University Seminar Research Articles

Pre-service teachers' understanding of teaching L2 French interactional competence through TBLT: Insights from task design processes and post-implementation reflections

This paper reports on a university seminar for pre-service teachers (PST) of L2 French in which a conversation analytic concept of language use was combined with the methodology of task-based language teaching (TBLT) to teach L2 interactional competence (L2 IC). In the course, participants carried out a needs analysis, designed pedagogical tasks that focused on teaching L2 IC and trialed them in real classrooms before evaluating both their tasks' success and their own learning process. In a post-hoc study, data gathered from the course including pre-design comments, written design rationales, audio recordings of the group design meetings, oral and written feedback and post-implementation comments were analyzed using Qualitative Content Analysis to find out in what respects the PST's cognition with regard to teaching L2 IC changed during the seminar. The results show that there were some dynamics in the PST's cognition, particularly regarding their view of learner factors in task accomplishment and the targeting of specific social actions. Other aspects of PST's cognition remained more stable as their initial beliefs were confirmed by the task design process.

Struggle and health. Sociability and literacy in the “150 hours” courses in Turin

Throughout the years of the reforms, Turin’s political and trade union organizations succeeded in collecting and combining the requests coming from people’s workplace and everyday’s life to develop new models of social governance of schools and social services. All this was realized by reversing the responses given to social discomfort and suffering through a re-appropriation of spaces and a growing participation of citizens in all the social choices. This contribution aims at reconstructing the initiatives and experience of the courses of the so-called “150 hours school” in the years 1974-1978: in this period, the training on prevention on women’s health was carried out in middle schools and in university seminars, and it was open to male and female workers. These training started a process of awareness, active citizenship and representation that – from the collegial bodies of the schools to the newly born local councils, up to the factory councils – brought into question and “in motion” parents, school staff and new residents and workers.

My 50-year history with the Columbia university seminar on appetitive behavior.

My 50-year history with the Columbia university seminar on appetitive behavior.

Evaluation of a university seminar on the use of digital media in the physics classroom

Fostering digital competencies is an important aspect of pre-service teacher education. However, for physics, there is a lack of systematically surveyed and evidence-based seminars that specifically take into account relevant research findings. Thus, we developed a research-based seminar on the effective use of digital media in physics classrooms and investigated its effects on pre-service teachers (PSTs) professional competencies in a mixed-methods design. Our quantitative analyses of different competence components surveyed in a pre-post-design indicate that the seminar leads to an increase in motivation to use digital media in the physics classroom. Nevertheless, no significant increase in digital-media PCK was found, which could be due to the small sample. The seminar design, however, was predominantly evaluated positively by experts and PSTs in guided interviews. Based on the results, it is planned to further refine the original seminar using a Design-Based Research approach.

Prostate Cancer Survivorship Essentials for men with prostate cancer on androgen deprivation therapy: protocol for a randomised controlled trial of a tele-based nurse-led survivorship care intervention (PCEssentials Hormone Therapy Study)

IntroductionAndrogen deprivation therapy (ADT) is commonly used to treat men with locally advanced or metastatic prostate cancer. Men receiving ADT experience numerous side effects and frequently report unmet supportive care...

Teaching happiness to students - implementation and evaluation of a program aiming at promoting wellbeing in elementary schools.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of mental disorders in children and adolescents has increased significantly. Evidence shows that childhood mental disorders can have serious consequences on psychosocial, cognitive, and physical development. Approaches from Positive Education go further than the urgently needed prevention of mental disorders by aiming directly at promoting subjective, psychological, and social wellbeing. The present study describes the implementation of a brief program to promote wellbeing in 15 elementary schools. For this purpose, in a regular university seminar, students of teaching and educational science were instructed to give 11 "happiness lessons" for fourth graders in a team of two and in the presence of the class teacher over the course of 3 months. Quantitative data were collected from children and parents in the treatment group classes and in the parallel classes serving as the waiting control group at four measurement points (pre, post, 1- and 2-month follow-up). We assessed psychological wellbeing, negative emotions and moods, parent support and home life, perception of the school environment, and self-esteem of the children with established instruments with versions for children and their parents and the frequency of positive and negative emotions of the children in self-report only. Additionally, we applied ad hoc items on subjective perception of the project and open questions in the treatment group. Data were analyzed with EffectLiteR using multigroup structural equation models. Results showed a small significant effect for negative emotions with the children's data and a medium effect for psychological wellbeing in the perception of the parents at the 1-month follow-up. Interaction effects suggest that lower baseline levels in parent support and home life and self-esteem would increase the treatment effect for these constructs. The need for more grounded framework in positive education and the inclusion of more qualitative methods as well as suggestions to improve the program in the sense of a whole school approach are discussed.

How to Be an Unsuccessful Ancient Philosophy Scholar in Uneasy Times: The Case of S. Lisiecki (1872-1960)

The paper provides a brief outline of the biography and works of Stanisław Lisiecki (1872–1960), a little-known Polish classics scholar, who is remembered only, if at all, as a translator of Plato’s Republic. In his early fifties, having given up his career as a Catholic priest, he started working in the field of classics and managed to publish several minor works on Plato in Polish and Latin. His decision to abandon the clergy was not welcomed by many members of the Polish academia and most of his translations of Plato and Aristotle remained unpublished. His renderings of Plato could not compete with the highly accessible translations made by W. Witwicki, which were becoming increasingly popular at that time. Furthermore, Lisiecki’s translations of Aristotle, despite the pioneering nature of his undertaking, met with strong criticism at various university seminars.

Unlocking minds and rethinking law school: the transformative power of ‘University in Prison’

Unlocking minds and rethinking law school: the transformative power of ‘University in Prison’ The project “University in Prison” unites law students living in freedom and imprisoned students by having both groups of students attend a weekly university seminar on criminological and legal topics. This takes place within the walls of Berlin’s largest prison and therefore comes with various challenges. Much more decisive, however, are the positive effects that the project has on all those involved. In this article, we talk about the implementation of the project, the impact of “University in prison” on students living in freedom, imprisoned students and law schools in general and the first evaluation results. “University in Prison” attempts to foster inclusivity in law school and challenges the status quo at law schools in Germany.

The University Forest School Space in England: taking seminars outdoors for early years undergraduates

ABSTRACT Outdoor natural spaces are seen as not only physical locations but also shaped by human interactions, cultural practices, and political processes. University seminars were conducted in the on-campus Forest School. Focusing specifically on the development of early years educators in England, the exploration of outdoor natural spaces reveals a multifaceted dimension that extends beyond mere physicality. A convenience group of 25 participants comprising early years undergraduates were selected for a focus group that took place around a campfire after a series of seminar discussions. Thematic analysis of the data revealed the themes of collaboration, creativity, and cultural boundaries. Drawing upon Lefebvre and Massey, this research highlights the potential for new educational spaces beyond the traditional indoor classroom and the benefits of incorporating nature into early years learning environments.

AI-Fused Automation [From the Editor’s Desk

ChatGPT is everywhere. From the weekend party table to the weekday university seminars, people have been talking about ChatGPT. Since its public launch at the end of last November, it reached 100 million users in January and has become the fastest-growing Internet service ever. GPT is short for generative pretrained transformer, and the chatbot is the large language model pretrained with text databases from the Internet and human feedback. The hype around ChatGPT may be well justified, as the tech innovation could transform some fields, such as how humans interact with machines. Will it be long before truly intelligent machines are developed to transform industrial sectors such as manufacturing?

How to Delay Death and Look Further Into the Future if You Fall Into a Black Hole

In this note, we present a pedagogical illustration of peculiar properties of motion in the vicinity of and inside black holes. We discuss how a momentary impulse can modify the life-time of an object radially falling into a Schwarzschild black hole down to singularity. The well-known upper limit for a proper time spent within a horizon, in fact, requires an infinitely powerful kick. We calculate the proper time interval (perceived as the personal lifetime of a falling observer) till the contact with the singularity, as well as the time interval in the Lemaître frame (which reflects how far into the future of the outer world a falling observer can look), for different values of the kick received by the falling body. We discuss the ideal strategy to increase both time intervals by an engine with a finite power. This example is suitable for university seminars for undergraduate students specializing in general relativity and related astrophysical subjects.

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere

"We don't normally require that in other contexts, do we": Interpersonal meanings of tag questions in British university seminars based on the BASE corpus.

This study investigates the interpersonal meanings expressed by English tag questions in the context of British university seminars from two dimensions: evidential modification of tags and conduciveness of responses. The data for the study derive from seminars in the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) Corpus, which is herein both quantitative and qualitative analyzed. The findings reveal that: (1) three-quarters of tag questions in the data are utilized by teachers, and the unmarked form of tag questions in university seminars are generally positive-negative forms, with a few examples of other varieties; (2) regarding evidential modification of tags, depending on the degree of epistemic certainty of the speakers on the proposition of the anchor, the default function of teachers' tag questions in the data is to convey emphasis, followed by confirmatory function, with only a few cases of informational function; and (3) regarding conduciveness of responses, over 70% of tag questions are followed by no verbal response, while less than 30% are followed by explicit responses. Accordingly, these findings raise the question of whether tag questions can really provide sufficient scope for interactions in classroom. It is hoped that this nuanced, corpus-based analysis of tag question utilization within the context of British university seminars would empirically reveal the interpersonal relations between teachers and students and thereby shed light on more efficient seminar discussions.

Easily applicable social virtual reality and social presence in online higher education during the covid-19 pandemic: A qualitative study

Social virtual reality (social VR) platforms gained popularity among users over the last few years. They provide users with a sense of social presence, potentially stimulating social interaction in distance education. Insights on how VR enhances the social aspects of learning are scarce, however, and past examinations often focused on the effects of short usage times of self-developed VR learning applications. To analyze the potential of a simple-to-apply off-the-shelf social VR environment in distance education, in this qualitative study, a sample of 35 master's students employed the AltspaceVR platform for university seminars and group work over a six-week while campus access was restricted due to the covid-19 pandemic, and 23 of them were interviewed to examine their perception of the technology. The results show that social VR facilitated feelings of social presence, a more natural and spontaneous way of communicating with peers and teachers, and an increased sense of community in the classroom, compared to the alternative of videoconferencing. Participants reported high acceptance of the technology for teaching and learning tasks, particularly for interactive activities (e.g., workgroups) in small groups, but also identified limitations related to aspects such as image resolution, lack of note-taking tools, or the feeling of dizziness and fatigue after prolonged use. These results highlight the potential advantages of social VR for stimulating the social dimensions of online education, as well as the remaining challenges that need to be addressed to enable its use in higher education.

Az antropocén és a performatív tudomány : Példák a Bielefeldi Egyetemről

This study inquires how theatrality and performativity (drama pedagogy) played an important role in certain research and teaching programs of the Center of Interdisciplinary Research in Bielefeld (Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung / ZIF) and its associated Bielefeld University. It focuses especially on heuristic examples engaging with the challenges of the Anthropocene. By using inside and outside perspectives to the topic, the study investigates the structure of a university seminar on performing science, as well as the intersection, where art and science meet productively in a universitarian framework.

A Rating Framework for the Quality of Video Explanations

AbstractMore and more teachers create video explanations for their instruction. Whether or not they are effective for learning depends on the videos’ instructional quality. Reliable measures to assess the quality of video explanations, however, are still rare, especially for videos created by (preservice) teachers. We developed such a measure in a two-step process: First, the categories were theoretically derived. Second, a coding manual was developed and used with 36 videos, which were created by preservice teachers during a university seminar. The resulting framework, which can be used as a coding manual for future research, consists of twelve criteria in five different categories: video content, learner orientation, representation and design, language, and process structure. With this framework, we contribute a reliable measure to evaluate the quality of existing videos. In practice, teachers can also use this measure as a guideline when creating or choosing video explanations for the classroom.

‘Noticias no son noticias, ¿no?’: Mexican perspectives on violence in the media and the war on drugs

Explicit images and descriptions of violent death are typical within the Mexican media landscape, and especially within the context of the War on Drugs. Here, I share observations of my encounters with these media, particularly television narcotelenovelas and tabloids. I also center the voices of people with firsthand experience of the narcoscape in Mexico City and Ciudad Juárez, including Mrs. Luz María Dávila, the mother of two youths slain in a 2010 drug cartel-directed massacre. Across the two main sites of this study, a university seminar and a public town hall meeting, a professor and a self-politicized mother each question the role of the media in upholding investments in violence within news and entertainment. As the professor asks, ‘News are not simply news, right?’ These insights invite reflection on the public’s participation as spectator-voyeurs in the more than 105,000 Mexican deaths facilitated by cross-border trade in illicit narcotics to-date. The interactional data also suggest effective ways of encouraging critical media analysis in and beyond university settings.

Stage V Chronic Kidney Disease: A plea for Home Dialysis

Summary
 Overall, home dialysis remains underutilized in much of the world. It is only in some parts of the world, such as Hong Kong, Mexico, Thailand, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, that home dialysis is used for more than 20% of the dialysis population. It is observed that in most high- and middle-income countries, home dialysis is generally more economical than center-based dialysis.
 According to the results of the REIN 2020 registry, the share of out-of-center dialysis in France has been increasing since 2012. This is mainly due to the increase in the number of patients treated in low medicalized dialysis units (LMDUs) (+7.3% per year between 2012 and 2016, then +3.8% between 2016 and 2020). In contrast, the proportion of patients treated at home has changed little. The percentage of patients on peritoneal dialysis is decreasing (-1.8% per year). Home hemodiaysis is increasing (+10.3% per year) but remains very marginal (1% of dialysis patients). Finally, the advanced age of dialysis patients, which is constantly increasing, cannot be ignored. The proportion of these very old patients has increased from 10.5% in 2012 to 12.5% in 2020. However, during the COVID-19 epidemic, several articles in the literature have demonstrated the protective effect of home dialysis in all its forms (peritoneal dialysis and home hemodialysis) against SARS-CoV-2 infection.
 We report on the status of home dialysis in France, its advantages and proposals for its development, as presented at the Home Dialysis Day (DIADOM) of University Seminars of Nephrology (SUN) in Paris in January 2022.

Real responses to anti-tax avoidance: Evidence from the UK Worldwide Debt Cap

We analyze how multinational firms reallocate real operations and debt across their affiliates in response to anti-tax avoidance policies. The UK introduced a worldwide debt cap in 2010, generating a quasi-natural experiment that limited interest deductibility for a group of multinational firms. We find that multinationals affected by the reform reduced the amount of debt held in the UK and increased debt held abroad. Affected multinationals reallocated a share of their real operations away from the UK. Our findings provide causal evidence for tax-motivated debt and real activity reallocation within multinationals and show how multinationals can circumvent tax avoidance regulations.11We would like to thank Jennifer Blouin, Steve Bond, Travis Chow, Mike Devereux, Jim Hines, Krzysztof Karbownik, James O’Donovan, Daniela Scur, Michael Stimmelmayr, Juan Carlos Suarez Serrato, Shiheng Wang, Bohui Zhang and three anonymous referees for their comments. Further thanks to the participants of National Tax Association conference, Utah Tax Invitational, China International Conference in Finance, Asia Meeting of Econometric Society, Ce2 workshop, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation Summer Symposium, Fanhai International School of Finance at Fudan University seminar, Australian National University, International Institute of Public Finance Annual Congress and European Economic Association Congress for their helpful suggestions. Xing acknowledges financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71903125), Shanghai Pujiang Program (No. 16PJC056) and Shanghai Institute of International Finance and Economics. All omissions and errors are our own.

Conflicts in Physical Education Classes - A Systems Theoretical Analysis of the Teacher’s Perspective

This article presents the results of a systems theoretical analysis of conflicts in physical education classes from the teacher’s perspective. Building on the state of current research, a theoretical model to analyse the development and management of sport related conflicts in the school setting is elaborated. This model is used to examine written assignments collected at university seminars on conflicts in a German sport institute. At these seminars, sport science students submitted 40 detailed descriptions of conflicts in physical education classes, which were either collected through an interview or experienced directly in their role as teachers. The empirical material is analysed using qualitative content analysis. Based on a fictive case that is developed for exemplification purposes, all collected cases are considered against the background of the developed model. It differentiates between trivial, stable, slightly, and highly escalated conflicts and examines suitable management strategies. The study concludes that trivial conflicts are common in physical education classes, that teachers use different strategies to manage them, and that this issue is dealt with differently at the organisational level. This preliminary model can be improved through further empirical research that compares different school forms and levels of education at the national and international level.