Faculty Perceptions of the Exercise Science Student Learning Experience During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Significant disruptions in higher education course delivery occurred during the coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic. The implementation of emergency remote teaching (ERT) offered exercise science faculty a safe method to continue educating students in courses generally taught face-to-face. The purpose of this investigation was to explore faculty perceptions of their ERT efforts with respect to student successes, challenges, and faculty expectations. Through an electronic survey, participants (N = 112) from higher education institutions in 31 states and three Canadian provinces provided feedback on their perceptions of the student experience across 315 fall 2020 courses. Data analysis included a thematic analysis to identify themes and trends in participant responses. Faculty identified student adaptability, increased autonomy of learning, and maintenance of learning as successes. Also noted was the increased flexibility of alternative pedagogy methods. Participants perceived student challenges related to technology, time management, and well-being. Faculty perceived students expected increased accommodations and instructor responsiveness during fall 2020. While faculty and students were challenged to adapt during the global pandemic, the perceived ERT experiences during COVID-19 highlight the resiliency of higher education students and underscores changes needed by educational institutions to provide resources and training upon return to traditional education or in response to a future crisis.

Woolf and Education

This chapter braids together discussion of ‘education’ in Virginia Woolf’s life and works. It examines her own education (and self-proclaimed autodidacticism), her teaching experience, and the representation of school and higher education in her fiction and non-fiction. Drawing on archival material discovered in 2009 relating to Woolf’s extensive studies at King’s College London’s Ladies’ Department and new research on her teaching at Morley College, it assesses the transformation in our understanding of Woolf’s experience of formal education. Moving then to texts such as Jacob’s Room, The Years, A Room of One’s Own, and Three Guineas, the chapter argues that Woolf’s oeuvre offers a complex and multi-layered engagement with the inequalities and limitations of the education system particularly in relation to gender and class. Woolf’s alternative pedagogy also critiques the term ‘education’ itself, with literature at the heart of a rethinking of where and how education occurs.

INTERTWINING MATHEMATICAL MODELING WITH ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

Since contemporary learning theories, strategies and models offer the interdisciplinary approach, educators need new pedagogical alternative ways to attain it in practicum. For this reason, the current research aimed to illustrate how to intertwine mathematical modeling with an environmental issue that recruits waste management (e.g., reuse-recycle-reduce) to live an environmentally friendly lifestyle. Through a case study research, 6 seventh-grade students (3 females and 3 males; aged 13-14) voluntarily participated in the research. The researchers videotaped and analyzed all interactive learning processes to elicit the students’ environmental dialogues. The results indicated that the interdisciplinary mathematical modeling afforded the students to acquire the targeted environmental concepts/issues and somewhat supported their arguments. Since the current research illustrates an alternative pedagogy to integrate science/environmental education into mathematics, it may be used to facilitate dissemination and applicability of the STEM education. Keywords: environmental issues, interdisciplinary approach, mathematical modeling

Online Learning: A Post Covid-19 Alternative Pedagogy For University Students

The sudden COVID-19 pandemic situation experienced globally has caused many schools and institutions of higher learning to resort to fully online teaching and learning throughout the world, including Malaysia. As many educators and students braved the situation, and until a remedy is found to prevent the spread of this deadly coronavirus, the question that lingers in the mind of many people is ‘Will online learning be the way forward for university students in post COVID-19’? Most past research have reported on students’ experience of online mode of learning via a blended learning approach but there is relatively little research focusing on the real experience of students embarking on full online learning mode, especially in the state of Sarawak. Thus, this quantitative research aimed to identify the level of acceptance of online learning among university students who have experienced full online learning mode. It also intended to identify the factors that facilitated online learning and the challenges of online learning among university students. Data were collected using an online survey involving 156 respondents from a public university in the state of Sarawak. The data collected from the survey were analysed using descriptive statistics (means, frequency counts and percentages). Results showed a moderate high level of acceptance of online learning among the university students. In addition, results revealed that among the four main factors that facilitated online learning among the students, enhancement of English language skills ranked the highest, followed by enthusiasm, self-efficacy and satisfaction. This study also found that among the main challenges encountered by the majority of the students are issues of delivery speed of teaching and learning, students’ attitude, struggles and stress of online learning mode. Results yielded in this study add to the existing literature on the possibility of online learning as an alternative pedagogy in post COVID-19 for the education sector. Keywords: Online Learning, Virtual Learning, Online Learning Pedagogy, Post COVID-19 Education, Challenges, University Students

Video Games and Indirect Learning

As a result of rapid technological advancement, educators are turning to alternative pedagogy to instill valuable knowledge and transferable skills to their pupils. Esports and video games are being examined as a potential avenue. This research, backed by empirical data, explains how the content of particular games can indirectly teach players real-world skills and advanced academic concepts. Five different soft skills (responsibility, communication, teamwork, problem solving, leadership) and two core academic areas (mathematics, language arts) are examined using in-game elements of the following 12 video games/video game franchises as evidence to support claims of video games being a source of indirect education: Neopets; League of Legends; The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim; Overwatch; Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; Tetris; Portal; Fortnite; Assassin's Creed; World of Warcraft; No Man's Sky; and Spyro.

The Pedagogy of Intimacy: Mother's Contribution to Academic Parenting during Student's Learning from Home

This essay strives to articulate the pedagogy of intimacy born from mothers' engagement in academic parenting when formal learning shifts from school to home. Redefining parenting and intimacy, mothers implicitly articulated an alternative pedagogy when the space and time of learning during the Covid-19 pandemic move to home. Listening to the self-narratives of mothers who work full time at home, at least part-time, as informants in thisqualitative study, the words "parenting" and "intimacy" were prominent inthe semi-structured interviews. In the pre-pandemic seasons, these wordswere identical to activities at home and were seen as unrelated, at leastlimitedly related, to formal education. Learning from home, especially withmothers' engagement in informal learning during the Covid-19 pandemic,challenges the boundaries of maternal involvement in the formal educationspace. Mothers re-centralize home both as space and as a time for learning.Mothers reiterate their central role as informal teachers, further pedagogues,in children's education. Articulating intimacy's pedagogy, they reclaim homeboth as the steaming time and ubiquitous space for self-determined learning.