scholarly journals Using Interactive Response Systems in Economics: utility and factors influencing students’ attitudes

Author(s):  
Lydia Bares López ◽  
Ana Mª Fernández Pérez ◽  
Esther Ferrándiz León ◽  
Mª Esther Flores Varo ◽  
Mª Dolores León Rodríguez

<p class="Textoindependiente21"><span lang="EN-US">The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) involves changing traditional methods to promote innovative teaching experiences. This paper has two main aims: a) to show evidence of the use of Interactive Response Systems (IRS) to identify gaps in the understanding of the course contents and b) to investigate factors influencing students’ attitudes towards the use of IRS. The experience was developed through a collective tutoring session in the subject of Economics using IRS. Economics is a first-year subject in the Degree of Business Administration and Management offered by the University of Cadiz, which includes contents of Microeconomics and Macroeconomics and uses economic models to explain the function of the economy and the behaviour of economic agents. Results show that IRS technique allows detecting gaps in learning and comprehension. From our econometric estimations, we also identify two strongly significant variables affecting students’ attitudes towards IRS: gender and received explanations regarding the use of IRS. Variables such as first enrolment in the subject and the number of hours devoted to studying have a positive and significant effect on the attitude to IRS, but at a lower level of significance (from 5% to 10%).</span></p>

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Gutiérrez Porlán ◽  
José Luis Serrano Sánchez

<p class="AbstractText">This paper presents the findings of a study carried out in the academic year 2014-2015 at the faculty of Education of the University of Murcia with first year degree students in Primary Education studying Research and ICT. The study started with the application of the DIGCOM questionnaire to analyze the digital competences of 134 students. The questionnaire served as an initial task to help students reflect on their digital competences. The subject was developed around tasks which adopted a transversal approach and used the nature of the contents itself to direct and improve students’ digital competencies. Finally, the initial questionnaire was reformulated and run in order to ascertain the students’ self-perception of their improvement in these competencies through the tasks they had performed.</p> <p class="AbstractText">Below we present the tasks carried out, the organization of each subject and the most relevant data regarding the self-perception of digital competencies of the future primary school teachers enrolled at the University of Murcia. The data reveal, on the one hand, that the students participating consider themselves to be competent in the most basic aspects of digital competencies and, on the other, their perception that the work done in the subject has helped them quite a lot in improving their competencies.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilal M. Tayan

Academic misconduct in many educational institutions in the Middle East is an inherent problem. This has been particularly true amongst the university student population. The proliferation of the Internet and the ownership of mobile and electronic devices, have, in part, witnessed rates of cheating, plagiarism and academic misconduct cases steadily increase across higher education contexts. Though the growth of the Internet as an information source and gateway to knowledge has increased substantially in recent years, it has, however, opened up a plethora of varying forms and rates of academic dishonesty. This study was conducted through an online Likert scale questionnaire. Its purpose was to investigate first year male undergraduate students’ attitudes, experiences and perceptions towards plagiarism and cheating in a university located in Saudi Arabia. The study aimed at addressing themes in relation to the meaning, forms, source, frequency and reasons of cheating and plagiarism. The study indicates that cheating and plagiarism is common among students, while a need to address student awareness and clarify student expectations towards academic integrity was also identified. The study also proposes several recommendations to alleviate the levels of academic misconduct, be it cheating in exams or plagiarising content, in the Saudi university context.


1981 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Hoffer

Each year we ask many of our first-year students at the University of Oregon to list the mathematical subjects or topics that they liked best and topics they liked least in their precollege classes. Although several subjects were “favorites,” the subject that was almost universalJy disliked was geome- try in high school.


2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabrina Ballestracci

This paper focuses on the acquisition of German sentences by Italian native speakers in Foreign Language Teaching, with the verb located in second position, and the subject found in the middle field. The study is based upon a corpus of texts written by Italian students during their first six semesters at the University of Pisa. The first part of the study describes the main grammatical structural differences between Italian and German declarative sentences, referring to position of verb, subject and clause constituents. In the second part, I summarize the research results of the main German-Italian linguistic contrastive studies on the acquisition of word order in German, by focusing on declarative sentences with the subject in the middle field. The final part of this paper focuses on the linguistic and contextual factors influencing the acquisition process for further development in this field of study, in order to offer suggestions for foreign language teaching of German.


Mousaion ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-103
Author(s):  
Paul A. Laughton

The objective of this research was to determine whether students would benefit from the incorporation of a teaching method known as peer instruction with clickers in first year information management classes at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Quantitative data was collected from selected classes over a period of two years. An attempt was made to confirm whether the benefits from using peer instruction with clickers recorded in previous studies were applicable to the subject of information management. Half of the selected classes used peer instruction as a teaching method, while the remaining half used a conventional face-to-face, one-to-many teaching method. Clickers were used to collect data from all classes, enabling a comparison of the two teaching methods. The different teaching methods applied revealed varying responses from the students, which also revealed different results in their class test scores. This quantitative data may potentially prove some benefits of using peer instruction with clickers to teach information management.Keywords: clickers, information management, peer instruction


2016 ◽  
Vol 853 ◽  
pp. 24-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
F.J. Trujillo ◽  
M.J. Martín ◽  
F. Martín ◽  
Lorenzo Sevilla

At the presented work, the results obtained by the implementation of self-assessment tools in the subject of Manufacturing Engineering are analyzed. This is the first subject that has been taught by the Department of Manufacturing Engineering Processes at the University of Malaga in all new engineering degrees within the EHEA framework. First, weak points related to the criteria, tools and evaluation methods have been identified, which were detected during the first year teaching the subject. In order to improve the academic outcomes, new evaluation methods and additional assessment tools have been developed. For this purpose, ICT based tools have been used to support teaching. Finally, the academic results after its implantation have been compared with those previously obtained. As a result, an increase in the number of students who passed the exams together with an improvement in the average marks has been observed, as well as a reduction in the number of student skipping the final exam.


2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
U J Dixit ◽  
M V Reddy

To see if there is a significant difference between the performance of the first year (100 level) students at the University of the South Pacific (USP) having different Form Seven marks, a statistical analysis is carried out using their Cumulative Grade Point Averages (CGPA). For this analysis, relevant data was obtained for the years 1997-2001 and the Form Seven marks (Total of English and best 3 subjects) were divided into the classes 250 – 259, 260 – 269, and ≥ 270. Results indicate that there is a significant difference between the CGPA of these three classes. A further analysis is then carried out by using the CGPA of only the first two classes 250 – 259 and 260 – 269 in order to determine if an increase in the entry requirements from 250 to 260 will be justified. Under its current admission regulations, USP accepts into its degree programmes all students who have passed the seventh form examination with an aggregate of at least 250 marks out of 400 with a minimum of 50% in English. The results of our analysis indicate that the minimum entry requirement could be increased to 260 if USP feels that the level of significance (Type 1 Error) is more than 3.17 percent. However, the minimum entry level should remain as 250 if the significance level is at most 3.17 percent.


Author(s):  
Blasius A. Chiatoh ◽  
Clovis N. Nkwain

Although English is the official language of the University of Buea (UB), Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE) is quite commonly used on campus, particularly in extra curricula situations by Anglophones, who have it as their language of wider communication (LWC). However, Francophone students, some of whom meet CPE for their first time upon enrolment, tend to manifest much dislike for this language. Faced with the challenge of maximising the opportunities for learning and studying in English, a language in which they have limited spoken and written competence in, they view CPE as a sub-standard code, indeed, an impediment to the English language learning process. This paper surveys Francophone students’ attitudes towards CPE at UB with focus on the underlying motivations for these attitudes. Data was elicited from a questionnaire administered to first-year Francophone students. The findings evince that Francophone students harbour unfriendly attitudes towards CPE.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (04) ◽  
pp. 491-495
Author(s):  
Liyana Tanny ◽  
Takashi Komabayashi ◽  
D. Leann Long ◽  
Yoshio Yahata ◽  
Susan M. Moffat ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the oral health attitudes and behavior of students in the oral health curriculum in Australia and New Zealand. Materials and Methods: The Hiroshima University - Dental Behavioral Inventory was administered to students in the first (year 1) and final years (year 3) of the oral health curriculum at Charles Sturt University in Australia and the University of Otago in New Zealand. A total of fifty-two year 1 students and forty-five year 3 students completed English version of the questionnaire in 2013. The responses were statistically analyzed by Fisher's exact tests and exact logistic regression models. Results: The responses of students in years 1 and 3 differed significantly for “I worry about the color of my teeth” at Charles Sturt University and at the University Otago, for “I think my teeth are getting worse despite my daily brushing,” “I put off going to the dentist until I have a toothache,” and “I don't feel I've brushed well unless I brush with strong strokes.” The estimated odds ratios from the exact logistic regression models showed that year 1 students were more likely to agree with above-mentioned four questions. Conclusions: Oral Health students who had been educated in a 3-year oral health curriculum in Australia and New Zealand had more positive attitudes and behaviors related oral health than did students at the beginning of their curriculum.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Linden ◽  
Neil Van Der Ploeg ◽  
Ben Hicks ◽  
Prue Gonzalez

Established first year design principles highlight the need to provide early response systems for students who appear to be disengaging with targeted communication regarding available support services. One thousand, one hundred and s students were identified in session 1 that either: did not submit a pre-census early assessment item; or had limited learning management system activity. These students were then offered timely support, including on-the-spot advice and referral to other pre-existing support structures within the University. Students were identified from 77 subjects offered to commencing students, taught across 182 offerings. Of the students identified, 607 chose to defer or withdraw from their studies while 554 students remained. This raises the question, what became of those remaining students?


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