The effectiveness of cooperative learning in an online learning environment through a comparison of group and individual marks

Cooperative learning is a learning approach where students are placed into groups to work towards a common goal. Prominent learning theories state that students learn best when they construct their own knowledge in an active learning environment where they can socially interact and collaborate to reach a desired outcome. Cooperative learning provides such a learning environment and has the benefit of creating an active learning community where students can develop transferable skills. Online learning has grown steadily over the past few years, but even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic where tertiary institutions’ only option was to continue with their academic programmes remotely through online learning platforms. With online learning becoming a prominent feature, calls are made to educators to examine teamwork and cooperation and how this can be facilitated in an online setting. In the online learning environment it is important to promote collaborative engagement to counteract feelings of isolation and encourage deep learning to occur. In the second accounting module of a fully online degree, students are exposed to a case study, with a group assignment as well as an individual assignment component. The aim of this study is to determine whether group work can be effective by comparing group marks to individual marks. The study further elicits the perceptions of the online students to determine their views regarding group work, the process that they followed to collaborate, as well as their perceptions regarding skills developed using the case study approach. A mixed-methods approach was followed, using the group and individual marks and combining those with the survey analysis and qualitative data analysis from a questionnaire. It was found that the average mark for the group assignment is higher than for the individual assignment and that the individual assignment shows a greater spread of marks. For male students who prefer to work within a group, their group mark is higher than their individual mark, showing that they did receive the benefit from working within a group. Students agreed that group work is a valuable skill that will be needed in their future careers and that the group work enabled them to learn from their group members. Working in a group requires a lot of time and effort, but students will elicit the strategies required to gain the necessary knowledge and solve the problem posed to them. Students mentioned several other skills that they perceived were developed through their exposure to the group work; skills such as communicating well, listening with intent, negotiating a point of view, researching alternatives and solving a problem were all enhanced through their participation in their groups. The results suggest that group work can be effectively achieved and managed in an online setting, albeit with special care around the logistical and technological challenges that can be experienced. Cooperative learning in the form of group work is not always welcomed by all students, but it will enable them to navigate their future careers where teamwork will be a prominent feature.

Teaching Culture Online

This chapter explores the ways in which the language educator can be successful teaching culture together with language specifically in an asynchronous online environment. It provides examples of content, activities, and assessments that are meaningful, collaborative, and learner-centered, and that employ mobile technology familiar to the average instructor. In addition, it discusses the new role of the language professor in facilitating an integrated language and culture curriculum in a fully online setting. Through shifting the responsibilities and roles of the instructor, emphasizing social and teacher presence, and employing flexible learner-centered content and activities, previously face-to-face language classes can be successfully transformed to foster cultural competency asynchronously.

Examining Ease and Challenges in Tele-Assessment of Children Using Slosson Intelligence Test

As the world came to terms with the longevity of the COVID-19 crisis, there came a mass migration towards tele-health services which included tele-assessments. Practitioners argued that delaying assessments would mean a delay in provision of services. Therefore wherever possible, assessment procedures were modified to cater to an online setting including assessment of cognitive abilities. With its many advantages tele-assessment brings many unpredictable challenges. In this study we tried to explore those by administering the Slosson Intelligence Test-third edition (Slosson, 2006) on a sample of 29 school going children ranging in age from 6 to 16 years old, via Zoom. Observations were divided into two categories, that is, logistical and practical. Results showed that technology improves accessibility of services and solves many logistical problems such as availability of testing venues, and makes communication easier. However, practicality was hindered as the testing environment was less controlled and factors such as internet disruptions, limitations in observations, and presence of other people and things in the household may adversely affect the scores. Moreover, virtual fatigue could be a factor that practitioners need to consider.

Taking deliberative research online: Lessons from four case studies

Researchers using deliberative techniques tend to favour in-person processes. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has added urgency to the question of whether meaningful deliberative research is possible in an online setting. This paper considers the reasons for taking deliberation online, including bringing people together more easily; convening international events; and reducing the environmental impact of research. It reports on four case studies: a set of stakeholder workshops considering greenhouse gas removal technologies, convened online in 2019, and online research workshops investigating local climate strategies; as well as two in-person processes which moved online due to COVID-19: Climate Assembly UK, a Citizens’ Assembly on climate change, and the Lancaster Citizens’ Jury on Climate Change. It sets out learnings from these processes, concluding that deliberation online is substantively different from in-person meetings, but can meet the requirements of deliberative research, and can be a rewarding and useful process for participants and researchers alike.

Einstellung gegenüber Online-Beratung: Eine Umfrage unter Berater:innen, Coaches und Therapeut:innen

ZusammenfassungSpätestens seit der Corona-Pandemie ist das Thema „Digitalisierung“ auch in der Beratungswelt angekommen. Online-Beratung wird von vielen Praktizierenden jedoch mit großer Skepsis begegnet. Was genau diese negative Einstellung verursacht, wurde bislang nur wenig untersucht. Bisherige Studien bezogen sich entweder auf Video-Therapien oder auf die Einführung evidenzbasierter Praktiken. Ziel der vorliegenden Querschnittsstudie war es deshalb, mögliche Merkmale zu ermitteln, die die Einstellung gegenüber Online-Beratung im Vergleich zur Präsenz-Beratung positiv oder negativ beeinflussen. Zur Erfassung der Einstellung wurde ein neues Instrument entwickelt, das verschiedene Merkmale von Beratung beschreibt, und mittels Online-Fragebogen bei 66 Personen aus den Bereichen Beratung, Therapie und Coaching eingesetzt. Faktorenanalytisch ergaben sich bei dem Instrument zwei unterschiedliche Einstellungsdimensionen, die in den anschließenden Regressionsanalysen von jeweils unterschiedlichen Personenmerkmalen prädiziert wurden. In Bezug auf die Dimension „Kernmerkmale von Beratungen“ wird eine negativere Einstellung nur durch eine höhere Berufserfahrung vorhergesagt. Hinsichtlich der Dimension „Rahmenbedingungen von Beratungen“ zeigt sich eine positivere Einstellung gegenüber dem Online-Setting, wenn die Beratenden sich als Frau identifizieren, eine geringere Berufserfahrung vorweisen, im Bereich Coaching tätig sind oder an urbanen Orten praktizieren. Interessanterweise hatten weder die technische Affinität noch die subjektive Wichtigkeit des Datenschutzes Einfluss auf die Einstellung. Die Studie liefert damit wichtige Erkenntnisse für die weitere Erforschung und auch Praxis von Online-Beratung und vermag bisher widersprüchliche Befunde in dem Bereich zu erklären.

Commonly Used Outcome Measurement Tools in Pediatric Physical Therapy Telerehabilitation in the Philippines: A Quantitative Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study

With the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of telerehabilitation has rapidly increased to improve access and minimize cross-infection risk to patients. Nevertheless, Filipino pediatric physical therapists (PTs) must ensure that they conduct evidence-based procedures for specific tests and measures to determine patient outcomes. This investigation reported the most common pediatric outcome measurement tools (OMTs) used in telerehabilitation by Filipino pediatric PTs treating 0 to 21-year-olds in the Philippines. Validation and pilot testing of an adapted questionnaire on OMT usage was undertaken before dissemination via email and social media. Pediatric PTs reported that the commonly used OMTs in telerehabilitation are Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM) (100%)—including both versions of GMFM-88 and GMFM-66 followed by Pediatric Balance Scale (PBS) (30%). These findings support the use of feasible OMTs in pediatric telerehabilitation due to their applicability in the online setting.

Strategies for Student Evaluation in The Online Context

In this paper we conducted an investigation on the performance of the students during the second semester of the academic year 2020-2021. We looked at the performance results obtained by students on the laboratory work, practical and final exams while we were forced by the Covid pandemic to move entirely into an online education system. Our focus was to determine the impact of a consistent behaviour (or lack of it) on the final student performance. We determined that, even in an online setting, a good involvement (in terms of attendance and good performance) guarantees good final results. The investigations were performed using the Formal Concept Analysis, which is a very powerful instrument already used by us in previous research in order to detect student behaviour in using an e-learning portal. Another set of results showed that the change of the final mark computation formula to be based in a higher proportion on the lab work was closer to the actual overall performance of students

A Hybrid Lightweight System for Early Attack Detection in the IoMT Fog

Cyber-attack detection via on-gadget embedded models and cloud systems are widely used for the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). The former has a limited computation ability, whereas the latter has a long detection time. Fog-based attack detection is alternatively used to overcome these problems. However, the current fog-based systems cannot handle the ever-increasing IoMT’s big data. Moreover, they are not lightweight and are designed for network attack detection only. In this work, a hybrid (for host and network) lightweight system is proposed for early attack detection in the IoMT fog. In an adaptive online setting, six different incremental classifiers were implemented, namely a novel Weighted Hoeffding Tree Ensemble (WHTE), Incremental K-Nearest Neighbors (IKNN), Incremental Naïve Bayes (INB), Hoeffding Tree Majority Class (HTMC), Hoeffding Tree Naïve Bayes (HTNB), and Hoeffding Tree Naïve Bayes Adaptive (HTNBA). The system was benchmarked with seven heterogeneous sensors and a NetFlow data infected with nine types of recent attack. The results showed that the proposed system worked well on the lightweight fog devices with ~100% accuracy, a low detection time, and a low memory usage of less than 6 MiB. The single-criteria comparative analysis showed that the WHTE ensemble was more accurate and was less sensitive to the concept drift.

Strangers in the dark: Navigating opacity and transparency in open online career-related knowledge sharing

Given repeated upheavals in jobs and organizations, people increasingly share career-related knowledge in open online platforms. Dealing with career-related knowledge in an open online setting, though, is challenging. It requires people to balance between exchanging too much and too little career-related knowledge, e.g., to disclose and share the right knowledge without jeopardizing themselves. This study examines how participants achieve such delicate balance in open online processes. It investigates discussions in a career advice-focused online platform. Findings reveal how open online career-related exchanges include sequences of knowledge sharing, knowledge evaluating, and of diverting. They also include sequences of regulating openness that involve securing opacity for the people participating while also ensuring the transparency of the process. The study unpacks how participants in an open online setting navigate the dynamic balance between individual opacity and processual transparency. Findings hold implications for scholarship on open organizing, careers, and advice networks, as well as for practice.

Learning Motivation

The objective of this study is to be able to find ways or the best strategies in teaching that will motivate students to exert effort in their studies, considering the present conditions in this pandemic period. A quantitative method was used to define the study's objective, where two sections of Psychology students who took up Science 101 and Science 104 were chosen as respondents to answer the survey questionnaire through google forms. The purposive sampling technique was also employed since these students can appropriately answer the queries sent to them. The Likert scale method was used to measure the students' level of agreement, with the 5-point range, where the results were collated and analyzed. The research result finds several strategic activities such as report enhancement, online debates, virtual experiments, discussion and updating of recent findings, and the creation of infomercials that truly captured their interest and attention. This study made use of several references and tables in order to support the results obtained. The researcher recommends that there should be effective and efficient motivational activities to sustain student engagement. The researchers, who are also educators, have agreed to continuously upgrade the newfound motivational activities to encourage more students to study well even in an online setting, thus giving more opportunities for better achievement in education.