Students’ experiences with challenge-based learning at TU/e innovation Space:overview of five key characteristics across a broad range of courses

Challenge-based learning (CBL) has emerged in the last decade as a response to the complexity of problems faced by modern society, new competencies needed for the workplace, and insights from cognitive sciences on knowledge acquisition and learner motivation. In CBL, students work on real-world problems which are open-ended and require interdisciplinary knowledge and entrepreneurial mindset. In the last three years, over 70 CBL experiments have been initiated at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), in order to develop a broad range of CBL teaching practices. Half of these courses have taken place at TU/e innovation Space, which is a learning hub and expertise centre for CBL and entrepreneurship education. We use students’ evaluation surveys to analyse the experiences of Bachelor and Masters students in these courses. In particular, we are focusing on responses to five key course design characteristics set by the teaching staff as important: how interdisciplinary and challenge-based (or linked to real-life problems) the courses are, how entrepreneurial and hands-on they are, and how much they contributed to students’ personal development, as well as their team development. The results show that what attracts students to these CBL courses matches closely these five characteristics, and we discuss why this might be the case. Interestingly, some of the more hands-on aspects of the courses do not seem to have been affected by the COVID-19 disruption in the 2019-2020 academic year

Svep1 stabilises developmental vascular anastomosis in reduced flow conditions

Molecular mechanisms controlling the formation, stabilization and maintenance of blood vessel connections remain poorly defined. Here we identify blood flow and the large extracellular protein Svep1 as co-modulators of vessel anastomosis during developmental angiogenesis in zebrafish embryos. Both loss of Svep1 and blood flow reduction contribute to defective anastomosis of intersegmental vessels. The reduced formation and lumenisation of the dorsal longitudinal anastomotic vessel (DLAV) is associated with a compensatory increase in Vegfa/Vegfr pERK signalling, concomittant expansion of apelin-positive tip cells, but reduced expression of klf2. Experimentally, further increasing Vegfa/Vegfr signalling can rescue the DLAV formation and lumenisation defects, while its inhibition dramatically exacerbates the loss of connectivity. Mechanistically, our results suggest that flow and Svep1 co-regulate the stabilization of vascular connections, in part by modulating the Vegfa/Vegfr signalling pathway

State-of-the-art microscopy to understand islets of Langerhans:what to expect next?

The discovery of Langerhans and microscopic description of islets in the pancreas were crucial steps in the discovery of insulin. Over the past 150 years, many discoveries in islet biology and type 1 diabetes have been made using powerful microscopic techniques. In the past decade, combination of new probes, animal and tissue models, application of new biosensors and automation of light and electron microscopic methods and other (sub)cellular imaging modalities have proven their potential in understanding the beta cell under (patho)physiological conditions. The imaging evolution, from fluorescent jellyfish to real-time intravital functional imaging, the revolution in automation and data handling and the increased resolving power of analytical imaging techniques are now converging. Here, we review innovative approaches that address islet biology from new angles by studying cells and molecules at high spatiotemporal resolution and in live models. Broad implementation of these cellular imaging techniques will shed new light on cause/consequence of (mal)function in islets of Langerhans in the years to come

NPS Solar Cell Array Tester CubeSat flight testing and integration

The Naval Postgraduate School Solar Cell Array Tester (NPS-SCAT) is the first CubeSat for the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). The NPS-SCAT mission was designed to measure solar cell performance degradation in low earth orbit. NPS-SCAT serves as a pathfinder for future NPS CubeSat missions. This thesis documents the pre-flight NPS-SCAT battery analysis, power budget, vibration analysis, beacon antenna integration evaluation, and conformal coat study. Some data from the flight is presented, which validates the pre-flight power budget analysis.http://archive.org/details/npssolarcellarra1094543925Lieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

The interplay of students’ and parents’ responsibility judgements in the school context and their associations with student motivation and achievement

Due to the important motivational implications of an individual’s sense of responsibility, this paper studies the interplay of 271 secondary school students’ and 101 of their parents’ responsibility ascriptions for student learning and their relations to student motivation and achievement. Three dimensions of responsibility were identified; responsibility for the learning process, student achievement and establishing a supportive social network. Students’ sense of personal responsibility was related to their ascriptions of responsibility to parents and teachers and their own subject-specific motivation and school achievement. All of these were found related to parents’ responsibility judgements and expectancies. These findings underscore the importance of the school context for fostering students’, teachers’ and parents’ sense of responsibility for ensuring students’ academic success

Teaching goals of early career university teachers in Germany

While schoolteacher motivation has become a significant area in educational research, teachers in higher education have been left somewhat disregarded. This exploratory study focuses on early career university teachers’ motivation, specifically on their personal goals. The results show that most participants emphasise their research and qualification rather than their teaching. Focusing on their goals as a teacher, four areas of teaching goals emerge: self-directed, content-directed, teaching-directed and student-directed teaching goals. Based on these, three groups of teachers with different goal profiles were identified: instruction-oriented, student-oriented, and ego-oriented early career university teachers. The study could not confirm any differences between these groups and their self-perceived teacher responsibility or self-efficacy but there were significant differences between the groups in the areas in which early career university teachers teach and in the length of time they have been teaching

"I don't have time to do any things i am responsible for" - University Teachers' sense of responsibility for teaching

University teachers work in a highly complex environment, meeting the multiple and sometimes competing demands of striving for high quality teaching and research. While a growing body of research focuses on the relevance of schoolteachers’ sense of responsibility and its outcomes for teaching and student learning, teacher responsibility has been neglected in research with university teachers. This research, consisting of two consecutive qualitative and quantitative studies, sets out to explore university teachers’ sense of responsibility for teaching at different stages of their career and in different academic contexts. Participants were 199 German and 80 Australian university teachers. Results of quantitative data analysis show that all university teachers most strongly feel responsible for their teaching and relationships with students. The focus of university teachers’ sense of responsibility on teaching was also shown in the qualitative data. Differences between the samples of the two studies, however, appeared with regard to further objects of responsibility. Cluster analyses, including the frequencies of statements, revealed three types of university teachers in each study: teaching - and student - oriented university teachers in both studies, achievement - oriented teachers in the German/Swiss, and administrative - oriented university teachers in the Australian sample. Implications for university teachers’ work contexts and training are discussed