Faculty Teachers Research Articles

Learning to teach and play futsal using digital tablets: What knowledge do sports science students mobilize?

Abstract There is little research on the knowledge mobilized by sports science students when they learn to play a sport by learning to teach it. This study focuses on the benefits of using digital tablets to foster this learning during a university teaching module in futsal with students in the second year of a sports science bachelor’s degree. We compare the knowledge mobilized by these students during self-confrontation interviews (based on video recordings of the sessions), game situations, reciprocal coaching and debates of ideas. We then identify the nature of this knowledge and the strategies for its mobilization in context using a framework mainly based on didactics in physical education (Amade-Escot, 2006; Armour, 2011) and on pedagogical content knowledge studies (Shulman, 1986). The students were divided into two experimental conditions following the same pedagogical curriculum. The students in condition 1 used digital tablets to film themselves, tag videos and discuss the recordings. The students in condition 2 did not use tablets. The interviews were conducted twice during the teaching module: first during period 1 (beginning of the module) and then during period 2 (end of the module). The results show that students in condition 1 were more likely to mobilize shared knowledge, make decisions through cooperation and even devolve the construction of tactical reasoning and knowledge by their peers following the didactic approach of the faculty teacher as early as period 1. This promoted access to the construction and meaning of teaching and learning content. These results are discussed in light of the current challenges within educational systems and of the joint development of interactional skills for learning to cooperate and even to teach.

Experiencing the shift: How postsecondary contract and continuing faculty moved to online course delivery

The shift to online learning that occurred in March of 2020, created an unprecedented period of intense work for faculty and sessional instructors at the post-secondary level. This shift necessitated courses be adapted under short timelines, new technology be integrated into course design and teaching strategies and assessment methods be adapted for an online environment (Van Nuland et al., 2020). This study examines how sessional instructors, referred to in this chapter as contract faculty, and continuing full-time faculty members delivering the same online courses experienced this shift. While the demands of a continuing faculty position call for balancing of teaching, research and service responsibilities, contract instructors have their own unique stressors (Karram Stephenson et al., 2020). Contract faculty lack job security, are paid by the course and often receive their teaching assignments with short notice. By examining their perspectives on delivering the same courses online, we learn that the shift to online teaching resulted in additional work in order to adapt courses to the online environment, with faculty describing the challenges of balancing the additional work with other responsibilities of their position. Concerns of participants focused on a perceived inability to develop relationships with students in an online environment.

Study Of Faculty Instructors In Undergraduate Classroom And Planetarium Learning Environments

A mixed-methods study exploring the undergraduate planetarium learning environment was conducted during the 2019--2020 academic year at a western American university. Survey responses from university faculty, observational data using the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS), and faculty interview responses were collected and analyzed to investigate how and why collegiate undergraduates were being instructed in a planetarium environment and how this environment compared to a traditional classroom counterpart. Results suggest that planetarium use is viewed by instructors as an integrated learning experience with the classroom environment, with affective learning outcomes in the planetarium complemented by cognitive learning outcomes in the classroom. COPUS observations of planetarium instruction show broad similarity to classroom instruction; however, reductionsin active-learning behavior archetypes measured in the planetarium environment suggest a trade-off between interactive learning strategies and visually immersive content presentation. Implications concerning the collegiate planetarium environment and future work are discussed.

What Worked, What Did Not: University Instruction during a Pandemic

What Worked, What Did Not: University Instruction during a Pandemic

Faculty-Undergraduate Course Curriculum Collaboration

This paper describes a collaboration between one faculty instructor and seven undergraduate student collaborators. Together, the team designed a new college course. The analysis provides a practical way for educational leaders to challenge the authority of knowledge–engaging students in their education and motivating faculty to freshen their course materials and pedagogies. Such a move promotes creative and divergent thinking, student engagement, inclusivity in the classroom, and collaborative practices. The authors present the benefits realized for the instructor, student collaborators, and students taking the course, as well as a number of challenges and limitations to consider when conducting faculty-student collaborations.

Perceived impact of short‐term professional development for foreign language teachers of adults: A case study

AbstractUsing Desimone's (2009) framework for studying the effects of teacher professional development (PD), this qualitative study examines the effectiveness and impact of a 10‐week professional development course on 31 foreign language (FL) instructional faculty and staff in a U.S. Government language school. Data sources included 31 K‐W‐L reflections, 15 questionnaire responses, and nine semistructured interviews from course participants. Etic and emic analysis revealed evidence of Desimone's framework as well as emerging themes that showed the importance of modeling, expanding the professional community, confirming beliefs, increasing confidence, and developing a learner‐centered mindset to effective PD for FL teachers. These emerging themes are presented as an expansion of Desimone's core conceptual framework based on contextual factors specific to PD for FL instructors of adult learners. The results of this study can inform the development and evaluation of FL teacher PD and ground future studies in this context using Desimone's framework.

Medical Spanish in US Medical Schools: a National Survey to Examine Existing Programs.

Most medical schools offer medical Spanish education to teach patient-physician communication skills with the growing Spanish-speaking population. Medical Spanish courses that lack basic standards of curricular structure, faculty educators, learner assessment, and institutional credit may increase student confidence without sufficiently improving skills, inadvertently exacerbating communication problems with linguistic minority patients. To conduct a national environmental scan of US medical schools' medical Spanish educational efforts, examine to what extent existing efforts meet basic standards, and identify next steps in improving the quality of medical Spanish education. Data were collected from March to November 2019 using an IRB-exempt online 6-item primary and 14-item secondary survey. All deans of the Association of American Medical Colleges member US medical schools were invited to complete the primary survey. If a medical Spanish educator or leader was identified, that person was sent the secondary survey. The presence of medical Spanish educational programs and, when present, whether the programs met four basic standards: formal curricular structure, faculty educator, learner assessment, and course credit. Seventy-nine percent of medical schools (125 out of 158) responded to either or both the primary and/or secondary surveys. Among participating schools, 78% (98/125) of medical schools offered medical Spanish programming; of those, 21% (21/98) met all basic standards. Likelihood of meeting all basic standards did not significantly differ by location, school size, or funding type. Fifty-four percent (53/98) report formal medical Spanish curricula, 69% (68/98) have faculty instructors, 57% (56/98) include post-course assessment, and 31% (30/98) provide course credit. Recommended next steps for medical schools include formalizing medical Spanish courses as electives or required curricula; hiring and/or training faculty educators; incorporating learner assessment; and granting credit for student course completion. Future studies should evaluate implementation strategies to establish best practice recommendations beyond basic standards.

Determination of the Elements of Architecture Students' Readiness to Conduct Professional Activities

The relevance of the study is due to higher requirements for the professional training of engineering specialists and the need to determine the most significant aspects of their readiness to conduct professional activities. Focus on certain training aspects will make it possible to increase both the quality and the speed of specialist training, as well as contribute to their personal motivation and help them reveal their talents. The purpose of the study is to identify the elements of archi-tecture student readiness to conduct professional activities. The study took place at the Ural State University of Architecture and Art (Russia, Yekaterinburg); it involved 120 four- and five-year-students of the Faculty of Architecture, as well as 12 faculty teachers and 154 graduates of different graduation years who have from 5 to 20 years of professional experience. Based on the analysis of available research on professionalism and professional readiness, as well as a preliminary participant survey, a number of elements of students' readiness for professional activities have been identified. The concept of students' readiness to conduct pro-fessional activities has been clarified; it is described as complex integrative struc-ture, which simultaneously reflects the level of development of professionally important qualities and abilities of specialists, especially their attitude to profes-sion. The elements of students' readiness to conduct professional activities have been identified: motivational-axiological, informational-cognitive, activity-oriented, personality-reflexive. The survey participants described the elements that they believed would most contribute to professional readiness: motivational-axiological (22% of participants), informational-cognitive (18.8% of participants), personality-reflexive (16.7% of participants) and activity-oriented (13.4%). The study can be useful for vocational education teachers to help them identify the in-fluence of students' personal characteristics on the successful development of their readiness for professional activities.

Writer identity and disciplinarity in the third space

This qualitative study examines academic support practices and students’ experiences and perspectives in a graduate nursing education program that has, for many years, emphasized research and writing by requiring aspiring nurse practitioners to pursue publication in peer-reviewed clinical research journals. In collaboration with faculty, practitioner researchers from the university’s postsecondary learning center developed and facilitated group workshops and provided students with individual consultations on research processes and manuscript development. The researchers wrote field notes and researcher memos, administered workshop evaluations, and interviewed seven participants to better understand students’ writer identities and whether writing for the discipline of nursing with the support of peers, faculty, and learning instructors led to any changes in both their individual and collective sense of disciplinary identity. More broadly, this study interrogated the role of a postsecondary learning center employing an academic literacies pedagogical approach (Lea and Street, 1998; Lillis and Scott, 2007) in working with faculty to support students’ writing for a specific discipline. Findings suggest that graduate nursing students felt anxiety and uncertainty about claiming disciplinary expertise and competence as writers. This affective experience made it difficult for students to align their understandings of nursing as a discipline, rooted in their field experiences as professionals, with a more academic conceptualization that they believed to be represented by the research and writing practices required for the assignment. By engaging with the learning center as a third space (Gutiérrez, 2008), the students explored these challenges and experimented with writing practices, directions for their research, and the conceptualization of their profession as they modified their understanding of what was possible for scholarly writing and research in nursing as a discipline and what they could contribute individually as emerging scholars. This study has implications for teaching academic writing practices in nursing contexts, as well as other academic disciplines and for forming generative collaborations between postsecondary learning centers and subject experts.

Learners’ Perception of the Transition to Instructor-Led Online Learning Environments: Facilitators and Barriers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Online learning environments (OLE) continue to expand due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the transition of a majority of educational institutions and universities worldwide from traditional classroom settings to online learning methods. The purpose of this study was to understand the perceptions of learners at a university in India toward the sudden transition from traditional face-to-face learning to an instructor-led OLE due to the pandemic-induced lockdown enforced across India in March 2020. Using a qualitative case study approach, structured interviews were conducted via Microsoft Teams with 35 learners from Savitribai Phule Pune University, a large public university in India. Interviews comprised eight open-ended questions, which were validated by experts. Results indicate that learners accepted the transition toward the OLE. Five key themes arose from the interview data: accessibility and comfort, Internet connectivity, OLE effectiveness, course content, and interactions between students and instructors. The study provides insights to the researchers with the emergent themes from the research. Also, it carries practical implications concerning implications regarding infrastructure readiness for remote learners, acceptance, and adoption of OLEs by faculty instructors, organizational support, and facilitating conditions.

The Creation of a Collaborative, Case-Based Learning Experience in a Large-Enrollment Classroom.

Numerous educational studies have shown that passive learning methods are frequently associated with disappointing learning outcomes, yet many faculty instructors continue to rely on passive didactic lectures. This article describes the creation of an active learning teaching approach-referred to as the collaborative, case-based classroom-that combines three pedagogical strategies: peer-assisted learning, case-based learning, and just-in-time teaching. Data from student surveys of a third-year cardiology elective showed a preference for this teaching approach compared with a case-based lecture. Six major themes emerged from survey analysis: engagement/interactivity, instructional benefit, clinical reasoning, clinical relevance, peer-assisted learning, and timely feedback. Although detailed here in the context of a cardiology elective, the collaborative, case-based classroom is a teaching approach that could be modified to fit a variety of other teaching environments.

Students and faculty perception of distance medical education outcomes in resource-constrained system during COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional study

IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic has imposed significant challenges on medical education worldwide, particularly in experience- and resource-limited regions of the world. Collaborative efforts of educators and academic institutions are necessary to facilitate the adaptation to the new educational reality. In this study, challenges and outcomes of a newly implemented distance education curriculum are examined to share findings and provide recommendations. MethodsAn alternative distance education curriculum with online resources and virtual lectures was developed and implemented in February 2020 at the Wasit University College of Medicine in Iraq. A post-implementation survey was developed for both faculty instructors and students to evaluate the program's effectiveness and perception. Results were compared between both groups. The study was approved by the University's Dean and exempted by the research committee for anonymity. ResultsA total of 636 students and 81 instructors were surveyed. Approximately 33% of students and 51% of instructors found online education equivalent or superior to traditional face-to-face teaching methods. Almost 69% of students and 51% of instructors reported increased difficulties with virtual learning, primarily due to challenges with the available technology, unreliable internet connectivity, as well as perceive fatigue when listening to online lectures. ConclusionsDistance education provides a worthwhile alternative during the COVID-19 pandemic, including in regions of limited experience. Adequate preparation, good quality audio-visuals and Internet, and student engagement activities are recommended to improve the quality of education.

RETRACTED: Smart Japanese listening course design based on data intelligent analysis and FPGA

Japan's lack of English communication opportunities proves to be a challenge for the learner, as there is no consistent training in listening and speaking English and will not provide significant improvement as a foreign language. A Japanese faculty teacher will launch a mobile-assisted language learning shadow application to overcome these difficulties. Students can cultivate their ears during shadow training. It is officially accepted that technology can be useful in improving speaking and listening. It then considers the change in motivation, influence, oral communication in English, English proficiency of first-year college students, and most science and engineering significant activities. Referral services based on user activities on the Internet, such as data analysis, can benefit Internet service providers and users. Although these services use a lot of statistical data that can be obtained through content and online transactions, they also face the challenge of ensuring that service providers do not infringe on their services' privacy. However, the large amount of data received by a network imposes a high predictable cost of the new implementation. This article focuses on accelerating its use in web service data anonymization and enabling data anonymization in Field Programmable Gate Teams (FPGA). Anonymizer proposes RAM and uses real network traffic to evaluate how it completes the test network usage.

Student Perception of Case-based Teaching by Near-Peers and Faculty during the Internal Medicine Clerkship: A Noninferiority Study.

Introduction:Third-year medical students traditionally receive their didactic or small group teaching sessions from clinical faculty during clerkship rotations. Near-peer teaching is increasingly recognized as an acceptable method for teaching, however most near-peer teaching takes place during the pre-clinical curriculum. We sought to determine if fourth year medical students were noninferior to faculty in facilitating small group discussions during clerkship rotations.Methods:Seventy-five third-year medical students participated in a small group session focused on rheumatologic diseases during their internal medicine clerkship rotation. Students were taught by fourth-year medical students who self-selected to participate as near-peer teachers at 1 clinical site (near-peers, N = 36) and by clinical faculty at another site (N = 39). At the end of the session, third-year medical students completed a survey evaluating teacher performance and effectiveness.Results:There was no significant difference between the 2 groups on each of the 17 survey items assessing teacher performance, the total teaching performance score, and the teaching effectiveness rating (all P-values >.05). A mean between-group difference of 2% in favor of the near-peers indicated noninferiority of the near-peer teachers compared with faculty teachers on the total teaching performance score. An absolute difference of 14% in favor of the near-peers indicated noninferiority of the near-peer teachers compared with faculty teachers on the teaching effectiveness score. Near-peer teachers reported several benefits, including improving their own medical knowledge and skills as a future educator.Discussion:Our data supports the noninferiority of the perceived performance and effectiveness of near-peer teachers compared to faculty teachers in the clerkship setting. Adding near-peer teachers to the clerkship setting is feasible and can be beneficial to all stakeholders.

Translanguaging as a Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for Teaching English to Multilingual Pakistani University Students

While Pakistan is a country with dual national languages, English and Urdu, there are over 74 regional languages actively spoken by its citizens. A changing and post-colonial world is placing demands on students to communicate and do business in English; however, their pre-university preparation across regions does not always, or often, provide adequate English mastery prior to their tertiary schooling where English is required knowledge. This study explores English teaching and learning of Pakistani learners attending a tertiary level institution. To seek solutions to some of the challenges they face, the study posits the possibility of translanguaging as a culturally responsive pedagogical approach to provide a pathway through which instructors might promote and maintain the country’s linguistic diversity while simultaneously promoting greater mastery of English. The data used for analysis were obtained from 1) 15 faculty instructors of English at this university and 2) 15 student participants who speak five of the major languages spoken in Pakistan. Findings reveal faculty perceptions and ideas about translanguaging as a culturally responsive pedagogy to be open to new considerations for meaning-making but in need of scaffolding in order to understand these approaches for teaching English to university learners. Insights into prioritizing students’ mother tongue as a point of departure and a resource in their learning suggests potential for creating a cross-over with the target language (English) to arrive at greater student engagement and more meaningful mastery of English as an outcome.

University instructors’ knowledge for teaching organic chemistry mechanisms

Many recent studies document the difficulties that students experience when learning organic chemistry, often due to the complex visualization and reasoning skills required to successfully understand the ways molecules interact in specific environments. Many of these studies call on instructors to improve their teaching strategies to support students’ learning of organic chemistry mechanisms, but few have focused on instructors’ knowledge of organic chemistry and how they use their knowledge to teach this topic. To investigate university instructors’ knowledge for teaching organic chemistry mechanisms, we utilized a task-based think-aloud interview protocol where graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) and faculty instructors assessed authentic undergraduate student responses to three organic chemistry mechanism questions. We describe this knowledge for a substitution, an acid–base, and an addition reaction. For all mechanisms, we describe how GTA participants’ knowledge for teaching related to their content knowledge. This result revealed differences between GTA and faculty participants’ knowledge for teaching mechanisms that were specific to features of each mechanistic task. For example, in a substitution reaction question, all faculty participants recognized and explained issues with a student's drawing of a transition state and apparent understanding of partial bonds. These features of the student's drawing were not recognized by any GTA participants, who focused instead on the student's prior knowledge about ionic bonding. These findings qualitatively illuminate strengths and weaknesses in graduate students’ knowledge for teaching which can guide how they are supported as instructors.

Community of Practice Among Faculty Team-Teaching Education Doctorate (Ed.D.) Students: A Reflective Study

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of the study was to contribute to knowledge about the ways in which incorporating a Community of Practice into doctoral seminar teaching and course management could be a practical and sustainable path to professional development for doctoral faculty aspiring to become stewards of the practice of teaching. Background: This report documents a reflective self-study conducted by four professors engaged in a community of practice while team-teaching a linked pair of EdD seminars on action research at Arizona State University. Methodology: This reflective study used field notes and written reflections as its sources of data to examine how participants’ identities as professors of education changed during and after participating in a team-taught professional doctoral pair of courses. Contribution: An important goal of the community of practice was to promote faculty professional development as stewards of the practice of teaching. Engaging in disciplined reflection on teaching is uncommon in American graduate education and rarely documented in the literature of post-compulsory education. Findings: Analysis of post-hoc reflective accounts and contemporaneous notes revealed a general pattern of gradual transformation by the teaching team members. The professors moved from anxious concern about appearing competent to growing confidence and appreciation for the potential of a community of practice to provide significant professional benefits to students and faculty. Salutary features of reflective team teaching in a community of practice persist in participants’ subsequent teaching practice. Recommendations for Practitioners: Reported benefits include eagerness for team teaching, increased openness to pedagogical suggestions from peers, comfort with being observed by colleagues while teaching, and willingness to revise plans when initial plans and practices are not working effectively for students. Recommendation for Researchers: Data analysis and testimony support the claim that engaging in a CoP, in this case, did support their identity transformation as stewards of their own practice as instructors and professors of education. However, the study design does not support a claim that most or all future Communities of Practice in doctoral education will produce similar salutary results. Testing this proposition will require additional research in settings and programs different from the one represented here. Impact on Society: Implementing communities of practice in doctoral programs can make room for professional development for both the faculty team and for the students. Future Research: Further studies could be conducted to document the ways in which other communities of practice can be used to develop faculty instructors in masters and doctoral programs and in undergraduate education.

Dimensions of Variation in Chemistry Instructors’ Approaches to the Evaluation and Grading of Student Responses

Chemistry faculty instructors (FIs) and graduate student instructors (GSIs) regularly engage in the evaluation and grading of student responses in formal formative and summative assessments. In this study, we identified dimensions of variation in these instructors‘ approaches to the evaluation and grading of students’ answers. Using qualitative methods of research, we conducted individual interviews in which participating chemistry FIs and GSIs were asked to evaluate and grade the same set of students’ responses to a typical exam prompt and justify their decisions. Our results indicate that an observed variability in assigned grades emerged from the complex interaction of explicit and implicit decisions made and preferences manifested along various dimensions. Our findings suggest avenues for the professional development of chemistry instructors that can help reduce grading variability.

Instructional Competence and Faculty Performance among Maritime Schools in Central Luzon

The study investigated into the maritime faculty quality and excellence in education, mainly because they oversee facilitation of their students learning experiences. The effectiveness of their teaching is one of the factors that determine how well students' cadets would do in their voyage towards knowledge and acquisition. Thus, the advocacy to promote academic excellence and quality maritime education in the Philippines, as Philippine Merchant Marine Academy aims to be a center of maritime research making this institutional research in a regional scope to evaluate the instructional competence and faculty performance among maritime schools in Central Luzon. Descriptive survey design was used and this research was conducted in the ter-tiary level of the public and maritime schools in Region III. School year 2018-2019. The locale of the study is the three school duly rec-ognized by Commission on Higher Education (CHED). The respondents of the study were twenty-eight (28) technical maritime faculty from central Luzon offering a program of study of Bachelor of Science in marine transportation and in Bachelor of Science in marine engi-neering. Questionnaire was the main instrument used for the data collection. Pearson Moment Correlation, ANOVA, means, percentages and standard deviations were used to analyze the data. The results of the study showed that the quality of teachers was high in terms of their academic and professional qualifications, and it did reflect much in the performance of the students.

Multiple Methods of Teaching Arts Between Past and Present in Jordanian Universities

The study in concepts of Fine Arts educational methods in the Jordanian Universities from the perspectives of instructors in Fine Arts faculty at Yarmouk University and Arts and design faculty at Jordanian University in the academic year 2019/2020, the researcher used the descriptive analyses approach. The study population consists of Fine Arts faculty instructors at Yarmouk University (55) and Arts and design faculty instructors in the Jordanian University (32)with 87. The study tool was applied to the plastics art department instructors with a number (26) and with a percentage (98%). To achieve the study's goal, the researcher has conducted a 56-items questioner distributed on five main areas: the purposes of teaching Fine Arts, the reality of Fine Arts teaching, modern teaching methods, Fine Arts attitudes, and Fine Arts learning approaches. The validity and reliability of the tool have been verified.The study results showed that teaching Fine Arts objectives were high in the Jordanian universities with an average (2.54). The reality of Fine Arts teaching in the Jordanian universities was high with average (2.39, the fine arts teaching methods used in the Jordanian universities were high with average (2, 42). According to instructors ' perspective, attitudes toward Fine Arts in the Jordanian universities were high with average (2, 45), and the effectiveness of teaching approaches used in teaching Fine Arts in the Jordanian universities was high with average (2, 48). On light of the previous results, the researcher recommended some recommendations to modernize Fine Arts teaching methods. Keywords: Concept changes, Good perception of meaning, Fine arts, Teaching Methods DOI: 10.7176/JTHS/52-04 Publication date: December 31 st 2020