Term Paper Assignment Research Articles

Teaching Methods and Strategies on Learners’ Motivation in English Language Lectures in Higher Education in Kenya

Purpose: This paper sought to determine the teaching methods and strategies increasing learners’ motivation in English language lectures at the university level. The study was based on social cultural theory of learning.
 Methodology: The study adopted quantitative design, descriptive statistics method to understand the problem at hand. The target population consisted of 375 Bachelor of Education Arts students. Simple random sampling was used to sample 100 third year Bachelor of Education (Arts) students in a public university. Questionnaires and document analysis of research articles were used to collect raw data from 100 students. The data was analyzed using SPSS computer package.
 Findings: The teaching methods that highly motivated students were explanation, discussion, interactive lectures and demonstration, teaching methods that moderately motivated learners were task-based method, case study and communicative language teaching and least motivating was audio lingual method. Highly motivating teaching strategies were group discussion and presentation, CATs and drama and moderately motivating teaching strategies were class assignments, debate, term paper assignments, pair work and dialogues.
 Recommendation: Based on the study findings the study recommends that lecturers to strive to determine their learner’s needs and specific learning styles in order to adopt the correct teaching methods and strategies that motivate them to learn English language.

Teaching Students to Learn Better in Introductory Psychology: A Replication and Extension Study

Background: Psychology courses provide a good opportunity for instructors to teach students effective learning strategies integrated with content. Objective: This replication and extension study explored changes in students’ self-reported use of learning strategies before and after a term paper assignment and examined the relationships between learning strategy use and academic performance. Method: Three hundred eighty-five introductory psychology students completed surveys on their use of 11 learning strategies at the beginning and end of the semester, read an empirical article and wrote a term paper about the learning strategy of practice testing, and completed four exams among other assessments. Results: Replicating prior work, students generally reported improvements in their use of learning strategies over the course of the semester, though improvements were largely attributable to grade point average (GPA). Two learning strategies—self-explanation and practice testing—were positively correlated with course performance in the second half of the semester, over and above the effects associated with GPA. Conclusion: Teaching students about beneficial learning strategies may increase their adoption of those strategies as well as their course performance, replicating prior research. Teaching Implications: In order to improve course performance, instructors may consider adapting assignments in ways that increase students’ knowledge and use of effective learning strategies.

Genre-based revising strategies of graduate students in applied linguistics: Insights from term papers

The need for genre literacy is increasingly becoming evident in academic writing courses, particularly in the realm of research article (RA) writing. This paper documents RA genre-literacy informed revisions English as an Additional Language (EAL) graduate students applied to improve their term-paper assignments in the form of RAs following their participation in a series of genre-based research paper writing workshops in Applied Linguistics. Drawing upon insights from the revision strategy frameworks of Allal and Chanquoy (2003) and Willey and Tanimoto (2012), we developed a six-category taxonomy consisting of addition, deletion, reformulation, substitution, translocation, and expansion genre-based revision strategies. Using the prevailing genre-based frameworks, we compared the earlier and revised drafts of twelve RAs composed by Iranian graduate students to account for the strategies they employed to redraft each section of papers in terms of move-step realization. This study found that expansion, reformulation, and addition were the most commonly used genre-based revision strategies. In addition, the findings revealed that moves in introduction and discussion sections included the highest number of genre-based revisions. Through introducing genre-oriented RA revision strategies, this study calls for further attempts to promote the integration of genre literacy into English for Research Publication Purposes courses.

Error Analysis in Academic Writing: A Case of International Postgraduate Students in Malaysia

This paper examines the different types of writing errors performed by 16 international postgraduate students undertaking an intensive English course at a public university in Malaysia. It was mandatory for international postgraduate students who obtained less than IELTS Band 6 to undertake an Intensive English Course (IEC) offered by the University, prior to entering their respective faculties’ academic programs. The students were required to write a 3-5 page term paper assignment on a topic related to their field of study. Mixed methodology approach was employed to examine and analyze corpus of students’ term papers. The errors in the term papers were identified and classified accordingly. The results of the study revealed that four most common English language errors committed by the participants were sentence structure, articles, punctuation and capitalization. This study also shed light on the manner in which students assumed the rules of English to that of their native language. Such insight is useful for both instructors and students because it provides significant information on the building blocks experienced by English language learners in academic writing.

Combining Chemical Information Literacy, Communication Skills, Career Preparation, Ethics, and Peer Review in a Team-Taught Chemistry Course

The widely acknowledged need to include chemical information competencies and communication skills in the undergraduate chemistry curriculum can be accommodated in a variety of ways. We describe a team-taught, semester-length course at Wright State University which combines chemical information literacy, written and oral communication skills, professional ethics, and career preparation. The chemical literature instruction includes evaluation of sources, practice with scientific databases, and an introduction to reference management. Written communication skills are addressed in a term paper assignment which includes a peer review exercise to provide students with exposure to an author’s and a reviewer’s perspective. Students’ oral communication skills are honed through training in presentation techniques and the completion of several speaking assignments. Resume-writing, professional ethics discussions, and presentations by alumni who are employed in a variety of chemistry-related positions contribute to ...

Assignments Integrating Psychology and Environmental Studies

In an interdisciplinary team-taught course, students completed several short writing assignments and a term paper that integrated psychological and environmental issues. The writing assignments asked students to respond to readings and apply knowledge to their own lives or to new situations. In this paper, we discuss three short writing assignments, which dealt with (a) bottled water and social norms, (b) climate change and persuasion techniques, and (c) the commons dilemma, operant conditioning, and overfishing. We also describe a term paper assignment in which students selected an environmental issue, researched the ecological and psychological causes and solutions, and wrote a scientific paper discussing and integrating these ideas. These assignments provide examples for instructors about how psychological and environmental studies can be integrated within one class or one assignment.

The Kitchen Is Your Laboratory: A Research-Based Term-Paper Assignment in a Science Writing Course

A term-paper assignment that encompasses the full scientific method has been developed and implemented in an undergraduate science writing and communication course with no laboratory component. Students are required to develop their own hypotheses, design experiments to test their hypotheses, and collect empirical data as independent scientists in their personal laboratories—their kitchens. Motivating students to use food preparation as a chemical experiment does more than just provide them with adequate data for their term papers. Students develop a new awareness for experimental variables, acquire experimental planning and development expertise, and gain an enhanced set of independent thinking skills. This inquiry-based assignment requires students to treat edible ingredients as a chemicals and kitchen equipment as scientific instrumentation. Students are required to provide correctly formatted scientific terms for all consumables and equipment, and they are encouraged to bring experimental results into...

A Chemical Information Assignment for Nonscience Majors

The chemical information needs of nonscience majors are equally important compared to those of science majors but require a focus on different types of information. An assignment has been created to help nonscience majors gain familiarity with chemical information, specifically focusing on Internet resources and practical applications. The students are asked to research an urban legend, to establish connections between chemistry and their majors, to discover the types and sources of pollution that affect their hometowns, to determine the health and environmental hazards associated with a specific chemical, and then to apply their information to the task of writing a risk–benefit analysis of living in their hometowns. The assignments are personalized for each student and were better received that the original term paper assignment used in previous years.

Teaching the Past Through Oral History

Any teacher of an American history survey course has wrestled with organizing a vast amount of material into a concise, integrated, and understandable series of lectures that can be presented within a few months. Covering the major national events that occurred between 1865 and the present often leaves little time to explore the underlying causes and effects that propelled historical development. To provide students with a deeper level of historical understanding, I have found it advantageous to base my lectures on two broad themes: the changing relationship between the federal government and its citizens and the expanding citizenship rights of women and minorities. Both themes focus on change and development and highlight the impact that national trends have on the everyday lives of Americans. While traditional teaching sources-class lectures, textbooks, videos, and other secondary materials-offer students the basic facts and ramifications of historical change, they often fail to connect the broader national trends to individual lives and to show how individuals' perceptions and attitudes have changed or remained static over time. Oral history provides students with an important tool to make such connections. Personal interviews not only enliven historical study and personalize historical events; they also allow students to perceive how the nation and its individual citizens have changed through time. Interviewing people who experienced the poverty of the Great Depression, the violence of school integration, the turbulence of the Vietnam War era, or the fears of the Cuban missile crisis dramatically underscores the evolutionary nature of American history. As part of my teaching curriculum, I require my students to conduct historical interviews for their term paper assignments and to present their findings during class discussion. I instruct each student to choose one event covered in class and to interview at least two people who lived through that event.' That process alone can raise as many questions as it answers. Students often discover during an interview that individuals forget or gloss over painful subjects. For example, several students discovered that their interviewees resisted answering questions about their involve-

Cross Conversations: How Can High School and College Teachers Work Together to Teach Research Strategies to Students?

Offers observations from a high school English teacher and a college professor (and former high school teacher) on dilemmas of the term paper: to teach it or not in high school; the importance of research skills; the wish to prepare students well for college and for life; and high school students’ comments regarding their term paper assignment.

Nursing theories. Creative teaching strategies make this course come alive.

The author describes creative teaching strategies used to teach a nursing theories course. Presentation and term paper assignments encouraged creativity and class participation. A final examination question that places students in a party setting with all of the theorists in attendance allows students to synthesize their knowledge using a creative approach.

Computer systems “conference” for teaching communication skills

In an effort to improve the communication skills of students, many universities are requiring computer science educators to include writing and speaking components in their courses. This paper describes an alternative to the classic term paper assignment. A "student conference" approach has been successfully employed in a junior-level computer systems course for five semesters. Each student performs an implementation and experimental study, then writes a research-style technical paper on this work. Students also participate in an anonymous review process, revise their own papers, and make oral presentations of their work. The structure of this conference approach, representative assignments, and observations are presented.

Using the Internet to Prepare a Term Paper for a Geology Course

Preparing a term paper requires students to acquire thorough knowledge of a topic through study of the literature and to prepare a written summary in the student's own words. Although most reference materials for term papers should be from published literature, the Internet provides abundant sources from which to select a topic and gather information. Due to the irregular distribution of information on the Internet, locating specific information can be very challenging, especially for novice users. Students should be cautious when using Internet sources for a term paper, as the Internet does not have the high content standards typical of professional journals. This paper is intended as a short guide to be presented to students as part of a term-paper assignment. A style guide for the citation of Internet sources is also presented.

Homework and Test Questions for Introductory Physics Teaching

Scaling and Ratio Reasoning. Kinematics. Force and Dynamics. Momentum and Energy. Electricity. Direct Current Circuits. Electromagnetism. Particle Trajectories in E- and B-Fields. Wave Phenomena. Images with Mirrors and Lenses. Geometrical and Physical Optics. Fluids and Thermal Phenomena. Kinetic Theory. Modern Physics. Mixed Areas of Subject Matter. Naked Eye Astronomy. Learning Objectives. Term Paper Assignments.

Selectivity and Rigor in Research Universities

Undergraduate admissions selectivity is a common defining characteristic of the academic quality or excellence of a given college or university. This assertion is borne out by the relationship that institutional reputation and resources -- both common approaches to assessing institutional quality -- have with admissions selectivity [2]. The reputational approach defines institutional quality in terms of institution's place in the hierarchy of colleges and universities [2], whereas the resource approach delineates quality by applying such criteria as SAT or ACT scores of entering freshmen, the number of books in institution's library, or the scholarly productivity of institution's faculty [2]. Selectivity is the best single predictor of the reputation or prestige of a college or university [3, 32] and is highly associated with such resource criteria as faculty salaries, endowment per student, and educational and general expenditures per student [3]. Thus, undergraduate admissions selectivity appears to be adequate indicator of the perceived academic quality of a college or university [3, 4, 20]. Moreover, the role of institutional selectivity as important index of academic quality or academic standards is well rooted in the academic folklore beliefs held by academics and the lay public alike. This folklore reads as follows: an 'excellent institution' is one that 'maintains high standards,' and high standards in turn means highly selective admissions policies [2, p. 41]. Furthermore, a common belief of this academic folklore is that students attending a highly selective institution learn more and develop their intellectual skills more fully than do their counterparts at less selective institutions [1, 28]. If selectivity is index of academic standards or quality, then institutional selectivity should exert the influence on student achievement and intellectual development suggested by academic folklore. This contention has been pursued by empirical research [1, 5, 6, 27, 30, 31, 33]. From their review of the findings of this research, Pascarella and Terenzini [28] conclude that the effects of institutional quality (selectivity) on student learning are small and inconsistent when various student entry characteristics are statistically controlled. They offer several interpretations for the failure of this body of research to validate the folklore touting a positive relationship between institutional selectivity and student academic achievement and intellectual development [28]. The first of these interpretations is that institutions of putatively varying degrees of quality have the same general influence on students. A second explication is that the samples used in these studies are restricted to a narrow range of academically able students. The data-analytic approaches used prevent the identification of the unique effects of institutional attributes and precollege (entry) student characteristics, because student learning is likely to be influenced by the joint effect of these two categories of variables. Such is a third interpretation advanced by Pascarella and Terenzini [28]. A fourth explanation is that institutional level variables such as institutional selectivity may be too broad to discern the anticipated effects, for such effects may be occurring at the level of the academic department. The lack of a common educational experience among students is a fifth accounting offered by Pascarella and Terenzini [28]. However, another perspective can be advanc]ed. This perspective is that academic quality is manifested in such course-level academic processes as the type of questions faculty ask students during class, the nature of term paper assignments or other written exercises, and the type of examination questions written by faculty [10]. Put differently, academic quality is embedded in process at the course level rather than in the achievement of various cognitive outcomes. Academic standards are manifested in such processes through the level of academic demands or rigor expected of students. …

Including Failure Case Studies in Civil Engineering Courses

Although the ideal would be to teach a special course in failure studies of constructed facilities in which appropriate lecture materials are available, an alternative is to add failure case studies to existing civil engineering courses. A method by which this can be accomplished without requiring additional expenditures of time and money, and special forensic expertise by the teacher, is to require a term paper on a review of a specific case study from a civil engineering journal. A detailed description is given on the requirements and administration of the term-paper assignment during the duration of the course.

Preparing a Term Paper for a Physical Geology Course

A term paper worthy of a high grade must be something more than a quick review of readily available literature. It should be a research project on a subject that is narrowly focused enough that the instructor will learn new things. The process of writing a term paper requires numerous drafts in which the entire paper is critically evaluated and revised. The paper should also be presented in a professional manner, with adequate references and few, if any, grammatic or typographic errors. This paper is a short guide intended to be given to students as part of the term-paper assignment.

In-Class Poster Sessions

In-class poster sessions offer an attractive alternative to traditional term paper assignments. Poster sessions are suitable for classes of all sizes, promote collaborative learning, encourage creativity and independent thought, develop research and communication skills, and ease the grading burden on instructors. This article describes the logistics of conducting poster sessions and discusses their possible uses. When asked to compare poster sessions with traditional term papers, 100% of the students responding preferred the poster session.

Preparation of Term Papers Based Upon a Research-Process Model

The research process is used as a model for structuring an undergraduate term-paper assignment. Sequential assignments given through the semester require students to define their topic, conduct library research, refine the scope of the paper, write a draft, obtain peer review, and revise for formal submission. Weekly feedback by the instructor provides an opportunity for students to improve both content and writing quality and has resulted in better final products. An emphasis on library research introduces students to the primary and secondary literature in geology, accessed by manual and computerized means. Because the term paper is prepared in a progressive fashion, students are required to use a microcomputer with a word-processing program to encourage more efficient use of their time. A pre-course survey of students found they had had little prior experience with geological literature, word processing, or preparing term papers with cited references. A survey at the close of the semester found strong ...

Describing the Development of a Developmental Psychologist: An Alternative Term Paper Assignment

Each student taking a sophomore/junior level course in developmental psychology is asked to choose a different developmental psychologist and to read as much of that person's published work as is feasible. Students are encouraged to select articles that range over different research areas and different years of publications. They then write a paper describing the target psychologist's work, focusing on the question, “How has this person's work developed?” The assignment in intended to address a number of goals, including the following: (a) to acquaint students with primary literature in developmental psychology, (b) to provoke critical thinking about the concept of development, and (c) to recognize that the progress of an academic career is seldom linear or preordained. Student reaction and implementation suggestions me discussed.