What Did We Learn?

Assessment is critical to effectively implementing interdisciplinary pedagogy in higher education. We developed an interdisciplinary project for an Introduction to Psychology and Introduction to Criminal Justice learning community at an urban community college. The semester-long project involved completing a series of lessons and assignments in both courses. The study objective was to evaluate the extent to which the interdisciplinary project supported students’ learning, with attention to their academic skill development, progress on course learning outcomes, and academic progress in the psychology course. Data procedures included summative assessment of final paper submissions and collection of final paper grades and final grades in the psychology course across two cohorts of learning community students. Findings suggest the interdisciplinary project positively supported students’ academic skill development, progress on course learning outcomes, and overall success in the psychology course. These findings demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary teaching and assessment. We offer the interdisciplinary project and assessment procedures presented here as models for higher education faculty interested in interdisciplinary pedagogical approaches.

MELANCHOLIC SENTIMENTS TOWARDS MODULAR LEARNING MODALITY: SINGLE PARENTS IN FOCUS

Schools worldwide shuttered their doors in the spring of 2020 to slow the spread of the COVID -19 pandemic virus. This physical closure quickly moved to modular learning, which increased parental and guardian responsibilities. Data were collected from 10 single parents of Rizal Memorial Colleges, Inc. The research design of this study utilized the phenomenological method to determine the Melancholic sentiments towards modular learning modality: single parents in focus in The Rizal Memorial Colleges, Inc. This study aimed to investigate parents’ experiences and struggles by the use of thematic coding with the use of essential themes. Data obtained identified emergent themes clustered, namely; strive to balance parent employment demands and learner needs, strenuous assisting more than one child in the home with learning, lack of personal balance, and parent feels overwhelmed; maintaining a strict schedule; engaging in creative activities; keeping children busy and; organizing daily routine; tracking academic progress, keeping socio-emotional Development, accessing of achievement, and identifying emotional toll. The findings revealed and addressed the learning gap that has emerged in their children’s learning in these challenging times. Furthermore, single parents, being aware of how to manage their time, struggles, hardship, and challenges to cope with their sentiment experiences, and strive on how they can surpass and would be a strong basis for school administrators as this comes as an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of different educational approaches and develop teaching and learning process suited to specific educational needs. Considering the result of this study as input from families, and should be sought to create a program and learning method that is beneficial to all school stakeholders. KEYWORDS: Melancholic sentiments, Modular learning modality, and Single Parents

How Can Schools Increase Students’ Hopefulness Following the Pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the academic progress and wellbeing of many students, resulting in a greater sense of hopelessness and despair. These consequences are particularly devastating for many children living in urban communities, where poverty and a lack of resources prevent them from accessing high-quality learning, health care, and social programs. To understand the enormity of the problems associated with the growing hopelessness of our school-aged children, this article describes the factors affecting hope, how schools can foster hope, the skills and mindsets educators need to instill hope, and the positive outcomes of producing more hopeful students.

E-Report System to Help Monitor Student Academic Progress Using Forward Chaining for Grade Promotion According to Student Development Level

The COVID-19 pandemic that has occurred in the world and Indonesia is one of the affected countries. To limit the rate of transmission of COVID-19, the Ministry of Education issued regulations relating to online schools. With this online school, both parents and teachers need media to be able to monitor students' academic progress as long as online schools are implemented. Therefore, we need a system that can assist teachers and parents in monitoring students' academic progress. In this study, an e-report was designed by incorporating the components of students' academic aspect and students' character aspect. This system is supported by a decision support system using forward chaining to determine the feasibility of a grade increase according to the level of development of the student. The output of this system is student grade reports, advice given to parents and grade promotion decisions based on academic and character aspect.

Utilizing Process Approach through IELTS Essay Practice in Teaching Writing for Medical Students through Online Teaching

Mastering the skill of writing means mastering a very powerful tool of expression. Hence, English language teaching is an integral part of training medical students in Egypt. Developing ‘writing skills’ is essential for their future career after graduation. Due to smartphones, autocorrect devices, and pre-prepared writing templates available online; students lack the competence in a very indispensable skill in their academic progress which is ‘writing’. The main goal of this study is to investigate how ‘writing’ could be developed through the process approach in an academic semester during the period of quarantine in Egypt from 15th of March, 2020 to 30th of May, 2020, which coincidentally became an online teaching semester due to Covid-19 circumstances, an experiment involved (230) students in Oral and Dental Medicine Faculty at Delta University in their first year of study. There was a variety of research methods involved in this paper which included the theoretical and the practical ones in addition to inductive-deductive ones, observation, and analyzing techniques to reach data and statistical values of students. The results revealed a great improvement estimated by more than 60% in students writing performance after the application of this approach and demonstrating an ability to use proper terms and conjunctions in academic writing.

An artificial intelligence approach to monitor student performance and devise preventive measures

A major problem an instructor experiences is the systematic monitoring of students’ academic progress in a course. The moment the students, with unsatisfactory academic progress, are identified the instructor can take measures to offer additional support to the struggling students. The fact is that the modern-day educational institutes tend to collect enormous amount of data concerning their students from various sources, however, the institutes are craving novel procedures to utilize the data to magnify their prestige and improve the education quality. This research evaluates the effectiveness of machine learning algorithms to monitor students’ academic progress and informs the instructor about the students at the risk of ending up with unsatisfactory result in a course. In addition, the prediction model is transformed into a clear shape to make it easy for the instructor to prepare the necessary precautionary procedures. We developed a set of prediction models with distinct machine learning algorithms. Decision tree triumph over other models and thus is further transformed into easily explicable format. The final output of the research turns into a set of supportive measures to carefully monitor students’ performance from the very start of the course and a set of preventive measures to offer additional attention to the struggling students.

Assessing the student academic workload in the learning process of a technical university

The article deals with an assessment of the students' workload influence on the academic progress in a technical university. This study was carried out at Tyumen Industrial University, the Branch of IUT in Surgut. The research participants were the first-year students of full-time and part-time departments of the "Oil and Gas Business" direction. The research was done in 2017-2018. Much attention is given to some of the consequences that first-year students have: neuropsychic stress, declining academic progress, and the quality of education. There are reasons for such a state: lack of time, a large amount of information, many classroom hours, irregular distribution of the students' workload intensity of academic disciplines in the first semester, etc. The research gives valuable information on the necessity to improve the system of students' organizational and educational activities, depending on the specific features of a technical university. This study contributes to the existing research on the impact of academic workload on the students' emotional, mental state in higher education. Specifically, it studies the volume of the freshmen's academic workload in accordance with the curriculum, which is one of the main negative factors affecting the level of mental students' performance.