Main Teaching Objective Research Articles

A Virtual Exchange to Boost Students’ Intercultural Communication Skills in English

. How can universities enhance their students’ internationalisation at home? The need to find teaching methodologies that boost students’ intercultural communication skills without travelling abroad has motivated the present study, carried out by two English lecturers from Florida Universitaria in Spain and Jade University of Applied Sciences in Germany. Research was divided into two stages: first, a deep analysis of the intercultural experiences organised in the past at both universities; and second, the implementation of virtual encounters with students from different cultures as tools to promote interculturality at the home university. This paper aims at showing the impact of those exchanges on boosting students’ intercultural communication in English. Two groups of undergraduate students, during their English classes, worked synchronously on topics related to essential aspects of intercultural communication. The main teaching objectives of the Virtual Intercultural Communication (VIC) exchange were to increase participants’ motivation for knowing other cultures, to raise their intercultural awareness, to foster their capacity to change perspectives, and to improve students’ English language skills and their digital abilities. Through the outcomes achieved, students’ self-reported feedback, and lecturers’ observation, it can be concluded that virtual exchanges are effective tools to improve students’ intercultural communication while they meet the English learning objectives.

Research on the Reform of Practical Teaching of Internet of Things Engineering in the Context of New Engineering

The emergence of new engineering disciplines has resulted in the growing trend of cross-discipline, and theenhancement of students’ technical application ability has become the main teaching objective of engineering disciplines. For this reason, the Internet of Things (IoT) engineering program should be actively reformed, providing students with sufficient opportunities to improve their practical skills. This paper identifies the challenges within practical teaching of IoT engineering, delves into effective strategies for practical IoT teaching within the context of emerging engineering disciplines, and presents practical teaching experiences from the School of Information Engineering at Hainan University of Science and Technology as a case study. The aim is to offer guidance and insights to educators in this field.

Empowering the next generation of leaders

Learning outcomes The main teaching objective for the case is for students to build a better understanding of how to advance women (and other minorities) in the workplace through mentorship. This is achieved through recognizing the wide variety of issues that enable and constrains women’s advancement in the workplace; defining mentoring, sponsorship, coaching and networking; and highlighting how mentoring, sponsorship, coaching and networking can overcome the challenges of facing women’s advancement in the workplace? Case overview/synopsis The case study explores the role of senior women leaders in the career advancement of other women in the workplace. It helps us understand how mentoring can address the low prevalence of women at senior levels despite companies’ efforts to advance women. The case profiles the career and leadership journey of a senior female executive, Maserame Mouyeme. It documents her rise from the dusty streets of Soweto, South Africa to become one of the first black female executives in several corporate contexts across Africa and especially at Coca-Cola. The case illustrates her practice of mentoring and its impact on her and others’ careers. Also illustrated is Mouyeme’s leadership style, mentoring approach and workplace experiences. Students deliberate Mouyeme’s dilemma: whether to continue to advance a new generation of women leaders or whether to focus on her core role of building the business she is responsible for. The selected research method is a teaching case study, grounded in an exploratory approach. Primary data was collected via semi-structured interviews with the protagonist and four of her mentees. Secondary data was collected via studies about the protagonist and the companies she has worked for in her career. The case provides empirical insights about the role of leaders and especially women, in advancing women. The case shows the approaches in which organizations can advance women. It also shows how emerging leaders can better manage their own careers. The case deepens knowledge of women advancement and career development. Complexity academic level The case is appropriate for post-graduate level study, including MBA-level. It is also appropriate for use on executive development programs. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

Brief Discussion on the Application of Micro Course in the Flipped Classroom of Professional English in Higher Vocational Education—Taking Hotel English as an Example

With the development of science and technology, information-based teaching methods have gradually become popular. Teaching methods such as pictures + video + interesting animation have improved the traditional teaching mode, made the classroom alive, and increased students' interest in learning. This article uses the "micro class" combined with the "flip class" teaching mode, allowing the "micro class" to enter the hotel English teaching and the pre-learning and post-learning , which used in English class in colleges and universities, so that students have more opportunities to contact English . Combined with the situation in the hotel work, students can understand the application of hotel English more deeply. This article takes "Hotel English" teaching as an example, analyzes the applicability of micro-learning applied teaching courses in hotel English, conducts feedback research on the design and effect of practical processes, finds out problems and proposes suitable teaching methods for the course, in order to the purpose of teaching reform. The core content of "micro class" is the classroom teaching video (lesson clip). Students are not easy to get tired and absorb the teaching content in the learning process. The content of the micro course includes the teaching design, material courseware and so on. According to the teaching theme and teaching thoughts, micro course can make "small environment" for learner. . For the students of Higher Vocational Education, "micro class" learning time is not long and easy to master knowledge. Before class, students learn and preview the teaching content by watching videos and other ways on micro course. In class, teachers check the students' learning situation through interactive mode. It can arouse the students' memory, improve the students` learning efficiency. Hotel English in professional English of Higher Vocational Education is the core course of hotel management. Its main teaching objective is to cultivate students' practical ability of listening, speaking and translating in the hotel workplace environment, and train students' basic skills of hotel service. In the process of hotel English teaching, teachers must create a working environment atmosphere and pay attention to the three-dimensional training and practice of listening, speaking and translating based on the completion of hotel tasks. The application of micro class teaching mode provides a huge space and platform for English teaching, and provides students with more intuitive situational teaching.

Case Article—Workforce Scheduling for Airport Immigration on the Island of Tropical Paradise

This case study focuses on modeling and analyzing the practices concerning the staffing of the immigration agency at the Island of Tropical Paradise International Airport, which is responsible for processing arriving passengers into the country. Students are challenged to model the status quo of immigration employee scheduling and analyze various high-level policy changes to determine the reduction in staffing requirements while also being concerned with the wait time of passengers in the queue at immigration. The case has been used in an introductory operations research (OR) course in an engineering curriculum as a term project and was created based on a client of a major consulting organization. The main teaching objective of the case is to have students demonstrate an understanding of how to use OR models and analysis to impact practice. To this end, the case moves the students from standard classroom or textbook examples to an open-ended problem where there is not a single correct model or analysis to tackle it.

Language and Interactive Media in Teaching and Training at Akademi Pengajian Bahasa

The Industrial Revolution 4.0 (4IR) is gaining ground in technology development in Malaysia. It also involves the development and usage of technology in the national education system. The development of this technology has a positive impact on language teaching and learning as it provides new dimensions with the development of more comprehensive interactive multimedia products. This paper discusses one of the courses that prepare graduates to produce interactive multimedia. Interactive multimedia is produced based on specific topic in Malay language that aims to teach specific target groups. Language and Interactive Media is a compulsory course taken by students of the Bachelor of Applied Language Studies (Malay for Professional Communications) at the Akademi Pengajian Bahasa, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, while the Interactive Media Development course is an advanced course offered as an elective subject. The main objective of teaching and training for both courses is to ensure that students are capable of developing interactive multimedia-based learning products on Malay language and culture. The discussion was based on feedback provided through the Entrance-Exit Survey (EES), student’s learning outcome and examples of interactive media application produced by the students.

Enseñanza de idiomas: objetivos y técnicas de corrección en producción oral

Objetivo El objetivo era analizar la relación entre las técnicas de corrección explícitas/implícitas para errores orales en dirección productiva y los objetivos docentes de forma y significado en contextos de enseñanza de idiomas y Aprendizaje Integrado de Contenido y Lenguas Extranjeras (AICLE), Metodología desarrollada La metodología se articuló a partir de la recogida de datos en forma de errores orales (N=147) y las pertinentes intervenciones correctivas docentes. Para ello, se observaron clases de idiomas y AICLE (N=36) en un colegio privado de Madrid (España) en los seis cursos de Educación Primaria, Resultados Los resultados revelaron una preferencia generalizada entre ambos grupos de profesores a favor de técnicas de corrección explícitas cuyo objetivo era la forma de la lengua meta. Sin embargo, los profesores AICLE optaron también por intervenir sobre el significado cuando empleaban técnicas de corrección implícitas, Conclusiones y discusiones La conclusión principal giró en torno a la aplicación generalizada de técnicas de corrección explícitas, junto a la forma de la lengua meta como primer objetivo docente. Si bien, el enfoque AICLE también contempla la opción inversa. Esta situación puede extrapolarse al aula de idiomas mediante la aplicación contextualizada de usos lingüísticos con fines auténticamente adquisitivos.

Atividade-fim do IFPB: profissionalização e Enem

<p>This work aims to identify and describe discourse (s) and voice (s) of students and teachers from Instituto Federal da Paraíba, Picuí campus, about the main teaching aim of the institution. This study focused on the main teaching objective of IFPB in order to help the understanding of the advantages and drawbacks in the teaching process as well as the profile of the student that is approved in IFPB selection process. It is a descriptive-interpretative research whose corpus is composed of two sets of data. The first one is documentary and concerns the statute of IFPB and the public notice of the Selection Process for Presential Technical High School Courses . The second one concerns the answers to the questionnaire given by students and teachers from IFPB-campus Picuí. The Students are from Geology, Buildings and Information Technology courses, from the first and fourth years. The research is based on speech studies (FAIRCLOUGH2001), within the scope of the analysis of textually oriented discourse or critical discourse analysis, and in the concept of “voice and character”, as presented by Mey (2001) , in the context of social pragmatics. The data show that regarding the official documents of the institution, the main teaching objective of IFPB has already been consolidated, but in practice there still seems to be some disagreements with the official discourse because most of the students want quality education to pass the National High School Exam (In Portuguese, it is used the abbreviation “Enem”). This is the characteristic that defines IFPB, according to the students, and not the technical or professionalization teaching, therefore the voice of the society is that that IFPB offers students a great quality education . Some teachers also believe that , it is necessary to prepare student for Enem.</p>

Literature in Language Lessons

Teaching modern foreign languages is not all about communicative skills. It is also about testing functional abilities. While we still pay lip service to the creed of communicative language teaching, we have adopted test formats and teaching styles that follow a hidden agenda: the production of human capital. The main objective of teaching is being shifted from communicative competence to cognitive measurement. This article argues that using literature in the modern foreign language (MFL) classroom is perfectly compatible with the communicative approach and the curriculum. It highlights the fact that literature, once driven out by communicative language teaching (CLT), could now help to bring back the 'communicative spirit' that is in danger of being drowned by competency-based teaching and testing.

Razvoj posebnih kompetentnosti studenata i stimulisanje istraživačkog rada

The need for highly educated personnel is an indisputable goal and an imperative of educational strategies in the EU and Serbia as well. The labour market in the Republic of Serbia is searching for the personnel with specific competencies. It can be developed through the appropriate system of teaching at the faculties. Therefore, faculties need to be oriented towards improving the quality of teaching and towards transferring the con­crete and applicable knowledge in accordance with the needs of the national economy and public institutions. The main objective of teaching is to generate creative, computer literate personnel capable of independent research and decision making. Learning is related to knowledge, skills and competences, i.e. it is based on the use of knowledge and skills in specific situations. By completing the study programmes, students acquire general and specific abilities. They are compatible with the European Qualifications Framework. The expected goals and qualifications for each type of study and each level of study are clearly defined. The development of students' special competencies and stimulation of research work should be included in the curriculum and operationalized by some action plans during the period of education (3 or 4 years for the first, second and third level of studies). After the appropriate analysis, the model has been defined at the Faculty of Business Studies in Belgrade along with the action plan. The idea is to develop special compentencies and stimulate the students to conduct research work.

ОБУЧЕНИЕ РОДНОМУ ЯЗЫКУ В НОВОЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЙ ПРОГРАММЕ ДЛЯ ГИМНАЗИЙ ЭСТОНИИ

This article considers the content and structure of the new State Curriculum for high schools in Estonia, in which drafting the authors participated. The curriculum was applied in 2011/2012 academic year, and has being put into action gradually, starting from the 10th form. It is totally separated from the curriculum for middle schools. The main objective of teaching and education in high schools is that students are to find a field of activity of their interest and ability, which will be included in their further training. They are formative assessment and feedback that are of great attention in the new curriculum, as well as the need for conducting researches is emphasized, including mother tongue. Under the requirements of the new curriculum, studies in every subject are student-centred, i.e. they are brought in accord with students’ interests and everyday needs, e.g. in mother tongue courses the need of text-centred approach is highlighted. The number of required courses is reduced; there are more opportunities for options. In comparison with the previous curriculum, the courses on mother tongues (Estonian and Russian) are unified. Before, only 3 courses on Russian as a mother tongue were set-out, now 6 compulsory courses and 1 elective course are scheduled (like Estonian). While developing curriculum for the Russian (native) language, cross-cutting topics were taken into account. The article thoroughly describes the structure and content of the subject; it is shown how the new curriculum is being implemented in teaching practice; the realization of new text-centered courses “The Perception and Creation of an Oral Text” and “The Perception and Creation of a Written Text” as an implementation for the basic concept is instantiated. Key words: curriculum, teaching at high school level, mother tongue, text-centered approach, students’ needs.

Morning Report: Is the Time Ripe for a Change?

Background: Morning report is a time-honored part of the medical day. However, recent changes in house officer training and staffing raise questions about the educational efficacy of this daily conference. Summary: As it is currently conducted, Morning Report is an exercise in role playing that fails to achieve its main teaching objectives. This article suggests ways to modify Morning Report in an attempt to sustain the valuable purpose for which it was initially conceived. Conclusions: Refocusing the objectives of Morning Report and shifting the time to noon may restore the educational value of this important conference.

Talk about Approaches of Specialized English Teaching in Technology Undergraduate University

The main teaching objectives of Shanghai Dianji University are technology and application. Aiming at the orientation and basing on the cultivation of the major of electronic and information engineering, this paper analyzed the effect of specialized English teaching in students foreign language abilities, presented the teaching objective and approaches of specialized English teaching, and explored the relevant reform measures in specialized English teaching. These researches put forward the specialized English teaching in Shanghai Dianji University, improved students’ the level and ability of the major of electronic and information engineering.

Matching Intended And Actual French Curriculum Objectives In Selected Secondary Schools In Kenya

Intended French curriculum objectives refer to four official objectives of teaching and learning French in secondary schools in Kenya as laid down in syllabuses; namely, to equip learners with basic communicative skills, give learners access to oral and written materials, facilitate further studies, and promote global peace (Republic of Kenya, 2002). On the other hand actual curriculum objectives refer to what teachers and students of French perceive to be the objectives of teaching and learning French in secondary schools in Kenya. It is imperative that the intended and actual French curriculum objectives should match for there to be effective learning. However, the facts that French subject at secondary school continues to register low enrolment and retention of students as well as poor performance in national examinations indicate a mismatch between the 2 kinds of objectives. The purpose of the study therefore was to match intended and actual French curriculum objectives in secondary schools in Kenya. The study is based on survey design. It was carried out in 16 secondary schools offering French in Western Province of Kenya, selected by stratified random sampling to include provincial, district and private school categories. Saturated sampling technique was used to select 16 teachers of French and 327 students of French, from the 16 sample schools. Data was analyzed by use of descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations) and inferential statistics (t test). The study found match on only one objective of equipping learners with basic communicative skills. Based on these findings, it is recommended that officially French be taught starting from primary schoolsand equipping learners with basic communicative skills for effective communication where French is required be recognized as the main objective of teaching and learning French in secondary schools in Kenya.Key Words: French Curriculum, Intended Objectives, Actual Objectives, Performance

South Beauty Group: In Quest of a 'Beautiful' Growth Story

Since the 1990s, China's catering industry had boomed sharply with over 15% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate). In 2007, the catering market size of RMB1,200 billion (US$155 billion) accounted for 4.87% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in China. This percentage was only 1.5% in 1978. China's restaurant market was in a typical state of perfect competition, not only in terms of the number of players, but also in terms of the food varieties. Intrigued by the successful story of western fast food in China, the leading Chinese players were exploring how to expand their scale through the development of restaurant chains. Considering the difficulties of standardizing Chinese cuisine, the scale expansion of the Chinese Dinner segment was slower than that of Hot Pot and Chinese fast food segments. It was October 18th, 2007. As an innovative upper-middle player in the Chinese Dinner segment, the South Beauty Group, with 20 restaurants and two soon-to-be-opened restaurants under three different brands, was dreaming about expanding its scale to 100 restaurants in three years (35 in China and 65 in the international market). To meet this ambitious target, the Group faced many challenges, including standardizing Chinese cuisine, selection of domestic and international locations, development of franchising operations and the launch of an IPO. Moreover, as the only Food Service Partner of Chinese cuisine for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Group also had to organize the company's resources efficiently to fulfill this prestigious contract. This case had been developed mainly for MBA and EMBA students, with the main teaching objective being to understand the challenges of growth. The students will also be exposed to the dynamic Chinese business environment and the dreams, innovativeness and decision-making behaviors of Chinese entrepreneurs, even in such a traditional industry. An audio-visual support, including an introduction to the company, the restaurants and the dishes, and two interviews with Ms. Zhang Lan is available to instructors.

Academic Education in Complementary Medicine: A Tuscan Methodological Perspective

The implementation of complementary medicine (CM) involves a large number of persons in Italy, and in the nineties, the percentage of Italian citizens adopting the most frequent and relevant practices of CM almost doubled. Appropriate academic education in CM is an important and fascinating challenge for current didactic systems in the Italian University. Already in 2004, the Joint Italian Conference of the Deans of the Faculties of Medicine and of the Presidents of Medical Degree Courses released an official statement regarding the relationship between CM and health area degree courses. The main teaching objectives embedded in the institutional framework proposed by the Joint Italian Conference are now finding specific implementation modalities in the University of Florence. For many years, the Florence Medical School has had strong and fruitful contacts with institutional bodies in Tuscany and, together with these institutions, has established a continuous dialogue with the world of CM. This exchange has given rise to various teaching activities within the academic setting. With specific reference to the undergraduate curriculum in Medicine and Surgery, a methodological course regarding CM has been designed and conducted, with selective attention being given to the CM practices having an enhanced rate of supportive scientific evidence, such as herbal medicine and acupuncture. With regard to the postgraduate curriculum, a Master degree in Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine and a Master in Clinical Phytotherapy are already active in the University of Florence and are having a remarkable success among the attending health professionals. This high degree of satisfaction well documents the importance, need and feasibility of structured academic education in CM and, in particular, of a methodological didactics such as those currently implemented in the Florence Medical School.

The cognitive flexibility theory0

Hypermedia engineering constitutes the employment of an engineering approach to the development of hypermedia applications. Its main teaching objectives are for students to learn what an engineering approach means and how measurement can be applied.This paper presents the application of the Cognitive Flexibility Theory as an instructional theory to teach Hypermedia Engineering principles.Early results have shown that students presented a greater learning variability (suggested by their exam marks) when exposed to the CFT as a teaching practice, compared to conventional methods.

Communicerende Vaten

Theories about mother-tongue teaching and second language teaching (L1 and L2 teaching) converge on a number of aspects, viz. 1) com-municative orientation, 2) functional orientation, and 3) preference for authentic materials. Both LI and L2 theorists agree that the main teaching objective must be to give the pupils a certain level of com-municative capacity in L1 and L2 respectively (although opinions vary a great deal as to how to define the desired proficiency-level). The aim of the teaching is thus a functional, society-oriented one. L1 and L2 theorists are similarly agreed that methods and techniques employed in the teaching programme must also be functional vith respect to the main teaching objective. This goes also for the materials used, the dominant feeling being that these should be as much as possible authentic. Authenticity is more easily realized, it would seem, within LI teaching, as the pupils already possess a high degree of proficiency in their ovn language. One way of going about it would be to integrate LI teaching to a large extent in the teaching of other school-subjects. In L2 teaching this is obviously rather difficult, since the pupils in fact start from scratch. This latter fact means that In spite of the parallels that can be found, L3 and L2 teaching have completely different starting points, Since the whole acquisition process must take place within the L2 teaching situation, no L2 teaching programme can afford to overlook the grammatical aspects of the language taught. In the opinion, of certain L1 teaching theorists, on the other hand, mother-tongue teaching can very well do without grammar. The result is that in some approaches all the emphasis in LI teaching Is on the social aspects of language6 and attention to the language as a linguistic system is virtually nil. In such an approach L1 teaching becomes an emaneipatory, liberating process, From the point of view of L2 teaching this has some drawbacks, because in the teaching of grammatical aspects of L2 (be it explicitly or implicitly) awareness of a kind of structural and functional aspects of the grammatical system of the mother tongue can no longer be taken for granted. It is suggested that this is an undesirable situation and that steps should be taken by the appointed bodies to work out sorae kind of minimum grammar programme.