In-depth Learning Experiences Research Articles

Research on Moral Education Strategies for Vocational College Students Integrating Traditional Chinese Culture

By combining theoretical discussion with practical cases, this study aims to deepen the understanding of traditional cultural values of Higher Vocational College(HVC) students, and urge them to integrate these values into their career and social interaction. In the setting of educational goals, we have made clear the importance of cultivating students' traditional moral values such as kindness, filial piety and loyalty, and the positive role of these values in individual development and social interaction. Through the design of integrated courses, we are committed to providing a comprehensive and in-depth learning experience, so that students can better understand the value of traditional culture in practice and apply it to real life. Emphasizing practice and experience is one of the focuses of this study. We let students feel the charm of traditional culture by community service, traditional handicraft production and field trip. In text reading, we choose Chinese traditional literary classics for in-depth interpretation, and help students better understand the moral wisdom contained in the text through discussion and group cooperation. Through this study, we expect to provide a series of scientific and effective strategies for the moral education of HVC students, aiming at cultivating moral personality with traditional cultural connotations and further promoting the inheritance and development of traditional culture in the field of HVC education.

Intercultural learning in the classroom: Facilitators and challenges of the learning process

Higher education institutions have the potential to significantly contribute to students’ intercultural competence development through internationalization at home. However, the intercultural competence literature lacks empirical research on how students learn and the process of intercultural learning. This study investigates in-depth learning experiences in a six-week cross-cultural management course at a Dutch research university in which a blended learning tool was incorporated to enhance students’ intercultural competence. Thematic analysis of the data from qualitative semi-structured interviews resulted in an inductive explanatory model. This shows that facilitating factors for learning were teaching tools, intercultural contact (teamwork, multicultural classroom, cultural informants), motivational factors and intercultural experiences. Learning happened through experience, reflection, abstract conceptualization and experimentation. Learning dilemmas occurred around adaptation and stereotyping/generalizing. Pivotal for intercultural learning is dissonance: this needs to be sufficient to stimulate learning, but may also lead to learning dilemmas. The study concludes with recommendations for intercultural course design.

Digital Platform-Based Learning Innovation in Elementary Schools in The Industry 4.0 Era: Systematic Literature Review

Information and communication technology advances have been utilized in many sectors of human life, including educational practices. This study aims to reveal the innovation practices of app-based digital application platforms. This research was conducted using a systematic literature review (SLR) approach. Data sources come from research journal articles and books by the theme of the discussion. The data analysis technique uses content analysis. The finding or result of this research is that learning can utilize digital platform features as part of learning innovation. Digital platforms that can be utilized are such as Microsoft Teams and Edmodo applications. Both applications have many services, such as video conferencing, presentations, assignments, and online assessments. The utilization of digital platforms in schools in the Industrial Age 4.0 aligns with the development and challenges of the rapidly changing times. Digital platforms are part of the innovations that can be used as alternative media and real solutions for technology-integrated learning. Learning with digital platform media can increase student participation and collaboration and provide new, in-depth learning experiences.

Instructional Design for Optimizing Biochemical Chemistry Education Using Basic Medical Knowledge

Biochemical chemistry, as one of the core courses in medical education, involves the structure, function, metabolism, and other key contents of human biomolecules, which is of great significance in cultivating students' scientific literacy and clinical practice ability. However, the traditional teaching of biochemical chemistry is often based on independent chemical concepts and lacks organic integration with basic medical knowledge, leading to a decline in students' interest in learning and poor learning results. Therefore, there is an urgent need to optimize the teaching design of biochemical chemistry using basic medical knowledge to provide students with a more in-depth learning experience and lay a solid foundation for future medical practice. The article discusses the application of basic medical knowledge in biochemical chemistry education from the aspects of anatomy, physiology, and pathology, and proposes three teaching design strategies, namely, case study, modularized learning, and experimental learning.

Online site visits using virtual collaborative spaces: A plan-reading activity on a digital building site

Site visits or field trips have been a tool utilized by construction educators to engage students in active learning, assist traditional lessons, and attain stronger and deeper student learning experiences. Nevertheless, site visits present major logistical and accessibility challenges for educational institutions and instructors, reducing the number of students that have access to the benefits of such a technique. The limitations for site visits have further broadened recently, as the reality of the COVID-19 public health concerns has forced educators to move to online course delivery quickly and the majority of site visits have been canceled. The research goal of this paper is to present construction students with opportunities to enable online location-independent site visits where contextualized learning is dangerous, unsafe, or impossible to achieve. In this project, a virtual online learning environment was created to offer the affordances that provide an in-depth learning experience through collaborative communication for a plan-reading activity in a virtual space that resembles a real-world site visit to a building facility. This virtual online learning environment helped students to experience the physical and social aspects of the site visit while getting a collaborative opportunity to practice their plan-reading skills. A comparative study with a business-as-usual condition (online delivery through Zoom®) was conducted and the students’ plan-reading performance and their feedback on the sense of presence, social presence, fatigue, and system usability was reported. The outcome of the study shows that such virtual collaborative site visits present unique opportunities to enable online delivery of spatiotemporal contexts of sites and offer an effective remote alternative when these learning opportunities are not available.

A Study on Online Learning Behaviors of the Private University Students Based on SPOC Mode—Take Zhejiang Yuexiu University as an Example

With the rapid development of MOOCs and SPOC in higher education under the wave of education informatization, research on online learners’ behavior has received more and more attention from university researchers. However, there are just a few studies on online learning behaviors of students in private universities. Relying on Zhejiang Province’s first-class undergraduate course (online and offline hybrid)—A Survey of Major English-speaking Countries, this paper conducted a study on the analysis of students’ online learning behavior based on SPOC mode, by collecting data on the online learning behavior process of 224 junior students from Zhejiang Yuexiu College of Foreign Languages, including students’ weekly login times to the platform, video viewing hours, total online learning hours, unit quiz scores, forum posting and final test scores. These data were statistically and analytically analyzed using SPSS.20, and correlation analysis was conducted using the Pierce correlation coefficient. The results show that students’ participation in online learning is satisfactory, the teacher’s ability to guide learning directly affects students’ online learning logins, and students’ learning performance is positively correlated with the number of course logins, video viewing hours, unit test scores and the number of forum posts, especially with unit test scores, but there is little student-student interaction in forum discussions. It can be seen that SPOC mode can organically combine traditional classroom with online classroom, especially visualize the characteristics of students’ online learning behavior, help teaching administrators and teachers in private colleges and universities accurately grasp the learning status of learners, thus promoting them to provide strong support in the process of course reform, strengthen the ability and responsibility of information technology, integrate online and offline teaching more efficiently, and at the same time make students to pay more attention to the usual grades, to focus on the cultivation of learning ability, thus giving students a complete and in-depth learning experience, improving the completion rate of the course and promoting the improvement of teaching quality.

Understanding culturally responsive practices in teacher preparation: an avenue to address disproportionality in special education

ABSTRACT With the rapid increase of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds bringing a shift in the landscape in today’s schools, equity discourses continue to arise. For example, more than four decades of data have pointed towards the disproportionality (i.e. over- or -under-representation) of students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds in special education in the United States, Europe, and beyond. As a continuous problem, there have not been enough studies exploring the state of general education teacher preparation programs and pre-service teachers’ use of culturally responsive practices (CRP) within referral models for special education. Knowing that teacher preparation is a key formation period for practicing teachers’ beliefs and knowledge the current study examined pre-service teachers’ knowledge and skills of culturally responsive practices within pre-referral models in order to address equity issues in special education (e.g. service delivery). Results from a fully integrated mixed methods study showed to be contradictory as the rating of pre-service teachers’ perceived knowledge and skills of CRP and pre-referral models to be high but their work indicated otherwise. Implications for teacher preparation programs include more in-depth learning experiences on CRP, disabilities, and engaging in equity discourses as part of pre-service teachers’ preparation.

Designing effective capstone experiences and projects for entry-level doctoral students in occupational therapy: One program's approaches and lessons learned.

Entry-level doctoral occupational therapy programs require students to complete a capstone experience and project that supports advanced skills through an in-depth learning experience with a student-selected mentor. Strong curriculum design and mentorship are vital aspects of successful capstone experiences and projects. Through the application of these key components, students are supported, in collaboration with mentors, to achieve mutually beneficial projects allowing advancement of the profession through dissemination of capstone work.

“Solvitur Ambulando” (It Is Solved by Walking): Learning Business Leadership on the Camino De Santiago

Undergraduate students enrolled in a large research university walked 500 miles on the Camino de Santiago (Camino) as a culminating experience of a course designed to foster high-impact learning, specifically learning about themselves as leaders and global citizens. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore undergraduate students’ perspectives about the impact of the experience on their leadership development. The course design incorporated leadership theory and high-impact learning practices to provide students with an innovative and in-depth learning experience unique from a classroom setting. A thematic analysis of student post-Camino metareflections gave insight as to how students perceived their development as leaders and what elements of the experience students perceived to be most impactful. Interpretation of the findings was informed by leadership development literature identifying the metacompetencies and competencies of a leader. Other business schools could incorporate the findings regarding leadership development and the effectiveness of the specific course experience to implement their own programs. We provide recommendations and outline resources other universities would need for structuring similar innovative, high-impact learning experiences designed to enhance students’ leadership competencies.

Pedagogical Knowledge Acquisition During the Practicum

Teacher reflection is widely considered as an important process that provides in-depth learning experiences to preservice teachers. Portfolios and teachers' diaries are commonly used teaching tools to funnel one's own critical thoughts about practice. It is also common to analyse the teaching practice in the practicum through the guidance of expert teachers who act as mentors. Both ways are crucial to organise preservice teachers' practical knowledge acquired in the schools. The objective is to determine under which learning situations (individual reflection vs. mentoring interaction) knowledge is better acquired and determines the differences between preservice teachers. Five preservice teachers were recorded giving a regular lesson to primary school students. Data was analysed by following the PDA model that divides the content in narrative and inferential. Main results reveal that practical knowledge is mostly elicited with the help of a mentor and mostly inferential. There were minimal significant differences among preservice teachers.

Research on the SPOC Online Course of Higher Education

Online courses of higher education occupy an important role in the modern education system, but there are many uncharted territories, particularly with the development of MOOC, most universities are looking forward to try a small and precise course type -SPOC. This essay investigates thoroughly on SPOC courses and focus on the teaching cases for SPOC in the University of California at Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Colorado State University, the Harvard University. Based on the case studies, this essay explores the new advantages of SPOC in the view point of teaching quality, education cost, teaching models innovation and in-depth learning experiences. SPOC can create the sustainable learning environments and upgrade integrated teaching abilities to promote the development of Online Course of Higher Education

Integrating EFL skills for authentically teaching specific grammar and vocabulary

When a person uses a language in an authentic setting, skills such as speaking, reading, writing and listening are naturally integrated to achieve communicative competence. Therefore, this research is based on the use of a content-based instruction model and the communicative language approach to teach English as a foreign language (EFL). The activities described in this article integrate language skills using communicative activities to learn and practice the present perfect and associated new vocabulary. All the skills were evaluated through qualitative informal assessments and quantitative formal testing to see if the chosen strategies could aid in attaining the goals set by the professor and could allow for authentic learning by the participants. This qualitative and quantitative research used 33 sample students, pre- and post-evaluations of all four skills, and questionnaires about the students’ knowledge of the present perfect post-treatment and the opinions of the students about the types of strategies and educational models used to integrate the four language skills in their classes. These results were then used to find out how these teaching strategies could aid in student teaching-learning. The tools used aided in the results were to find out how to integrate communication skills throughout the lessons in the classroom to allow for a more fluid and in-depth learning experience for the intermediate students that participated in this research done at UNAE, Ecuador.

GRANTSISM: An Excel™ ice sheet model for use in introductory Earth science courses

ABSTRACTGRANTISM (GReenland and ANTarctic Ice Sheet Model) is an educational Excel™ model introduced by Pattyn (2006). Here, GRANTISM is amended to simulate the Svalbard-Barents-Sea Ice Sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum, an analogue for the contemporary West Antarctic Ice Sheet. A new name, “GRANTSISM,” is suggested; the added S represents Svalbard. GRANTSISM introduces students of bachelor's or master's programs in Earth sciences (first or second cycle program in the Bologna system for higher education), but with little or no background in numerical modeling, to basic ice sheet modeling. GRANTSISM provides hands-on learning experiences related to ice sheet dynamics in response to climate forcing, and fosters understanding of processes and feedbacks. GRANTSISM was successfully used in noncompulsory courses in which students have been able to reproduce paleo-ice sheet evolution scenarios discussed here as examples. Students progressed further by designing, developing, and analyzing their own modeling scenarios. Here, we describe GRANTSISM and report on how learning activities with GRANTSISM were assessed by students who had no prior experience in ice sheet modeling. The response rate for a noncompulsory survey of the learning activity was less than 40%. A subsequent control experiment with a compulsory survey, however, showed the same patterns of answers, so the student response is considered representative. First, GRANTSISM is concluded to be a highly attractive tool to introduce learners with an interest in ice sheet behavior to ice sheet modeling. Second, it triggers an interest for more in-depth learning experiences related to numerical ice sheet modeling.

Evaluation of an International Entrepreneur Exchange Program: Impacts, Lessons Learned, and Implications for Agricultural Development

This study evaluated a two-way, visitor exchange project for entrepreneurship development between three African countries and the United States. The study’s purpose was to determine outcomes, understand lessons learned, and derive implications for international agricultural development. Findings of the study confirm visiting African Entrepreneur Fellows (AEFs) developed entrepreneurial knowledge, gained business skills, and acquired positive attitudes toward U.S. business and culture. The majority of AEFs had applied acquired knowledge and skills to improve their businesses and promoted open economic ideals, business ethics, and human rights in their businesses. As a result, AEFs were able to expand their business into new ventures, improve customer services, establish communication networks, and serve their communities. Visitor exchange, entrepreneurship-building programs are effective strategies in contributing to development efforts in developing countries. Paying due attention to the selection and matching of U.S. mentors with the business interests and learning needs of international fellows is necessary to ensure their learning expectations are met. It is important to assign international participants with suitable mentors for longer periods of time to increase the likelihood of receiving more in-depth learning experiences and develop lasting professional relationships to further collaboration. Realization of the potential of entrepreneurship-focused, visitor exchange programs between nations as a strategy for international agricultural development is the major implication of this study.

Case reports as a resource for teaching and learning.

Preparing the next generation of health professionals is a collective responsibility. All health professionals have a role to play in contributing knowledge that can enhance teaching and learning for health students across the educational spectrum. Health professionals in general have a commitment to lifelong learning and this commitment is reflected in our professional standards and guidelines, and our literature 1. Indeed, healthcare practice changes quickly in response to new diseases, treatment modalities, and changing patient needs. Thus, lifelong learning is essential if we are to successfully meet the needs of the communities we serve. As we develop professionally, our learning needs and styles of learning mature and develop 2. For example, graduate health professional students often have a rich range of clinical experiences to draw on that can enhance their learning and their insight into the need for ongoing learning. However, for those in the pre-service educational setting, there may be far less clinical experiences to draw on, and so it falls to faculty to ensure that students are provided with current and contextualized cases upon which their learning can be based. Indeed, there are challenges associated with adequately preparing students to face the rigors of clinical practice. It is here that case reports can potentially fill a void. Case reports bring a contextualized account to the classroom. Each case report represents a healthcare encounter involving a real person with a real clinical problem 3. Through case reports, real-world concerns and experiences are able to be brought into the classroom and research suggests that using case studies based on episodes of “real life” provide learning opportunities that can support knowledge, improve attitudes, and enhance skills development 4. The reporting of a case assimilates theory and practice and highlights the key individual factors that were the catalyst for clinical decision-making and action, and also provides students with crucial information about the outcomes. Case reports allow students to engage with real clinical scenarios, and to contemplate the decision-making and actions of the treating team. However, in addition to the focus on health issues, case reports can be used to stimulate students in considering the wider social, cultural, political, and economic issues that may contribute to and impact on the health status of an individual. This can then be used as a lens to consider issues more broadly. Effectively working with other disciplines is an essential skill for all healthcare professionals, and inter-professional learning using case reports may contribute to and foster knowledge sharing and development of the required competencies to successfully collaborate with peers 5. With the increased emphasis being given internationally to inter-professional education for healthcare professional students 6, case reports can provide a learning opportunity and be a useful strategy to enhance inter-professional student learning activities. In addition, sharing practices through case reports provides a means to actively engage students and through insight into the use of clinical guidelines, encourage them to consider issues around guideline-informed practice. As with any teaching and learning activity, there is a need for skilled facilitation to actively engage students to enable them to get the best from engaging with case reports. Current health environments are complex, as are the patients seen within these environments. All health professionals need to be active lifelong learners, so they are in a position to underpin their practice with the most current evidence; yet, often translation of evidence into practice can be fraught with difficulties. Case reports offer a lens in which to view single episodes of care which are often used to facilitate the understanding of a larger body of evidence. Case reports bring to the classroom real-life tangible scenarios that provide students with high value learning experiences. Under the guidance of a skilled facilitator case reports offer a rich and in-depth learning experience in the class room for all disciplines across health care.

Learning International Trade by Game in Maritime Business Schools

Business trade is a very complex process and maritime students should acknowledge this complexity and understand various different components of the process and the interactions among them. Considering this complexity, teaching college students about the international trade can be a demanding and expansive process within the traditional learning context. Developments in instructional strategies helped educators to enhance learning environments with games and simulations providing students with enduring and in-depth learning experiences. The learning experiences included realistic trade scenario allowing students to simulate the process and explore possible results of their actions during the game. The conversations used during the game were derived from real business environment helping students to realize how their classroom learning was connected to actual international trade environment during this activity. The purpose of this research was to observe the effects of business simulation game on maritime business students’ understanding of international trade process. The study design was a single group experimental and participants were consisted of 59 undergraduate maritime business school students studying in two Turkish universities. The data was collected through a Business Trade Simulation scale designed for this study. The results of the study illustrated that international trade game enhanced participants’ knowledge and skills about international trade and students’ motivation toward the game as well.

Creating In-Depth Learning Experiences by Using Rawls' “Veil of Ignorance”

Combining a variation of John Rawls' “veil of ignorance” mind experiment with role-playing and case studies allows instructors to create assignments that engage students in the full range of learning processes, encourage them to consider a wide range of viewpoints, provide them with opportunities to apply the cognitive and the affective components of learning, and make real for them world views competing for influence in the development of policies, regulations, and laws. This article presents three examples of this curriculum innovation in a graduate Human Behavior in the Social Environment sequence, followed by suggestions of its use in practice, research, and policy courses.

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note Elizabeth A. Jones In this issue of the Journal of General Education, assessment and curricular reform continue to be pressing issues. Thomas Nelson Laird, Amanda Niskodé-Dossett, and George Kuh draw upon data from the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement in their article “What General Education Courses Contribute to Essential Learning Outcomes.” They compare the types of skills promoted by faculty teaching general education courses with those emphasized by faculty who teach other courses. They also investigate if there are differences in instructor practices between these two groups of faculty. They found that faculty who teach general education courses design their courses to emphasize intellectual skills and individual and social responsibility to a greater extent than did instructors who were teaching other courses. In addition, faculty who teach general education courses were found to emphasize integrative learning and reported more diverse interactions than instructors teaching other types of courses. The research results discussed by these authors are very insightful, as they clearly document the contributions that faculty members who teach general education make to support student learning and reinforce crucial outcomes. Academic leaders and faculty often discover that curriculum reform is necessary to strengthen learning experiences for students. Francis Stage and Jillian Kinzie explore curriculum change in their mixed-methods study “Reform in Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: The Classroom Context.” They found that faculty had increased interactions with students and learning became a collaborative and active process. They also discovered an increased focus on authentic contexts and practical knowledge and on interdisciplinary connections. This research study offers important contributions and concrete examples of how faculty redesigned individual undergraduate science courses in an effort to promote student success. Another example of curriculum reform is creating global interaction and international experiences for students. In their article “‘Making Connections’ [End Page vii] at the University of North Carolina: Moving Toward a Global Curriculum at a Flagship Research University,” Jay Smith and Julia Kruse discuss the specific types of curriculum changes they implemented. New graduation requirements included experiential education, for which many students decided to study abroad. In addition, all students complete one Global Issues course. The authors’ portrait of major reform clearly demonstrates how a multifaceted approach to redesigning the curriculum can provide students with more in-depth learning experiences to enhance their global consciousness. We conclude this issue with two book reviews. Scott Cottrell critiques a recent assessment book, Promoting Integrated and Transformative Assessment: A Deeper Focus on Student Learning written by Catherine Wehlburg. Steve Gump reviews another assessment book, Assessing Student Learning in General Education: Good Practice Case Studies by Marilee Bresciani. We hope that you find these articles useful as you consider curriculum reform and assessment at your own college or university. You may also want to share your own experiences as they relate to the general education of your students and contribute to jge. [End Page viii] Copyright © 2009 The Pennsylvania State University

In-Depth Learning: One School??s Initiatives to Foster Integration of Ethics, Values, and the Human Dimensions of Medicine

Today's medical student curriculum is a lock-step experience that provides a broad survey of medicine with little opportunity to pursue fully integrated, in-depth learning. To teach students about the human dimensions of health care, many schools simply have added courses that survey general areas such as ethics, values, and patient-doctor relationships. However, a superficial, broad-brush approach does not offer students sufficient opportunity to engage with these topics in substantive and meaningful ways. The authors propose that a theme-based, individualized, in-depth learning experience (in which students pursue a focused project comprehensively and in detail)--one that is an integral part of the curriculum--helps students learn to blend values and ethics with medicine in a way that cannot occur during rapid-paced topical survey courses. Furthermore, it is in the depths of a learning experience that one comes face to face with the realities of uncertainty: the realization that unanswerable questions outnumber answerable ones; the awareness of the difficulty in accumulating sufficient evidence to answer a question that is, in fact, answerable; the recognition that many patients' problems transcend available evidence and must be addressed by the art of medicine; the realization that a patient can have a condition that one cannot diagnose and that may even get better for reasons that one cannot understand. The authors describe three initiatives at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, two of which have been offered for more than 10 years, that illustrate the value of in-depth learning experiences. These in-depth experiences blend situated learning, reflective exercises, faculty mentoring, critical reading of literature, and constructive feedback in a prescribed but individualized curriculum.

Reinventing a State Funding Program for Museums

ABSTRACTWhile state funding represents a primary source of support for museums, its characteristics and significance have eluded recognition and analysis. Programs and funding mechanisms vary considerably among states, ranging from support for specific projects in museums by agencies that fund multiple types of cultural institutions to state agencies exclusively devoted to museums. The Museum Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, which supports all disciplines of museums, faced critical challenges to its leadership role as funding was restored following a period of severe retrenchment. It engaged in open dialogue with the museum community as it developed new initiatives and services to the field. The Program worked with service organizations to create new approaches for professional learning about museum practices, made revisioning permanent collections an overarching guidelines theme and challenged exhibition applicants to explore neglected topics. It also emphasized multiple interpretive perspectives, mutual engagement with communities and sequential educational activities that provide in‐depth learning experiences.