scholarly journals INTEGRATED LEARNING DESIGN OF AN ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY SUSTAINABILITY AND ETHICS COURSE

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Zilberbrant ◽  
Allan MacKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Real World ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Stakeholder Management ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Group Project ◽  
Engineering Technology ◽  
Final Project ◽  
Management Concepts ◽  
Sustainability Issue

McMaster University’s School of Engineering Technology (SET) offered a unique course structure to students in their final undergraduate term in the 2015-2016 academic year. The intention of the program chair and instructor was to deliver a course that taught sustainability and ethics in a context that would be applicable to 105 Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) engineering technology students preparing to commence their careers at the end of the term. The course focused on the delivery of a final project of the students’ choosing that connected to a real-world sustainability issue supported by weekly lectures and testing. The unique delivery style was an experiential learning approach mimicking the dynamics of a real-world project involving client and stakeholder management – concepts that the students were introduced to in prerequisite courses. The project criteria stipulated a “new-worthy” topic which forced the students to be up-to-date and adjust their project work throughout the term based on changes in the media interest, public opinion, or political involvement. Students were challenged to not only look at the problem and address the applicable environmental, social, and economic aspects but to further develop communication strategies within the political context and societal acceptance/understanding of the issue. The evaluation of the course success is reviewed based on student feedback and a formal focus-group session conducted by McMaster Institute for Innovation & Excellence in Teaching & Learning (MIIETL) which highlighted students “felt engaged with the material and described the project as their ‘greatest intellectual challenge’ of the B.Tech. program.” For the purpose of knowledge sharing, this paper will discuss the course design, innovative instructional approach, group project attributes and outcomes from a student the focus-group.

scholarly journals Applying a framework to document and analyze the learning design intent with learning analytics in an online course

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Sally Eberhard
Keyword(s):  
Learning Analytics ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Learning Technologies ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Educational Goals ◽  
Learning Design ◽  
Group Project ◽  
Final Project ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Pedagogical Intent

“ETEC 565A: Understanding Learning Analytics” was a new course offered in a Master of Educational Technology programme in UBC in January 2019. In order to support students exploring learning analytics in a more relevant way to them, the final project allows students to choose their own learning analytics adventure. This presentation will be a showcase and a reflection of learning from our final (group) project. Our group wanted to focus on learning design and learning analytics. There has been a lot of interests in learning analytics in higher education, it has been appearing in the EDUCAUSE’s Horizon report for many years as a technology to adopt. We also know that learning technologies should support the educational goals. Therefore, it is important for us to understand, how would one combine learning design with learning analytics. Our instructor guided to Lockyer, Heathcote and Dawson (2013)’s work. Their article presented “learning design as a form of documentation of pedagogical intent that can provide the context for making sense of diverse sets of analytic data” (p.1439). Lockyer et al (2013) explored using the checkpoint and process analytics as broad categories of learning analytics and how through this documentation of pedagogical intent and the related learning analytics that can be collected, could support pedagogical actions.   Our instructor has given us permission to use our course as an example to apply Lockyer et al (2013)’s framework and conduct our analysis on the course. Our group also had access to some learning analytics data ourselves, through the “Threadz” tool for analysing our discussion forum activities. For all other types of data that we did not have access to, we made comments on what the data could be used for, and if it would provide enough information to assess if the pedagogical intent was met. Comments were also made about potential data that could have been better for informing pedagogical actions but were either not possible to get or too difficult and unpractical.   In the presentation, I will share some backgrounds for the Lockyer et al (2013)’s framework for aligning learning analytics with learning design, how one could use the framework to document their own course design and identify potential learning analytics data sources or the lack of. As the framework provides teachers and designers a tool to think, plan and reflect with. I will discuss some of our group’s findings and reflections from the analysis of our own online course.  Then discuss about potentials of using such framework on a more traditional face-to-face course.   As institutions and courses collect more data about their students, it is useful to have a framework to help teachers think about how they might use the learning analytics data to support their students through examining and documenting their pedagogical intents. It is also important to note what the existing data can and cannot do to support pedagogical goals.

scholarly journals Building a precision oncology workforce by multidisciplinary and case-based learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Srikar Chamala ◽  
Heather T. D. Maness ◽  
Lisa Brown ◽  
C. Brooke Adams ◽  
Jatinder K. Lamba ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Group Session ◽  
Focus Group Session ◽  
Precision Oncology ◽  
Training Experience ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Case Based Learning ◽  
Case Based

Abstract Background Participants in two recent National Academy of Medicine workshops identified a need for more multi-disciplinary professionals on teams to assist oncology clinicians in precision oncology. Methods We developed a graduate school course to prepare biomedical students and pharmacy students to work within a multidisciplinary team of oncology clinicians, pathologists, radiologists, clinical pharmacists, and genetic counselors. Students learned precision oncology skills via case-based learning, hands-on data analyses, and presentations to peers. After the course, a focus group session was conducted to gain an in-depth student perspective on their interprofessional training experience, achievement of the course learning outcomes, ways to improve the course design in future offerings, and how the course could improve future career outcomes. A convenience sampling strategy was used for recruitment into the focus group session. A thematic content analysis was then conducted using the constant comparative method. Results Major themes arising from student feedback were (1) appreciation of a customized patient case-based teaching approach, (2) more emphasis on using data analysis tools, (3) valuing interdisciplinary inclusion, and (4) request for more student discussion with advanced preparation materials. Conclusions Feedback was generally positive and supports the continuation and expansion of the precision oncology course to include more hands-on instruction on the use of clinical bioinformatic tools.

scholarly journals Е-ENVIRONMENT BASED ON MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF GROUP PROJECT WORK OF STUDENTS AT HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (6) ◽  
pp. 98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olena G. Glazunova ◽  
Olena G. Kuzminska ◽  
Tetyana V. Voloshyna ◽  
Taisia P. Sayapina ◽  
Valentyna I. Korolchuk
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Cloud Services ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Environmental Sciences ◽  
Group Project ◽  
Project Method ◽  
Environment Model ◽  
National University

Materials of the article are devoted to the experience of implementing cloud services in the process of training students at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. The latest research in the field of designing and creating e-environments for the organization of group project work has been analyzed. The e-environment model based on Microsoft SharePoint is developed and the method of using Office 365 cloud services in a single e-environment for organizing group project work of students is given. This article offers the developed criteria and selected tools for assessing the effectiveness of using the e-environment for the organization of group project work. It presents the materials and analysis of the results of applying the project method in the course of studying the academic discipline “Information Technologies” at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. It also defines the advantages of applying e-environment based on Microsoft SharePoint for the organization of students’ project work.

scholarly journals ’I learned a lot about my classmates …’. Exploring focus group discussions as learning environment to raise controversial issues in geography and economic education

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 16-30
Author(s):  
Christiane Hintermann ◽  
◽  
Heidrun Edlinger ◽  
Matthias Fasching ◽  
Thomas Jekel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Learning Environment ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Real World ◽  
Economic Education ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions

Teachers of geography and economics address numerous topics in the classroom which are controversially discussed in society and/or affect pupils directly. How they deal with issues such as migration or identity depends not only on the respective curriculum but also on their disciplinary knowledge and pedagogic skills. This paper argues for the need to adapt learning environments depending on educational objectives, content, age and discusses focus groups as one possible way to work with students in secondary education on sensitive matters. Focus groups are seen as a tool to enable real-world complexity in the classroom, and to prepare students for participatory, active citizenship. The paper first discusses current theoretical thought regarding controversy in both society and the classroom. It then goes on to illustrate real-world classroom experiences of focus-group based learning on controversial issues and to discuss its benefits and challenges.

Bringing Real World Context into the Focus Group Setting

Focus Groups ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 129-136
Author(s):  
Peter Coughlan ◽  
Aaron Sklar
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Real World ◽  
Group Setting
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