Insights on best teaching practices for promoting students' learning

The Department of Educational Sciences and the Department of Electronic and Telecommunications at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) have been working together with the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde (UK), with the aim of improving the teaching and learning of introductory programming courses. Both institutions belong to the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU), with a commitment to "developing and implementing new forms of teaching, training, and research; to assuring an innovative culture within their walls; to experimenting with new forms of management and administration; and to sustaining and nurturing internationally-minded staff" (ECIU). Over the past two years, data has been collected through interviews, questionnaires and class observation, to better understand the organization of the different courses and approaches to teaching and learning. Members of academic staff have been actively involved in trying to enhance the students' learning experience through reflection on teaching methods and trying new ideas to aid student success. During this process we have assimilated insights on teaching philosophies, methods and suggestions for course redesign. As an important piece of the "puzzle", students also provided useful feedback on differing aspects of teaching and course organization. The present paper presents a meta-analysis of our findings on the relevance of teaching practices for promoting students' learning. In addition, we discuss the impact that teaching philosophies and course organization may have on best teaching practices

Turning engineers into reflective university teachers

Increasing attention to quality and innovation in Higher Education (HE) is enhancing the pedagogic knowledge of faculty members and thereby encouraging the academic success of their students. This aim requires, from the institution and teachers, a greater degree of involvement than was previously the case. This is certainly borne out by experience in Portuguese universities. The growing concern of engineers with issues of pedagogy and academic success marks a sea change in the traditional conceptions of teaching and learning in Higher Education. There are, of course, indications that many academics are resistant to change. Our research indicates a tradition among Portuguese and Scottish academics to incline their effort toward research with a resultant decline in interest and effort on teaching. The present paper presents a meta-analysis of research conducted at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) and the University of Strathclyde (United Kingdom) between 2000 and 2004 involving academics who taught first-year introductory Programming courses. The purpose of our study was to promote reflection and research on teaching based issues as a strategy toward improved student learning. The findings of the study raised a number of salient issues for discussion and consideration. In this paper, we present some of these issues, aiming to explore the impact that the findings may have on teachers' attitudes towards teaching and students' learning in introductory programming courses

Effects of nucleus initialization on event-by-event observables

In this work we present a study of the influence of nucleus initializations on the event-by-event elliptic flow coefficient, $v_2$. In most Monte-Carlo models, the initial positions of the nucleons in a nucleus are completely uncorrelated, which can lead to very high density regions. In a simple, yet more realistic model where overlapping of the nucleons is avoided, fluctuations in the initial conditions are reduced. However, $v_2$ distributions are not very sensitive to the initialization choice.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, to appear in the Bras. Jour. Phy