Heterogeneous Group Of Students Research Articles

Identification of Students with Similar Performances in Micro-Learning Programming Courses with Automatically Evaluated Student Assignments

The identification of heterogeneous and homogeneous groups of students using clustering analysis in learning analytics is still rare. The paper describes a study in which the students’ performance data stored in the micro-learning platform Priscilla are analyzed using learning analytics methods. This study aims to identify the groups of students with similar performances in micro-learning courses focused on learning programming and uncover possible changes in the number and composition of the identified groups of students. The CRISP-DM methodology was used to navigate through the complexity of the knowledge discovery process. Six different datasets representing different types of graded activities or term periods were prepared and analyzed for that purpose. The clustering analysis using the K-Means method found two clusters in all cases. Subsequently, performance metrics, the internal composition, and transfers of the students between clusters identified in different datasets were analyzed. As a result, this study confirms that analyzing student performance data from a micro-learning platform using learning analytics methods can reveal distinct groups of students with different academic performances, and these groups change over time. These findings align with teachers’ assumptions that the micro-learning platform with automated evaluation of programming assignments highlights how the students perceive the role of learning tools during learning programming in different term periods. Simultaneously, this study acknowledges that clustering, as an exploratory method, provides a solid basis for further research and can identify distinct groups of students with similar characteristics.

과학영재학교에 신규로 전입한 수학, 과학교사들이 겪는 어려움과 극복 방법

This study aimed to explore difficulties that newly employed teachers of science and mathematics have experienced at a science gifted academy and to investigate their ways to overcome their difficulties in terms of teaching andlearning, assessment, and research guidance. A survey and in-depth interview were administered with seven research subjects for this study. It was found that there were various difficulties that teachers experienced at a science gifted academy. For the teaching and learning area, teachers had difficulties in determining appropriate level of enriched content and considering characteristics of heterogeneous groups of students with different levels of understanding when they were preparing teaching contents. During class implementation, they still felt difficulties in judging the appropriateness of enriched contents and selecting proper topics for both students who had prior learning at a private academy and those who did not. For the assessment area, teachers went through difficulties in developing objective criteria to assess student performance, in grading unexpected descriptive answers with reliability, and in developing good items to discriminate various levels of abilities exhibited by individual students. For the research guidance area, teachers expressed difficulties in guiding students who did not follow teacher advices and students who did not understand recent theories related to their research themes and lack of research ideas. Other difficulties were also appeared. The major direction of ways to overcome difficulties seemed that teachers provide customized guidance and encouragement in consideration of individual students’ characteristics and make more efforts and time to improve their professionalism. In conclusions, in order to provide science gifted education in quality at a science gifted academy, it is necessary to explore in more details difficulties experienced by newly employed teachers and to more actively provide them with differentiated support to overcome difficulties.

Developing and Validating Critical-Heutagogy Learning (CHL) to Enhance Lifelong Learning: A Rasch Analysis Approach

This research is dedicated to the development and validation of Critical-Heutagogy Learning (CHL), an innovative pedagogical approach designed to foster lifelong learning among university students. In an era characterized by rapid changes, the imperative for lifelong learning is paramount, necessitating individuals to continually update their knowledge and skills to remain adaptable and successful in diverse environments. To evaluate the validity and reliability of CHL, this study employs Rasch analysis. The development phase of CHL encompassed an exhaustive review of relevant literature, consultations with subject matter experts, and an iterative design methodology. This process was critical to ensure that CHL adhered to established principles of lifelong learning while promoting critical thinking and heutagogical practices. For the validation phase, CHL tools were administered to a heterogeneous group of students across multiple educational contexts. The gathered data underwent rigorous Rasch analysis to ascertain the framework's reliability, evaluate item fit, and pinpoint areas necessitating enhancements. The findings indicate that CHL is both a valid and reliable approach, with a high percentage (89.5%) of student respondents affirming its effectiveness in fostering engagement in learning and enhancing autonomous learning competencies. Additionally, this study delves into the interactions between bias and differential item functioning. The outcomes of this research offer a valuable contribution to the field of education, presenting a rigorously validated framework that supports lifelong learning. This is achieved through the promotion of critical thinking and the facilitation of independent learning skills, thus aligning with contemporary educational objectives and needs.

Students’ digital addiction and learning difficulties: shortcomings of surveys in inclusion

Students have been distance learning to a considerable extent during the Covid years and the primary concerns are teenagers’ learning difficulties, digital addiction and long screen time. Our aim was thus to study teenagers’ perceived learning difficulties, digital addiction and screen time. The current study was a part of a larger e-survey. The data were collected across Estonia from 8,486 teenagers who studied in the inclusive education system during spring 2022. The students were 11–20 years old. While analysing the data, we had to exclude the answers of 315 students. Those students had answered carelessly or inaccurately, had written an inaccurate age, illogical answers or similar answers throughout the test. We studied teenagers’ level of learning difficulties, digital addiction and screen time. The study shows positive correlations between learning difficulties, digital addiction and screen time. Digital addiction and screen time predict 11% of the variability of perceived learning difficulties scores based on a Linear Regression model. The model shows a poor prediction for students whose scores are very different from the mean. We describe the weaknesses of an e-survey method in inclusive education. Linear statistical models predict well for average students, but do not predict well for respondents who are very different from the mean. The so-called residuals need special attention or, paradoxically, exclusion from the statistical analysis. The outliers are often the students who need help in the inclusive system. Here, we will share our insights, what we have learned as researchers from conducting the study. We cannot collect reliable data about special needs students with any wide scale e-survey if we do not address the developmentally heterogeneous group of students and their needs while participating in the survey. This is significant for study reliability as well as gathering data from children with special needs.

COOPERATIVE LEARNING FOR THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF NAVIGATORS

The article aims to study the resources that a Maritime English teacher can use offline and online to achieve the standards of higher education and develop a high-level expert who easily adapts to the modern demands of society and meets the complex, changing conditions of the market, regardless of the country of employment. So, the paper deals with cooperative learning, which is a teaching arrangement that refers to small, heterogeneous groups of students working together to achieve a common goal. We have conducted a theoretical analysis of the relevant books and papers and analyzed the essential conditions for the use of cooperative learning. The paper has studied possible failures when applying this toolkit and suggested ways to solve problems or prevent failures. The role of a teacher is really great when planning cooperative activities. She/he should identify objectives, decide group sizes and divide students into groups, prepare instructions to promote interdependence, specify group roles, assign tasks, monitor the behavior of students, provide help, sum up, evaluate the work result, and give feedback. Special attention has been paid to the practical part of the research, so we have suggested cooperative learning techniques that can be used in the teaching of future navigators.

Inclusivity in transitioning to medical school.

Inclusivity in transitioning to medical school.

Teaching in Diverse Lower and Upper Secondary Schools in Norway: The Missing Links in Student Teachers’ Experiences

Teacher education programs must be able to prepare student teachers to work effectively with heterogeneous groups of students in ways that support the learning of all students and affirm their identities within growing neoliberal and neoconservative discourses. In Norway, classroom composition has also become more diverse, primarily due to a higher number of students of a transnational background. This paper explores student teachers’ experiences of preparation for the changing nature of the teaching profession that is informed by increased student diversity. A case study with four student teachers from a teacher education program at a Norwegian institution of higher education is employed to gain rich insight into the students’ perceptions and experiences. The findings illustrate a need for better preparation on the part of the program in relation to teaching content and methods, the practicum experience, and intercultural training from a pedagogical perspective.

Minimum entropy collaborative groupings: A tool for an automatic heterogeneous learning group formation.

For some decades now, theories on learning methodologies have advocated collaborative learning due to its good results in terms of effectiveness and learning types and its promotion of educational and social values. This means that teachers need to be able to apply different criteria when forming heterogeneous groups of students and to use automated techniques to assist them. In this study, we have created an approach based on complex network theory to design an algorithm called Minimum Entropy Collaborative Groupings (MECG) in order to form these heterogeneous groups more effectively. The algorithm was tested firstly under a synthetic framework and secondly in a real situation. In the first case, we generated 30 synthetic classrooms of different sizes and compared our approach with a genetic algorithm and a random grouping. In the latter case, the approach was tested on a group of 200 students on two subjects of a master's degree in teacher training. For each subject there were 4 large groups of 50 students each, in which collaborative groups of 4 students were created. Two of these large groups were used as random groups, another group used the CHAEA test and the fourth group used the LML test. The results showed that the groups created with MECG were more effective, had less uncertainty and were more interrelated and mature. It was observed that the randomized groups did not obtain significantly better LML results and that this cannot be related to any emotional or motivational effect because the students performed the test as a placebo measure. In terms of learning styles, the results were significantly better with LML than with CHAEA, whereas no significant difference was observed in the randomized groups.

Students’ Attitude toward STEM Project-Based Learning in the Fun Cooking Activity to Learn about the Colloid System

This research revealed how the implementation of STEM Project-Based Learning (STEM PBL) in chemistry teaching on colloid system topics with heterogeneous groups of students in terms of habits, hobbies, goals, and gender-biased perceptions. Also, the research described students’ attitudes towards STEM PBL, and the linkages between their attitude and understanding. Participants consisted of 101 students of high schools. Qualitative data were obtained through documentation, and narrative responses in group reports. Quantitative data were obtained through the questionnaire of students’ attitudes toward STEM PBL and the comprehension tests. There are nine types of food products as STEM projects. The most frequent positive experience is that learning colloid topics is “fun”, while the most frequent negative experience response is “time-consuming”. The average score per item of attitude is higher in (1) the female's group, (2) the group who is used to cooking, (3) the group who has a passion, (4) the group who has a goal, and (5) groups that have gender-biased perceptions. There is no significant difference in attitude scores in the student group, except that the group with goals in the culinary field has a higher average attitude score than the group who have no aspirations. Students’ understanding is not closely related to the attitude.

Artificial Intelligence to improve learning outcomes through online collaborative activities

A key strategic objective of the University courses is the promotion and development of new and innovative teaching activities, also through the e-learning environment, with the aim of providing students with direct involvement in the learning process. Collaborative activities represent important and effective teaching methodologies that allow the improvements of learning outcomes through active learning. Furthermore, they can allow the development of soft skills because they enable learners to work together and practice critical reflection and conflict negotiation. Recently, online learning environments are being used to design and deliver assignments based on student work groups. Indeed, the development of digital technologies allows the organization of these online activities in a flexible way for both students and teachers. The goal of this work is to develop successful collaborative activities for undergraduate students to ensure the improvement of knowledge and soft skills on a specific topic. One of the fundamental factors that influence the success of collaborative learning is the students’ group formation, which consists in the realization of heterogeneous groups in terms of cognitive resources, characteristics, and behaviors, composed by four or five students. However, the correct implementation of groups requires careful profiling of each student’s behavior which can be difficult for the teacher to detect. In this work an intelligent software, developed using Artificial Intelligence algorithms, was used to assist the teacher in the realization of heterogeneous groups of students. It is composed of a Machine Learning model, consisting in clustering techniques applied to Moodle learning analytics performed to return clusters that identifies different students’ profiles, and a specific algorithm that automatically organizes the groups, ensuring the heterogeneity including at least one student from each cluster. At the end of the execution the software returns the list of the heterogeneous groups to the teacher. The software was applied to assignments that required working group within a specific online course for university students, using a Moodle e-learning platform. The quantitative analysis demonstrated the effectiveness of the numerical method for group composition proposed in this work to ensure successful collaborative activities, confirmed also by the perceptions of the students on the course.

PREDICTABLE ERRORS IN SERBIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

This paper compares the written production of students learning Serbian as a foreign language with utterances of children at an early age acquiring Serbian as a first language. In one part of the corpus – the one compared – there are errors in essays by a linguistically heterogeneous group of students who attended an intensive course in Serbian at A1 and A2 levels of knowledge in the Centre for Serbian as a Foreign Language (within the Department of Serbian Language and Linguistics) at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad. The other part of the corpus – the one the first part is compared with – there are deviations from the standard Serbian language revealed in papers dedicated to the acquisition of Serbian and speech development of children at an early age (one to three years old). By means of comparison, common morphological and syntactic deviations from the standard Serbian norm have been determined and singled out (deviations: 1. in the creation of verb forms, 2. in congruence between the subject and predicate as well as 3. in the use of prepositional-case constructions with verbs) with the aim of showing which students’ errors occur under the influence of the target language itself, i.e. due to intralingual interference. The result of the analysis is a list of the total 43 types and subtypes of errors common for the two groups of respondents, which further leads to the conclusion that the singled out students’ errors can be considered intralinguistic ones. It is established that the total sum of examples by students is 38.1% of their whole corpus in the three observed grammar segments.

Pedagogical rationales of flipped learning in the accounts of Finnish mathematics teachers

ABSTRACT The focus of this study is on the pedagogy of flipped learning (FL) in mathematics teaching. There has been extensive research into FL, but less research on teachers’ pedagogical rationales when adopting this pedagogy. The present study addresses this research gap by examining interviews with mathematics teachers in Finland. These teachers identified themselves as FL advocates. A thorough analysis of the teacher interview data inspired by a grounded theory approach revealed three main pedagogical rationales for FL in the teachers’ accounts, namely, Individualising Learning, Fostering Self-regulated Learning, and Fostering Engagement. Individualising Learning emphasises attempts to differentiate and humanise learning mathematics in heterogeneous student groups. Fostering Self-regulated Learning highlights the teachers’ emphasis on students’ responsibility in goal-oriented activity that is supported by self-paced learning. Fostering Engagement is related to the teachers’ attempts to create a personally motivating learning environment for students. The results of this study contribute to the research into FL in two ways. First, the teachers of FL view self-regulation as an objective of education, and not just as a means of education. Second, the teachers underscore general learning skills over disciplinary learning in mathematics.

Individual characteristics of students in vocational education moderating the relationship between school engagement and vocational identity

In any country, there is a group of students who are at risk of dropping out of school without any qualifications. This is detrimental for many of those students, because failure to graduate increases risks of unemployment and societal exclusion. To reduce this risk, specialized curricula aim to prepare these students for their working life by fostering the development of a vocational identity, that is, how they define themselves as workers. As a prerequisite to achieving this goal, students need to attend school and feel engaged with school. The curricula seek ways to stimulate emotional school engagement, taking into account the heterogeneous target group of students they serve. To address potential consequences of individual differences, this questionnaire study (N=996) conducted in the Netherlands explored how various individual characteristics of students in these specialized curricula moderated the relationship between emotional school engagement and vocational identity. Results show that stronger school engagement always coincided with a stronger vocational identity; however, the strength of the relationship varied. Stimulating emotional school engagement was specifically important for the subgroups of students who are young, less agreeable, less motivated, and less resilient. In order to foster the vocational identity of their students, the specialized curricula are recommended to draw nuanced conclusions and formulate refined strategies to effectively respond to the heterogeneous group of students who are at risk of dropping out.

The Impact of Heterogeneous Grouping and Reciprocal Peer Teaching on Anatomy Medical Education Outcomes

Goals of the 2019 University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Medicine curriculum revision include reducing the students repeating Phase I for academic reasons to less than 5% and those delaying Step I to less than 10%. To address these goals and improve student performance on the National Boards of Medical Examiners (NBME) final exam in Clinical Morphology (CM), the foundational anatomy course taken by first year UNM medical students, we introduced two interventions: competence‐based heterogeneous (CBH) student group formation and reciprocal peer teaching (RPT). These interventions applied independently have been shown to elevate outcomes for the lowest performing students without negatively impacting higher performing students (Donovan et al., 2018 & Pizzimenti et al., 2016). CM is designed around classroom and lab‐based active learning sessions completed in small groups that were historically formed by random assignment. Students in the cohort projected to complete undergraduate medical education in 2025 (MS2025) were administered a pre‐quiz to stratify them into quartiles, after which CBH groups of six to eight students were formed. Students participated in all classroom‐based CM active learning sessions within their CBH group. CBH groups were divided into two (physically adjacent) dissection groups for lab sessions. After completing weekly lab dissections, students participated in RPT sessions in which the divided CBH group alternately taught each other. Students were provided training, checklists, and facilitation questions to guide teaching sessions. As all students dissected and taught each week, our study addressed some of the limitations of other research that found students perform better on exams only for content for which they dissected and taught (Manyama et al., 2016). MS2025 student performance on assessments was compared with the previous two cohorts (MS2023 and MS2024). Assessments included weekly low‐stakes quizzes and an NBME final exam.Initial results indicate that MS2025 students performed significantly better (mean = 84.6%) than MS2023 (mean = 82.2%) and MS2024 (mean = 80.9%) students on the standardized NBME final exam. Additionally, this significant difference was amplified when comparing NBME scores from the lowest quartile of each cohort; however, no difference was observed when comparing the scores from the highest quartile of each cohort. There were no differences among cohort scores on weekly quizzes collectively and across quartiles. Because both interventions were applied to all subjects, it is not clear to what degree results can be attributed to RPT or CBH groupings; however, with both interventions, student NBME exam scores improved. Overall, each of these interventions requires a minimal investment of time and resources, and can be replicated in future iterations of this course. If shown to be consistently effective, they may further contribute to best practices in anatomy education with reasonable expectations to improve lower quartile student performance.

“We Use English But Not Like All the Time Like”—Discourse Marker Like in UAE English

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is characterized by extensive language contact. Although Arabic is the official language, practically all communication in general as well as in higher education, in particular, takes place in English. The current study reports from the larger projectLanguage, Attitudes, and Repertoires in the Emirates(LARES, 2019–2021) and investigates the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) among university students in Sharjah, one of the seven sovereign emirates of the UAE. A spoken corpus based on 58 semi-structured interviews is used to examine the use of the discourse markerlike. It has been shown to be a ubiquitous feature of English no longer confined to American English and occurs frequently in the corpus. It doubtlessly is a prominent discourse marker in the type of English spoken among the heterogeneous group of multicultural university students considered here. Although a large individual variation with respect to normalized frequencies oflikecan be observed, none of the social variables (i.e., gender, citizenship, L1, year of birth, number of languages, college, self-assessed proficiency in English, and English usage score) included in the analysis account for this variability. Instead, I argue thatlikeas a discourse marker is part of the English repertoire of all students and appears to be even more frequently used than in other English varieties. This supports previous research arguing for an intensification of language change in ELF contexts as well as high individual variation as a characteristic of multilingual ELF users.

Adolescent Refugees Challenging School and Education—A Multi-Level Analysis of the Austrian School System

Within educational systems, discussions have long been held about whether and to what extent refugees and displaced people can be integrated. Due to rare insights, this paper discusses how far school authorities as well as participants handle and adapt to more heterogeneous student groups. Study participants consist of national and federal school authorities, principals, teachers, local students and refugees (both parents and children) having either fled due to the Syrian war or due to fear of facing Afghan persecution. For this study, interviews with the aforementioned participants, being allocated to different levels (i.e. micro-, meso-, or macro-level) of the Austrian school system, have been conducted to ensure variety and transparency of data. The investigation showed that notions of what are the right decisions leading to the right measurements in relation to the integration of adolescent refugees seem to vary depending on individual protagonists’ level of work within the Austrian school. While decisions from both school authorities as well as educators are comprehensible for those working within the same level, decisions taken on another (usually higher) level, are frequently regarded as unsupportive or even convey a negative image causing disappointment, frustration and display lacking interconnectedness between individual levels.

Evolution analysis of content, teaching and examination modes with impact analysis on student satisfaction and learning effect

This paper presents the evolution of a master course taught simultaneously at multiple master specialisations. The analysis of the course structure, content, teaching and evaluation modes has been presented over several years, including both pre-pandemic and during Covid 19 pandemic time. The challenges of dealing with a highly heterogeneous student group are explained and solutions that have been implemented over the years are analysed by means of their effect in student satisfaction scores and learning effect percentage.

Polish Teacher Competencies in Teaching Students from Migrant Backgrounds in Preparatory Classes

The number of students in the Polish education system from migrant backgrounds has regularly increased in the second decade of the 21st century. Many of them arrive with little to no literacy in Polish. The educational system was not prepared to accommodate these new students; Poland was previously considered an emigration country as opposed to an immigration one. Polish classes were linguistically and culturally homogeneous and teachers rarely had Polish language learners in their classrooms. They were not used to teaching multicultural, mixed, and heterogeneous groups of students and most have to find teaching strategies to best respond to new students who were also learning Polish. Changes in Polish educational laws in 2016 opened up the possibility of preparatory classes (PC) (oddziały przygotowawcze) in schools, although some schools decided to challenge this. In this paper, teachers’ competencies in teaching the newly arrived students in reception classes is discussed. This research was carried out with the goal of understanding teachers’ beliefs, experiences, attitudes, and competencies in this completely new context in their professional experience, namely teaching students from a migrant background in preparatory classes, as well as students who need language or academic support, require intercultural education and a friendly learning environment, or for whom curricula in regular classes were not accessible.

Who's got the power? Unpacking three typologies of teacher practice in one-to-one computing classrooms in Finland

This study explores teachers' practice and aims to understand the complexity of and the difference between teacher-centred teaching and student-centred learning in the one-to-one computing classroom. Generally, prior research has examined moving from teacher-centred teaching to student-centred learning. Here, we scrutinise one-to-one computing practices in Grades 1–6 in Finland by analysing how power and control emerge from the way teachers organise the physical classroom and communicate in practice. We target variations in practical classroom orchestration as well as in how teachers reason about their practice. A mixed-method analysis was conducted in two phases, including 15 classroom observations and subsequent teacher interviews. First, a quantitative analysis displayed three clusters of ways teachers distributed power and control in their classroom orchestration. Second, the clusters were integrated in a qualitative analysis of the interviews. The findings show that the variations of teacher practice depended on their beliefs and higher-order learning goals related student autonomy in the use of material resources. It also showed a variation in the way teachers scaffolded students’ individual work and created collaborative learning opportunities. In the one-to-one computing classroom, this emerges from issues that teachers can control inside school regarding the use and organisation of material resources. However, another factor that made teachers adapt their practice was the integration of heterogeneous student groups into their classrooms.

Pembelajaran Lesson Study Dalam Meningkatkan Aktivitas Kolaborasi Antar Siswa

Collaboration in learning is often carried out by students, but often the teacher does not evaluate it, the teacher assumes that the collaboration carried out by students in learning is just an ordinary interaction and rarely gives students the opportunity to ask questions, differentiates abilities and reduces learning opportunities together, so students do not learn from peers and do not have the opportunity to provide input and respect the opinions of others. This problem then becomes the objective of implementing Lesson Study learning to find out how much collaborative activity between students in learning. The main purpose of implementing Lesson Study in these subjects is to increase collaboration activities among students. The research team is interested in implementing learning through lesson study. The basic pattern of lesson study is the heterogeneous grouping of students in small groups with four members. The members are expected to share knowledge each other through sharing tasks given by the teacher. The task is continued with jumping tasks. That is, giving tasks / questions that increase without giving examples first. If a third of students can work on the question, then the jumping task is successful. The method used is descriptive. The data collection techniques were documentation and observation. The data analysis used was descriptive. The results showed that there was an increase in student collaboration activities when implementing lesson study, it was 25%.