Learning together through international collaboration in teacher education in Malaysia. Report of a project to develop a Bachelor of Education (Honours) in Primary Mathematics

Copyright University of Hertfordshire, School of Education 2011Learning together through international collaboration in teacher education in Malaysia is the report of an enterprising partnership between the University of Hertfordshire, UK, the Ministry of Education Malaysia and two Institutes of Teacher Education in Malaysia. Working collaboratively with colleagues in Malaysia, the University of Hertfordshire School of Education designed, validated, supported and quality assured a Bachelor of Education (Honours) degree programme for initial teacher training for a single cohort of 120 students over four years. All the students graduated in 2010. Learning together through international collaboration in teacher education in Malaysia provides a record of the project itself. It also documents in-depth insights from contributors to the project in two main areas: the collaborative approach to working together and issues relating to learning and teaching, including the Action – Reflection – Modelling (ARM) pedagogical approach, which underpinned the degree programme. Senior managers, teacher educators and lecturers share some of their learning from working together to develop and implement the new degree programme. Student teachers voice some experiences from their school placements. They describe how they used ARM; highlight some of the benefits of the approach and identify some of the challenges associated with introducing a different pedagogy in schools as they were 'learning to teach'. There are glimpses of 'lively and attractive' classes in which 'pupils enjoy and feel comfortable to learn' and 'are eager to answer my questions'. School mentors provide additional insights into the student teachers' learning and teaching practice. The richness of the contributions is reflected in the many quotations included in the report. The successful completion of this project was due to the dedication and expertise of many contributors. The findings documented in this report are relevant for all those engaged in international collaboration and teacher education.Final Published versio

An Online Interactive Competition Model for E-Learning System

This paper presents an Online Interactive Competition Model for E-learning System. The system allows a student to connect and interact with other students on the courses they offer in a semester using both synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communication mechanisms. Each course lecturer e-supervises and e-moderates the students’ performances in his/her course. Following the semester course outlines, the system automatically and periodically selects topics for discussions. Each student’s questions as well as his/her contributions to questions posed by other students or even the lecturers on the e-learning platform are rated by the course lecturers who equally make their contributions in difficult cases. On registration, a student is assigned the rank of a starter in all courses.  Based on a course lecturer’s ratings on a student and how long the student had used the course page, the student may rise to the following ranks in the course: Senior, Master, Expert or Professional. In this paper, the scalable algorithm for the students’ ranking is presented. Moreover, a student’s ranks in different courses are independent; that is, a student can be an expert in one course and a starter in another. This ranking strategy serves as an incentive to encourage the students to participate actively and make meaningful contributions to questions posted on the platform. A working prototype of the system was developed using MySQL Database Management System (DBMS), PHP as the scripting language and Apache as the web server. The system was tested and the results were presented graphically in this paper.http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/njt.v34i3.1

Student-Athlete Career Development through Community Service: A Retrospective Study

This study examined the career development of seven former Southeastern Conference (SEC) student-athletes who were awarded membership to the SEC Community Service team through their contributions both with their teams and individually. The NCAA Division-I student-athlete population is a unique subset of college students that face hindrances through time restraints but also have designated sources aimed to enhance their academic and vocational development, with the latter usually assigned to full-time Life Skills administrators. Through a series of phone interviews focused on reflective collegiate community service and career development, several themes emerged. For collegiate community service the most common themes were: Service Settings, Current Service, and Time Restraints. For career development, the major themes that emerged from the interviews were: Working with Diverse Groups, Scholarship and Admittance into Graduate Programs, and Career Choice/Personal Values

The Effects of Group Size on Student Learning, Student Contributions, \Mental Effort, and Group Outcomes for Middle-Aged Adults Working in an Ill-Structured Problem-Solving Environment

Group work has become increasingly important within adult education as educators strive to present students with problems and processes that they encounter in their professional lives. In many work environments, individuals are expected to function as a part of a team to solve complex problems. Consequently, there has been a shift towards teaching students how to solve problems as part of a group rather than individually. An important question becomes What size group maximizes students learning? This study compared student learning, student participation levels, and mental effort for middle-aged, professional students in large (six students) and small groups (three students) while working in a collaborative, ill-structured problem solving environment to determine if group size impacted student performance. This study found that there was no significant difference in learning, participation, and mental effort between large and small groups. It also confirmed earlier research demonstrating that group product scores, even when adjusted for student participation, did not predict individual student learning. A multiple regression was used to determine if group size, participation, mental effort or group scores could be used to predict individual student learning. The study showed that for middle-aged professional students, group size, mental effort, participation, or group quality were not effective predictors of student learning