Third-year Undergraduate Course Research Articles

“Sprinkling Death”: Using the Subversive Humor of Mock-Translation in the Classroom

Four students in the third-year undergraduate course CHN 3003: Reading and Translating Chinese at the University of Malta worked together to create a mock-translation of a fast-food menu. This article examines this collaborative task and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses against the theoretical framework of mock-translation, while also taking into account the socio-cultural particularities of the Maltese context. Malta is a small island nation in the Mediterranean and a former British colony. Students at the University of Malta, including those who study Chinese, are often bilingual in English and Maltese (a Semitic language) or another European language. Instructors working in the Chinese-English translation classroom may find the collaborative translation exercise a useful tool for getting students to consider the intersection between theory and practice.

A laboratory experiment for science courses: Sedimentary microbial fuel cells.

Nowadays there is a concern to improve the quality of education by including an interdisciplinary approach of concepts and their integration in the curriculum of scientific disciplines. The development of microbial fuel cells as a potential alternative for production of renewable energies gives undergraduate students the challenge of integrating interdisciplinary concepts in a hot topic of global interest as alternative energies. We present a laboratory experiment that has been part of a third-year undergraduate course in biology where students gained experience in assembling microbial fuel cells and the understanding of how they work. In this process, the students could integrate biological, biochemical, and electric concepts. In addition, the acquisition of manual skills and experimental design decisions are important for the development of future professionals.

Design, implementation, and insights from a volcanology Virtual Field Trip to Iceland

Virtual field trips (VFTs) are an effective form of geoscience teaching to support or provide alternatives to in-person field trips. We report on the design and implementation of the Iceland VFT aimed at teaching physical volcanology in a third-year undergraduate course. An evaluation exercise administered following the VFT allowed students to reflect on their learning and provided insights into the student experience. Students found the VFT an interesting and motivating learning experience due to the three-dimensional visualisations, entertaining videos, and being exposed to ‘real life’ volcanic environments. Students made suggestions on how to improve the VFT, including minimising technical difficulties and completing the VFT at home to allow more time for classroom discussions. These suggestions were implemented in the second iteration of the VFT and informed the development of two massive open online courses and switch to a flipped classroom.

Can we teach undergraduates the history of time?

This essay examines the author’s experience since 2018 in developing and teaching a third-year undergraduate course on the history of time at a Singapore university, for students specializing in East and Southeast Asian history and the history of technology. History courses are traditionally taught in a chronological format, with clear periodization, and a nearly exclusive focus on written and audiovisual “texts.” The author has found that such an approach is less effective for a course on the history of time, a subject that suggests no obvious periodization or linear narrative, and for which many of his students lack a precise vocabulary. To solve these challenges, the author has borrowed autoethnographic exercises developed by scholars in other disciplines and assigned unconventional tasks such as building water clocks and curating time capsules. While the course has proven popular, it has also invited questions about what a global history of time looks like. Although the industrial and technological history of time is accessible to his students, much of the recent work on temporality presumes a familiarity with European and North American social and political issues that students outside of those regions may lack.

Investigation of Activity Designs Prepared by Pre- Service Mathematics Teachers for Aspects of Entrepreneurship Education

The aim of this study is to examine examples of activities prepared by pre-service mathematics teachers for entrepreneurship education based on their knowledge of the aspects of entrepreneurship education and the achievements in this area in the secondary school mathematics curriculum. In the national and international literature, there are very few studies on entrepreneurship skills in mathematics education and on developing these skills. In addition, there are no secondary school mathematics curriculum acquisitions or application examples prepared in accordance with such acquisitions. The participants of this study included 20 pre-service teachers enrolled in the third-year undergraduate course “Connection in Mathematics Teaching” who volunteered to participate. Over the course of two weeks, four lessons of approximately 40 minutes, or 160 minutes in total, were taught to pre-service teachers addressing the following questions: “What are entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills? How are they related to mathematics? What can be done about the achievements in mathematics and the mathematics curriculum?” The subjects were explained and examples of applications from the researcher’s own work were given. After these explanations, the pre-service teachers were given an assignment. The data of the research consist of the completed assignments and audio recordings of individual interviews after homework analysis. The data were analyzed by content analysis.

Leadership development of 21st century engineering millennial students in Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates; problem-based learning in action

Leadership development has become an import aspect of the UAE’s educational system. In recent years, UAE leaders have focused on the reform of higher education assessment, curriculum and administration with a view to encouraging Emirati students to contribute to the nation’s growth as national human capital, through leadership roles where they will be guided and educated driving the needs of the knowledge economy. In many courses, students are more knowledge recipients than producers; they are considered cognitively active whilst physically inactive where learning is considered a passive process. BUSS301, a third-year undergraduate course taught to engineering students has undergone major revisions influenced by student evaluations on application, relevance and assessment. The earlier syllabus entitled Corporate Leadership and Human Resource Management (more theoretical and examination driven) has evolved to a more recent Enquiry Based approach: Teaching and Learning Leadership by Simulation and Theory where students are driving their own learning through inquiry using a project-based learning (PBL) approach.
 
 Keywords: Project-based learning, engineering education, leadership, student-centred learning, constructivism, teambuilding, collaboration

Preparing undergraduates for visual analytics.

Visual analytics (VA) combines the strengths of human and machine intelligence to enable the discovery of interesting patterns in challenging datasets. Historically, most attention has been given to developing the machine component. But it is also essential to develop the abilities of the analysts themselves, especially at the beginning of their careers. For the past several years, the University of British Columbia (UBC)--with the support of Boeing--has experimented with various ways of preparing undergraduate students for VA. The result of this experimentation is a third-year undergraduate course titled Cognitive Systems 303 (COGS 303) that focuses on "VA unplugged"--that is, on developing investigative abilities prior to training on the VA systems themselves.

Bayesian decision analysis: principles and practice

Bayesian decision analysis supports principled decision making in complex domains. This textbook takes the reader from a formal analysis of simple decision problems to a careful analysis of the sometimes very complex and data rich structures confronted by practitioners. The book contains basic material on subjective probability theory and multi-attribute utility theory, event and decision trees, Bayesian networks, influence diagrams and causal Bayesian networks. The author demonstrates when and how the theory can be successfully applied to a given decision problem, how data can be sampled and expert judgements elicited to support this analysis, and when and how an effective Bayesian decision analysis can be implemented. Evolving from a third-year undergraduate course taught by the author over many years, all of the material in this book will be accessible to a student who has completed introductory courses in probability and mathematical statistics--Provided by publisher.

Using Geography to Teach Freedom and Defiance: Lessons in Social Change from ‘Autonomous Geographies’

This paper is about how the transformatory pedagogical practice of popular/liberatory education can be further articulated within geography. It is based on the experiences of a third-year undergraduate course, ‘Autonomous Geographies’, in which the author developed some of the core values of popular education, namely engaging with movements for change, making space for emotions, developing strategy and overcoming powerlessness, and building solidarity and cooperation. These were put into practice through coursework involving contact with social movements, a praxis-based reflexive journal, action planning and spokescouncils. The author reflects on how he engaged students with the possibilities of becoming active, critical and defiant citizens engaged in social change, as well as problematizing his own position and aspirations. On the author's part, this paper is a call to re-energize the links between geographical education and freedom, and a plea that we do not retreat from naming and confronting oppression.

Practical experience with learning objectives in an undergraduate crop physiology course

Practical experience with learning objectives in an undergraduate crop physiology course