Seminar Course Research Articles

Assessment of Short and Longer-term Impacts of a 1-credit Chemical Engineering First-Year Seminar

We report the short- and longer-term impacts of offering a 1-credit introductory seminar to first-year chemical engineering students. Students who completed the seminar demonstrated a better awareness of the major, career opportunities, and academic success strategies than students who did not enroll in the seminar. A longer-term comparison showed that even though students who opted to enroll in the seminar were less confident to start, by graduation there were no significant differences in retention or academic performance between students who did or did not take the seminar course. Therefore, we encourage departments to consider offering a chemical engineering first-year seminar.

Discomfort, Resistance, and Othering: A Poetic Inquiry into Urban Teacher Preparation Program Redesign

This article explores the experiences of three Black female doctoral students and one White female professor as they engaged in a doctoral seminar course on the redesign of an undergraduate urban teacher preparation program at their university. Borne out of a promise to one another to write about our experiences navigating increasingly complex and politicized dynamics within the college, we explore how we, as current and future teacher educators, make sense of reform in teacher preparation. We drew from the literature on neoliberalism, whiteness as a wicked problem in teacher education, colonialism, and teacher educators’ work in the “swamp” throughout our course, for our proposals, and this article. We utilized poetic inquiry methodology to explore the real, everyday implications of program redesign in our lives and our careers. Equally important is our use of critical race theory to examine and make sense of our experiences as we engaged in this work. We discuss differences across our program redesigns, our reflections on why those differences might exist, and a reflection on the process of engaging in this way in a doctoral program. Our findings revealed feelings of discomfort with and resistance to a teacher education program redesign that centers racialized contexts in the spirit of social justice. We concluded with implications for research, policy, and the practice of teacher education as we write to understand, write to resist, and write to survive.

Embracing Age-Inclusivity Through Multimodal, Active Student Learning in a Health and Aging Policy Course

Abstract One of the goals for an upper-level undergraduate seminar course is for students to identify and discuss existing policies, programs, and resources for meeting the needs of the aging population. To encourage active student learning, the course provides a mix of readings and assignments, six intergenerational discussions, and reflective writing. The idea is that these varying experiences help foster a deep understanding of how these policies and related issues pertain and matter to everyone, not only older individuals, and how their future career and family experiences will benefit from the knowledge gained in the course regardless of their next career steps. This course model has been effective for challenging ageism, and has been taught four times, each time with modifications based on student numbers, current issues, and the pandemic. The presenter will discuss assessment methods, identify best practices, and offer suggestions for others interested in utilizing a similar model.

Perspectives Against Racism: educational and socialization efforts at the departmental level.

The current heightened social awareness and anxiety triggered by escalating violence against Black Americans in the United States demands a safe space for reflection, education, and civil discourse within the academic setting. Too often there is an unmet need paired with a collective urgent desire to better understand the chronic existing structural, social, educational, and health inequities affecting disadvantaged populations, particularly Black Americans. In this perspective, the authors provide insight into a shared learning approach that provided a forum to discuss Perspectives Against Racism (PAR). Unlike existing top-down approaches, faculty, trainees, and staff were engaged in leading a series of focused discussions to examine unconscious bias, promote awareness of implicit biases, and reflect on individual and collective roles and responsibilities in working toward becoming antiracist. An existing 1-h graduate elective seminar course was dedicated to creating a space for learning, discussion, and exchange of ideas related to the experience and existence of racism (personal and institutional/systemic). A goal of each session was to go beyond didactics and identify mechanisms to implement change, at the level of the individual, department, and institution. This perspective of the shared experience may provide an adaptable framework that can be implemented in an academic setting at the departmental, center, or institutional level.

Quarantine conditions of education and life of Osyp Bodiansky in 1830–1831 (according to the letters of the Bodіansky brothers)

The chronological boundaries of this study cover one academic year. That was the last year of Osyp Bodiansky’s studies at the Poltava (Pereiaslav) Seminary. The main source base consists of Osyp and Fedir Bodiansky’s letters from Pereiaslav addressed to their parents. The article aims to study the quarantine period of Osyp Bodiansky’s life in Pereiaslav during the second cholera pandemic. It is an attempt to recreate one year of Osyp Bodiansky’s life from the moment he arrived to study before leaving for Moscow. The sequence of events helps to answer the question: where did O. Bodiansky live, how did he earn from the conditions, what was distance education in 1830–1831 like, how did he manage to avoid cholera? This year began with finding a good apartment and a trip to Kyiv to buy some books. O. Bodiansky planned to re- ceive 660 rubles from the conditions. In October, the seminary was quarantined and all the students were sent home. There were two attempts to resume the study, but cholera reached Pereiaslav and the study did not take place. O. Bodiansky completed a full seminar course in Pereiaslav only in September 1831 and went to continue his studies at Moscow University. The main focus of the article is the quarantine conditions of study in the seminary and the life in the city. This study has a prosopographic context, which contributes to the retrospective of the social portrait of O. Bodiansky and the city of that time. Osyp Bodyansky was one of those who studied in this city and kept in touch with the locals throughout his life. His character was formed here together with the desire to know the truth, love for the Ukrainian way of life.The relevance of the study of such a historical figure as O. Bodiansky, who made a significant contribution to the preservation and development of Ukrainian history and culture in the Moscow ideology, is dictated by the socio-political realities of today when Ukrainian culture once again needs protection and promotion. This is a human-dimensional vision of both the history of a particular region (in this case, Pereiaslav in the early nineteenth century) and the understanding of a person of a particular era and region as a person, not a known historical figure without any ideological involvement.

A student-centered seminar course as a complementary approach to a traditional journal club.

Graduate physiology programs strive to provide students with in-depth expertise in a particular academic discipline, often facilitating this process in the form of a departmental seminar course. Within the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California Irvine (UCI), students are required to attend a seminar course, most often designed as a journal club, each quarter until they are ready to graduate. While this format may work well in departments where research topics are closely related, it has historically been less successful in UCI's Department of Physiology and Biophysics, where wide-ranging interests make for little overlap in foundational knowledge, limiting meaningful engagement with the material or with peers in the class. In this paper, we describe a complementary approach of developing a syllabus around student interests and covering topics that are critical for student success but often omitted from graduate curricula, such as interview skills, grant writing, and scientific communication. Results from our preclass survey motivated this approach to the class, and our retrospective survey demonstrated the substantial differences in student engagement, enthusiasm, and perceived benefits of this course relative to the journal club style course. We hope that the success of our course may serve as an exemplar for strategies to engage students more effectively and provide critical training in diverse skillsets that will help students after graduation.

Learning English Changed My Life

The article Learning English Changed My Life by Liyan Zhang was written in the International College-English Communication (IEC) 494 Senior Seminar course that I (Professor Shizhou Yang) taught at Payap University in Thailand in 2020. The main objective of the course was to prepare the seniors in English communication BA program “for work experience or senior project” (Course syllabus). Inspired by Transnational literacy autobiographies as translingual writing (Canagarajah, 2020), which included a clear course design, and building on my previous experiment of teaching literacy autobiographical writing to my graduate students in China, I imagined the Senior Seminar to be a catalyst for similar researching and writing explorations. Except this time, I wanted my students to write with an end goal of “submission to MEXTESOL Journal as non-refereed articles” (Course syllabus). There was some flexibility added, though. For instance, I allowed some students to research their internship experiences. I also provided the option for them to only submit their literacy autobiographies for an in-house publication at the end of the semester. During the 15 weeks of class, the students learned about the autoethnography research method, read and discussed recent publications on language, literacy, and identity, told stories, asked questions, collected self-related data, and based on our cultural analysis of the data, drafted their own literacy autobiographies. Toward the end of the semester, we shifted our focus to peer review and revision to make the literacy autobiographies more narrative, more autoethnographic, and academic. I was impressed by my students’ literacy autobiographies. They showed me that, through autoethnographically oriented literacy autobiography projects, literacy education can be made relevant, critical, imaginative, and liberating even in an English-medium environment in Asia. Liyan was one of the two students who submitted their literacy autobiographies to MEXTESOL Journal. She cherished this opportunity to be mentored by an MJ reviewer, and as evidenced by her current literacy autobiography, her writing has taken strides. I hope the readers will find that an important story of language learning is not just a mechanical skill, but impactful on the learners’ life trajectories— an important point for ELT professionals to bear in mind.

Impact of COVID-19 on graduating U.S. pharmacy students in the early epicenter of the pandemic in New York City

ObjectiveTo describe the self-reported impact of the COVID-19 pandemic among final year student pharmacists enrolled in a Doctor of Pharmacy program in New York City during the first peak of the outbreak March through May 2020. MethodsA required senior seminar course for graduating student pharmacists served as a conduit for faculty led monitoring of the wellbeing of the cohort through three data sources: 1) polling data regarding stress factors during a COVID-19 informational session (March 2020), 2) survey data from a 12-item COVID-19 Impact Survey developed and administered electronically in May 2020 and 3) qualitative data from reflection papers mentioning COVID-19. Descriptive statistics, bivariate analysis and thematic analysis were used to summarize data. ResultsIn March, almost half of respondents (total = 185) reported high personal (47.6%) and school related stress (42.1%). Most students were participating in advanced pharmacy practice experiences (80%) and working in a pharmacy (80%). Survey data (n = 96) revealed the majority of participants perceived negative impact on their future career (69%) and reported concern for people close to them with suspected and confirmed COVID-19. One-third of participants reported knowing someone who died from COVID-19 and 8% were self-confirmed COVID-19 positive. Themes emerging from the reflection papers included: changed perspective, gained experience as a pharmacist during a pandemic, concern for loved ones, and positive outlook. ConclusionThe COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the wellbeing of a cohort of graduating student pharmacists in New York during the initial peaks of the spread in the United States. The results reinforce a need for student support during emergency situations, especially during the final year.

Pod-agogies: Story-Sharing Interviews for Leisure Students

This paper explores the use of podcast-style interview pedagogies (pod-agogies) as an innovate teaching method in a capstone therapeutic recreation (TR) seminar course. The purpose of the pod-agogies course component was to create meaningful connections between upper-year TR students and TR practitioners working in the field and on the frontlines of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Students engaged with the audio-recorded story-sharing interviews and reflected on what they learned through a critical reflection portfolio assignment.

Context Matters: Stress for Minority Students Who Attend Minority-Majority Universities.

Research on college student stress has typically focused on institutions where the student population is predominately White and continuing-generation. This study explored student stress in a unique context-a public regional university where the majority of students are Latinx, first-generation (FGCS), and of low socioeconomic status (SES). Of the 355 participants in the study, 72.4% self-identified as Latinx and 59.7% were FGCS. Additionally, on a subjective scale of socioeconomic status (1 = lowest, 10 = highest), the mean response was 5.76 (SD = 1.56). Participants (18 years old or older) who were enrolled in a first-year seminar course were recruited for this study. Through an online survey during Fall 2018, first-year students reported levels of perceived and experienced stress related to academic, economic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal concerns. Results of regression analyses indicated that most types of stress were predicted by students' Latinx identity status and SES; FGCS status did not significantly predict stress. These findings highlight the need to explore solutions to address stress for Latinx and/or low SES students. Additionally, the study underscores the necessity of conducting research at educational institutions in which Latinx, FGC, and low SES students comprise the majority of the student body.

An Analysis of Online Model Learning in Educational Seminar Courses at IKIP Budi Utomo

Corona virus (covid) has disrupted the learning process directly. So the government has issued regulations to maintain distance and social distancing. So a solution is needed to answer this problem. Online learning is one way to solve this problem. The objectives of this study are 1) To determine the implementation of the application of online learning models in educational seminar courses. 2) To find out what obstacles are the problems in the online model learning process in seminar courses. 3) To find out the development of online learning in educational seminar courses. 4) to find out the skill aspect in online model learning in educational seminar courses at IKIP Budi Utomo Malang. The research subjects are lecturers of educational seminar subjects and students of the 2018 economic education study program class A and B IKIP Budi Utomo Malang. This research is a qualitative research with descriptive analysis technique. Analysis of research data obtained from the process of searching and compiling systematically, data obtained from observations, interviews and the field, namely data collection, data reduction, data presentation, conclusions and verification. The results of the study show that (1) the implementation of the application of online model learning in the educator seminar course has been effective; (2) the obstacles that become problems in the online learning process in educational seminar courses are the internet network, communication between lecturers and students, lack of effectiveness and time efficiency, lack of enthusiasm of students in understanding the material; (3) students are able to make proposals and journals and then able to carry out educational seminars online.

Qualitative Development of Students’ Digital Skills by Integrating a Spreadsheet Software in First Year Introduction to Engineering and Seminar Course

The Introduction to Engineering (ITE) and Industrial Seminar and
 Profession (ISP) courses conducted at School of Chemical and Energy
 Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, are integrated courses
 which implement the Cooperative Problem-based Learning (CPBL)
 methods in the same semester. Based on this integrated courses, the
 main aim of this paper is to investigate the qualitative impact of
 spreadsheet hands-on seminar on the first year students' digital skill.
 At the beginning of the semester, students are given sustainability-based project to work on, which requires them to collect and to report
 the data in a series of presentations and written reports. In order to
 present those data, they need to use analysis tools such as a
 spreadsheet software. The students are introduced with some in-depth applications of the Microsoft Excel software through the seminar
 sessions in the ISP course. With the knowledge that the students gain,
 they are expected to implement it in the CPBL project. A qualitative
 approach has been adopted to implement the study. Student’s
 reflections were used as the data source to identify common attributes
 that they have managed to gain from seminar sessions. This study has found that all students had primarily learned about digital skills. They perceived hand-on activity during the seminar as a good platform to acquire knowledge on basic calculation and developed learning skill on Excel. Moreover, students recognized the skills they are learning will be useful in other courses and future careers.

Motivations for Continued Use of Critical Thinking Skills among First-Year Seminar Graduates

Many first-year seminar courses, as well as other programs aimed at first-year undergraduate students, actively incorporate critical thinking into the curriculum. What factors motivate students who purposefully develop these critical thinking skills to continue using them during subsequent semesters? This article discusses results of a study on this topic. Twenty-four students participated in a study approximately one semester after completing a first-year seminar at their university. The study uses mixed methods to (a) discuss students’ self-reported responses regarding nine potential motivating factors for continuing use of critical thinking skills, (b) examine correlations with critical thinking performance on a writing sample, and (c) briefly compare students’ self-reported motivating factors for continued use of critical thinking skills with parallel self-reported motivating factors for continued use of information literacy skills. The article ends with recommendations for applying the findings in the undergraduate classroom.

Bioinspiration as a method of problem-based STEM education: A case study with a class structured around the COVID-19 crisis.

Bioinspiration is a promising lens for biology instruction as it allows the instructor to focus on current issues, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic. From social distancing to oxygen stress, organisms have been tackling pandemic‐related problems for millions of years. What can we learn from such diverse adaptations in our own applications? This review uses a seminar course on the COVID‐19 crisis to illustrate bioinspiration as an approach to teaching biology content. At the start of the class, students mind‐mapped the entire problem; this range of subproblems was used to structure the biology content throughout the entire class. Students came to individual classes with a brainstormed list of biological systems that could serve as inspiration for a particular problem (e.g., absorptive leaves in response to the problem of toilet paper shortages). After exploration of relevant biology content, discussion returned to the focal problem. Students dug deeper into the literature in a group project on mask design and biological systems relevant to filtration and transparency. This class structure was an engaging way for students to learn principles from ecology, evolution, behavior, and physiology. Challenges with this course design revolved around the interdisciplinary and creative nature of the structure; for instance, the knowledge of the participants was often stretched by engineering details. While the present class was focused on the COVID‐19 crisis, a course structured through a bioinspired approach can be applied to other focal problems, or subject areas, giving instructors a powerful method to deliver interdisciplinary content in an integrated and inquiry‐driven way.

Evaluating Major Problems of MA Students of TEFL in Developing Proposals: MA Students and Their Professors’ Perceptions in Focus


 This study aimed at evaluating the major problems of MA students of TEFL in developing proposals from the viewpoint of MA students and their professors. This quantitative study enjoyed a descriptive method and presented the frequencies and percentages of the analyzed data. The participants were a sample of 40 MA students of TEFL and 15 professors. They were requested to fill out a separate valid and reliable 40-item questionnaire. These two questionnaires were designed to evaluate students’ viewpoints about writing proposals and professors’ viewpoint about students’ proposals. Since the obtained data were non-parametric, Chi-square test was applied to analyze the data. The findings showed that APA style was not completely taught to MA students. The students had enough familiarity with the layout and physical appearance, and had appropriate knowledge of skills and subskills; however, they did not know how to analyze the data. Professors also believed that students could not explain the implications of the study perfectly in their proposals and could not provide a complete reference section. They also believed that students were not able enough to use cohesive devices. On the other hand, the difference between MA students and professors regarding the issue of affective factors was not statistically significant. The findings of this study will be useful for professors who teach seminar courses, and the administrators of the universities to offer acceptable format for the proposals, and to make students more aware of principles they should follow in proposal writing to submit an acceptable proposal.

Online seminar and online laboratory course on chemistry experiments for schools – Digitalization of a bachelor course for chemistry teacher training

AbstractAufgrund der Corona‐Pandemie musste zu Beginn des Sommersemesters 2020 innerhalb kürzester Zeit eine umfangreiche Bachelor‐Veranstaltung zur schulexperimentellen Erschließung chemischer Inhalte (6 SWS) digitalisiert werden. Wöchentlich wurden Seminar‐ und Äquivalente zu Praktikumssitzungen in Form von Zoom‐Videokonferenzen durchgeführt; dabei diente Moodle als Lernplattform zur Bereitstellung von Materialien, für Online‐Tests und zur Abgabe von Studienleistungen. Im Seminarteil erarbeiteten die Studierenden nach einer Instruktionsphase kollaborativ fachdidaktische Inhalte. Anschließend wurden die Versuche aus dem Praktikumsskript mithilfe von Videos in Partnerarbeit erschlossen und in digitalen Versuchsprotokollen dokumentiert. Zur weitergehenden Verarbeitung erstellten die Studierenden beispielsweise Erklärvideos oder mithilfe von online zugänglichen PDF‐Formularen Gefährdungsbeurteilungen. Die digitalisierte Lehrveranstaltung wurde zum Abschluss des Semesters mit den Studierenden in Form eines Online‐Fragebogens evaluiert.

The Effect of First-Year Seminar Classroom Design on Social Integration and Retention of STEM First-Time, Full-Time College Freshmen

Classroom design is related to student satisfaction and learning, but its effect on student retention is unknown. This exploratory study compared the impact of classroom design on social integration and retention among STEM first-time, full-time college freshmen in a first-year seminar course by comparing classroom sizes (large (LL) vs. small (SL) lecture), classroom formats (lecture (SL) vs. flipped classroom (FC)), and classroom student composition of students at risk of attrition based on low math placement scores (combined low math (CLM) vs. separated low math (SLM)). To capture social integration of freshman after their first semester, students completed a survey for course credit. Retention rates of freshman returning to the university for their second year were included. Almost all students in all classrooms had made friends in college; most had made friends with peers in the course and were spending time with them outside of class. Compared with LL students, SL reported lower satisfaction with their overall social life. More FC students were satisfied with their social life, and fewer found making friends to be harder than expected. These findings showed even greater disparities between groups for at-risk students. SLM students exhibited lower social integration than CLM students. The CLM flipped classroom retained the highest percentage of students at the university into the second year. Findings from the present study suggest that integrating at-risk students into a first-year seminar flipped classroom that matches student composition of the major benefits social integration and retention into the second year, for all students as well as those with low math scores.

Utilization of peer advisement course among first year students: A pilot study exploring students and their perceptions

BackgroundThe transition from high school to college can be a stressful experience for first-year university students. Peer advisors are thought to be a valuable social support resource for first-year nursing students. PurposeThe purpose of this study was to assess the perceptions and experiences of both first-year nursing students and their peer advisors in a first semester seminar course. MethodologyA cross-sectional descriptive design was used on a sample that included 108 first-year nursing students and five peer advisors. ResultsThe study revealed that 68% of the participating freshmen felt that the program met their nursing school expectations and 95.1% reported that the peer advisor group meetings were beneficial and met the goals of the courses, as anticipated. Students described their peer advisors as excellent communicators, accommodating, and sensitive to diversity. The course also offered peer advisors an opportunity for personal and professional growth. ConclusionThe findings of this study might help inform the academic institution's practices regarding the benefits of peer advisement program for first-year students.

The Online Collaborative Learning Design Webinar: A Case Study of Thai Open University's Graduate Students in a Science Education Programe

In the COVID-19 pandemic situation, online education is an interesting way to enable learning anywhere. Especially in postgraduate instruction, the student's arguments, and shared knowledge and experiences with colleges are important and can be enhanced by collaborative learning activities in certain seminar courses. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of using the webinar on Microsoft teams considered from satisfaction towards the webinar and attitude toward MST. The participants were 40 graduate students who enrolled in a seminar in science curriculum and instruction course at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University. The research tools were as follows: 1) A satisfaction towards the webinar questionnaire, 2) attitude toward the MST questionnaire, and 3) an interview form. The mean, standard deviation and content analysis were used for data analysis. The results of this study indicated that the vast majority of graduate students had felt satisfaction towards the webinar and attitude toward MST were scored at an overall high level. The results suggested that the collaborative learning on webinars could be an appropriate alternative to be used as supplement for traditional face-to-face learning, particularly when there is a need for locational flexibility.

Student Pharmacists Self-Perceived Confidence in Communication Skills With Healthcare Practitioners Before and After a Seminar Course

Introduction: Competent pharmacy practice requires the ability to critically evaluate the medical literature and communicate pharmacotherapy information and recommendations to healthcare practitioners. Given the limited research on how these skills are taught, a seminar course in the third year of the pharmacy curriculum was designed to strengthen these skills and abilities. Methods: This was a prospective, pre- and post-cohort survey design. Students were informed of the study’s intent with participation being voluntary and not affecting their course grade. Students received the same survey at the beginning and end of the semester. The 20-question survey assessed self-perceived confidence in the domains of communication and literature evaluation using a 5-point, Likert-type Strongly Disagree-Strongly Agree Scale. Demographic information and students’ previous pharmacy work and internship experience were collected as a part of the survey. Descriptive statistics and Student’s t-test were used to assess the research question and comparisons of student demographics. Results: Sixty-eight of a possible 91 students (75% response rate) completed both the pre- and post-survey. There was no statistically significant differences between any of the measured demographics. Overall, students slightly agreed they were confident in their communication and literature evaluation skills in the pre-course evaluation, with communicating drug interactions as the least confident area. Post-course, students were significantly more confident in all but 5 of 20 measured areas. Conclusion: The Seminar course resulted in a positive change in students’ perception of confidence to communicate with healthcare professionals and ability to evaluate drug literature.