Service With Friends: The Influence of Peer Interactions and Emotions in Community Service Experiences

Community service has increasingly become part of students\u27 educational experience. It is seen both as a stand alone requirement and as a core component integrated into course objectives. Much has been learned about the effects of community service on students, but there remain unanswered questions. This study compares four structures of mandatory community service differing in the amount of peer and faculty interaction. It also examines the influence of students\u27 emotional reactions to community service experiences. The participants for the study are college freshmen enrolled in a required environmental course. Hierarchical regressions are utilized to explore the influences of community service structure and other independent variables on four student outcomes: community service attitudes, social and civic responsibility, academic sense of belonging, and students\u27 evaluation of their community service experience. Students who participated in the model of service with the most peer and faculty interaction reported more positive evaluations than students in other models. Students who participated in activities that directly benefited others had more favorable outcomes than students who engaged in activities that helped the community generally. Students who experienced personal satisfaction, happiness, surprise, or guilt during their community service reported more positive outcomes, while students who felt anger, fear, or disgust while engaged in service had more negative attitudes

Teaching Students to Give and to Receive: Improving Interdisciplinary Writing Through Peer Review

The context for this study is a multidisciplinary collaboration of six faculty members using peer review in their respective disciplines with the goal of improved student writing. Faculty members developed their own assignments and methods for implementing peer review, but each followed the same guidelines. Students submitted drafts to peers who made comments and used a rubric to provide formative feedback. The instructors used a variety of tools to support peer review, including Google Drive, Blackboard, and Expertiza, a dedicated peer-review system. Students reflected on the peer review process in an online survey after each round of peer review. The survey results varied considerably between the classes, suggesting the importance of the instructor, assignment, and peer review process. There were also common themes that emerged across courses, such as the common value of giving reviews. This paper examines one participating faculty member\u27s fall 2015 and spring 2016 education course and how students\u27 perceptions of peer review evolved positively across the two semesters

Introducing Coding Into Teacher Education: An Interdisciplinary Robotics Experience for Education and Engineering Students

Despite nationwide mandates to integrate computer science into P-6 curriculum, most P-6 preservice teachers (PSTs) are not exposed to coding or computational thinking during their professional preparation, and are unprepared to teach these topics. This study, conducted as a part of an NSF-funded project, explores a teacher preparation model designed to increase PSTs’ coding knowledge and coding self-efficacy. PSTs in an educational technology course partnered with engineering undergraduates (EUs) in a computational methods course and worked side-by-side on robotics activities to develop skill and confidence with basic programming concepts and block coding. Students utilized experience gained from these interdisciplinary partnerships to lead robotics activities with fifth and sixth grade students (FSGs) in an after-school technology club. Findings from quantitative studies suggest that the implementation of the approach resulted in a significant increase in both PSTs’ coding knowledge and coding self-efficacy. Qualitative studies revealed that most PSTs’ and EUs’ perceived value of the project was positive

5th/6th Graders and Preservice Teachers Explore Engineering and Coding in a Combined After-School Technology Club/Educational Technology Course

Elementary schools are increasingly encouraged to adopt STEM education efforts that include engineering and programming, yet pre-service teachers (PSTs) are not traditionally prepared to teach these subjects. This pilot study describes an innovative preparation experience designed to help PSTs gain experience and confidence in these areas. As part of an undergraduate educational technology course, PSTs led an after-school technology club at a local public school. PSTs enrolled in the course worked alongside fifth and sixth grade students on a series of collaborative design challenges that culminated in the creation of animal-inspired robots. The “WoW Club”, as it came to be known, introduced both student populations to engineering, coding, and robotics, while allowing them to interact and develop skills in a low-stakes environment. The approach was found to have a positive impact on PSTs’ engineering self-efficacy and coding self-efficacy

Implementing Peer-Review Activities for Engineering Writing Assignments

Professional engineers spend a considerable portion of their day writing, yet disciplinary writing skills are not addressed in many engineering courses. This study investigates peer review as a mean to enhance student writing in engineering courses. Students completed formative peer reviews using an online peer review system for a group project in a fluid mechanics course (with online and face-to-face sections) and for an individual writing assignment in a senior capstone class in mechanical engineering. A university-wide rubric for disciplinary writing was used to assess student writing performance on interim and final assignments completed over the course of a semester. Online surveys were used to assess student perceptions of the peer review process. The study was implemented over two semesters with iterative revisions in instruction made between semesters based on initial findings. Results suggest that peer review can increase student performance, as long as reflections are used to prompt student revision, regardless of the class delivery method or assignment type

Lessons Learned from Two Teacher Educators: What COVID-19 Can Teach Us About Preparing Elementary Preservice Teachers to Teach the Next Generation of Students

Over the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has required teacher educators to teach their classes online. Teacher educators now need to reflect on the learning opportunities that the COVID-19 induced shift to online learning has provided. This study shares two teacher educators’ experiences of teaching and supporting preservice teachers (PSTs) as they taught engineering online to elementary students. The two teacher educators noticed (a) positive changes in PSTs’ attitudes and beliefs about technology integration, (b) PSTs’ tendency to select and use of educational technologies, (c) PSTs’ recognition of the importance of online interaction and feedback from K-12 students, (d) the importance of providing PSTs with extended access to physical hardware, and (e) the importance of providing developmentally appropriate digital resources. The paper concludes with suggestions for teacher educators who are preparing PSTs for the next generation of teaching

Probing the Landscape: Toward a Systematic Taxonomy of Online Peer Assessment Systems in Education

We present the research framework for a taxonomy of online educational peer-assessment systems. This framework enables researchers in technology-supported peer assessment to understand the current landscape of technologies supporting student peer review and assessment, specifically, its affordances and constraints. The framework helps identify the major themes in existing and potential research and formulate an agenda for future studies. It also informs educators and system design practitioners about use cases and design options

Building an Architectural Component Model for a Telehealth Service

Copyright © 2015 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).Models of services, processes and technology are useful tools for conceptualizing complex systems such as healthcare. The application of a component architecture helps illustrate the processes and technologies that are important to the operation of a health service and conceptualize the relationships between each component. Telehealth services are relatively recent and have characteristics that do not fit neatly into established models of health services. This paper analyzes the components used to build a telehealth in the home service in South Australia and the design choices that were taken. The service used commodity-based devices and systems to deliver simple to use, low-cost in the home care. Building on this analysis, the components required in an architectural component model of a telehealth service are identified enabling a provisional architecture for telehealth services to be derived from an existing internationally recognized architectural model for eHealth systems. Situated within the broad family of eHealth architectures, a Telehealth Architectural Model of telehealth processes, software, devices, common systems and ICT infrastructure is proposed that represents the components required to support telehealth and allows for customization of services according to clinical models of care