Student perspectives on education: implications for instructional redesign.

Könings, K. (2007). Student perspectives on education: implications for instructional redesign. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands

Towards more powerful learning environments through combining the perspectives of designers, teachers, and students.

In order to reach the main aims of modern education, powerful learning environments are designed. The characteristics of the design of PLEs are expected to have positive effects on student learning. Additionally, teachers’ conceptions of learning and teaching do influence the implementation of a PLE. Moreover, students’ perceptions of a learning environment affect their subsequent learning behaviour and the quality of the learning outcomes. The different perspectives of educational designers, teachers, and students are summarized in the Combination-of-perspectives (COOP) model. Combining these perspectives by mutual exchange of conceptions and perceptions is expected to have positive effects on the power of PLEs

An approach to participatory instructional design in secondary education: an exploratory study

Könings, K. D., Brand-Gruwel, S., & Van Merriënboer, J. J. G. (2010). An approach to participatory instructional design in secondary education: an exploratory study. Educational Research, 52(1), 45-59.Background: Teachers have limited insight in students’ perspectives on education, although these perspectives influence quality of learning. As students’ and teachers’ perspectives differ considerably, there is a need for teachers to learn more about students’ experiences and ideas about education. Participatory design might be a good strategy to take student perspectives into account in instructional design. In areas outside education, the positive effects of participation have already been demonstrated. Purpose: The main goals of this exploratory study are to develop an approach – based on the principles of participatory design – for student participation in instructional design, and to evaluate how students and teachers experience the discussion about possible changes in the design and how they cooperate in designing lessons. Additionally, the study investigates whether the used approach is workable and suitable for use with a range of courses. Sample: The sample consisted of six teachers (of mathematics, economics and English) from two secondary schools in the Netherlands and their tenth grade pre-university students (N = 139; average age, 16 years). In each class, a small group of seven co-designing students was selected as a representative sample of their class. All other students in these classes (i.e., those not directly involved in participatory re-design) were also included, as evaluators of the proposed changes. Design and methods: A participatory design meeting was organized for each group separately. In all groups, the same approach for participatory design was used. The quality of the meeting and the agreement with the proposed changes were evaluated using open questions. The questions were answered individually by both teachers and co-designing students. The remaining students answered questions about their agreement with the proposed changes. The written answers were analyzed using a coding scheme. Results: Findings suggest that both teachers and co-designing students were largely satisfied with the meeting. The atmosphere was experienced predominantly as comfortable and enough opportunities were provided to express thoughts and ideas. Teachers, additionally, stated that the usability of students’ suggestions was good. The remaining students predominantly agreed on the proposed changes discussed. No differences were found between the evaluation scores of students of different courses. Conclusions: The main conclusion from this exploratory study is that participatory design appears suitable for use in education. The approach used for initiating and structuring the discussion between the teacher and his/her students was appropriate for designing lessons, according to all those involved. As this study suggests, the barriers to the inclusion of students in the instructional design process are not insurmountable, and there are compelling reasons for implementing participatory design in education

Teachers’ perspectives on innovations: Implications for educational design

Educational designers often develop a ‘powerful learning environment’ that is subsequently implemented by teachers. Due to a lack of cooperation with teachers they may receive limited feedback on the quality of their design and the way it is implemented. This study focuses on teachers’ perceptions of a Dutch innovative learning environment called the “Second Phase”, as well as their desires and their dis/satisfaction with this environment. The results show that teachers are reserved about student autonomy and productive learning. Perceptions and desires are related to their individual approaches to teaching. The findings provide useful feedback for designers and a starting point to intensify their cooperation with teachers

Undergraduate medical students' behavioural intentions towards medical errors and how to handle them: A qualitative vignette study

Objectives In undergraduate medical education, the topics of errors in medicine and patient safety are under-represented. The aim of this study was to explore undergraduate medical students' behavioural intentions when confronted with an error. Design A qualitative case vignette survey was conducted including one of six randomly distributed case scenarios in which a hypothetical but realistic medical error occurred. The six scenarios differed regarding (1) who caused the error, (2) the presence of witnesses and (3) the consequences of the error for the patient. Participants were asked: â € What would you do?". Answers were collected as written free texts and analysed according to qualitative content analysis. Setting Students from German medical schools participated anonymously through an online questionnaire tool. Participants Altogether, n=159 students answered a case scenario. Participants were on average 24.6 years old (SD=7.9) and 69% were female. They were undergraduate medical students in their first or second year (n=27), third, fourth or fifth year (n=107) or final year (n=21). Results During the inductive coding process, 19 categories emerged from the original data and were clustered into four themes: (1) considering communication; (2) considering reporting; (3) considering consequences; and (4) emotional responsiveness. When the student him/herself caused the error in the scenario, participants did mention communication with colleagues and taking preventive action less frequently than if someone else had caused the error. When a witness was present, participants more frequently mentioned disclosure of the error and taking actions than in the absence of a witness. When the outcome was significant to the patient, participants more often showed an emotional response than if there were no consequences. Conclusions The study highlights the importance of coping strategies for healthcare professionals to adequately deal with errors. Educators need to introduce knowledge and skills on how to deal with errors and emotional preparedness for errors into undergraduate medical education

Students’ and Teachers’ Perceptions of Education: Differences in Perspectives

Könings, K. D., Seidel, T., Brand-Gruwel, S., & Van Merriënboer, J. J. G. (2011, August). Students’ and Teachers’ Perceptions of Education: Differences in Perspectives. Paper presented at 14th Biennial Conference for Research on Learning and Instruction of EARLI, Exeter, England.Teachers and students have their own perspectives on education. Congruent perspectives contribute to facilitating teaching-learning processes and help to achieve optimal learning outcomes. This study investigates both teachers’ and students’ perceptions on a learning environment in Dutch secondary education. It is aimed to define which students are at risk experiencing adverse discrepancies to their teachers’ perceptions. Additionally, teacher profiles are defined on their discrepancies to students’ perceptions. All tenth graders (N = 994) of four schools and their teachers (N = 136) filled out the Inventory of Perceived Study Environment Extended. In addition, students filled out the Inventory Learning Styles (ILS-SE) and teachers completed the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI). By using Latent Class Analyses profiles in difference scores were defined. Profiles were characterized by analyzing differences on the ILS-SE and ATI. Teachers’ perceptions were mostly more positive than students’ perceptions. LCA profiles showed a ‘distal’ student profile which was at highest risk and experienced most motivational problems. Also, for the ‘intermediate’ student profile the discrepancy between perceptions was related to negative learning-related characteristics. Analyzing teacher profiles, ‘idealistic’ teachers were at risk to cause destructive friction. This study stresses the importance of improving congruence between perceptions. Future research has to focus on effective interventions. Improving teachers’ immersion in the students’ perspective or including students in the instructional design process to better account for their perceptions might be beneficial

Resilient Secure Aggregation for Vehicular Networks

Innovative ways to use ad hoc networking between vehicles are an active research topic and numerous proposals have been made for applications that make use of it. Due to the bandwidth-limited wireless communication medium, scalability is one crucial factor for the success of these future protocols. Data aggregation is one solution to accomplish such scalability. The goal of aggregation is to semantically combine information and only disseminate this combined information in larger regions. However, the integrity of aggregated information cannot be easily verified anymore. Thus, attacks are possible resulting in lower user acceptance of applications using aggregation or, even worse, in accidents due to false information crafted by a malicious user. Therefore, it is necessary to design novel mechanisms to protect aggregation techniques. However, high vehicle mobility, as well as tight bandwidth constraints, pose strong requirements on the efficiency of such mechanisms. We present new security mechanisms for semantic data aggregation that are suitable for use in vehicular ad hoc networks. Resilience against both malicious users of the system and wrong information due to faulty sensors are taken into consideration. The presented mechanisms are evaluated with respect to their bandwidth overhead and their effectiveness against possible attacks