Instructor Reflections Research Articles

발달장애 대학생의 장애무용 수업 실천적 지식 형성 과정에 관한 자문화기술지

Objectives The purpose of this study is to explores the process of forming practical knowledge in dance classes for college students with developmental disabilities, using autoethnography. Methods Data were collected during the dance classes taught in the Department of Special Physical Education at University A from September 2018 to December 2019 and from March 2021 to June 2023. The collected data include self-reflective materials, class logs, field files, and cultural artifacts. The data were analyzed using emotion coding, contrast coding, and evaluation coding, and were described using confessional and emotive writing. Results Educational environment knowledge was formed through the process of addressing questions that emerged between the conflicts of “New Challenges: What Should Be Taught?” and “Research vs. Educational Field.” The curriculum and course content were shaped through the interaction of dance education, college students with deveopmental disabilities, and university education. This was categorized under “Creating My Identity in University Dance for Students with Disabilities: How Should It Be Taught?:” and further subdivided into “Reconsidering Traditional Dance Education Methods: Completing to the End,” “Thoughtful Movement,” “Making story”, and “The Instructor as a Discoverer.” Conclusions The instructor's reflection and introspection on education, as well as their belief in their own teaching, serve as the driving force for their growth. Practical knowledge is not static; it changes organically through the interaction between the instructor, the students, and the educational environment. As the agent of this change, the educator must explore new educational challenges and opportunities, using them to improve and transform their teaching.

“Not a cookie cutter situation”: how neurodivergent students experience group work in their STEM courses

BackgroundAlthough group work is increasingly used in STEM courses and may lead to improved academic outcomes, there is evidence that some implementations of group work may lead to unintended barriers for certain students’ learning. Despite the growing number of neurodivergent undergraduate students, there is limited research on neurodivergent students’ experiences with group work in STEM courses. To address this knowledge gap, the current research investigated the experiences of 22 neurodivergent undergraduate students with group work in STEM courses at a range of institution types and in a variety of STEM disciplines. Participants shared experiences with in-class and out-of-class group work assignments for lecture and laboratory courses.ResultsThrough inductive thematic coding of semi-structured interview transcripts, we identified seven themes impacting participants’ experiences. Three themes were individual level: personal characteristics that participants associated with their neurodivergence; strategies for academic success (with subthemes of organization/time management, adaptive communication, and self-advocacy); and beliefs on group work’s value. Four themes were group level/classroom level: group dynamics; role in group (including leadership roles); the competitive culture within STEM; and recommendations for instructors. Through a social-relational perspective on disability, we proposed a model showcasing how group and classroom factors serve as supports or barriers to neurodivergent students’ full participation in group work, as well as to their sense of belonging. Using the seven themes we articulated, we outlined a set of practices for designing group work assignments. In addition, we propose how pairing inclusive assignment design with instructor reflection and articulating anti-ableist values can support neurodivergent student belonging by disrupting discourses of normalcy in STEM.ConclusionsAs one of the first studies exploring the impact that group work in STEM courses has on neurodivergent undergraduates, this work may inform reimaginations of group work practices to better address the needs of neurodivergent STEM students and support a more inclusive culture in STEM classrooms. In addition, our conceptual model may serve as the basis for future research regarding interactions between individual-level and group-level factors associated with neurodivergent students’ learning through group work and other active learning practices.

Hands-on engineering design in an undergraduate thermodynamics learning context

Hands-on engineering design is a critical element of quality engineering education commonly featured in the first and last year of undergraduate programs. Technical science and engineering coursework dominate the sophomore and junior year, often with fewer hands-on design experiences. We sought to mitigate this by integrating a hands-on engineering design project into a second-year thermodynamics-focused course for mechanical engineering students. We iterated on a heat-to-work device design project developed by Shepard and Hoxie to make it more open-ended, and to introduce a ‘who’ and a ‘why’ into the project by having students design devices to help hypothetical users accomplish tasks. We analyzed student reflections about the project using an inductive thematic approach. Our results indicate that the project was challenging; students consistently described experiencing failures. Most students were eventually able to succeed in the project using a combination of design iteration, risk-taking, and adaptation. They articulated growth in engineering design capabilities (including the valuation of simplicity in designs, brainstorming, applied learning, and time management), and increases in confidence (including takeaways about the importance of self-trust and intuition). In this paper, we present the revised project design and findings from its implementation using student and instructor reflections, and suggestions about how it could be implemented in thermodynamics courses for other mechanical engineering programs.

Instructor Reflections from a Graduate-level Course on STEM Education Research and Practice

The University of Guelph has piloted a graduate-level course on STEM Education. The course sought to balance research and practice lenses, including learning outcomes and activities related to learning theories, epistemologies, research methodologies, and an embedded Instructional Skills Workshop. The course was intentionally designed to target affective learning domains, challenging learner beliefs and values about teaching and research. The aim is to share critical reflections from the co-instructors following the first offering of the course, with a focus on philosophical approaches, expectations, student perceptions, threshold concepts, and the negotiation of meaning. Key themes identified in both reflections included: exploration, transformation, climate & community and logistics & operations. These themes illustrate learning as a process, depending on the openness of learners to question pre-existing beliefs, and re-build existing mental models. The resulting transformation is aided by collaboratively learning with others, where different perspectives and values help students uncover their own.

Launching new sustainability-focused engineering economics modules: materials, instructor reflections and student feedback

All engineering students in Canada must take an Engineering Economics course as part of program accreditation requirements. These courses mainly focus on the evaluation of monetary profits and direct financial costs incurred during the design, operation and decommissioning phases of projects. This approach, however, does not always reflect the true costs of these projects, and the modern engineer must also consider environmental and social elements when evaluating their viability or feasibility. To modernize course content and include these considerations, four new instructional modules incorporating sustainability in economic decision-making have been created and implemented in CIVL 403 at the University of Btitish Columbia as a pilot. Topics include environmental accounting, life cycle analysis, social impact assessment tools, and social and cultural capital. Student feedback suggests they value and are interested in the topics connected to sustainability, and are largely supportive of content like this being included in engineering economics courses as part of engineering training.

Reflections of Chinese Middle School English Instructors and Learners on Efficiency of English Education

This article sheds light on a survey study on the reflection of English teaching and learning by teachers and students in high schools in China. Forty-Two English teachers and 156 students from four high schools in Hunan Province participated in the study. They responded to questions through an online survey about their English learning and teaching experience. The survey also asked the participants to share their comments and opinions on how to make improvement and changes to make English education more effective and efficient. The data were discussed and analyzed in comparing with English learning experience and process of native speakers of English in the United States. Findings of this study suggest that more exposure to authentic English, extensive reading, and daily oral communication be enhanced to improve the learners’ proficiency. This study indicates that the current learning process and instructional sequence are not effective and efficient. Some fundamental issues related to learning sequence, learning efficiency, curriculum policy and design are addressed, and suggestions are made for future research and English education reform.

Reflections of art history instructors on an educational digital game: A narrative case study

The current paper is based on a large art-based project that aims to explore the art history instructors’ practice-based reflections on their adoption, implementation, and use of the educational video game, ARTè: Lumiére, which is an exploration game designed to enhance art history and art appreciation courses in the context of the birth of French Impressionism. The data were gathered from three art history instructors teaching in higher education through semi-structured interviews with a particular focus on reflection on their undergraduate students’ engagement and learning experience during the gameplay. Results indicate that there were four major emergent themes, including self-reflection, reinforcement of learning, Lumiére as a game changer, and overcoming the obstacles. Regarding the instructors’ reflections and experiences, we suggest that instructors’ presence during the gameplay and the game design process might have a significant impact on the students’ learning experience.

Teaching Ethics in Computing: A Systematic Literature Review of ACM Computer Science Education Publications

The computing education research community now has at least 40 years of published research on teaching ethics in higher education. To examine the state of our field, we present a systematic literature review of papers in the Association for Computing Machinery computing education venues that describe teaching ethics in higher-education computing courses. Our review spans all papers published to SIGCSE, ICER, ITiCSE, CompEd, Koli Calling, and TOCE venues through 2022, with 100 papers fulfilling our inclusion criteria. Overall, we found a wide variety in content, teaching strategies, challenges, and recommendations. The majority of the papers did not articulate a conception of “ethics,” and those that did used many different conceptions, from broadly applicable ethical theories to social impact to specific computing application areas (e.g., data privacy and hacking). Instructors used many different pedagogical strategies (e.g., discussions, lectures, assignments) and formats (e.g., stand-alone courses, incorporated within a technical course). Many papers identified measuring student knowledge as a particular challenge, and 59% of papers included mention of assessments or grading. Of the 69% of papers that evaluated their ethics instruction, most used student self-report surveys, course evaluations, and instructor reflections. While many papers included calls for more ethics content in computing, specific recommendations were rarely broadly applicable, preventing a synthesis of guidelines. To continue building on the last 40 years of research and move toward a set of best practices for teaching ethics in computing, our community should delineate our varied conceptions of ethics, examine which teaching strategies are best suited for each, and explore how to measure student learning.

Reflection on Business Communication in a “Fishbowl”: Increasing Active Learning and Course Effectiveness While Lowering Disconnection

Active learning is synonymous with learning by doing. Power in learning by doing has been amplified by a Confucian scholar “What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand” (Xunzi, 340- 245 BC). In the business communication class, hearing is less effective than seeing and is less effective than experience. True learning must be active, where students’ experiences produce action and connection to the real-world workplace. This pilot study explores the “Fishbowl” active learning method to teach business communication. This case study is anchored in reflective practice and the theory of learning by doing. Data were collected from instructor reflections and students’ self-report data from class discussions during the spring 2022 semester. Findings indicate that (1) practical class discussions amplify the voices of the students rather than the teacher (2) students are willing to be actively engaged with the content if allowed, (3) asking open-ended, analytical, or opinion questions increase class participation, and (4) effective teaching and learning occurs when instructors engage in reflective practice.

An Action Research Study of Digital Storytelling Project-Based Course

This study is an action research study of a digital storytelling project-based course. The purpose of this study is to explore the way of implementing a digital storytelling project-based courses in order to make a local improvement rather than making a generalization. This paper reports the procedure of the Multimedia-Assisted English Education course, which was offered to the English language education majors for fifteen weeks in the spring semester in 2020 and its pedagogical effects in terms of the students’ competence both quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitative and qualitative data collected included students’ general English proficiency test scores (Quick Placement Test, or QPT), virtual class recordings, group activity notes, mind maps, learning journals, student and instructor reflection notes, lecture evaluations, videos of a digital storytelling project, peer evaluations, self assessments, video critiques (Lacy, 2018), transcripts of students conversations (open channels), and core competency surveys conducted at the beginning and end of the semester. Due to the COVID-19, all the classes were delivered online, which made it possible to explore on-line interaction and collaboration among seventeen students in a non-face-to-face situation. In the course of completing a digital storytelling project in a group of 8-9 students, students were reported to enhance collaborative problem-solving and mutual communication competencies.

Teaching Squares

The Teaching Squares Program involves the formation of a 3- or 4-member group of educators from different departments or disciplines. The diversity in knowledge and experience helps to promote cross-disciplinary learning and professional growth among teachers. Once the group has been formed, the teachers select a class they will each teach during the observation phase. Other teachers observe each instructor as they lead the students and engage with them. Participants then meet after they make their observations to provide feedback. The teachers meet regularly to provide feedback in a supportive and constructive manner.
 The Teaching Squares Program helps to promote continuous professional growth and development. As teachers observe their peers, they learn practical strategies that their peers use to encourage a collaborative and supportive learning environment. A significant benefit of Teaching Squares is that faculty can observe and learn from their colleagues. In this program, teachers observe their colleagues in the teaching process and give feedback using given criteria. Teaching Squares allows teachers to receive feedback on their teaching approach and strategies from their peers. The program encourages the teachers to reflect on their practice and seek practical opportunities for development and growth. This program is a multidisciplinary model for instructor reflection and assessment. Furthermore, Teaching Squares provides a sense of togetherness and collaboration among faculty members.
 Usually, teachers devote much of their time to preparing lessons, teaching, and assessing students, leaving them with little time to observe and learn from colleagues. Teaching Squares is a structured program that allows teachers to observe and learn from their colleagues. It is a practical approach that can help improve their performance and effectiveness. This is a peer review process that allows collaboration and reflection among faculty members. Teaching Squares is a structured program that involves approximately 3 to 4 faculty members who observe their colleagues in the teaching process and give feedback using given criteria. The program aims to provide faculty with a platform to observe and learn from each other's teaching approaches in a non-competitive and supportive environment. The participating members follow the teaching process of their colleagues and then offer helpful feedback as they engage in reflective discussions.

Teaching social work group practice competencies through an online mutual aid MSW peer support group assignment

ABSTRACT Social work educators find it a challenge to create meaningful and realistic experiential learning opportunities for distance education students to practice and demonstrate competence in social group work practice and telehealth skills. The ‘Peer Support Group for First Year MSW students’ assignment was designed to meet this need. For the assignment, students form a small mutual aid peer support group that is delivered through web-conferencing, and each student is responsible for creating, implementing, facilitating, and evaluating one group session, which they record and submit for instructor review. They participate as group members for the remaining peer support group sessions. Student feedback and instructor reflections reveal that it provides a realistic group facilitation experience for students to practice their group telehealth skills, and that students benefit from the community of support and mutual aid they receive from participating in the groups. This assignment demonstrates that social work students in distance-education courses can engage in experiential practice experiences that develop their competence in social group work practice, so that they are prepared to meet workforce needs.

Interdisciplinary Pedagogy through Problem-Based Learning

This case study piloted an interdisciplinary Problem-Based Learning course, utilizing Hung’s (2006) 3C3R model. We explain the course design, curriculum, and implementation. We collected qualitative written questionnaires from students who participated in the course to investigate their learning experiences. As a result, students shed light on lessons they learned throughout the course, which led to the creation of a lessons learned guide for future instructors. This guide encompasses 8 lessons that were gleaned by both qualitative student feedback and instructor reflections from the course. These lessons include allocating in-class time to work on projects, using a modular approach in the course design, presenting students with real-life problems related to the topic of the course, providing in-class case studies for students to get acquainted with examples of previous work, grouping students from diverse academic backgrounds together when possible, utilizing online and librarian resources, surveying the classroom on their comfort with self-directed learning beforehand, and including a self-reflection piece at the end of the course.

Responsible Robotics: A Socio-Ethical Addition to Robotics Courses

We are witnessing a rapid increase in real-world autonomous robotic deployments in environments ranging from indoor homes and commercial establishments to large-scale urban areas, with applications ranging from domestic assistance to urban last-mile delivery. The developers of these robots inevitably have to make impactful design decisions to ensure commercially viability, but such decisions have serious real-world consequences. Unfortunately it is not uncommon for such projects to face intense bouts of social backlash, which can be attributed to a wide variety of causes, ranging from inappropriate technical design choices to transgressions of social norms and lack of community engagement. To better prepare students for the rigors of developing and deploying real-world robotics systems, we developed a Responsible Robotics teaching module, intended to be included in upper-division and graduate level robotics courses. Our module is structured as a role playing exercise which aims to equip students with a framework for navigating the conflicting goals of human actors which govern robots in the field. We report on instructor reflections and anonymous survey responses from offering our responsible robotics module in both a graduate-level, and an upper-division undergraduate robotics course at UT Austin. The responses indicate that students gained a deeper understanding of the socio-technical factors of real-world robotics deployments than they might have using self-study methods, and the students proactively suggested that such modules should be more broadly included in CS courses.

The Complexities and Benefits of Community-Partnered Projects for Engineering Capstone Design Students

Community-partnered engineering projects provide a mechanism for cultivating the development of sociotechnical engineers prepared to design within diverse and complex cultural, environmental, social, and other contexts. During the 2021–2022 academic year, we guided three teams of senior undergraduate engineering students through year-long community-partnered projects for their required capstone design course, which instead typically features corporate/industry-sponsored projects. We analyzed end-of-semester reflections (both fall and spring semester) from each student using inductive thematic analysis to explore how they perceived their experiences. The themes that emerged from the student reflections, including connectivity, transdisciplinary, multiple stakeholders, sustainability, justice, and ethics, are all components of the sociotechnical engineering capabilities that we are working to develop in our students. We consider these findings encouraging, and suggestive that integrating community-partnered projects into engineering capstone design offerings is worthwhile and effective. However, our implementation was not without challenges, such as trying to force the projects to fit into a course structure and timeline developed to support corporate/industry-sponsored project teams, which was burdensome to the community-partnered project teams. In this paper, we highlight both the complexities and benefits of this approach and insights gained from student and instructor reflections.

Development and Evaluation of an Experiential Career Planning Assignment to Train Students to Assess Organizational Fit.

Determining if an employment opportunity will be a good match can feel daunting, especially for veterinary graduates entering the workforce. To ease this transition, veterinary educators traditionally have attempted to provide career support through interspersed didactic lectures on career options and the preparation of employment documents. While well intended, this approach fails to address the multiple dimensions of effective career planning or the reality that career planning is a lifelong endeavor. For a career-planning teaching modality to be effective, it must address all stages of career planning and provide a framework that can be adapted throughout a career. Here we describe how a four-stage career-planning model, utilized throughout higher education, was employed to create a career planning assignment for guiding students in assessing organizational fit. We describe how student feedback was used to inform revisions, resulting in an improved educational experience as measured by students' perceptions of the utility of the assignment. Additional recommendations based on instructor reflection are provided to guide creation and implementation of future assignments. Given the growing support for professional skills training in veterinary medical education, we view incorporation of such learning activities as essential to preparing students to enter the modern veterinary workplace.

Emerging from the pandemic: instructor reflections and students' perceptions on an introductory programming course in blended learning.

Teaching an introductory programming course to first-year students has long been a challenge for many college instructors. The COVID-19 pandemic, which caused unprecedented shifts in learning modality across the globe, has worsened the learning experience of novice programmers. Instructors have to find innovative ways to keep students engaged and learning. Blended or hybrid learning has become a new preferred way of learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Blended learning is viewed as a combination of both in-person and online instructions. Such a learning environment offers instructors the flexibility to provide learners with an engaging face-to-face learning experience while promoting the well-being and safety of students. Starting Fall 2020, York College (and other CUNY colleges) has since offered several courses in hybrid mode. Two years have passed since the abrupt transition. There were several lessons learned from the experiences. In this paper, I discussed evidence-based pedagogical approaches that were used to teach students in an introductory computer programming class at York College, CUNY, where blended learning was used. Student perceptions of learning experience and obtaining coding skills in both online and in-person environments are also presented. The findings from the survey suggested that students benefited from face-to-face interactions and feedback, while those who preferred an online environment liked the flexibility that online components offer. Through careful design and implementation of pedagogical approaches used in the class, novice programmers could potentially benefit from both face-to-face and online components of blended learning.

Pedagogical Strategies for Enhancing the Outcomes of Weekly Readings

This study explores different pedagogical methods to understand what motivates undergraduate and graduate engineering students to read more thoroughly, deeply and with greater criticality. It analyzes three associated activities that were intended to encourage reading: a summary of the readings, an online discussion board and a student-led discussion. The study explores questions about the amount and depth of reading, and students’ perceptions of the value of the readings and associated activities. Data was collected using the following methods: student questionnaires and focus groups, TA and instructor reflections, end of course evaluations and student grades. The results indicate thatthe associated assignments encouraged students to read more and motivated the students to read with more depth and criticality. Overall, the students had a positive perception of the readings and assignments, but they also identified pedagogical improvements that would have encouraged them to be more engaged with the reading material. The results of this research show that the associated activities in all three iterations of the undergraduate course increased reading compliance. The online discussion activities increased the depth of reading more than the summary assignment, though the discussion students read less of the entire reading weekly. The overall student perception of the reading assignment was that the assignment was good but could be made more effective with some changes. Future iterations of the courses could include new pedagogical strategies with interactive components to increase depth and engagement.

Reflecting on Hybrid Learning in Studio-based Courses: Complications and Effectiveness during the Pandemic and Beyond

The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in courses transitioning to fully remote learning, or considering hybrid models. Such models demonstrated great potential, making an argument for consideration even beyond the pandemic. In this paper, co-instructors of a synchronous hybrid design studio course present their experience of such a course and recommendations for future synchronous hybrid design studio courses. Through instructor reflections and student surveys/interviews, we present successes and failures of several aspects of the course, such as pre-recorded content, technology and software usage, groupwork, and project activities.

A Self-Investigation into Thai EFL Writing Instructors’ Perceptions toward Written Feedback on College Students’ Writing Essay Assignment

Although the behavior and impacts of instructor reflection in writing classes have been extensively studied over the past few decades, a significant proportion of the work has concentrated on students' attitudes and utilization of all such responses, as opposed to teachers' perspectives, self-assessments, and actual text comments given. Research findings on instructors' attitudes regarding students' written work are far from conclusive. This research gathered data from eight Thai-nationality writing instructors of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and one hundred and six Thai undergraduate students in order to assess teachers' attitudes toward written comments. In addition, the researcher analyzed instructors' self-evaluations of written feedback and the link between their self-evaluations and whether they even responded to EFL areas. The results revealed that these instructors' self-evaluations of the comments that they claimed they generally supplied and the genuine reflection they delivered on student writing were fairly consistent. The results also reveal that while marking writing drafts, these instructors were far more bothered with local issues, particularly grammatical, and this attention persisted throughout the amendments of the writing. Instructors' predilection for and reliance on grammatical accuracy in their comments may misguide students into prioritizing writing characteristics and then into believing that a zero-blunder essay is a competent and better-quality written work. Remarkably, despite the fact that instructors appeared to dwell on local problems for correction, all favorable comments on essays focused on global features. These instructors had little professional training in evaluating student written assignments, according to the findings of this research.