Student Project Work Research Articles

The Investigation of Students’ Attitudes toward Project Work in Enhancing Independent Learning in English I at King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok

The objectives of the study were: 1) to survey the students’ attitudes toward the project work used in the English I course; 2) to compare the attitudes toward the use of project work of high, moderate, and low English proficiency students; 3) to investigate the correlation between the students’ attitudes and their English learning achievement. The population was 4,000 first-year students enrolled in English I. The subjects were 360 students from different faculties selected using the stratified random sampling technique. An English achievement test and a close-ended questionnaire were used for the quantitative data collection. The qualitative data were gathered from the open-ended questionnaire and interviews. Descriptive statistics such as mean and Standard Deviation (S.D.), the Pearson correlation coefficient, and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze and explain the data. The results showed that the students had high to moderately positive attitudes toward the use of project work in their English class. Moreover, the results revealed that there was no difference in how the high, moderate, and low proficiency students viewed the project work, and the statistical significance of the correlation between students’ attitudes and their final scores was not found. Interestingly, the qualitative data yielded invaluable results that provide useful information for further research and pedagogical implications for language teachers. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5p581

The Study of the Phenomenon of Creativity in the Educational Environment

The modern world has changed dramatically: now it is the world of increasing volatility, heterogeneity, diversity, and rapid changes. It has become a self-organizing system that goes out of a human control and imposes its own laws. The state of a managed object has varied, whereas the methods of learning and management remain the same. The article argues that it is necessary to use new forms of training and management, based on non-linear thinking and creativity. The main purpose of the research was to investigate the attitudes towards the phenomenon of creativity in the educational environment. The article presents the results of a sociological survey of 350 teachers/professors, 680 students and 300 entrepreneurs about their attitudes to the possibility of teaching and using of creative technologies. The survey results show that the teachers/professors are rather conservative, while business people generally recognize the effectiveness of creativity in their work. The authors propose technology, techniques, software, and organizational forms of training students and schoolchildren in accordance with the requirements of the knowledge economy, which implies not only the possession of a set of necessary knowledge, but also the ability to generate and apply it in real life situations. An original intelligent IT-system for the formation and development of the individual creative thinking, as well as team skills of innovative project work of students and schoolchildren, is outlined in the paper.

Engineering students' perceptions of team conflict and high-performance teams

Our study investigates the role of team conflict in the context of student design project work. We are interested in how students experience conflicts in a team environment and how these conflicts relate to other aspects of teamwork such as communication, division of work, shared goals, and leadership. We are using a mixed-method approach to data collection through peer-review data, team observations, and reflective memos. This paper reports results from a study implemented in a required first-year engineering design course. The majority of participants recognise the benefits that task and procedural conflicts have on team performance. Specifically, teamwork aspects such as communication, open-mindedness, and working towards a common goal were connected to cognitive conflict. The peer-review data illustrates that some class sections showed statistically significant improvements in goal commitment, idea communication during conflicts, conflict engagement and attentive listening over time. The results of the post-hoc tests further suggest that students in teams with a predominantly male composition (three males and one female) reported a statistically significant decrease in goal commitment and attentive listening during the ten-week evaluation period. Finally, methodologically we found that the reflective memos and team observations were better instruments for capturing team conflict, more so than peer-review surveys.

Put the Student in Charge: Take Part in the Biggest Revolution Ever in Teaching and Learning in Dermatology

Nearly all dermatology education will be possible online, with superior potential for interaction between student and teacher, for evidence-based learning and for meeting the needs of individual students. Online interaction is already integrated in dermatology undergraduate education in many universities. Teachers need to understand the new pedagogy and how to use novel e-learning techniques to unlock the fantastic potential of online dermatology education. But running the international Diploma in Practical Dermatology over the last 10 years has taught that provision of high quality online dermatology learning is labour intensive and not cheap. Hard copy undergraduate books will be replaced by competitive online learning material aimed at medical students. Teaching universities will either rapidly adapt to a highly competitive world market in online courses, or sink. New educational institutions, specialising in online education, will soon become household names. New software will emerge, responsive to the individual student’s learning needs, putting the student rather than the teacher in charge of life long learning. Dermatology teachers are urged to: get educated about how to educate online, plan your undergraduate curriculum around identified learning objectives, find studentappropriate websites and apps, create new online videos, abandon live lectures, use tutor time for direct student interaction, set up online student interactive project work, and make your e-learning material freely available online to promote yourself and your department. “Stand back, the high speed e-learning train is ap proaching” Jump on fast! In this issue of Acta Dermato-Venereologica, Rees (1) provides an excellent historical analysis of the interac

The effects of authentic audience on English as a second language (ESL) writers: a task-based, computer-mediated approach

The majority of writing tasks assigned to second language (L2) learners tend to target an abstract audience and the writing generated is not meant for real or meaningful purposes. The emergence of Web 2.0 concepts has created a potential educational environment where students have access to a widely distributed, authentic audience with a simple click of the mouse. This study examines the impact that targeting an authentic audience within a task-based, computer-mediated environment may have on L2 learner motivation toward English as a second language (ESL) writing. Student perceptions on progress in writing and on motivation to improve their writing were assessed through a semi-structured interview, triangulated with student web-based project work and participant observation. Analysis of interview data reveals that students were motivated to focus on sentence complexity and variety and engaged in the autonomous learning of vocabulary in an effort to communicate information they perceived to be important. The qualitative results also indicate that the participants' awareness of audience and sense of ownership were raised through engagement in this task-based, computer-mediated approach.

Resonances of an oscillating conductive pipe driven by an alternating magnetic field in the presence of a static magnetic field

A short conducting pipe that hangs from a weak spring is forced to oscillate by the magnetic field of a surrounding coaxial coil that has been excited by a low-frequency current source in the presence of an additional static magnetic field. Induced oscillating currents appear in the pipe. The pipe motion becomes damped by the dragging forces between the induced currents and the static field. This oscillating system presents an interesting set of properties. To start with, it is not a magnet interacting with the oscillating field of a coil. The oscillating pipe is not even a ferromagnet. It is a new and conceptually rich case of a damped forced oscillator whose motion differential equation contains coefficients that depend upon a parameter. Here, we present and analytically explain the case of the small amplitude oscillations of this magneto-mechanical system. The ordinary amplitude and phase resonance curves are theoretically derived and confirmed by the set of experimental results presented. This oscillator is inexpensive and simple to set up, does not require sophisticated instrumentation, and with its interesting analytical model, is recommended either as an undergraduate laboratory experiment, as student project work, or even as a demonstration experiment.In loving memory of our late colleague and friend Professor Darío Moreno

Contextualizing Nanotechnology Education: Fostering a Hybrid Imagination in Aalborg, Denmark

In the context of worldwide economic and environmental crisis it is increasingly important that nanotechnology, genomics, media engineering and other fields of ‘technoscience’ with immense societal relevance are taught in ways that promote social responsibility and that educational activities are organized so that science and engineering students will be able to integrate the ‘contextual knowledge’ they learn into their professional, technical–scientific identities and forms of competence. Since the 1970s, teaching programmes in science, technology and society for science and engineering have faded away at many universities and have been replaced by courses in economic and commercial aspects, or entrepreneurship and/or ethical and philosophical issues. By recounting our recent efforts in contextualizing nanotechnology education at Aalborg University in Denmark, we consider a socio-cultural approach to contextual learning, one that is meant to contribute to a greater sense of social responsibility on the part of scientists and engineers. It is our contention that the social, political and environmental challenges facing science and engineering in the world today require the fostering of what we have come to call a ‘hybrid imagination’, mixing scientific–technical skills with a sense of social responsibility or global citizenship, if science and engineering are to help solve social problems rather than create new ones. Three exemplary cases of student project work are discussed: one on raspberry solar cells, which connected nanotechnology to the global warming debate, and two in which surveys on the public understanding of nanotechnology were combined with a scientific–technical project.

Encouraging creativity and employability skills in undergraduate microbiologists

Key skills such as communication and critical thinking are essential for today's microbiology graduate. There are many opportunities within the undergraduate curriculum to help students to use, develop and appreciate their own unique set of skills. This article describes personal experiences of research-led teaching at Manchester Metropolitan University (UK) which have been used successfully to encourage creativity and other employability skills in both large and smaller classroom settings, and through individual student project work.

Undergraduate/postgraduate student project work to support the teaching and learning of remote laboratory design

Undergraduate/postgraduate student project work to support the teaching and learning of remote laboratory design

A Stitch in Time: Gender Issues Explored through Contemporary Textiles Practice in a Sixth Form College

AbstractThis article discusses, contextualises and locates in contemporary theory, an autobiographical case study of an artist‐teacher in the ‘learning community’ of a Sixth Form College art department. It reflects on the educational potential of enabling teachers of art and their students to investigate issues of culture and identity through engaging with contemporary art practice. It seeks to explore the extent to which exposure to contemporary art practices (and in the second year sixth form, textiles‐based, cases discussed) creates a more conceptual approach to student project work, which can act as a catalyst to develop students' understanding of issues‐based practice. The discussion of the selected pieces is located within a feminist paradigm that foregrounds the body and gender theories. This article elucidates how a conceptual approach to working, as opposed to a more traditional skills‐based approach, can act as a vehicle for moving students towards becoming self‐motivated artists and, in the case studies described, take their practice beyond that which is normally achieved within the constraints of timed, exam‐based work.

Debating Point: Student research and ethics

Ethical codes of practice have largely ignored student project work, although there has been some discussion that it ought to be treated as a special case and handled by less stringent ethical review. However, if ethical review is about safeguarding the interests and rights of those who volunteer to participate, then there can be no case for accepting less stringent ethical criteria just because the researcher is a student. In this debating point article two issues are addressed. First, the principle must be established that student research is conducted under competent supervision and it is therefore the supervisor’s role to ensure that the student discounts any methodological strategy which places the participants at unacceptable risk. Second, and perhaps more controversially, the question of ethical review is raised for student classroom or field exercises which involve collecting data from human participants to meet practical coursework requirements. The proposal is made that these exercises should also be subject to ethical review and a further proposal is made about how this might be handled for large numbers of students on course.

Enhancing the Campus through Student Project Work

Enhancing the Campus through Student Project Work

What aspects of reasoning do further education college lecturers use in writing rationales?

Commonly, the task of constructing rationales is used in development programmes as a means of advancing Further Education College (FEC) lecturers' understanding of their practice. Often lecturers also teach this task as a part of student project work. Drawing on psychological research on argumentative reasoning the aim was to illuminate strengths and weaknesses in lecturers' rationale construction by identifying (a) components of reasoning and (b) ideas used in rationales. A descriptive sample survey design plus a focus group interview was employed on an opportunity sample of 22 FEC lecturers. They provided 89 pages of word-processed responses to nine questions. Content analyses indicated that participants used only two of Kuhn's (1991) five broad components of argumentative reasoning and educational literature was cited without commentary or evaluation. It is argued that course design needs to draw on ideas from at least three bodies of research: pedagogies for learning argumentative reasoning, ‘aspects of knowledgeability’ (Bereiter, 2002) and situated learning.

Linking Teaching and Research through Departmental Research Conferences for Student Project Work

Linking Teaching and Research through Departmental Research Conferences for Student Project Work

Collaborative projects: a study of paired work in a Malaysian university

There has recently been considerable interest in various forms of collaborative learning. This study examines the project work of university students in a TESOL (Teaching of English as a Second Language) programme for whom English is a second language. It compares the phonetics and phonology projects completed by students working in pairs with those completed by students working alone. It was found that those who worked together produced better work and had more positive attitudes. However, it was observed that working in pairs sometimes involved conflict, manipulation and/or deception. It is suggested that while this type of work can be of value in academic writing there is a need for caution when assigning or allowing collaborative academic activities.

The use of C&IT to support fieldwork teaching and assessment at the University of Derby

C & IT is used at Derby in a variety of modes including pre-fieldwork training, post-fieldwork assessment and field-related courseware development as part of student project work. With respect to pre-fieldwork training, all students are required to undertake the UK Earth Science Courseware Consortium (UKESCC) ‘Field Safety Tutorial’ and to register their medical conditions on line using a Field Course Registration package. For field mapping, both the Field Safety Tutorial and the UKESCC ‘Using the Compass-clinometer’ courseware module are integrated into a programme of pre-course preparation sessions, involving the use of ‘in-house’ courseware, that must be completed by all students. Computer-based assessment of recent field experience is used on a number of modules to substitute for, or to supplement data obtained from, field assessments, and students are now able to submit field-related courseware modules as final-year projects. Future developments include integrated computer-based assessment of...

Precolonial Towns of Southern Africa

As South Africa underwent a period of fundamental change in the early 1990s, staff at the University of the Witwatersrand sought to make the planning curriculum relevant to the changing needs of the profession. One component that had been neglected was the study of precolonial towns in Southern Africa. Urban morphology, with its emphasis on how and why settlements took the shapes they did, provided a useful tool in the analysis of precolonial towns. Initial attempts by the staff to integrate selected parts of the syllabi of urban morphology and planning history are documented, illustrating how the links were reinforced through student project work.

Using the Internet as a teaching resource

Increasingly the Internet is being used by students to gather a variety of data and gain an extensive range of experience as part of their learning activity. The paper discusses how the Internet may be used to support learning and teaching and some of the motivation underpinning its adoption. It refers to use of the Internet in a final year module on multimedia run by the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at De Montfort University, one of the main purposes being to promote collaborative student project work. The authors present an analysis of feedback that has been gained from students’ experiences of using network technology. The article concludes by outlining some of the issues raised by using the Internet as a learning and teaching resource.

Interactive Robotics Using the Internet

We report on a project currently under way within the department of Computer Science at the University of Reading exploiting networking and multimedia technology to provide a shared robotics laboratory on the Internet. The laboratory is for use by our own students and students at other Higher Education (HE) institutions in the UK. We present a mobile robot system we have developed to support teaching, and we describe how the Internet is being used to provide and control access to the robot. A case study is presented illustrating the use of the mobile robot in student project work. The key goal of the work we are pursuing is the provision of robots as networked resources similar to other computing resources, in this way making them accessible to many more students than would otherwise be able to gain access to this advanced technology.

Student projects in collaboration with a family health services authority

Abstract An initiative involving the development of student group project work in collaboration with a public administration body, a Family Health Services Authority, is evaluated in the light of experience gained over a five‐year implementation period. The benefits of financial support, access to otherwise restricted databases and student empowerment are weighed against the limitations of being dependent on a single client and, in this case, the limited impact on the department's undergraduate curriculum.