Improving Student Learning Through Theme Based Curriculum Design and Team Teaching: An Action Research Study

This study is concerned with improving the design and delivery of the curriculum on a four year BA in Design Visual Communication programme in the Technologicl University Dublin. The study examines how aspects of curriculum design and delivery affect some of the key stakeholders - the students and academic staff – involved in the programme. It looks at how the design and delivery of the curriculum can be improved with a view to achieving two main aims. The first aim is to promote a deep approach to learning among visual communication students. The second aim is to promote a deep approach to learning among visual communication students. The second aim is to foster greater collaboration, communication and effective team teaching among the lecturers on the programme. The question was examined through designing and monitoring a theme based integrated Visual Communication project with a third year group of students. The project was delivered through team teaching over an eight week period. There were seven staff members on the teaching team and I assumed the role of project coordination. The relevant literature is reviewed with a view to establishing the possible approaches to design education. This focuses in particular on approaches to learning; interdisciplinary, theme based curricula and team teaching. The research is grounded in a critical theoretic framework. The research consisted of an action research cycle conducted with the collaboration of teaching colleagues and students. The data consisted of student evaluation questionnaires and focus group interviews with the teaching team. It also includes field notes by means of a research diary. The main findings show that team teaching leads to an improvement in team work and communication among the participating lecturers. The theme based approach to curriculum design supported by team teaching fostered a deeper approach to learning among students and resulted in students adopting a more integrated understanding of the subjects on the Visual Communication Programme. The study concludes with a series of recommendations including a proposal from participating students and staff that the theme based approach and team teaching be adopted across the four years of the programme. It also proposed that it is necessary to conduct a further investigation into how modularization will affect the implementation of the proposed learning and teaching strategies

Problem Based Learning 2

A mix of formative crits and weekly work in progress tutorials which also involves peer learning in tutorial groups of 5 or 6. A person from industry is brought in to view an interim crit. They view the student\u27s work from one particular issue such as strategy. Students are given their full marking and guideline forms that have been used to assess. This form is very thorough and if they are falling in the cusp of two marks certain lines may be highlighted

Political Party Advertising and Marketing Strategies in the 2015 UK Election

This chapter evaluates the ad message strategies and creative executions of two major UK parties—the Conservatives and Labour. To what extent did the advertising connect with the overarching election marketing strategies employed by the parties? To what degree did the advertising engage the electorate to address their hopes and fears, thereby building their trust? To answer these questions, this examination utilises critical analysis of multisource evidence including research studies, documentary evidence, expert conference speakers, discussions, follow-up questions and commentary on social media. The chapter identifies good and bad practices and the strategic role advertising plays in the marketing of elections

Barriers to Nurses’ Promoting Mobility in Hospitalized Older Adults

Objectives: To examine the association between nurses’ knowledge, attitude and external barriers and the nurse’s mobility-promoting behavior. Nurse perception of the priority organizations place on mobility, and the relationship of nurses’ level of experience to nurse prioritization for promoting mobility was also investigated. Design: Cross-sectional, descriptive, correlation study with convenience sampling. Setting: Two community-based hospitals in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. Participants: Eighty-five nurses caring for 98 inpatients 65 and older. Measurement: Nurses’ knowledge, attitude and external barriers were examined with a validated 5-point Likert Scale. Patient-related and other clinical barriers and the nurses mobility-promoting behavior was obtained with the validated self-recorded mobility log. Patient Basic Metabolic Index (BMI) and severity of illness was obtained though data extraction. Results: Nurses viewed the promotion of mobility as important, yet mobilizing older patients was infrequent. Nurses perceived a number of barriers to promoting mobility: Patient condition, the perception that patients could be harmed during mobilization, perceptions of heavy workload, difficulty prioritizing nursing care, and staffing shortages. While novice nurses had lower priority to promote mobility compared to more experienced nurses, novice nurses tended to promote more mobility. Conclusion: As nurses care for hospitalized older adults the convergence of interpersonal, patient, and environmental complexities acting as barriers to mobility need to be considered. It is important to understand the needs of beginning, less experienced nurses to overcome the barriers to promoting mobility. This study shows that even experienced nurses need to overcome barriers to promoting mobility. Hospitals need to address the needs of the novice nurse while enhancing the practice of more experienced nurses in order to support nurse-promoted mobility. The findings from this study show that nurses knowledge, attitude, and external barriers could play a role in the low levels of mobility in hospitalized older adults

Open Pedagogy for Teaching Structures

There is great potential to improve student engagement and retention by using open resources and pedagogies to teach structures. Open Educational Resources, OER, as defined by OER Commons are “…teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse at no cost, and without needing to ask permission”. Open Pedagogy is more difficult to define, but Wiley states that “Open pedagogy is that set of teaching and learning practices only possible in the context of the free access and 5R permissions characteristic of open educational resources.” 2 The “5R permissions” refers to the fundamental basis of sharing open content that allows anyone to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, or Redistribute the content of the resource in question. After teaching structures for many years, using several different textbooks, with varying results in student engagement and learning outcomes, the author decided to investigate/develop open pedagogies to use in teaching fundamental structural concepts. This paper will focus on the author’s recent experiences in introducing open pedagogies into an existing, second- year, introductory structures course. The primary goal of this experiment was to improve students’ retention of course content and engage them more directly in their coursework by challenging them to find, create and share open content. Another goal was to guide students in creating documents containing pertinent structural design information that they could maintain for use in their future structures courses and design studios. Students were required to create their own websites to store and share their work in the course. This exercise exposed students to the “5R’s” of open content, at a relatively small scale. The course goals and context in which open resources and pedagogy were used will be explained and described. Future potentials for using open pedagogies to teach structures will also be discussed

An Evaluation of the Stress-Negative Affect Model in Explaining Alcohol Use in College and Adult Samples: The Role of Components of Negative Affect and Coping Style

The associations between stressors and patterns of alcohol use have been studied for their implications for the etiology of problematic alcohol use. Proponents of the stress-negative affect mediation model suggest that negative affect induced by stressors may drive alcohol use; however, researchers have only weakly supported the mediation model. The current study used a more comprehensive approach to evaluate the stress-negative affect model by investigating the unique mediation effects of specific components of negative affect (i.e., sadness, guilt, fear, and anger) in the context of different coping styles among adults and college students. It appears that stress-negative affect model does explain alcohol use among adults but not among college students. The pathways from negative life events to alcohol use among adults who primarily rely on approach coping strategies, but rarely use avoidant coping strategies (i.e., high approach-low avoidant group), appear to operate uniquely through sadness and anger. In contrast, among adults who rely more heavily on avoidant coping strategies, but moderately use approach coping strategies (i.e., moderate approach-moderate avoidant group), stress-induced alcohol use seems to occur due to guilt. Thus, stress-negative affect model may better explain drinking patterns of individuals with certain characteristics and operate through particular components of negative affect. Interventionists who aim to reduce stress-induced alcohol use should consider focusing on specific components of negative affect and at-risk groups in order to improve treatment outcomes

Multimodal system for public speaking with real time feedback: a positive computing perspective

A multimodal system for public speaking with real time feedback has been developed using the Microsoft Kinect. The system has been developed within the paradigm of positive computing which focuses on designing for user wellbeing. The system detects body pose, facial expressions and voice. Visual feedback is displayed to users on their speaking performance in real time. Users can view statistics on their utilisation of speaking modalities. The system also has a mentor avatar which appears alongside the user avatar to facilitate user training. Autocue mode allows a user to practice with set text from a chosen speech

A Family Affair: Library Opportunities to Connect With Parents and Families

Parents are important aspects of our students’ academic lives, and as such, should be acknowledged and considered as allies and potential partners with libraries. This article presents ideas for many ways in which libraries can engage with parents and families, while also exploring the benefits of such efforts. The broad areas in which these efforts fall include 1) overall student success, 2) connecting with other student-supporting and student-reaching entities on campus, and 3) supporting the critical efforts of student recruitment and retention. In this article, examples of different parent engagement opportunities are also discussed, including involvement in campus events, engaging with parent associations, considerations of legacy engagement, and collaboration with other campus units. The results of these parent-library initiatives and connections can help accomplish a variety of things including supporting student academic success, ensuring that the library is involved in other university student outreach efforts, contributing to development and fundraising activities and finally, supporting the recruitment and retention of students