhaps more effective tools to apprehend electrochemical concepts, spreadsheets and Wolfram widgets replaced the traditional algebraically intense curriculum. Analytical Chemistry I is a lecture course on equilibrium and electrochemistry taught to 50 to 70 upper level undergraduate chemistry and engineering majors at the University of Iowa. Heavy reliance on spreadsheet tools first displaced the intensely algebraic curriculum in Fall 2020.Students undertook development of eight spreadsheets: fractional concentration plots and titrations for acid/bases and redox, potential axes, activity calculations, and voltammetry under Nernstian conditions by steady state rotating disk, potential step to an arbitrary potential, linear sweep, cyclic voltammetry. Systematic treatment of equilibria and explicit finite difference equations underlay the spreadsheets. Students developed each first new spreadsheet directed with written instruction and video. Students then used the spreadsheets to complete homework assignments and two exams. There was no final, but there was a final project where the students used the spreadsheet tools to evaluate a question of their own choosing. The final written report included implementation of their spreadsheets. Projects typically included equilibria and redox species. Final projects covered a range of subjects. I learned the difference in milk and dark chocolate, how catfish find lunch, why ramen noodles cook quickly, how novocaine works, the nuances of polydentate ligands on metals in CO2 reduction, and how hemoglobin carries O2 and CO2. Some wrote murder mysteries or next year’s final. The spreadsheet materials gave the students new skills and tools in understanding electrochemistry.In this presentation, several of the spreadsheets will illustrate how students developed and used the spreadsheet tools to tackle modeling complex electrochemical systems. A cyclic voltammetry spreadsheet is shown for Nernstian kinetics. Figure 1

Roles matter: Graduate student perceptions of active learning in the STEM courses they take and those they teach.

Despite many calls to reform undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education to incorporate active learning into classes, there has been little attention paid to graduate level classrooms or courses taught by graduate students. Here, we set out to understand if and how STEM graduate students' perceptions of active learning change in the classes they take versus those they teach. We found that graduate students had taken relatively few graduate level classes using active learning and they felt that more time should be devoted to active learning in the courses they were taking. Teaching assistants felt that they were devoting the right amount of class time to active learning in the classes they taught. Graduate students also felt that they were using teaching methods in the classes they taught that were different from those they thought should be used when teaching undergraduates and were different from how they preferred to learn when taking classes.

America’s major league soccer: artificial intelligence and the quest to become a world class league

America’s major league soccer: artificial intelligence and the quest to become a world class league

The ISR-1 Drug Case: A Decision-Making Exercise

Organizations around the world are challenged with managing complex decisions; however, many students do not have practical experience with the way in which these organizations go about this process. In this article, we outline an experiential case, based on a contemporary, real-world health policy challenge, which illustrates the ethical and team-based difficulties inherent in making decisions in instances of limited budgets and multiple stakeholders with conflicting priorities. This highly adaptable exercise places students in the role of decision-maker where they must select the best course of action to address a virulent blood-borne disease afflicting their constituents. Throughout this process, students are exposed to a number of decision-making, stakeholder, ethical, and team dynamic issues. The exercise has been successfully implemented in undergraduate- and graduate-level classes and encourages high-quality class discussions in a wide range of organizational behavior and management courses.

Asian football: how corruption disrupted marketing value in the game’s largest fan market

Theoretical basis This case is focused on the allegations of corrupt practices within the strategic leadership at the board level of an international sports organization – the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The theoretical premise is that the practices and decisions of the AFC’s leadership will have a profound impact on the AFC’s performance. However, because the AFC is the continental governing body, the impact is theorized to be far larger, across an entire industry. In writing the case, the authors were guided by upper Echelons theory (UET) (Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Hambrick, 2007; Hambrick et al., 2015), which argues that an organization’s strategic direction is directly influenced by its leader’s values. The authors selected UET for the theoretical framework, as it considered a spectrum of factors from industry, leader characters (values), their choices and the results of their actions. Such a comprehensive theory aligned with the complexities of the AFC and its leadership. In constructing the case roadmap using UET, the authors first adopted an ethnographic methodology. This was motivated by the fact that one of the authors had been embedded for many years as part of the leadership team at the AFC. His career work notes based on direct interactions and observations of these leaders helped in two ways: to identify the complex set of personal characteristics of these leaders (i.e. background, their careers outside football and financial standing) as they originated from 47 different nationalities. UET refers to these as observable factors to better theorize the hidden intentions of their alleged corrupt behaviors. UET identifies this second set of non-observable factors as psychological factors. These two different sets of observations combined helped to theorize their drivers, intentions and strategic decisions (options). For the second methodology, the authors accessed archival, publicly available media news and reports to understand the consequences of their actions to the AFC and the Asian football industry. This completed the final parts of the UET framework (Yamak et al., 2014). Research methodology This case relied on information that was widely reported within international media, press announcements by various organizations, published decisions by tribunals and publicly available information on the AFC. All of the names and positions in this case are actual persons. Case overview/synopsis This case focuses on the role and influence of the AFC as the Asian football governing body. The AFC is a member of the world football governing body – FIFA. With a US$1bn budget, the AFC has a strong impact on the future of football among Asia’s three billion people. Unfortunately, the AFC has been unable to create the value in its sports events or properties that attracts fans and investors. Central to this problem is the issue of corruption and corruption allegations within the AFC, especially with regard to its leadership. This case, therefore, attempts to highlight the various issues, discusses the circumstances around these challenges and brings forth the complexities of leading a truly international organization across 47 countries. Such factors are then tied to the value of the organization’s products or services in the marketplace. Complexity academic level The case is written and designed for a graduate level (MBA) class or an upper level undergraduate class such as corporate strategy, leadership, international management, international marketing, contemporary issues in management, cross-cultural management, sports management and sports marketing. In general, the case will also be a good fit for courses that discuss leadership, organizational strategy, organizational structure, organizational ethics and organizational behavior.

The ISR-1 Drug Exercise: An Ethical Decision-Making Experiential Activity

Both governments and firms face the continuous challenge to maximize utility with a limited budget, however, knowledge about the way in which these organizations go about this process is relatively unknown to students. In this article, we outline an experiential exercise, based on a contemporary health policy challenge, which illustrates the ethical, moral, and team-based difficulties inherent in making decisions in instances of limited budgets and multiple stakeholders. Drawing on literature from stakeholder theory, decision-making, and groups, this highly-adaptable exercise provides students with a concrete means of learning about these issues by placing them in the context of a territorial government that must address a virulent blood-borne disease by funding a series of initiatives and having to defend these decisions both to their fellow decision-makers and to relevant stakeholder groups. The exercise has been successfully implemented in undergraduate and graduate-level classes and encourages high-quality class discussions in a wide-range of courses focused on ethics, decision-making, and teamwork.

THE CORRELATION OF CLASSROOM ADMINISTRATION PERFORMANCE OF FEMALE DIRECTRESS SPORTS WITH THEIR QUALIFICATION

The female directress sports in colleges have to performed double tasks. They educate their subject to graduate level students in the classroom and conduct activities of games in the field. The female directress sports might have to acquire all those traits and experiences as compared to other subject tutors. The present study was an attempt to examine theperformance of the female directress sports in classroom (discipline) of college area. A five point likert scale questionnaire (1=Strongly disagree, 2= Partially disagree, 3=Neither agree/nor disagree, 4=Partially agree and 5=Strongly agree) were utilized for collection of data and to acquire the suitable answers about the classroom administration performance of the female directress sports. The questions were disseminated between the (N=90) girl’s pupils of graduate level classes in colleges of Sindh Province. The major conclusion of the study was to observe generally Classroom administration Performance has positively associated with qualification of female directress sports. It was assumed that the female directress sports that possess better knowledge and were high qualified so they can demonstrate better Classroom administration Performance in their professional field as compared to low qualified and less knowledgeable female directress sports.

Mapping Historical Texts in the Classroom: The Anatolian Travelers Project

The process of mapping provides an active approach for students to engage with landscapes of the past. As part of a graduate-level class called Spatial Analysis of the Past, students were given an assignment to create online maps of nineteenth-century travelers’ accounts about western Anatolia (Turkey). Travelers often record their experiences of journeying through foreign landscapes. Although usually written from the perspective of an outsider, these first-hand accounts can serve as valuable primary source documents for geographical information about these regions. The participation of students in mapping these accounts can prompt deep reflection in the classroom regarding the subjectivity of spatial representations and understandings. This class assignment served as the initial step in a larger research undertaking called the Anatolian Travelers Project, an ongoing, open access initiative. This project attempts to collect, organize, and visualize regional travelers’ accounts through online mapping, to improve our understanding of how people interacted with this landscape and its inhabitants. The project records and compares, among other things, the travelers’ modes of transportation, the routes they chose, their observations about the land and people, and what they felt was worth recording and publishing. Here, we reflect on the use of web mapping as a pedagogical method in teaching the past by reporting on the results of our classroom experimentations. Specifically, we focus on four learning goals: the integration of historical and archaeological methods, an increase in digital literacy among humanities students, experimentation with visualization decisions, and an investigation of landscape and spatial perspectives. Our experiences in the classroom will help inform our future implementations of online mapping as a teaching tool. In terms of technology, we utilized the Neatline plugin to Omeka for mapping, though we consider infrastructure ultimately interchangeable.

Teaching students supply chain risk using a linear programming model of the fictitious online retailer Elbe

The fictitious online retailer Elbe faces a deterministic demand for products over a geographic area and fulfills this demand using supply nodes and fulfillment centers. Experiential learning using provided solver and ILOG models (available upon request from the authors) for this supply chain allows students to experiment with disturbances in the distribution network where facilities go offline as a result of, for example, natural disasters. Students are shown how mathematical models can be used to plan the flow of product in real-world settings, as well as how these models can be used to react to supply chain risk. These models can be used in advanced undergraduate- or graduate-level classes in supply chain and operations management, leaving students with an appreciation of the models and their usefulness in real-world applications, as well as an increased understanding of supply chain risk and its impact on demand fulfillment.

Design and investigation of cooperative, scaffolded wiki learning activities in an online graduate-level course

Informed by the literature on community of inquiry, wikis in education, and scaffolding in technology-supported learning environments, this study reports the design, implementation, and investigation of wiki-supported cooperative learning activities in an online graduate-level theories class. The investigation of emerging research questions revealed students’ participation patterns in the wiki learning activities, the relationship between their participation and course performance, and the students’ experiences with the scaffolding strategies designed to support their cooperative activities. The study offers implications for designing and scaffolding wiki-based cooperative learning.

FACE-TO-FACE VERSUS THREADED DISCUSSIONS: THE ROLE OF TIME AND HIGHER-ORDER THINKING

This study compares the experiences of students in face-to-face (in class) discussions with threaded discussions and also evaluates the threaded discussions for evidence of higher-order thinking. Students were enrolled in graduate-level classes that used both modes (face-to-face and online) for course-related discussions; their end-of-course evaluations of both experiences were grouped for analysis and themes constructed based on their comments. Themes included the “expansion of time,” “experience of time,” “quality of the discussion,” “needs of the student,” and “faculty expertise.” While there are advantages to holding discussions in either setting, students most frequently noted that using threaded discussions increased the amount of time they spent on class objectives and that they appreciated the extra time for reflection on course issues. The face-to-face format also had value as a result of its immediacy and energy, and some students found one mode a better “fit” with their preferred learning mode. The analysisof higher-order thinking was based on a content analysis of the threaded discussions only. Each posting was coded as one of the four cognitive-processing categories described by Garrison and colleagues: 18% were triggering questions, 51% were exploration, 22% were integration, and 7% resolution. A fifth category – social – was appropriate for 3% of the responses and only 12% of the postings included a writing error. This framework provides some support for the assertion that higher-order thinking can and does occur in online discussions; strategies for increasing the number of responses in the integration and resolution categories are discussed.