scholarly journals Using Alternative Assessment to Assess Undergraduate EFL Students at Yemeni Universities: Challenges from the Perspectives of Faculty

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 440-458
Author(s):  
Marwan Saeed Saif Moqbel

The present study aimed at investigating alternative assessment (AA) within the Yemeni university EFL classrooms in terms of identifying the challenges of using AA to assess undergraduate EFL students from the perspectives of the faculty. Data were collected, through a questionnaire, from (66) lecturers and professors of different ranks who teach EFL at the collegiate level in two Yemeni public universities and one national university. The results of the study indicated that faculty members of English departments at Yemeni universities face some challenges of using AA to assess undergraduate EFL students. These challenges belong to various factors, including the instructional environment, the students, the management of Yemeni universities, the faculty members, or the nature of AA. Statistically significant differences were found in the mean scores according to years of experience variable between respondents with less than 5 years and those with 5-10 years of experience in favor of those with less than 5 years of experience, but not according to the type of university, gender, and specialization variables. Accordingly, some recommendations were given to address the identified challenges, which might lead to a better implementation of AA in Yemeni university EFL classrooms.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (46) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Layla Falah Salem Alomrani

The study aimed to identify the level of applying participatory action research (PAR) skills by a sample of faculty members at Tabuk University to improve teaching practices (TP), and to find out whether there were statistically differences at significance level (α ≤ 0.05) between the mean scores of the study sample assessment attributable to the variables: (Gender, academic level, qualification type, years of experience). To achieve this, the descriptive analytical method was used, whereby a questionnaire was administered to a sample consisting of (114) FMs at UT in the academic year 1440/1441 AH. The questionnaire consisting of (40) items, covering seven key skills. The results showed that the total assessment level of the practice of PAR skills to improve TP from the viewpoint of FMs showed a 'high' level of significance with a mean of about (3.78). Those skills were arranged according to the assessment level in a descending order as follows: (setting the PAR goal, reviewing the literature on research focus area, drawing results and conclusions, implementing the action plan (AP), designing the AP, defining the PAR focus area, and designing a future procedural AP). Also, there were no statistically differences at significance level (α ≤ 0.05) between the mean scores of participants' assessment attributable to: (gender, educational level, qualification type, years of experience). The study recommended supporting the development of AR skills among the FMs and motivating them to conduct this kind of studies along with academic studies. It was also recommended to conduct studies on the effectiveness of practicing PAR skills to improve the university education and learning process at the level of academic programs or study courses level, taking into account other variables. Keywords: participatory action research skills, teaching practices, faculty members.


SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110326
Author(s):  
Waheed Hammad ◽  
Wajeha Al-Ani

The purpose of this article is to explore the perceptions of faculty members regarding research capacity building in the field of Education. It particularly seeks to identify the challenges and opportunities associated with this practice from the perspectives of these members. The study adopted a qualitative research design, using focus group interviews to collect data from a sample of faculty members in the College of Education at a national university in Oman. The results revealed the existence of some challenges that hampered educational research, including time constraints, the lack of a collaborative research culture, the lack of research training, and the absence of a clear research agenda. The analysis also identified a number of capacity building opportunities such as a research-supportive environment, the availability of research funding, and the role of research groups. The study concludes with some recommendations to improve educational research capacity both in Oman and in the Arab region in general.


Author(s):  
Giuseppe Lippi ◽  
Gabriel Lima-Oliveira ◽  
Giorgio Brocco ◽  
Antonella Bassi ◽  
Gian Luca Salvagno

AbstractBackground:Despite the importance of manual pipetting of fluids such as water, solutions, buffers, reagents, or biological samples in daily laboratory practice, the intra- and inter-individual imprecision of this activity has not been recently described in scientific publications.Methods:Twenty laboratory operators were randomly enrolled for this study. Imprecision of manual pipetting was estimated by asking each laboratory professional to dispense 1 mL, 100 μL or 10 μL of distilled water for 10 consecutive times with three certified pipettes into a 50-mL plastic container placed into a gravimetric balance. The weight of the water dispensed was systematically recorded for each of the 10 repeated attempts, and the inter- and intra-operator imprecision was finally calculated and expressed as coefficient of variation (CV%).Results:The mean intra-individual imprecision was 5.7% (range, 0%–11.8%) for pipetting 10 μL, 0.8% (range, 0.4%–1.9%) for pipetting 100 μL, and 0.2% (range, 0.1%–0.5%) for pipetting 1 mL. Overall, the mean inter-individual imprecision was 8.1% for pipetting 10 μL, 1.1% for pipetting 100 μL and 0.4% for pipetting 1 mL. A significantly inverse correlation was found between intra-individual pipetting imprecision and the amount of water dispensed (r = –0.80; p<0.001). No significant correlation was observed between individual pipetting performance and sex, age, qualification, and years of experience in the laboratory.Conclusions:The results of this study show that manual pipetting is plagued by a considerable intra- and inter-individual imprecision, which is inversely correlated with the amount of fluid dispensed.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Ahlam Mustafa Hasan Awajneh ◽  
Suhair Sulaiman Mohammed Sabbah ◽  
Inas Aref Saleh Naser

The study aims to recognizing the concepts of knowledge economy and the roles of faculty members in the light ofknowledge economy from the perspectives of its members, it was clear that the concept of the knowledge economywas high, it was (2.7,) and there were differences in years of experience in favor of (1-5 years) class, and in favor ofthe associate teacher in the educational degree, and the university in favor of Bier Ziet University. Whereas the meanof the faculty members’ roles was (2.26) with differences in gender in favor of the females and as for the university,in was in favor of Bier Ziet University.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Krul ◽  
Armand R. J. Girbes

AbstractObjective:The objective of this study was to report on a nine years of experience of providing medical support during house parties (raves) in the Netherlands, where they can be organized legally.Design:This was a prospective, observational study of self-referred patients from 1997 to 2005. During raves, first aid stations are staffed with specifically trained medical and paramedical personnel. Self-referred patients were diagnosed, treated, and recorded using standardized methods.Results:During a nine-year period with 219 raves occurred, involving approximately three million participants, 23,581 patients visited the first aid stations. The medical usage rate (MUR) varied from 59–170 patients per 10,000 rave participants. The mean age increased from 1997 to 2005 from 18.7 ±2.7 to 23.3 ±5.7 years. The mean stay at the first aid station was 18 ±46 minutes. Most health problems were mild. Fifteen cases of severe incidents were observed with one death.Conclusions:Unique data from the Netherlands demonstrate a low number of serious, health-related, short-term problems during raves.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nima Pouladian ◽  
Mohammad Sadegh Bagheri ◽  
Firooz Sadighi

This study sought to examine the sort, frequency, and sources of writing wrongs committed by adult Iranian EFL students. To score the participants’ written essays and speaking interviews, the four criteria specified for the IELTS Speaking and Writing Band Scores (British Council, 2014) were taken into consideration. The study also tried to comparatively analyze the error categories made by men and women learners regarding the type and frequency of their linguistic errors. To gather the information, from the population of faculty members at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences (HUMS) in Bandarabbas, Iran, 100 adults, both male and female, with their age ranging from 31 to 52, were selected using convenient sampling. Based on their previous IELTS band scores ranging from 4 to 6, the members are separated into three groups.The results of data analysis revealed that verb tense was the very common grammatical mistake done by members in all three groups. For the cohesion and coherence and lexical sub-categories, relative clauses and incorrect use of target lexical item were regarded as the most common categories of errors. Outcomes of Chi-Square analyses also showed substantial differences among errors committed by participants in different groups. Finally, the comparison between male and female participants’ errors revealed that male participants made both written and spoken errors more than females. According to the results, recommendations, and any suggestions that are of importance to teachers and policymakers as well as to EFL learners are presented in detail.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hassan Eslamian ◽  
Seyed Ebrahim Mirshah Jafari ◽  
Mohammad Reza Neyestani

AbstractThis quasi-experimental study investigated the effect of teaching aesthetic skills to faculty members on development of their effective teaching performance through a two-group pretest-posttest design. The sample included 32 faculty members at a major Iranian university who were divided into the experimental (11 participants) and control groups (21 participants). The experimental group was taught to use aesthetic skills in the teaching and learning processes; however, no intervention was applied to the control group. To evaluate the effective teaching performance of the faculty members, a tailor-made questionnaire was used in two pretest and posttest stages, where randomly chosen students were asked to express their opinions about the faculty membersí performance. The sample size of the students was 1096 in the pretest stage and 935 in the posttest stage. Paired t-test results showed that there was no significant difference between the mean effective teaching scores of the faculty members in the control group in the pretest stage and in the posttest stage. However, the mean effective teaching scores of the faculty members in the experimental group were found to be significantly higher in the posttest. In addition, although there was no significant difference between the mean effective teaching scores of the two faculty groups in the pretest, faculty members in the experimental group outperformed their counterparts in the control group. Based on the findings, applying aesthetic skills by faculty members in the teaching and learning processes can pave the way for sustainable development of their effective teaching performance. Therefore, faculty members are recommended to acquire the required knowledge and skills to better use aesthetic skills in the teaching process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Hidayatul Hamdiah ◽  
Nik Mohd Rahimi Nik Yusoff

This article focused on the effectiveness of Number Head Together in teaching writing in the EFL Classroom. The aim of the study was to improve EFL students’ writing. This study was quantitative research and used an experimental design. The population was 30 students and the sample was 15 students. Purposive sampling was used in determining the sample of the study. The writing test was the instrument used to collect the data. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and paired sample t-test to test the hypothesis. The students' instrument was an essay-informed descriptive text. Furthermore, the researchers used pre and post to compare scores before and after implied Number Head Together. The mean score of the pre-test was 49.06 at p = 1.364 and the post-test was 78.40 at p = 1.576 which was higher than 0.05 (as the standard significance level in SPSS). This value showed the differences before and after implementing Number Head Together. Hence, it can be concluded that Number Head Together was significantly effective in teaching writing in the tenth graders of Public Vocational High School (SMKN) 1 Janapria, Indonesia. However, The student's writing improves because in grouping the students able to help each other. Keywords:  Number Head Together (NHT), EFL Classroom,  Teaching Writing


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-39
Author(s):  
Sabeeha Hamza Dehham ◽  
Nadia Majeed Hussein

This research attempted to explore the effects of divergent and convergent tasks on the successful reading of EFL students at the preparatory stage. To verify the analysis, the null hypothesis was established that states "There are no differences of statistical significance at the level of (0,05) among the mean of scores of the experimental group who study according to divergent and convergent task technique and the mean of the scores of the control group who study according to the regular method".  The experimental approach is used by designing two equivalent experimental groups of 32 students studying the technique proposed, and an 8-week (2019-2020) control group of 32 students, three classes each week using the Google Classroom Platform and Telegram. The present study utilized the platform Google Classroom (GC) and Telegram as an educational platform to assist students during their course learning process. The writing skills test was administered after checking with the experts. The results show that there are statistical differences at level (0,05) between the average of the experimental and control groups' reading skills and those of the experimental group. This difference is because the experimental group uses divergent and convergent tasks.


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