Electronic peer review: a large cohort teaching themselves?

[Abstract]: Electronic peer review can empower lecturers of large courses to produce rapid feedback, promote social interaction and encourage higher order learning for students. But what are the payoffs to educators? Do students recognise the benefits of such a system? Foundation Computing is one of the largest courses at the University of Southern Queensland. A system of electronic submission and peer reviewing with instructor moderation is now being used in this course. This system is innovative and unique and delivers benefits to students, lecturers and the University. This system has been evaluated, proven successful and is being considered for wider use

An evaluation of electronic individual peer assessment in an introductory programming course

[Abstract]: Peer learning is a powerful pedagogical practice delivering improved outcomes over conventional teacher-student interactions while offering marking relief to instructors. Peer review enables learning by requiring students to evaluate the work of others. PRAISE is an on-line peer-review system that facilitates anonymous review and delivers prompt feedback from multiple sources. This study is an evaluation of the use of PRAISE in an introductory programming course. Use of the system is examined and attitudes of novice programmers towards the use of peer review are compared to those of students from other disciplines, raising a number of interesting issues. Recommendations are made to introductory programming instructors who may be considering peer review in assignments

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SYNCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS E- LANGUAGE LEARNING IN EFL SETTING: A CASE STUDY

Teaching and learning process since the pandemic time has shifted away from the traditional face to face classroom into online distance learning, and this will be undergo in the post pandemic. This case study aimed to investigate the effectiveness use of the combined modes of synchronous and asynchronous in e- language learning for university students. While both types of that learning approach have its importance in different scenario. The research questions to be answered in the study was how the adoption of synchronous (discussion activity platform) and asynchronous (learning content platform) would be more effective in e- language learning. 55 university participants from the second semester of English Department who joined the online creative writing class in synchronous and asynchronous language learning activity received the survey questionnaire as the sampling of the collected data. The data from the interview was also obtained to get the learners insights regarding the course experiences.The results showed that the applying of the combination approach in online learning has been greatly effective in helping the learners in terms of the community interaction and  material engagement. Moreover, the learners’ response about the using blended mode of synchronous and asynchronous for their learning is very positive. Some suggestions to enfold the problems over the online learning  are also provided

Designing assisted living technologies 'in the wild' : preliminary experiences with cultural probe methodology

Background There is growing interest in assisted living technologies to support independence at home. Such technologies should ideally be designed ‘in the wild’ i.e. taking account of how real people live in real homes and communities. The ATHENE (Assistive Technologies for Healthy Living in Elders: Needs Assessment by Ethnography) project seeks to illuminate the living needs of older people and facilitate the co-production with older people of technologies and services. This paper describes the development of a cultural probe tool produced as part of the ATHENE project and how it was used to support home visit interviews with elders with a range of ethnic and social backgrounds, family circumstances, health conditions and assisted living needs. Method Thirty one people aged 60 to 98 were visited in their homes on three occasions. Following an initial interview, participants were given a set of cultural probe materials, including a digital camera and the ‘Home and Life Scrapbook’ to complete in their own time for one week. Activities within the Home and Life Scrapbook included maps (indicating their relationships to people, places and objects), lists (e.g. likes, dislikes, things they were concerned about, things they were comfortable with), wishes (things they wanted to change or improve), body outline (indicating symptoms or impairments), home plan (room layouts of their homes to indicate spaces and objects used) and a diary. After one week, the researcher and participant reviewed any digital photos taken and the content of the Home and Life Scrapbook as part of the home visit interview. Findings The cultural probe facilitated collection of visual, narrative and material data by older people, and appeared to generate high levels of engagement from some participants. However, others used the probe minimally or not at all for various reasons including limited literacy, physical problems (e.g. holding a pen), lack of time or energy, limited emotional or psychological resources, life events, and acute illness. Discussions between researchers and participants about the materials collected (and sometimes about what had prevented them completing the tasks) helped elicit further information relevant to assisted living technology design. The probe materials were particularly helpful when having conversations with non-English speaking participants through an interpreter. Conclusions Cultural probe methods can help build a rich picture of the lives and experiences of older people to facilitate the co-production of assisted living technologies. But their application may be constrained by the participant’s physical, mental and emotional capacity. They are most effective when used as a tool to facilitate communication and development of a deeper understanding of older people’s needs

An internet of old things as an augmented memory system

The interdisciplinary Tales of Things and electronic Memory (TOTeM) project investigates new contexts for augmenting things with stories in the emerging culture of the Internet of Things (IoT). Tales of Things is a tagging system which, based on two-dimensional barcodes (also called Quick Response or QR codes) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, enables the capturing and sharing of object stories and the physical linking to objects via read and writable tags. Within the context of our study, it has functioned as a technology probe which we employed with the aim to stimulate discussion and identify desire lines that point to novel design opportunities for the engagement with personal and social memories linked to everyday objects. In this paper, we discuss results from fieldwork with different community groups in the course of which seemingly any object could form the basis of a meaningful story and act as entry point into rich inherent 'networks of meaning'. Such networks of meaning are often solely accessible for the owner of an object and are at risk of getting lost as time goes by. We discuss the different discourses that are inherent in these object stories and provide avenues for making these memories and meaning networks accessible and shareable. This paper critically reflects on Tales of Things as an example of an augmented memory system and discusses possible wider implications for the design of related systems. © 2011 Springer-Verlag London Limited

Simulating scientific work in microclimate : collaborative learning in a blogosphere

Peer reviewe

Next-Generation Classroom Design at WPI

Active learning (AL) is a teaching pedagogy that seeks to improve student engagement and performance in class. Currently, Worcester Polytechnic Institute has no classrooms designed for this style of teaching. We conducted interviews with WPI faculty and administration, along with other schools with successful AL initiatives, to investigate the feasibility of active learning classrooms. Ultimately, we developed specific recommendations for implementing AL spaces at WPI, along with strategies that would help to optimize their performance

Bush Project Anthology Volume 1

Well over a decade ago, the late Ernest Boyer authored his much heralded work titled Scholarship Reconsidered, and academia quickly began to recognize a variety of meaningful scholarship activities including the scholarship of discovery, integration, application and teaching. Boyer insisted that the scholarship of teaching is a serious and very meaningful form of scholarship associated with what faculty members do to achieve success in the profession of teaching. He also insisted that the scholarship of teaching needs to be transformed from a very private form of scholarship to a much more public form of scholarship. The scholarship of teaching that Boyer sought to promote includes observations that we make as classroom professors regarding challenges to our effectiveness as teachers, our ideas for overcoming those challenges, steps we take to introduce changes in our teaching strategies, how we ultimately assess the results of those changes, what additional ideas for improved teaching effectiveness emerge and finally the sharing of this scholarship with our colleagues in a manner similar to how we ultimately assess the results of those changes, what additional idea for improved teaching effectiveness emerge and finally the sharing of this scholarship with our colleagues in a manner similar to how we share the scholarship of discovery. This publication is an initial effort of South Dakota State University to provide teaching faculty members a scholarship of teaching medium that will allow them to make public or to share their scholarship of teaching with colleagues on campus and beyond the walls of SDSU