Student-centered Learning Experience Research Articles

Towards Islamic Pedagogy By Exploring The Applications Of Educational Technology

Islamic education has long been an integral part of the Muslim intellectual tradition. However, new challenges and opportunities emerge in strengthening Islamic pedagogy in the current digital era. This article aims to explore how integrating technology in the context of Islamic education can enrich learning experiences and develop pedagogy connected to Islamic values. Through a literature review, we explore various educational technology applications that can be used to improve Islamic-based learning. We highlight the implementation of technology, such as interactive learning applications, e-learning platforms, and social media, that can facilitate discussion and collaboration between students and educators. In addition, we analyze Islamic pedagogical principles that can be integrated into developing and using educational technology. Concepts such as active participation, collaborative learning, and student-centered learning experiences are considered in the context of Islamic values such as justice, compassion, and example. Through this approach, technology in Islamic education will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of learning and respect and strengthen the spiritual and moral values that underlie Islamic education. Future research can explore the practical implementation of Islamic pedagogy connected to technology in formal and non-formal educational contexts and evaluate its impact on achieving the goals of Islamic education.

Development of a design course for medical curriculum: Using design thinking as an instructional design method empowered by constructive alignment and generative AI

Doctors are nowadays experiencing many struggles in their daily practice, mainly due to new intricate challenges of the twenty-first century. However, despite the efforts of traditional medical education, it falls short in providing them with the required tools to effectively overcome these difficulties. In light of these shortcomings, this paper suggests the development of a new educational framework designed to guide medical educators in creating student-centered learning experiences. Which may be ensured by using Design Thinking (DT) as an instructional design method, merged with constructive alignment principles, and generative artificial intelligence. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this new educational approach, a case study is showcased wherein the framework was applied to design a new medical curriculum. The case study specifically focuses on first-year students in a Moroccan medical faculty and was developed based on DT principles, allowing students to engage in a transformative learning process that encourages innovation and creativity. The new curriculum includes lecture sessions, hands-on workshops, and project coaching where teams of medical students learn the design process and are given the opportunity to prototype and test their proposed solutions at local university hospital units. Overall, the showcased case study provides evidence of the framework's effectiveness in designing a new medical curriculum, illustrating its potential for enhancing medical education and engaging future doctors in impact-focused projects with long-term benefits for their career development.

Task Based Learning as an Active Retrieval Approach in the Perception of EFL Students: A Case Study at Bridge Education Manado

This study set out to find out how participants at The Bridge Education Manado felt about task-based learning (TBL) as a teaching strategy. The poll findings showed that participants generally agreed, highlighting their favorable opinions of TBL's efficiency in fostering student-centered and interesting language learning experiences that promotes a laid-back learning environment where learners' needs and interests are engaged. They acknowledged how language skills were included into TBL, highlighting how well it covered lesson retrieval and made it easier to remember earlier classes and resources as well as to improve language learning experiences and valued their significance and relevance to the actual world. These favorable opinions highlight the usefulness of TBL as a method of instruction that adheres to the fundamentals of communicative language learning and promotes successful language learning outcomes. It is clear from the survey results that TBL is well-liked by students at The Bridge Education Manado. These findings have effects on how the institution teaches languages. First and foremost, it is essential to keep supporting TBL as a pedagogical strategy and to offer ongoing assistance and chances for professional growth to teachers so they can use TBL techniques in the classroom. They would better comprehend TBL ideas, techniques, and material production as a result of this. Collaboration among educators can also encourage the sharing of creative TBL implementation ideas and best practices. Additionally, getting regular input from students can help to enhance TBL practices and better inform instructional design

Cooking the Course from Scratch

Applying course design fundamentals grounded in sound pedagogy is a critical first step when creating outcome-based, student-centred learning experiences. In the described three-hour workshop, the participants worked collaboratively to design a learning activity that included recognition of prerequisite skills and learning outcomes aligned with both instructional strategies and assessment processes. On completion of the activity, each group presented to all participants who, along with facilitators, provided constructive feedback on all components of the designed activity. Workshop satisfaction feedback from seven sessions (four in-class and three online) indicates that the participants were highly satisfied and felt more confident in applying the fundamentals when designing learning activities for their courses.
 Keywords: course design, learning experience, teaching, educational development.

Maximizing student potential: Lessons for pharmacy programs from the patient safety movement

Higher education institutions (HEIs), including pharmacy programs, are experiencing growing pressure from the public and policy makers to develop student-centered learning experiences that meet societal needs. While HEIs may have in-house initiatives to meet such challenges, there are also opportunities for cross-domain learning and application of useful concepts from other sectors. One such sector that lends itself to cross-domain learning is the healthcare industry. Like HEIs, the healthcare industry has been experiencing pressure from its stakeholders, in this case, to address patient safety gaps. These forces intensified at the turn of the century leading to the emergence of what is now known as the patient safety movement, which enabled increased advocacy, education, and research to reduce healthcare-related harm. Despite persistent challenges, a key achievement of the patient safety movement has been application of a systems framework to understand and solve patient safety gaps. That is, patient safety gaps are often a result of system defects rather than isolated acts of individual workers operating in a complex social and technical work setting (often referred to as sociotechnical system). Commonly used systems frameworks describe a sociotechnical system through its components: 1) structure (e.g., people, tools/technology, physical workspaces); 2) processes (e.g., medication administration); and 3) outcomes (e.g., medication safety, patient satisfaction). At their core, both HEIs and healthcare organizations are complex sociotechnical systems that organize their structures to support specific processes - learning in HEIs and patient safety in healthcare - to ultimately improve outcomes for students and patients, respectively. This paper describes parallels between HEIs and the healthcare domain to illustrate how patient safety concepts and practices from healthcare can be adapted to HEIs in order to enhance educational structures, processes, and learning outcomes.

Teaching as Complex Intellectual Work: A Phenomenological Study of Social Studies Pedagogy

High quality teaching involves deep content knowledge, understanding students and their learning processes, and complex skills of teaching and assessment. Students who experience high quality teaching tend to achieve higher annual growth rates. This study used a descriptive, qualitative research model to explore excellence in social studies teaching. Purposive sample was used to select district coordinators (n = 4) and their highest quality social studies teachers (n = 9). The process of phenomenological decontextualizing and recontextualizing produced five structural themes. Excellent social studies teachers have intellectual identities that focus on having deep content knowledge and a commitment to learning. They use their deep content knowledge to help students find relevancy. They view themselves as curriculum designers who find and curate their own resources. They facilitate student-centered learning experiences that engage students, encourage inquiry, and allow for student dialogue. Lastly, excellent social studies teachers design learning experiences to get students to think critically about different perspectives, synthesize multiple sources or viewpoints, and consider the lesser told stories of history. These contextualized, phenomenological structures reflect the teaching demands of common frameworks of social studies pedagogy including ambitious teaching approaches, authentic intellectual work, and the college, career, and civic life (C3) framework.

A Game-Based Learning Approach in Digital Design Course to Enhance Students’ Competency

Digital Design is a laboratory course, and the educator must focus on the students’ need to know why they study the theory and mainly on the transition from knowledge-based learning to competency-based learning. This study consists of five surveys that were conducted during 2017–2021. First, we evaluated students’ learning outcomes in order to define possible learning problems. According to the literature, gamification can have a positive impact on students’ motivation and learning outcomes. Therefore, we used ready-made digital games in order to evaluate students’ satisfaction and willingness toward their integration in the educational process. This process was repeated in the next academic year. The feedback we received from the previous surveys has helped us to adapt to the new approaches of teaching due to the current pandemic caused by COVID-19. We proposed an online holistic environment based on Keller’s (1987) ARCS model and Malone’s (1981) motivational model, which was applied in distance learning. Each student participated in a student-centered learning experience. He took an active role and was self-manager of his learning process. He was given the opportunity to develop capabilities and strategies through practice and engagement in higher-order cognitive activities, acquire self-learning skills, learn how to solve problems, and participate in teamwork. This study’s innovation is that students experienced a combination of learning approaches: (a) a virtual lab consisting of simulation-based activities, which allowed students to access new laboratory experiences, (b) a project-based digital game without a processor, which developed their motivation, creativity, and hands-on ability, as opposed to the other relevant studies that use ready-made games, and (c) asynchronous videos as feedback, which ensured the educator’s emotional support and social presence. Finally, this study developed research to evaluate the effectiveness of this online holistic environment and used a questionnaire, which was created based on Keller’s Instructional Materials Motivation Survey tool. The results showed that its integration in distance learning is probable to motivate students to learn and affect positively their attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction.

Design Your Experiment (DYE) – Project based learning in Fluid Mechanics Laboratory

There is a need to implement an active and student-centered learning experience in the universities, which could help students expand their vision and better understand its application and concepts outside the classroom learning. This article discusses an approach of Design your experiment (DYE) project in the Fluid Mechanics laboratory to make the course more interesting for the students. We discuss various components involved in the DYE project and its learning outcomes. The student survey shows that the DYE helps the students to enhance their fundamentals, improve their communication, leadership and team management skills.

Ungrading Learner Participation in a Student-Centered Learning Experience

Ungrading Learner Participation in a Student-Centered Learning Experience

Проблематика використання змішаного навчання при викладанні дисципліни «Гігієна та екологія»

Every year the rate of spread of new educational models in higher education is increasing. This leads to a change in the trajectory of the educational environment towards the active use of Internet technologies. At the present stage, in order to qualitatively update the content of education, a polyparadigmatic approach to the choice of pedagogical technologies with a combination of different teaching methods, flexible educational models and styles is needed. This is a "blended learning" – modern technology that has broad prospects for use and further development, attracts the student and allows you to study according to an individual educational trajectory. The article highlights the features of the introduction of elements of blended learning in mastering the discipline "Hygiene and Ecology" by the 6th-year students of the Medical University. The purpose of the study was to determine the features of the use and ways of further improving the blended learning model in teaching the discipline "Hygiene and Ecology". Materials and methods. The methodological basis of the research is the concept of student-centered learning, theory, principles and own experience of using information systems in the implementation of a blended learning model. Results and discussion. The study highlights the main positive benefits of blended learning compared to traditional classroom learning. As a result of the study, it was established that when studying the discipline "Hygiene and Ecology" it is advisable to use the "inverted class" technology, which has a positive effect on the level of learning the material. At the same time, teachers faced the need for a clear structuring and distribution of topics for self-study by students and mandatory mastering within the classroom work in the study of this discipline. The introduction of elements of blended learning in mastering the discipline led to an increase in the pedagogical load in terms of the teacher's performance of significant amounts of methodological work, the search for adequate and relevant sources of scientific and medical information, actualized the need to create a unified methodological system in the institution. Conclusion. Problems that require a gradual solution on the way to the effective use of blended learning opportunities at a medical university are the organization of continuous training for teachers to develop their digital competencies, active promotion of the use and creation of open information resources, the distribution of the percentage of students' independent work and the labor intensity of classroom work in the network

Developing Communicative Capability in Foreign Languages through Digital Storytelling


 
 
 In the instructed second language teaching context, it is important to engage students in the meaning-making process to provide them with opportunities to develop communicative capability through the creative use of language. Second language acquisition research shows that while learners go through similar developmental stages in grammatical development, the rate of development differs from one individual to the next. Therefore, a language learning task needs to foster the development of communicative capacity while considering the current linguistic resources available to learners. This paper discusses Digital Storytelling (DS) as a method to create an opportunity to encourage students to develop more holistic communicative capability. Digital stories are short multimedia productions created by students that combine a first-person narrative with image and background music. This paper draws on some DS productions by intermediate Japanese language students from the Australian National University and discusses various communicative devices employed to make their story more engaging. DS allows students to transfer language they learned in the classroom to more authentic communication situations. It is a student-centred learning experience focusing, not only on using the language but also engaging in creative thinking and effective communication, with the added advantage of developing effective technical literacy.
 
 

Decentralization and recentralization of Korean curriculum documents 2012–2017: a novel approach to text mining in curriculum studies

This study adopted a novel text mining (TM) technique in curriculum studies to analyze the multi-layered South Korean curriculum document (CD) system from 2012 to 2017. A total of 716 CDs from the national, regional, and school levels corresponding to 23.4 million Korean characters were examined through keyword frequency analysis, topic modeling with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), construction of text network with clusters, and document vectorization. The results reveal the decentralized nature of each CD layer; i.e., the regional CD (RCD) mediates the national CD (NCD) to the school CD (SCD), and the SCD plays a key role in the implementation of diverse student-centered learning experiences. However, when the similarity (reversely distance) between the average CD vectors of each layer was examined, the SCD showed a constant trend of recentralization toward NCD. This study suggests that the adoption of TM techniques in curriculum studies would enhance the methodological progress of this field in accordance with conventional CD understanding, revealing novel aspects with reproducible and consistent results from a much larger dataset.

Editorial

PAM Review is the peer-reviewed student research journal produced in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. The journal was created to provide a student-centered authentic learning experience in a theory heavy course to help facilitating Faculty of Science graduate attributes and the University’s model of teaching.
 The student journal was first introduced in 2014 in the second-year physics course Energy Science and Technology. The course covers fundamentals of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics and their applications in current and emerging technologies.

Assessable Moots in Administrative Law: The Role of Student Feedback in Creating Cohesion

Teaching any law subject is inevitably a struggle to reconcile theory with practice, but administrative law offers its own particular challenges in this regard. Despite its potentially rich subject matter and its ability to intersect with other areas of law, a lack of perceptible cohesion and a ‘disconnect’ with the ‘real world’ continues to vex students and teachers of administrative law alike. Understanding how merits review, judicial review and other accountability mechanisms ‘fit together’, and how they interact with the various judicial and quasi-judicial institutions as well as primary and delegated legislation and government policy, can be a herculean task. Students often find connecting the theory and principles of administrative law with ‘real life’ legal and social situations confounding, which is exacerbated by the fact that administrative law does not deal with one cohesive subject matter or legislative scheme but crosses a variety of subject matters, the only unifying factor being government regulation. Further, principles of judicial review and the framework for merits and judicial review can prove conceptually challenging and students can find the material dry and uninteresting. Whilst this affliction is by no means unique to administrative law, when combined with issues of cohesion and disconnect, administrative law presents distinct pedagogical challenges for its teachers. The challenges that administrative law poses for its teachers and learners have not been overlooked in legal education scholarship. Common to this research is recognition of the need to ‘contextualise’ administrative law, or place it in the ‘real world’. Methods suggested include the use of topical issues that can help place administrative law in a historical, political and socio-economic context, express incorporation of indigenous content, investigation of the work of citizen advocate services and the utilisation of clients through clinical legal education. Might mooting, a rite of passage for all law students, help students contextualise administrative law through an understanding of how a matter proceeds through the levels of review? Could mooting help create the elusive connection between theory and practice? This paper reports upon on a three-year pilot of an assessable moot that was introduced into the subject Administrative Law at the University of Wollongong in 2016. Structured student feedback provides an insight into the pedagogical and administrative challenges and successes of assessable moots in promoting a skills-based, student-centred learning experience that encourages the development of advocacy skills and substantive knowledge that may be transferred to professional practice.

Collaborative Active Learning Activities Promote Deep Learning in a Chemistry-Biochemistry Course.

Currently in higher education, there is a move towards providing more student-centred learning experiences, where students are actively involved in the learning process. To promote learner engagement and communication between peers, many educators utilise collaborative active learning activities. This study aimed to demonstrate that an active learning curriculum developed for a Chemistry-Biochemistry unit, allowed students to gain a deep understanding of the content, while developing key academic skills. In each face-to-face session of the Chemistry-Biochemistry unit, students participated in collaborative active learning activities including Participation+ and a variety of Padlet activities. The students were also challenged to develop their written communication skills, by taking part in a formative In-Class Writing Task. Survey results indicated that the active learning curriculum provided an engaging, interactive environment that was conducive to the students developing an understanding of the course's underlying concepts and developing key academic skills. The students communicated their deep understanding of the content verbally during active learning activities and in writing during the In-Class Writing Task, written assignment and final exam. Students who consistently communicated deep knowledge of the content during the In-Class Writing Task achieved high marks on the summative written assignment, final exam and unit total. This study clearly demonstrates that the active learning curriculum employed in the Chemistry-Biochemistry unit provided a collaborative and engaging learning environment, where many students developed a deep understanding of the content and acquired the skills to communicate their knowledge both orally and through written communication.

Students’ perspectives on different teaching methods: comparing innovative and traditional courses in a technology program

ABSTRACTBackground: A growing number of educators have started exploring student-centered approaches to improve students’ learning and satisfaction with courses and programs. While prior research shows a positive impact of such strategies on student learning, further exploration of the perceptions of traditional, lecture-based and other more inquiry-based active learning as experienced by students within the same university is needed.Purpose: To compare students’ perceptions of the learning environment in studio-type courses within an innovative pilot student-centered transdisciplinary learning experience to the environment in traditional lecture or lecture-and-lab courses.Program description: An innovative learning experience that employs student-centered teaching strategies to engage students in the transdisciplinary exploration of technology and liberal arts within a technology-focused college in a large land-grant university.Sample: At the end of the first semester, eight students who chose to leave the program were interviewed. At the end of the second semester, eight students who chose to remain in the program and four students who left after the first semester were interviewed.Design/Method: Student were interviewed individually during the end of either their Fall 2014 semester or Spring 2015 semester. A thematic analysis was conducted. Frequency of occurrence was counted and compared for each theme.Results: The most frequently mentioned differences between traditional courses and this learning experience regarded instruction, assessment, and uncertainty. Students enjoyed the flexibility of a more student-centered approach, but struggled with understanding assessment and time management within self-directed transdisciplinary coursework. Student learning preferences appeared to influence their perceptions of each teaching method.Conclusions: Although results seemed to be influenced by personal preferences, time management and dealing with uncertainty were sources of frustration across both groups of students. Scaffolding students in these two areas may help students make an easier transition toward more student-centered learning environments.

Barriers and strategies: Implementing active learning in biomedical science lectures.

The traditional teaching style in higher education is didactic. However, the current literature states that student learning improves when they are active players in the process, triggering the move to implement active learning within the curriculum. In accordance, Monash University (an Australian research-intensive university) introduced the "Better Teaching Better Learning" agenda to deliver a more student-centered learning experience but its implementation has been inconsistent across its different schools. Interviews and an online survey were conducted to evaluate the teaching practices in lectures of Biomedical Science academics, identify barriers preventing them from implementing active learning in their teaching, and identify possible strategies to overcome said barriers. The two main teaching groups use a variety of teaching styles in lectures, with education-focused academics employing more active learning practices. Many academics were in the process of changing their teaching style, mainly to improve the overall student learning experience. However, complex barriers prevent them from doing so. Possible strategies were identified that would help academics adopt a more student-centered teaching style. © 2018 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 47(1):29-40, 2018.

Higher Ed Rocks: Don’t fret the small stuff

Abstract This article presents an account of the Modern Band Higher Education Fellowship – a week of professional development workshops for music teacher educators in the United States. The workshop focused on Modern Band instruments and curriculum, underpinned by Music as a Second Language pedagogy. Fellowship participants all took part in a gig at a local venue, performing on instruments with which they had varying degrees of familiarity – embracing the Modern Band ethos of participatory learning, approximation and curating a low-anxiety environment. Among key benefits of the workshop, the author notes improved aural skills, stronger orientation towards student-centred learning experiences and re-engaging with music-making for fun. Fellows returned to their colleges, committed to embedding Modern Band into their undergraduate syllabi. The author urges other music education professors to attend a Modern Band Higher Education Fellowship.

Parental perception and English Learners' mobile-assisted language learning: An ethnographic case study from a technology-based Funds of Knowledge approach

Abstract The purpose of this ethnographic case study is to examine the parents' perceptions regarding young English Learners' (ELs) mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) experiences from a technology-based Funds of Knowledge (FoK) approach. Six immigrant families in the United States from four countries (including China, Mexico, Japan, and Cambodia) were home-visited with in-depth semi-structured interviews. Participant observations, field notes, analytical memos, and a descriptive survey were used to triangulate the data. By centering on ELs' technological households' cultural sources, parents' perceptions of ELs' MALL experiences were explored through motivation, physical and material access, digital skills, and usage frequency and diversity of mobile applications. Results demonstrated that the parents were motivated to support ELs' language learning using mobile technology. Analysis revealed differences in technology access and appropriation based on diverse cultural backgrounds and socioeconomic status. Findings also indicated the inequity in the current digital divide and informed future studies on creating FoK-featured curricula to contribute to ELs' language education through mobile technology. This study extends the current MALL horizon from the front line of specific student-centered learning experiences to further examine the facilitating factors and barriers that hide within a multicultural learning environment.

Leading in the Real World: Operationalizing a Power-Based Model of Collaboration for Leadership Experiential Learning

ABSTRACTUsing a power-based conceptual framework, we present a collaboration model to guide faculty and student affairs (SA) staff in working together to develop experiential learning assignments that help students apply leadership concepts to on-campus organizational problems. The Power-Based Student-Centered Collaboration Model (PSCM) consists of four stages through which faculty, SA staff, leadership course students, and student organization leaders operationalize their legitimate, coercive, expert, reward, and informational power in sharing resources for mutually beneficial student-centered learning experiences. Power structures provide coordinating mechanisms for information-exchange, decision-making, and role clarification in team-based collaborations. Using the PSCM, we developed a 6-week assignment Leading in the Real World for an organizational leadership course. By assessing leadership challenges, leadership course students helped student organization leaders improve performance. We outline how ...