Student-student Communication Research Articles

Comfort in active learning spaces – students’ perceptions and preferences

ABSTRACT Evidence suggests that Active Learning (AL) and Active Learning Spaces (ALSs) have the potential to improve student learning outcomes. In this study, the student experiences of AL and ALSs in four classes in mathematics and statistics at a Norwegian university are examined through classroom observations, surveys, and interviews. The student interviews are analysed using constant comparative method, which resulted in one main category and three sub-categories presenting what the students perceived to be significant factors that impacted their learning experiences in the ALSs and how these factors affected their motivation to engage with the subject. The main category is called Engagement and Comfort, and the three sub-categories are called Students’ Varying Preferences, Student-student Communication, and Teachers’ Communication. Students’ motivation was looked at through an Approach-Avoidance Theory lens. Crucial to the student experiences was that some students felt deeply uncomfortable in the ALSs, which prevented them from engaging and benefitting from the ALSs. This research highlights how students’ comfort in the ALSs is essential to ensure their engagement and suggests many aspects that can support students’ comfort. Future research and professional development programmes built upon the reflections here can be used to support improved educational quality.

Depicting classroom social climate: Using drawings to examine primary students’ perceptions of geometry teaching and learning practices

Climate conducive to learning is one of criteria of good teaching. Even though current pedagogies argue for contemporary type of instruction, mathematics instruction may still be dominated by traditional type of instruction. The present study examined participant-produced drawings of 250 primary grade students regarding geometry teaching and learning practices. Not only different aspects of traditional type of instruction, such as the teacher standing in front of the classroom and delivering the content while students sit at their desks and passively listen to the teacher with little student-student communication were reported, but also some aspects typical for contemporary type of instruction, such as learning through teacher-student discussions, and the use of teaching materials and tools. Still, the aspects of traditional type of instruction prevailed. The results offer potential opportunities for reconsidering the current teacher education as well as policy that would reflect the teaching practices conducive to contemporary geometry instruction.

Pelatihan Pembuatan Interactive Media bagi Guru Sekolah Dasar Negeri Sawahan Kecamatan Turen Kabupaten Malang

The online teaching-learning process mainly means the absence of physical interaction between teachers and students. In this context, the existence of the Web. 2.0-based technologies is expected to bridge the distance between teacher-student and student-student communication. Somehow, it will be a big problem if the teachers do not administer online learning well and appropriately. The facts show that online learning still faces some obstacles, such as the quality of the Internet connection and teacher-student and student-student interaction, including the media applied in the teaching-learning process. Thus, the present community service that involved 30 teachers of elementary schools aims at empowering the teachers with the ability to create interactive media. This activity covers briefing, lecture, demonstration, and workshop on interactive media, such as PowerPoint Presentation (PPT) with voice, Kahoot, and Padlet. The results demonstrate that teachers believe that interactive online learning is not as complicated as they thought and applied in the classrooms.

Students’ Views on Physics Teaching at a Distance in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic

This study aimed at mapping high school students’ views from several schools of Athens on physics teaching at a distance that took place due to COVID-19 pandemic during the school year 2020-2021. For this purpose, 197 students completed a questionnaire that included 14 closed-ended questions and two open-ended questions. Findings revealed that most students had a negative view on physics distance course and particularly they emphasized on problems related to the home environment, to inter-connection, to lack of teacher-student, and student-student communication, to decreased concentration and to decreased experimental activities. However, several students found and pointed out some positive elements from the long period of distance education that referred either to the teaching of physics or to general topics. Such positive elements are the increased use of audio-visual material, which contributed to the understanding of the concepts and processes of physics, and which could be adopted in the teaching of physics more broadly, and not only in the distance education.

Paradigm Shift for Online Learning: Voices of Undergraduates from a National University in Sri Lanka

The abrupt eruption of the Covid-19 pandemic made drastic shifts in doing many things under new normal conditions. Consequently, the education sector too had a giant leap from traditional physical mode to an online learning method, giving a novel experience to students. Online learning is a form of education in which the main elements include the physical separation of teachers and students during instruction and the use of various technologies to facilitate student-teacher and student-student communication. Hence, this paper focuses on exploring problems faced by undergraduates in online learning in a national university in Sri Lanka. This is a qualitative study that used a convenient sample of 30 undergraduates who have undergone both the traditional learning mode and online learning method. Data collection was carried out through a self-administered, semi-structured questionnaire and thematic analysis was employed for the study. The study found that undergraduates are experiencing variety of problems in online learning as; technical issues, absence of conducive learning environment, financial burden, issues encountered from lecturers, pedagogical issues, and personal issues. This study provides useful implications for both the education policy formulators and educational institutions for the improvement of their online learning methods.

Social media as integrated character education media

Character education in schools is carried out in an integrated manner in all subjects. Integrated character education involves the school, family, and community in its implementation. The very few communication opportunities make the implementation of integrated character education involving families and communities difficult. Through this opportunity, we tried to introduce social media to be used as an integrated learning media for subjects and character education. The teacher can provide material and assessment to students and students can learn and submit assessment completion through the media. In addition, students can also place all of their work in a folder prepared for each student to accommodate their portfolios. Teacher-student communication and student-student communication can be done through groups or private chats. Such a mechanism can monitor student learning progress and at the same time train students’ courage to express opinions, collaborative skills, responsibility, respect for other people’s work, and independence. However, the effort to increase honesty and independence, social media has not provided satisfactory results because during the implementation of tests that must be done independently, students often exchange answers. These findings can be used as a reference for finding techniques around the use of social media in practicing honesty and independence.

Identifying difficulties in teaching foreign language speaking in the online environment

The digital transformation of education has been causing dramatic changes in the organization and curriculum of the educational process. The problem of mastering foreign language speaking skills by university students in distance learning format has been attracting growing attention in academic circles worldwide. In addition to the technical difficulties faced by the stakeholders of the online learning process, there has been an increasing focus on other related factors, including psychological barriers and emerging interaction patterns in both student-student communication and teacher-student communication. In this paper, the authors will identify the difficulties faced by the students who learn speaking skills online. A survey was conducted among students of technical specialties of the NUST MISIS University. The survey involved 16 students who were studying English online. The conducted experiment revealed several types of psychological difficulties that arise while learning to speak online. The results of the study will help improve the quality of academic programs in terms of identifying the existing gaps in designing and managing speaking classes online.

Analyzing Quality of University Life Perceptions of the Students of School of Physical Education and Sports

In this sense, the improvements to be made for all the dimensions in the scale highlight the importance of this study to determine the problems students will encounter during their school life and to reflect these experiences to students or athletes after graduation. Quality of school life can be considered as an indicator of students’ communication, love and respect towards other individuals at the school, and their satisfaction with all kinds of physical and social facilities of the school. In the field of quality of school life education, research has examined the issue of quality of university life, which is the highest level of education and training. The educational structure and administrative differences of universities made it compulsory to examine the quality of university life separately. Quality of university life includes the level of satisfaction with the university and the constructive experiences of students in the learning process. The study aimed to examine the differences of Harran University School of Physical Education and Sports students’ scores obtained from the dimensions of the “Quality of University Life Scale” according to gender, athlete identity, year of study, age, and residence variables. The research consisted of 311 participants in total, 135 females and 176 males. Independent sample t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were performed to determine whether the quality of university life varied according to the variables of students. A statistically significant difference was found in social opportunities dimension in favor of males, in participation in decisions dimension in favor of females, and in student-student communication dimension in favor of males, and in identity, social opportunities and future dimensions according to year of study (p < .05). In the study, no difference was found among students regarding the gender variable and quality of life. As a result, it is thought that increasing the quality of life in universities will increase the academic success of the student group, and the faculties will become institutions that train more qualified, happier and equipped teachers.

Determination of Student Opinions on Usage of Social Media and Mobile Tools in Student-Teacher, Student-Student Communication

Since Depending on technological advances, development of
 social media and mobile applications today reshape communication, education and teaching system. The extent to which social media and mobile applications which are especially used by new generation youth frequently will be beneficial in student-teacher and student-student communication is becoming more and more important. This research is based on the opinions of students on the usage of social media and mobile applications in education which take considerable time of teachers and students, social networks and mobile applications were used with the purpose of communication in science and communication technologies for 12 weeks. Thirty-five teacher candidates attended the study. At the end of the application interviews were held with 20 students and according
 to the findings obtained, an effort was paid to determine the impact of social media and mobile applications in student-teacher and student-student communication. Discussions and recommendations on obtained findings were presented.

The Effectiveness of Using Blackboard in Improving the English Listening and Speaking Skills of the Female Students at the University of Hail

The use of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) in Saudi universities has brought about significant changes in the academic environment. Therefore, the effectiveness of these systems deserves a careful examination. The current study investigates female students’ perceptions on the accessibility, usability and effectiveness of using Blackboard (Bb) in a web-enhanced listening and speaking course at the University of Hail (UoH). The study was conducted during the first semester of the academic year 2015-16. Data were collected from 37 female students at the Department of English using an attitudinal questionnaire and Semi-structured interviews in order to validate the study and elicit elaborate responses regarding the benefits of Bb, the challenges the participants’ faced and the suggestions they have for change and improvement. Statistical analysis of the data revealed that students generally had positive attitudes towards using Bb particularly because they found it helpful in improving their language skills and the student-instructor communication. Still, issues such as improving student-student communication and course design on Bb need further attention.

Student Opinions Regarding Twitter Usage with Mobile Applications for Educational Purposes

The aim of this study was to determine the opinions of regarding the use of the Twitter Micro blog site with mobile applications for educational purposes. The study ran for a period of 5 weeks, and involved the teaching of a Distance Education course. Course materials such as course concepts, slides and videos were shared, using Twitter as a platform, by using a variety of mobile applications such as ThingLink, Wevideo and Dropbox. As a result of the research findings, I suggest that Twitter usage in combination with mobile applications for educational purposes, created a positive effect on student opinions. It can be said that, when using Twitter for educational purposes, follow ability and share ability nature of Twitter micro blog site in combination with a variety of mobile applications, causes an increase in student-teacher and global student-student communication. Therefore the number of student websites that have this ‘sharing’ function will increase and a platform can be provided that promotes the growth of information as it is shared.

E-learning en mundos virtuales 3D. Una experiencia educativa en Second Life

La revista ICONO 14 publica trabajos científicos cuya temática aborde la comunicación bajo la perspectiva de las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación, y muy especialmente de las tecnologías emergentes, aplicadas a diversos campos del conocimiento, mediante investigación básica o aplicada, experimental, descriptiva o epistemológica

Faculty of communication students’ evaluation of academicians in terms of communication skills

Education research has frequently examined effective teacher and student, but has ignored effective communication skills. Briefly education process in classrooms and other environments (internet, out school activities) is required communication. Students communicate with other students and teachers. The communication is affecting the instruction. So teacher-student, student-student communication must be research for successfully education. This study was designed to examine students’ opinions about their teachers’ communication skills and to compare their responses based on gender, nationality and age. Study was applied to 97 students from the Communication department of Near East University. Results showed that students have positive opinions towards teachers’ communications skills in education.

Introduction of an online approach to flexible learning for on-campus and distance education students: Lessons learned and ways forward

While flexible delivery techniques, including online technologies, are becoming widely used to cater for the differing needs of students, they are not always met with enthusiasm, and can cause anxiety in students who are unfamiliar with the online environment. Online delivery of a first year nursing course (for distance learning and face-to-face provision) was introduced to facilitate reliable student-staff and student-student communication and streamline assessment procedures during a period in which class sizes increased (from 500 in 2003 to more than 650 in 2004 and 2005). Results of an evaluation exercise are presented, which aimed to: (1) trial online methods for course delivery and assignment submission; (2) canvass both student and staff responses to these innovations; (3) identify areas requiring change/improvement; and (4) formulate a strategy for improvement and continuing use of the technologies. Results suggested a positive response to the innovations by both staff and students. However, several implementation issues were identified, as were suggestions to overcome these initial hurdles. Iterative re-evaluation and continual development will examine the total benefit of these improvements. Taken together, this process has highlighted the importance of open communication, reducing anxiety and resistance to innovation, formal and informal evaluation processes and continued systems development.