Active learning assignment: Legos and coins to understand glucose metabolism

This article describes an assignment used in an undergraduate Advanced Exercise Physiology course for seniors. Due to the heterogeneity and several transfer students, students' backgrounds in chemistry varied from adequate to non-existent. This presented several challenges for teaching and also for students' understanding of the different metabolic pathways. This article presents an assignment for an active-learning team-based approach in the classroom and the adapted version for virtual learning. Students in active, team-based learning were asked to create a short video of glucose oxidation using Lego bricks, coins, or other toys to represent the glucose molecule, the by-products, and the enzymes involved each pathway. During virtual learning, the assignment was modified to create a video independently in both synchronous and asynchronous course sections. Based on students' responses to an instructor-developed survey on their perceptions of the assignment, 71.4% reported that the assignment was helpful to understand glucose metabolism.

Team Learning, Work Behaviors, and Performance: A Qualitative Case Study of a Technical University in Ghana

Higher education institutions in Ghana have a lot of expectations but appear to be facing contemporary challenges. Using five focus groups, this study explores individual learning, team learning, organizational citizenship behaviors, leader–member exchanges, innovative work behaviors, and performance in a Ghanaian technical university. Interactive exchanges suggest that individual social behaviors and leadership exchanges are important to higher educational institutions (HEIs). Both stakeholders and managers should activate these behaviors and leadership qualities to enhance performance. The inherent benefits help both faculty and HEIs fulfill their core mandates of teaching, research, and community service. With these, they remain globally competitive given challenges, dynamism, and expected performance from both faculty and HEIs as agents of socio-economic development. This study informs on underlying mechanisms that affect engagement in some of these behaviors, including the effect of culture as an inhibitor of women’s innovative behaviors. Next to that, it provides both theoretical and practical evidence for stakeholders, especially HEI managers, regarding how to increase faculty members’ efficiencies and performance. Finally, the study offers both recommendations and directions for future research.

Remaining Agile and Adaptable

If a network has longevity, it will experience change. This chapter is about how networks reinvent themselves, mature, learn, grow, and dissolve. It uses a framework based on two distinctions: the goal-directedness of the network and the disruptiveness of the change. For serendipitous networks, or networks where organizations do not share goals, field-wide disruption and the accumulation of individual organizations’ actions drive change. In these circumstances, organizations manage changes by attending to their network portfolio and absorptive capacity. For goal-directed networks, change can be planned or unplanned. It can be incremental or radical. In each of these circumstances, the chapter recommends pathways for managing the degree and type of change. It uses case studies to illustrate how leaders manage the dilemmas caused by network change. It includes strategic planning, action learning team, and absorptive capacity tools.

Telework, virtual work or telework

The research aimed to define competencies for telework through a systematic review of the literature, through a two-stage survey: (I) bibliographic survey in the Web of Science (WoS) database, and (II) selection of articles published between the years 2016 and 2020, after reading the abstracts, based on the criterion of adherence to the research theme, and further appreciation and presentation of the studies. As a result, the definitions of the competencies for telework are gathered around four macro-competencies, which situate knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary for the virtual context, which combine the separation of technical and support competencies with the words “Collaborative work”, “Problem-based learning”, “Team work” and Interculture. These are: (I) Technical-operational competencies for telework, (II) Technical-relational competencies for telework, (III) Support organizational-managerial competencies for telework, (IV) Leadership organizational competencies in supporting telework. Derived from the discussions, it is considered, in the context of “big crisis”, it is suggested analysis on mental health and on the values of openness (innovation and expression of creativity) associated with the challenges for the development of competencies for telework.

Project MESA: Impact of a student-led service learning project on cultural intelligence and socially engaged design

The intersection of service learning and cultural intelligence has been established a way for engineering students to gain vital formative experience and skills. Project MESA (Making Examinations Safe and Accessible) is a service learning team founded to address the barriers to gynecological screenings in Nicaragua, which are believed to contribute to high cervical cancer incidence. Through this study, the service learning approach of the project is evaluated in its effectiveness in developing cultural intelligence and promoting mastery of the socially engaged design process through team participation. Results showed that students who had greater measures of sentiment for Project MESA displayed higher cultural intelligence. Through a qualitative review, students were also able to identify the major components of socially engaged design. Students who participated in Project MESA also reported that their approach to the engineering design process was enhanced by service learning. Furthermore, students responded to what they felt they were able to gain from participation in the project. A number of themes were identified, the most common of which were prototyping, cultural sensitivity, and partner communications.

COOPERATIVE LEARNING STRATEGY IN CRITICAL READING ENGLISH TEXT THROUGH TEAM GAME TOURNAMENT (TGT) AND JENGA

The rapid development of information has the potential to spread negative content such as hoax news, hate speech, or issues of radicalism and intolerance. In this case, critical reading skills are needed. By reading critically, readers can become more objective, able to sort and not easily swayed. However, the learning implementation of critical reading is not easy, especially coupled with the students' low reading interest and ability, especially towards English reading texts. This narrative review aims to examine cooperative learning strategies in critical reading of English texts through Team Game Tournament (TGT) and Jenga. The method used is literature study by examining various sources from journal articles in various databases, proceedings, and official websites on critical reading, cooperative learning, TGT, and Jenga games. The selected data is then reduced, classified, analyzed, and concluded. The results of literature search show that in critical reading students not only understand the content of the text but also analyze and evaluate the text they read. In this case, cooperative learning facilitates students to critically exchange ideas about the insights, ideas, and points of view they get from the text. TGT, as a form of cooperative technique, has advantages of making students work together to try to improve critical reading scores quickly and accurately in groups. In practice, Jenga which is believed to have the superiority of cooperative, communicative, and effective aspects can be used by modifying and adding questions related to critical reading so that students try to understand and analyze the text accurately. Seeing the advantages of TGT as a cooperative learning strategy and the benefits of the Jenga in critical reading, the integration between the two can facilitate three important aspects, namely critical, fast and accurate so that it has the potential to develop students' critical reading skill in reading English text.Keywords: critical reading, cooperative learning, team game tournament (TGT), jenga

Challenges faced by preservice and novice teachers in implementing student-centred models: A systematic review

The purpose of this study was to unpack the challenges and constraints encountered by preservice and novice teachers when implementing student-centred models, and to describe the methodological characteristics of research conducted on this topic between 2004 and 2020. The procedure had a three-step approach: (a) searching for publications in electronic databases; (b) selecting studies based on inclusion criteria; and (c) refining this selection to identify research-based papers. 29 articles were selected, most of which were from Europe and North America. The most researched model was Sport Education, and studies considering novice teachers were scarce. The predominant methodology across studies involved multiple qualitative data sources and inductive analysis. Our major finding was the identification of three themes reflecting distinct challenges to the implementation of student-centred models: (a) teacher-related challenges (i.e. pervasive beliefs, occupational socialization, managerial- and instruction-related); (b) student-related challenges (i.e. student resistance to engaged participation in student-centred models); and (c) external challenges (i.e. context- and environment-related). Physical education teacher education should invest in training preservice teachers to: (a) manage the dynamics of students’ cooperative interactions and peer-assisted learning; (b) design developmentally appropriate small-sided games and problem-solving contexts, and (c) scaffold the gradual transfer of responsibility to students for their engagement in persistent learning team activities. Longer studies and the inclusion of student perspectives will be particularly valuable for future investigations.

The Reflective Process

The term “reflection” is often used informally with different meanings. This chapter lays out the core components of the reflective process that can be used as a tool for professional identity formation and lifelong learning and why and how reflection ought to be incorporated into daily practice. Reflective practice in healthcare education is an emerging topic with a substantial theoretical basis. Various theoretical frameworks of reflection are introduced, such as Schon’s concepts of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action and Brookfield’s concept of critical reflection. These are used to question hegemonic assumptions in the field. Practical models for the reflective process are presented, including the Gibbs framework and the Kolb’s cycle of experiential learning. Team reflection supports bases for continued learning, problem-solving, improved patient outcome, and quality improvement initiatives. Narrative medicine focuses on treating patients as individuals with their own unique stories, and reflective writing is an important part of developing narrative competency.