It’s Called a Lecture Theatre! Reflections on Large-Class Student Engagement

It’s called a lecture theatre! Reflections on large-class student engagement Rationale: Teacher enthusiasm and student engagement are key predictors of student motivation, successful learning and development of new knowledge (Patrick et al., 2000). Embedding creativity and innovation in the teaching experience is therefore critical to foster engagement and enhance acquisition of key learning outcomes. But, as Amabile famously argues in ‘How to kill creativity’ (1998), creativity is often seriously impeded in corporate and academic organisations in order to reinforce business imperatives such as productivity, uniformity of delivery of services, and control. Higher education is no exception: Walder (2015) identifies a number of barriers to innovation and, thereby, to student engagement in universities. Objectives: The aim of this presentation is to reflect on how university lecturers can generate student engagement in teacher-led, large-class teaching (i.e., classical lectures to 100+ students) where there is limited scope for group work and lively debate. The basic idea is to approach the lecture theatre as a theatre rather than a teaching room. The ideas and recommendations are based on critical reflection of the presenter’s student evaluations and a student council nomination for Most Innovative Teaching (2013). Findings: The storyline is likely the most important aspect to get right. Plays and movies are engaging because there is an evolving story, which makes the audience curious about what comes next. Lectures based on textbooks are often entirely predictable, because (i) the (good) student has already read the story/text, and (ii) the lecturer follows and repeats the textbook, perhaps even using the polished slides and cases that come with the textbook. The adoption of narrative models used in plays and movies can greatly enhance the structuring of the lecture material and prompt the lecturer to devise exercises or change style of presentation, which will generate attention and stimulate a sense of unpredictability. Activation of multiple senses is key to effective learning (Kátai et al., 2008). Audio material such as music is readily available and highly underutilised. By opening my large-class marketing lectures with themed music, I have managed to create a point of difference that sets the lectures apart in the student mind-set and gives the students a chance to settle down and tune in. Props are an effective way of embedding learning in tangible objects. Marketing teaching easily lends itself to the use of props (e.g., products), but all subject areas have an empirical field from which objects can be sourced and included in the teaching. The inclusion of props adds interest, breaks the flow of the story and provides a tangible hook, which connects theoretical learning with a relevant area of practise. Costumes are, of course, an inherent part of theatre and obviously available to lecturers. I do utilise this theatrical element, though as subtle as I can. By making conscious changes to what I wear when lecturing, I try to emphasise certain themes or instil a certain attitude towards a particular subject. Key barriers to innovation and student engagement in large-class teaching are addressed (Cachia et al., 2010; Hockings 2005; Walder 2015)

Vestibular inputs to premotor interneurons in the feline C1-C2 spinal cord

The resting length of respiratory muscles must be altered during changes in posture in order to maintain stable ventilation. Prior studies showed that although the vestibular system contributes to these adjustments in respiratory muscle activity, the medullary respiratory groups receive little vestibular input. Additionally, previous transneuronal tracing studies and physiological experiments demonstrated that propriospinal interneurons in the C1-C2 spinal cord send projections to the diaphragm motor pool. The present study tested the hypothesis that C1-C2 interneurons mediate vestibular influences on diaphragm activity. Recordings were made from 145 C1-C2 neurons that could be antidromically activated from the C5-C6 ventral horn, 60 of which had spontaneous activity, during stimulation of vestibular receptors using electric current pulses or whole-body rotations in vertical planes. The firing of 19 of 31 spontaneously active neurons was modulated by vertical vestibular stimulation; the response vector orientations of most of these cells were closer to the pitch plane than the roll plane, and their response gains remained relatively constant across stimulus frequencies. Virtually all spontaneously active neurons responded robustly to electrical vestibular stimulation, and their response latencies were typically shorter than those for diaphragm motoneurons. Nonetheless, respiratory muscle responses to vestibular stimulation were still present after inactivation of the C1-C2 cord using large injections of either muscimol or ibotenic acid. These data suggest that C1-C2 propriospinal interneurons contribute to producing posturally-related responses of respiratory muscles, although additional pathways are also involved in generating these responses

Engel’s Law Around the World 150 Years Later

One of the most enduring relationships in economics is that proposed by Ernst Engel in 1857: “The poorer is a family, the greater is the proportion of the total outgo [family expenditures] which must be used for food. … The proportion of the outgo used for food, other things being equal is the best measure of the material standard of living of a population.” The 150th anniversary of Engel’s law passed in 2007. With this in mind, the present paper looks at the extent to which Engel’s law is relevant in today’s world by looking across countries at the relationship between the share of household expenditure spent on food and national income per capita. This working paper provides an empirical analysis of Engel’s law based on data for almost every country and territory in the world. This facilitates analysis of the relationship between the food share of household expenditure and national income per capita, especially how this differs by development level.History of economic thought, Economic history, Consumer economics, Consumption, Measurement and analysis of poverty, Household behavior

Lysmata Rafa, a New Species of Peppermint Shrimp (Crustacea, Caridea, Hippolytidae) from the Subtropical Western Atlantic

Lysmata rafa n. sp. is described from freshly collected specimens from the Keys West Lakes, Florida Keys, and from a museum specimen collected at Bear Cut, Biscayne Bay, Florida. The new species is morphologically most similar to the western Atlantic Lysmata rathbunae Chace, 1970 and the eastern PaciWc Lysmata gracilirostris Wicksten, 2000, but can be distinguished from them by the number of carpal segments in the second pereiopod; the length and dentition of the rostrum; the shape and number of spines on the dactylus of the third to Wfth pereiopods; and the absence of a tooth on the pterygostomial margin of the carapace. Despite being a shallow-water species, L. rafa n. sp. has extremely elongate walking legs and third maxilliped that are more typical to deep-water or cave dwelling carideans

The wave equation on hyperbolic spaces

In this paper, we study the dispersive properties of the wave equation associated with the shifted Laplace-Beltrami operator on real hyperbolic spaces, and deduce Strichartz estimates for a large family of admissible pairs. As an application, we obtain local well-posedness results for the nonlinear wave equation

Heat kernel and Green function estimates on affine buildings of type A~r\tilde{A}_r

We obtain a global estimate of the transition density $p^n(0,x)$ associated to a nearest neighbor random walk, called here "simple", on affine buildings of type $\widetilde{A}_r$. Then we deduce a global estimate of the Green function. This is the analogue of a result on Riemannian symmetric spaces of the noncompact type

In Kind Benefits as Partial Payment of Wages: A Review of Laws Around the World

This paper is concerned with in kind benefits received by workers and how they are treated in national laws – in particular whether the value of in kind benefits are considered as partial payment of wages and, if so, under what conditions and how their monetary value is determined. This review is based to a large extent on information on national laws in 162 countries from around the world. This analysis is supplemented by analysis of how in kind benefits are treated in International Labor Organization ( ILO ) conventions; laws and regulations of the federal government and five states in the United States; and collective bargaining agreements from six developing countries. Despite data limitations, this is, as far as we know, the most comprehensive and systematic international review of in kind benefits and how they are treated as partial payment of wages

Modeling Premartensitic effects in Ni2MnGa: A Mean Field and Monte Carlo Simulation Study

The degenerate Blume-Emery-Griffiths model for martensitic transformations is extended by including both structural and magnetic degrees of freedom in order to elucidate premartensitic effects. Special attention is paied to the effect of the magnetoelastic coupling in Ni2MnGa. The microscopic model is constructed and justified based on the analysis of the experimentally observed strain variables and precursor phenomena. The description includes the (local) tetragonal distortion, the amplitude of the plane-modulating strain, and the magnetization. The model is solved by means of mean-field theory and Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that a variety of premartensitic effects may appear due to the magnetoelastic coupling. For large values of the magnetoelastic coupling parameter we find a premartensitic first-order transition line ending in a critical point. This critical point is responsible for the existence of large premartensitic fluctuations which manifest as broad peaks in the specific heat, not always associated with a true phase transition. The main conclusion is that premartensitic effects result from the interplay between the softness of the anomalous phonon driving the modulation and the magnetoelastic coupling. In particular, the premartensitic transition occurs when such coupling is strong enough to freeze the involved mode phonon.Comment: 28 pages, 15 eps figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.