Taking a Student-Centred Approach to Alternative Digital Credentials

As the acquisition of microcredentials becomes a more common practice, the authors foresee that there will emerge a variety of ways in which students can acquire microcredentials; such acquisition may manifest across multiple academic courses, programs, or experiences. In this chapter, they address how microcredentials are incorporated into and assessed across multiple pathways at their institution. These pathways include options for self-study, integrated academic programming, and co-curricular activities. The approach to both microcredentials and this chapter is student-focused. Rather than placing attention upon the revenue generation potential of microcredentials, this chapter addresses the methods through which universities can serve students in their goals to attain and demonstrate skills associated with microcredentials.

Students’ Perceptions of Content- and Language- Integrated Learning in Vietnam: A Survey Study

Content- and language-integrated learning (CLIL), an educational approach, in which the subject matter is taught in a foreign language. This has become popular in tertiary education. Many research studies have shown its benefits and discussed the favorable effects, especially with respect to L2 language gains. Yet, critical voices, also from the primary stakeholders, namely the students taking part in such integrated programs, have also been heard. In an effort to integrate into the international academic and scientific community, universities in Vietnam have also started to teach academic courses in English. The main objective of this cross-sectional survey study (N=104) was to explore Vietnamese students’ perceptions of such dual-training programs and to investigate to what extent they feel the program currently meets their needs. Our findings show that both lecturers and students are struggling in these courses, for one thing, because of insufficient levels of mastery of the English language; while for another reason, since courses cannot be characterized as courses in which disciplinary contents and the foreign language are taught in an integrated way. The way forward seems to be to educate the lecturers and the students well, before allowing them to participate in CLIL English courses. All these issues need to be considered in the context of local Vietnamese educational realities and traditions.

Information space as a factor of optimization of the future specialists’ self-education

The training of a specialist at a university is determined by the quality of the educational process, during which it is necessary to take into account the situation on the labor market. Successful training largely depends on the students self-education, which is difficult and limited in the context of a pandemic. The conditions of todays realities dictate the methods and forms of the process of self-education of students. During the pandemic, students practice self-education on a remote basis. We consider this form as a complex functional system with its own logic of development and relatively independent stages of learning via the Internet. Changes in various fields of activity are observed daily, which increases the requirements for the quality of education of a competitive individual; the idea of online education using electronic information platforms that serve as a means of self-education of students at the university is analyzed. The process of organizing the educational process in disciplines and tasks from the position of digitalization, through the introduction of modern digital technologies in the process of education of academic courses at the time of the pandemic in the country and the world, becomes significant. The conceptual apparatus considered in the paper: information space, educational space, self-education, competence, competence approach. It clarifies the need to teach the discipline in combination to acquire professional experience; the idea of revealing and enriching the inner potential of each person, his development and self-education throughout his life is substantiated; a detailed analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature is given. The results of a comprehensive study conducted at Chelyabinsk State University confirm the dependence of communicative competence on the students self-education during the pandemic.

Engineering Students’ Perceptions and Acceptance of the Online Flipped Classroom for Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article reports on the results of an open-response survey sent out to IIUM Engineering students to elicit their thoughts and views about learning their courses online via the flipped learning mode. The decision to take academic courses online was brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic which has forced many sectors, including the education sector, to either cease operations or make changes to their approaches. Hence the objective of the survey was to explore Biochemical Engineering students’ perceptions and acceptance of online flipped learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Responses were collected from 80 Year 2, 3 and 4 students of Engineering at the IIUM. The results showed an overwhelming acceptance of online flipped learning among the students where only a small percentage of 2.7% completely rejected it as a preferred online learning mode. A majority of the students expressed a reserved acceptance (64.9%) of it, while 27% accepted it unconditionally. A major concern that emerged from the findings was uncurated and poor selection of videos for students to study before class meetings. This suggests that the flipped classroom approach can result in ineffective online learning if it is not designed carefully. The findings have significant implications on the technological skills and pedagogical readiness of university lecturers to design and deliver online flipped learning in an effective manner.

Motivation of Taking Distance-Learning and Online Programmes: A Case Study in a TAFE Institution in Australia

The distance-learning and online courses and programmes are popular during the COVID-19 Pandemic due to the recommendation of social distancing and closure of borders in Australia. The purpose of this study is to explore and understand the motivation and decision-making processes of international students who continue their academic courses and programmes using online distance-learning platforms under the COVID-19 Pandemic. With the case study design, the researcher recruited 20 international students who are currently completing their academic courses and programmes through distance-learning from a Technical and Future Education (TAFE) institution in Australia. Based on the Social Cognitive Career and Motivation Theory, the researcher categorised that the educational achievements and career goals, the achievements of education and career goals, and interests in career development drove the factors of their motivation and career-decision-making process. The results of this study will provide a blueprint for school leaders, department heads, government agencies, policymakers, and researchers to reform and upgrade the current curriculum for technologically-assisted teaching and learning strategies and international students’ experiences. Received: 16 June 2021 / Accepted: 11 August 2021 / Published: 5 November 2021

Barriers of the Inclusion of Children with Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Classes from Pre-service Teachers’ Viewpoints

This study aims to investigate the barriers towards inclusion of children identified as having SEN in mainstream classes in Kuwait as seen by 452 pre-service teachers at the College of Basic Education. The researchers used a mixed-methods design that involved both an open-ended questionnaire and focus group. Each method investigated dimensions of the barriers towards inclusion in Kuwait as well as the SEN categories that participants believed would be most or least possible to include in mainstream classes. It was found that there are five different dimensions of possible barriers to inclusion: barriers from teachers, social barriers, academic barriers, physical barriers, and psychological barriers. It also found that the SEN categories seen as most possible to include were: moderate intellectual disability, specific learning disabilities, and giftedness, respectively. On the other hand, the SEN categories seen as least possible to include were: severe needs, severe intellectual disability, and autism. The study suggested that the government should institute new courses to prepare pre-service teachers for the challenges, revealed by this research, which prospective teachers expect to face when teaching in inclusive schools. This could help teachers build up more positive attitudes towards inclusion. Therefore, colleges of education should develop their academic courses so that they take into account the findings of this study and work accordingly Keywords: Inclusion, students with SEN, barriers, Kuwait

THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE WORKS OF WESTERN LITERARY SCHOLARS OF THE 20TH —21ST CENTURIES

The paper is focused on the perception of the short story genre in the western literary theory of the 20th —21st centuries. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the term 'short story' was a neologism, and its appearance indicated the rethinking of established literary forms. This process led to the development of new literary theories. The works of Brander Matthews (“The Philosophy of the Short Story”, 1901) and Frank O’Connor (“The Lonely Voice”, 1962), prominent writers and literary scholars of the 20th century, established academic short story studies in the English-speaking countries. Charles E. May, Susan Lohafer, Mary Rohrberger, Austin Wright, Ian Reid, Clare Hanson, Florence Goyet, Hanna Meretoja, whose major publications are also within the scope of the paper, provided further investigation of numerous issues of the short story genre and other types of short fiction. The works of the mentioned scholars are widely known and serve as a basis for academic courses and as an introduction to the short story theory. Nevertheless, they are rarely considered as one of the possible theoretical perspectives in the relevant Ukrainian research works on a short story, and it gives a reason for a closer look at them. Due to rising attention to the short literary forms, involving different theoretical frames might be beneficial to the development of the discourse. The paper describes the key issues of modern discussions concerning the distinctive features of the short story, its scope, definitions, establishment as an independent genre, and meaning in axiological and ontological contexts. The issue is explored by comparing different theoretical experiences with the use of comparative and discursive analysis.

Exploring the student perspectives on the barriers of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study using interpretative phenomenological analysis

PurposeThe present study aims to gauge the perspectives of students on the difficulties they faced during online learning during the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) through the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) technique.Design/methodology/approachThe current study employed IPA, and it was conducted among the students enrolled for professional courses in the government, private and deemed-to-be universities in Uttarakhand, India, using semi-structured interviews for the purpose of data collection.FindingsThe findings have been grouped under five parts referred to as “superordinate themes” or “barriers” which comprises learning in an online class environment, online learning in the home environment, student–teacher relationship in online learning, technical hindrances in online learning and health issues in online learning. These superordinate themes were further grouped under sub-themes.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study focused on the students of various private, public and deemed-to-be universities of the Uttarakhand region and represents the higher education sector only and did not tap the primary, secondary and vocational education. The students of academic courses or degree courses like arts, commerce, basic sciences and humanities, etc. were not included in the research study. Hence, the study lacks generalizability.Practical implicationsThe research findings of the present study have implications for higher education institutions (HEIs), teachers, students and policymakers.Originality/valueThe present study addresses the methodological gap by offering a new line of research where IPA has been used as the methodology to determine the barriers of online learning in the COVID-19 situation, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, none of the studies have used it so far to ascertain the barriers to online learning from the student perspective.