El profesor Josef Opatrný recibe galardón de la Universidad Carolina en su septuagésimo quinto aniversario

Academic life

COVID-19 Pandemic Effects on Brazilian Postgraduate Research

The education area is being deeply affected by COVID-19, and Brazilian students are trying to adapt. This chapter aims to research how postgraduate students are dealing with the challenges of the pandemic. From the following research question, “How did COVID-19 impact different dimensions of students´ lives enrolled at master and doctorate programmes?” the chapter describes the challenges that students from Master and Doctorate programmes of two federal institutes are dealing with and the future perspectives in the context of the pandemic. The research methodology is based on an exploratory approach, grounded on a survey for data regarding the impacts of COVID-19 in three dimensions: private life, professional life, and academic life, aiming to understand if and how their research and educational products development were affected. The results show that, despite stress and efforts, the students could adapt their research for the pandemic situation.

Envisioning the Rural Virtual College Classroom

This chapter addresses intersecting challenges faced by rural college students as online learning becomes more widespread. The chapter begins by discussing the ways in which geography—specifically access to campuses and broadband—can impact rural student inclusivity. It then discusses the multifaceted challenges of rural students, whose disproportionate rates of class disparity and mental health issues can amount to personal crises during the semester. Because the boundaries between personal and academic life are less clear when taking classes from home, students may find that online learning is more difficult than traditional face-to-face classes. Therefore, the chapter offers some suggestions for professors related to simplicity and transparency. It then describes creative, flexible, and empathetic ways of approaching course construction in synchronous online courses. Finally, it offers broader suggestions for decision makers in order to maximize equity and inclusivity moving forward, as synchronous online learning becomes more normalized.

The End of Flying: Coronavirus Confinement, Academic (Im)mobilities and Me

This chapter focuses on how the coronavirus pandemic disrupted ‘normal’ academic life and travel through an analysis of my own travel history over the past decade. After contextualising the ways in which quarantines and confinement radically decreased travel, the chapter has three parts. In the first part, I document my own curriculum vitae of academic travel over the past decade and quantitatively measure my estimated CO2 emissions. Next, I seek to situate the value of such academic travel in both quantitative and qualitative terms, through extrinsic measures such as publications and impact and through intrinsic values such as the experience of different cultures and places. Lastly, I look at the transition to virtual events and my own participation in online events during the past nine months and consider the relation between physical and virtual meetings within academic practices. Insofar as the pandemic demonstrated our ability to transform academic travel and accelerate the use of remote meetings within academic practices, a pressing concern is how to find ways of extending this into the post-pandemic phase. Among the questions I ask in conclusion are: What possibilities are there for more seriously extending remote no-fly meetings to address the climate emergency? And what are the implications of such changes, both positive and negative?

Design and Development of a Mobile Writing Application for Students With Dysgraphia

Writing plays a vital role in both daily life and academic life. Students begin learning to write in the first years in school and then they use writing skills their whole life. However, some students, such as students with dysgraphia, experience difficulties in writing. The purpose of the chapter is to develop a mobile writing application for students with dysgraphia and to reveal ideas of special education experts, educational technology experts, and classroom education experts, and a teacher about application. A pilot study was conducted with three students with dysgraphia firstly, and necessary revisions were made. After revisions, experts' views were taken. The results indicated that experts reflected positive ideas about mobile writing application for students with dysgraphia. However, the experts suggested some minor revisions for improving the mobile writing application. To sum up, final improvements were made, and a mobile writing application was developed.

Decarbonising Academia’s Flyout Culture

Flight is technologically and culturally central to academic life. Academia’s flyout culture is built on a set of shared beliefs and values about the importance of flying to being an academic. But flight also generates a large proportion of academia’s carbon emissions, posing a cultural challenge to flight’s ongoing importance. In this chapter, we assess the underlying values animating flyout culture and examine how those values might change as universities respond to pressures to decarbonise operations. We approach this analysis in four parts. First, we identify six values that support flyout culture—values of ideas, efficiency, quality, evaluation, recreation and status. Second, we discuss how each value will be affected by four modes of decarbonisation: carbon offsets; shifting travel modes; centralised, infrequent or slow conferencing; and virtual communication. Third, we consider new values that may emerge as universities decarbonise: values of localism, climate concern, emissions transparency and verification. Finally, we discuss inertia that will resist change and optimism about how academia can realign its operations and culture with a liveable climate. As decarbonisation pressures grow, the interplay of cultural dimensions will determine if such efforts succeed or fail.

Quality of Academic Life during COVID-19 Pandemic as Perceived by Taibah University Students

The current study aimed to identify the quality level of academic life during COVID-19 pandemic from students' perception of Taibah University, Yanbu branch. To this end, a descriptive approach was used to answer the following main research question: What is the quality level of academic life during COVID-19 pandemic from students' perception of Taibah University? The study tool consisted of a questionnaire to measure the quality level of the students’ academic life. The tool was ensured for reliability and validity and composed of three sections that contained indicators to measure the quality of academic life; academic practices, academic satisfaction, and academic support. The sample of the study consisted of 187 male and female students. Results showed high perceptions for the respondents in the quality of academic practices section (M=4.15, SD=1.03). The statement No.9 entitles “Rate the precautionary actions provided to you to activate the online education as an alternative to face-to-face education during COVID-19 pandemic” obtained the highest rank (M=4.63). The second section that measured the level of academic satisfaction recorded (M=1.76, SD=1.10), obtaining 58.71%. The statement 6 entitles “I felt my love to home increased during COVID-19 pandemic” obtained the highest rank (M=4.63, SD=.81, 98.93%). The academic support dimension recorded (M=4.33, SD=.93), Indicating that the level of academic support for students during COVID-19 pandemic was excellent (86.65%) as perceived by the study sample. The statement 5 which entitles “Rate the extent to benefit from academic counseling during COVID-19 pandemic” got the highest rank (M=4.67, SD=.72, 93.485). The most challenges encountered the students gradually categorized from the highest to the lowest were the poor Internet network, non-availability of laptop computers, low experience in working with blackboard, and poor technical experience. The study recommended the significance of academic support and suggested doing further studies on and the reality of quality of academic life from faculty members perspectives and the role of precautionary health during COID-19 pandemic to enhance the national loyalty for the university students.

Reflection on Contradictory Learning Methods and Identity Formation in a New Academic Life Setting

Lecturers new to the academic life setting normally face similar types of challenges. These challenges were intensified for new lecturers starting their careers in the academic setting during the COVID-19 pandemic, when classes were conducted online. Student-centered learning has been the focus in engineering education recently, but many of the current lecturers have never experienced this method of learning as students, resulting in unfamiliarity and inexperience in conducting classes using this method of teaching. Our experiences as two new lecturers starting our academic careers during the pandemic using both the student-centered learning method and teacher-centered learning method in different classes are reported through collaborative autoethnographic methods. Both of our reflections revealed that stark differences can be seen as an effect of the teaching method, concluding that the student-centered learning method is superior to the traditional teacher-centered learning method. However, applying the former method also has some challenges. To overcome these challenges faced by new lecturers, some action plans have been listed for future improvement, which could be very meaningful and useful to other new lecturers as well as educators new to applying the student-centered learning method.

Życie akademickie osób jąkających się w perspektywie społecznego modelu niepełnosprawności i koncepcji structural vulnerability

Stuttering is a speech disorder that affects approximately 50 million people worldwide. It makes everyday life difficult not only for children but also for adults. In psychology and speech therapy the social aspects of stuttering are emphasized, but so far this problem has not been studied in the context of academic life. My research is devoted to this issue in Poland I analyze the academic life of people who stutter through the prism of the social model of disability, the category of structural vulnerability, and exclusion. This study revealed the orality of the universities and a number of academic traditions based on well-established practices and social structures that make stuttering students and academic teachers vulnerable or socially disabled.