Dissolving the Dichotomies Between Online and Campus-Based Teaching: a Collective Response to The Manifesto for Teaching Online (Bayne et al. 2020)

This article is a collective response to the 2020 iteration of The Manifesto for Teaching Online. Originally published in 2011 as 20 simple but provocative statements, the aim was, and continues to be, to critically challenge the normalization of education as techno-corporate enterprise and the failure to properly account for digital methods in teaching in Higher Education. The 2020 Manifesto continues in the same critically provocative fashion, and, as the response collected here demonstrates, its publication could not be timelier. Though the Manifesto was written before the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the responses gathered here inevitably reflect on the experiences of moving to digital, distant, online teaching under unprecedented conditions. As these contributions reveal, the challenges were many and varied, ranging from the positive, breakthrough opportunities that digital learning offered to many students, including the disabled, to the problematic, such as poor digital networks and access, and simple digital poverty. Regardless of the nature of each response, taken together, what they show is that The Manifesto for Teaching Online offers welcome insights into and practical advice on how to teach online, and creatively confront the supremacy of face-to-face teaching

How instructors initially viewed teaching online in higher education in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic

Learning and teaching in higher education institutions around the world have been heavily affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 since the fall of 2019. Teachers were suddenly told to convert their classes online and to be prepared to teach virtually. An online focus group (n = 9) was conducted during the initial period of lockdown in the UK at the end of March 2020 to find out about their teaching experiences of transition into online education. A number of challenges were identified in both synchronous and asynchronous teaching processes, including unfamiliarity with the learning management system, privacy concerns, student engagement, preparation time and technological issues. A set of best practices was developed for instructors teaching online during the COVID-19 pandemic

The communicative functions of metaphors between explanation and persuasion

In the literature, the pragmatic dimension of metaphors has been clearly acknowledged. Metaphors are regarded as having different possible uses, and in particular, they are commonly viewed as instruments for pursuing persuasion. However, an analysis of the specific conversational purposes that they can be aimed at achieving in a dialogue and their adequacy thereto is still missing. In this paper, we will address this issue focusing on the distinction between the explanatory and persuasive goal. The difference between explanation and persuasion is often blurred and controversial from a theoretical point of view. Building on the analysis of explanation in different theories and fields of study, we show how it can be conceived as characterized by a cognitive and a pragmatic dimension, where the transference of understanding is used pragmatically for different dialogical goals. This theoretical proposal will be applied to examples drawn from the medical context, to show how a pragmatic approach to explanation can account for the complexity of the cases that can be found in actual dialogical contexts

Argumentative writing behavior of graduate EFL learners

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.This study analyzed the argumentative writing behavior of Iranian graduate learners of English as Foreign Language in their English essays. Further, the correlations between the use of argument elements and overall writing quality as well as soundness of produced arguments were investigated. To this end, 150 essays were analyzed. The sample essays were found to be predominantly deductive in terms of rhetorical pattern. Moreover, they mainly utilized ‘data’ and ‘claim’ most frequently with secondary elements of argument (i.e., counterargument claim, counterargument data, rebuttal claim, and rebuttal data) as the least produced elements. Overall writing quality co-varied significantly positively with the uses of claims, data, counterargument claims, counterargument data, rebuttal claims, and rebuttal data. Essays rated high in terms of overall writing quality were further rated for soundness and relevance of the arguments. The results demonstrate that even for advanced language learners good surface structure cannot necessarily guarantee well thought-out logical structure. The pedagogical implications for writing instruction and research are discussed

Enhancing Scientific Thinking Through the Development of Critical Thinking in Higher Education

In Chapter 3, Hyytinen, Toom and Shavelson discuss how critical thinking forms the foundation for the development of scientific thinking skills. They provide a detailed definition and conceptualisation of critical thinking and review the focus of research into this domain. Hyytinen and colleagues highlight why it is important for students to develop critical thinking skills as useful skills in their own right, and in order to form scientific thinking skills more broadly. In making this argument, they discuss a curriculum alignment approach to enhancing critical thinking skills.Peer reviewe