Theory Course Research Articles

Reinforcing student learning by MATLAB simscape GUI program for introductory level mechanical vibrations and control theory courses

The highly mathematical nature of introductory level vibrations and control theory courses results in students struggling to understand the concepts. Hands-on activity demonstrated in class can help them better understand the concepts. However, there is still an ongoing effort to lower the currently substantial cost of educational laboratory equipment for undergraduate-level engineering courses. Also, with the COVID-19 crisis, the Spring 2020 academic year took an unexpected turn for academics and students all over the world. Engineering faculty who teach laboratories had to move online and instruct from home. Online course preparation takes more time and effort compared to traditionally designed face-to-face courses and was compounded considering the unprecedented situation where many instructors didn't have time to record data from existing lab equipment or record video in their laboratories. In this paper, we present a Matlab Simscape GUI program designed to simulate modeling and control of dynamical systems for vibrations and control theory courses, and their associated laboratories, as one potential solution for online instruction. To complement the simulation program, online classroom and homework activities were designed using a learning sciences approach connecting several critical educational theories which can bolster student motivation, engagement with the material, and overall learning performance. The simulation is presented along with data from 19 students who completed the associated classroom and homework activities. Survey results probing student perceptions about the value of the learning tasks for the simulation were overwhelmingly positive and indicate this approach holds promise in supporting student learning.

Research on Problems and Countermeasures of Ideological and Political Theory Course for Hearing-impaired Students in Special Education Schools

Research on Problems and Countermeasures of Ideological and Political Theory Course for Hearing-impaired Students in Special Education Schools

Enhancing clinical judgement and decision-making skills of prelicensure nursing students

This article describes an authentic learning activity intended to enhance prelicensure nursing students' clinical judgment and decision-making skills. This activity was designed for fourth year nursing students in a pediatric nursing theory course. Part A of the activity requires students to choose the most appropriate staffing assignment for the unit's staff on an inpatient pediatric unit and provide a rationale for that decision. In part B, students review shift reports, prioritize care based on the provided patient information, and identify appropriate referrals to the interdisciplinary team. This activity is adaptable to various educational healthcare disciplines and can be modified for junior and/or senior learners.

Development of Textbook “Translation Theory for Beginners” The book helps Students in understanding translation theory

Since 2020 there has been a translation theory course in the curriculum of the German Studies Department at UNESA. This course is the basis for the skills that will be learned by the students in the following semesters. It is necessary to provide good textbooks as study material for this course. A good textbook is very helpful in preparing the learning process through to the implementation of the learning. Textbook is part of the learning resources. Textbooks are books that are put together for the benefit of the learning process. Textbooks can come from research or the results of a thought about something or a study in a particular field, which are then formulated as learning material. The development of the textbook “Translation Theory for Beginners” is intended to make it easier for students to understand, as it is based on mastering the German language in the third semester. The research and development steps carried out consist of three parts, namely preliminary studies, product development and learning about product tests. Preliminary studies have been carried out and information has been produced which will be used as a reference in planning the development of the "Translation Theory for Beginners" textbook.

Learning strategies of video game music makers: Informal and school-based learning for online publication

Music is an integral part of video games and the cultures that surround them, and the sound of video games enhances the user’s immersive game-play experience. Video game music (VGM) inspires performance and the creation of derivative music in both online and offline contexts. This study was conducted to explore how musicians perceived how helpful various learning strategies were for gaining the skills to publish VGM online. A cross-sectional, self-administered questionnaire was conducted at Super Music and Gaming Festival™ (Super MAGFest), an annual convention held near Washington DC, to capture data from respondents ( n = 137) who were adult musicians who published VGM online. The questionnaire captured the perceived helpfulness of learning strategies at school, other educational institutions, and informal approaches. Descriptive and inferential statistics analyses were made. Respondents found music theory courses in school and informal music learning strategies were among the most helpful learning approaches for attaining the skills they needed to publish VGM online. This article provides a starting point for the further exploration of VGM and informal music learning in the age of the Internet.

"This Class Was Highly Useless": Reformulating an Unpopular Music Theory Course for Non-music Majors

This essay first examines how a course of music theory for non-music majors at the University at Buffalo experienced a serious drop in popularity between 2016-2019, suggesting the following as contributing factors: snowballing complexity, overtaxing homework expectations, reliance on non-relatable repertoire, and lack of in-class music-making. Then, it recounts in detail how the adoption of a new syllabus addressed these particular issues and how the students reacted to these new methodologies, hoping to provide the reader with an example of an emerging inclusivity-focused paradigm in music theory pedagogy.

Heuristic Trees as a Digital Tool to Foster Compression and Decompression in Problem-Solving

This design-based study addresses the issue of how to digitally support students’ problem-solving by providing heuristics, in the absence of the teacher. The problem is that, so far, digital tutoring systems lack the ability to diagnose students’ needs in open problem situations. Our approach is based on students’ ability to self-diagnose and find help. To this purpose, we introduce a new type of digital, interactive, help-seeking tool called a heuristic tree. Students’ use of this tool is supported by a help-seeking flowchart. The design of heuristic trees is based on our reinterpretation of the notion of heuristic in terms of terms of compression. Our research question is: How do heuristic trees and the help-seeking flowchart influence students’ problem-solving behaviour? This question was studied in the context of a number theory course for in-service mathematics teachers. During five weeks, fifty students worked on fifty-five problems supported by heuristic trees. Our data consists of video observations of two small groups of students, a teacher log, interviews with these two groups, and a survey filled in by twenty-three students. The main results are that the support by heuristic trees and the help-seeking flowchart allows students to work in the absence of a teacher and to engage strongly with problems, maintaining ownership of the solution methods. Moreover, as intended by the tree structure, students learned to focus not just on the small steps of the solutions, but also on the general heuristic techniques, theorems, and concepts that should be learned in the process of finding those solutions.

The Brinkmanship Game: Bargaining Under the Mutual Risk of Escalation

This article describes a simple two-player game which illustrates basic concepts of brinkmanship, to include calculations of probability and expected outcomes, and risk-taking profiles. The game befits a single 50-minute class period with introduction, gameplay, and discussion. The game can supplement the study of conflict from classic Cold War case studies of crisis bargaining, to arms control, or negotiating international protocols for global climate change such as the Paris Agreement. The Brinkmanship Game was developed for the seventh week of a 10-week graduate course called Game Theory and Decisionmaking: Exploring Strategic Situations. The course features a flipped classroom with class time devoted to experimentation, gameplay, and discussion of readings and games; lectures are online. The Brinkmanship Game would be appropriate for students in any advanced undergraduate or graduate level course in international relations, security studies, negotiation, or game theory. The Brinkmanship Game provides an active learning opportunity that can be valuable for encouraging students to come to their own understanding of concepts of mutual risk-taking. The authors have found the game to be effective in the classroom and hope it may prove valuable to those searching for ways to motivate students and to help them learn.

Transmedia Uprising

Transmedia Uprising

Blended Learning in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Training Institute

This paper discusses blended learning in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Training Institute. Blended learning is an approach of teaching and learning that combines different technologies and methods to improve the educational experience in TVET. Blended learning in TVET can be categorised into three models; learning in classroom and workshop enhanced with technology, on- the-job training supplemented with classroom, distance and online learning as well as fully distance and online learning. ADDIE model is applied alongside Google Classroom as a blended learning platform in TVET institution as an initiative to meet the challenges of 21st century learning skills. During the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the TVET institutions implement blended learning method to conduct their training and theory courses online.

Instructional design learners make sense of theory: a collaborative autoethnography

Understanding theory is essential to instructional design (ID) research and practice; however, novice designers struggle to make sense of instructional design theory due to its abstract and complex nature, the inconsistent use of theoretical terms and concepts within literature, and the dissociation of theory from practice. While these challenges are generally understood, little is known about the sensemaking process of learners as they encounter these challenges in pursuit of deeper theoretical understanding. Using a collaborative autoethnographic approach, six ID learners investigated their sensemaking experience within an advanced ID theory course. Autoethnography, a form of qualitative research, focuses on self-reflection “to gain an understanding of society through the unique sense of self” (Chang et al., 2013, p. 18). Collaborative autoethnography, a type of autoethnography, explores anecdotal and personal experiences “collectively and cooperatively within a team of researchers” (p. 21). Using individual and collective reflexive and analytic activities, this inquiry illuminates the numerous sensemaking approaches ID learners commonly used to move beyond their initial, basic theoretical understanding, including deconstructing theory, distinguishing terminology, integrating concepts with previous knowledge, and maintaining an openness to multiple perspectives. Additionally, ID learners experienced significant struggles in this process but viewed these struggles as significant and motivating elements of their sensemaking process. Finally, this study offers implications for learners, instructors, and course designers.

Exploring the Path of Cultivating College Students’ Personal Morality in Ideological and Political Theory Courses

Based on the demand of social development for people with both ability and political integrity, it has been acknowledged that some college students have a problem, where their personal morality does not match their professional knowledge. In short, these students have rich and profound professional knowledge, but their personal morality is lacking. Therefore, the attention to such a problem is called for. This paper analyzes the path of cultivating college students’ personal morality in ideological and political theory courses in the new era, combs and expounds the occurrence mechanism between college students’ personal morality and ideological and political theory courses in the new era, improves the effectiveness of moral cultivation in ideological and political theory courses from four dimensions – teaching materials, teachers, teaching methods, and evaluation, as well as gives full play to the moral cultivation function of ideological and political theory courses in colleges and universities.

Online teaching research in universities based on blockchain

This study explores the use of blockchain in the course design and evaluation in Chinese universities, and explores the value of teachers’ views and experiences on blockchain in the course design. Previous studies have shown that blockchain has a positive effect on the improvement of online teaching management and evaluation quality. Most of the current research focuses on the management of online teaching by using blockchain, and this qualitative case study investigates the design and evaluation of online course based on blockchain by five teachers of different specialties. Semi-structured interviews and course materials were collected from five teachers for a TPACK framework analysis. The result of the survey emphasizes that the redesign of online courses based on blockchain can improve the matching between blockchain and courses, the quality of teaching and the trust of various parties in online education. The block chain-based the online course of both theory and practice design and evaluation, which is oriented by the index method of capability evaluation, is an appropriate idea and has achieved good results. The experimental course focuses on the integration of blockchain and experimental platform. The immersive and interactive course presentation and the personalized examination based on machine learning are effective. But follow-up should pay attention to the different requirements of course design of different disciplines, using a variety of data sources for analysis, to take measures to enhance the enthusiasm of teachers to adopt new technologies.

Teaching Generation Y: Which Instructional Tools Do Students Prefer in a Traditional Classroom Setting?

The paper evaluates different teaching aids used in an introductory in-class course that focuses on planning theories. We examine the perceptions of students regarding specific teaching tools and how helpful they were in making the course more approachable and providing a better learning experience. The analysis covers 133 student responses over a period of four consecutive years. Findings show that certain instructional tools are regarded as more helpful in making the course material more intelligible. This suggests educators in planning theory courses should review and continuously monitor the didactic tools they use in class.

Linguistic Image of a TV Hostess in Chat and Portrait Interviews

The present study featured the image of a TV hostess in such genres as chat interview and portrait interview. The speech genre is a factor that affects the linguistic image of a media personality. The linguistic image explicates various linguistic means used by TV hostesses to achieve the main goal of the speech genre. The research objective was to demonstrate the interrelation between the TV hostess image and the chat / portrait interview speech genres. The study involved the descriptive method, the qualitative and quantitative content analysis, and the discourse analysis. The linguistic image was analyzed at four levels. Each level revealed units that served as markers of the linguistic image of a TV hostess during chat and portrait interviews. The research results can be applied in theoretical and practical courses of media discourse theory, as well as in special courses of media linguistics, linguistic imagology, and communicative genreology. Further research is required to identify the nonverbal means of the image of a TV hostess in these speech genres.

A Fresh Shot at Statistics in the Classroom: Three Perspectives Using World Cup Soccer Player Data

In this article, we outline several activities revolving around soccer players who participated in the 2018 FIFA World Cup and 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Classroom activities are described from different perspectives, useful for a range of different statistics courses. In a first semester probability theory course, students investigate the counter-intuitive birthday paradox empirically and theoretically. For an introductory data science course, students practice their data wrangling skills using the statistical software R. Additional activities are shared for those instructors interested in emphasizing multivariable thinking in a second semester applied statistical modeling course. The activities shared will provide a range of opportunities for instructors to incorporate the FIFA World Cup data in their own courses. Supplementary files for this article are available online.

A Study on College Students' Sense of Acquisition in Ideological and Political Theory Courses from the Perspective of Psychology

The sense of acquisition in ideological and political theory courses for college students is a key indicator of the quality of ideological and political work in colleges and universities, and it is the direction in the teaching reform of ideological and political theory courses. From the perspective of psychology, the study attempts to construct the basic connotation of the sense of acquisition in ideological and political theory courses in colleges and universities, and proposes ways to improve the sense of acquisition in ideological and political theory courses from four aspects: psychological needs, socialization process, teaching orientation and teaching effect.

Reflections on the Teaching Reform of Art Theory Courses from the Perspective of Connectivism

Connectivism is a new learning theory that adapts to the information society and the Internet age. Its concept and cognition about knowledge, learning, curriculum, teachers, students, and interaction that subvert traditional learning theories constitute the basic viewpoints of this theory. This theory provides a new direction and possibility for the teaching reform of art disciplines and art theory courses in the new era. Constructing modern smart classrooms and teaching models, applying connectivity learning theory to art theory classroom teaching, giving full play to the teacher’s role as a course facilitator in influencing and shaping the construction of network resources, constructing network course learning resources, and optimizing the network course learning environment have become The proposition of the times in the teaching reform of art disciplines and art theory courses in the new era.

The path of integrating labor education into ideological and political theory courses in Higher Vocational Colleges in the new era

This paper mainly expounds the basic concepts of labor education and ideological and political theory courses in higher vocational colleges, and analyzes the value implication of integrating labor education into ideological and political theory courses in higher vocational colleges in the new era, including improving ideological and ideological pattern and labor literacy of students. Based on the current situation of higher vocational college students' group work quality, the author puts forward the labor education and ideological education theory fusion strategy, through the transformation education teaching idea, adopting diversified education teaching methods, perfecting the evaluation system of education and other path to promote integration of the two degree, together to give play to the role of both education, to improve labor quality of higher vocational students.

Research on the Teaching Mode Reform of Ideological and Political Theory Courses from the Perspective of Shared Development Concept

The Fifth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China put forward five development concepts including the concept of shared development, and put forward new tasks and new requirements for the ideological and political education of college students. The ideological and political theory courses in colleges and universities must implement the strategic requirements put forward by the National Ideological and Political Work Conference, and fulfill the theoretical armed and value-leading role in the process of moral cultivation and education. Guided by effectively meeting the diverse needs and value expectations of students' growth and development, actively implement the reform, innovation and practice of classroom teaching methods and means, and continuously improve the ability and level of cultivating heart and morality. This paper deeply analyzes the guiding significance of the concept of shared development to the reform of the teaching mode of ideological and political theory courses.