Abstract Research on Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) has indicated that course design is at least as important as teachers’ performance for student-rated perceived quality and student ...engagement. Our data analysis of more than 6000 SETs confirms this. Two hierarchical multiple regression models revealed that course design significantly predicts perceived quality more strongly than teachers, and that course design significantly predicts student engagement independent of teachers. While the variable teachers is a significant predictor of perceived quality, it is not a significant predictor of student engagement. In line with previous research, the results suggest it is important to highlight the vital impact of course design. The results are discussed particularly in relation to improved teaching practice and student learning, but also in terms of how student evaluations of teaching can be used in meaningful ways.
How should instructors adapt technical editing courses to account for generative artificial intelligence (AI)? This article addresses what generative AI means for technical editing pedagogy. While AI ...tools may be able to address rote editing tasks, expert editors are still needed to provide accessible, ethical, and justice-oriented edits. After reviewing impacts of generative AI on editing praxis, the author focuses on the microcredentials that she built into an editing course in order to address these impacts pedagogically. The goal was to enable students to understand AI, argue for their expertise, and edit from ethical and social justice perspectives.
Online courses are becoming more popular and accessible, but they require careful design and development of their structure and content. This paper presents a methodological approach for creating ...online courses by analysing existing practices and learner feedback. The paper focuses on the case study of the online course “Methods for Teaching Mathematics to Students in Technical Universities”, developed and tested by the authors. The paper discusses the main aspects of online course development, such as weekly planning, testing subsystem, video and PDF content, forum and survey subsystems, and assessment of learning outcomes. The paper also evaluates the quality of the online course and identifies some areas for improvement. The paper concludes that online course quality depends on various factors and provides recommendations for online course developers.
In response to the evolving needs of students and faculty, a small team of librarians rebuilt their library instruction program from the ground-up in 2020. The new approach consisted of three ...aspects: shifting introductory lessons to easily-accessible Canvas LMS modules, revamping LibGuides, and introducing a credit-bearing course. Together, they allowed librarians to move beyond traditional one-shot instruction, form deeper partnerships with faculty, and make the expertise of librarians more accessible. While the impetus for change was the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the new program laid the groundwork for rethinking traditional approaches to instruction and finding better ways to meet faculty and students at the point of need.
Open online learning environments attract an audience with diverse motivations who interact with structured courses in several ways. To systematically describe the motivations of these learners, we ...developed the Online Learning Enrollment Intentions (OLEI) scale, a 13-item questionnaire derived from open-ended responses to capture learners' authentic perspectives. Although motivations varied across courses, we found that each motivation predicted key behavioral outcomes for learners (N = 71, 475 across 14 courses).
From learners' motivational and behavioral patterns, we infer a variety of needs that they seek to gratify by engaging with the courses, such as meeting new people and learning English. To meet these needs, we propose multiple design directions, including virtual social spaces outside any particular course, improved support for local groups of learners, and modularization to promote accessibility and organization of course content. Motivations thus provide a lens for understanding online learners and designing online courses to better support their needs.
This article details findings from research to re‐design a postgraduate course on development practices in Development Studies in Aotearoa New Zealand, aiming to include the impact of the Covid‐19 ...pandemic. Reviewing literature, surveying recently graduated students and interviewing senior staff in international development organisations, five topics emerged as forces shaping development practices in a post‐covid‐19 world. Analysis suggests interviewed staff aligned with views in literature. However, comparing views of the current and next generation of development practitioners reveals quite diverging views as to what would be most important for a course on development practices.
As it becomes increasingly important for graduate students worldwide to write about their research in English for international publication, interest is growing in designing preparatory and support ...courses that effectively introduce the challenges and provide scaffolded practice, while fitting within context-specific constraints, including stage of candidature, level of student motivation, discipline/major mix and course length. Here we present a workshop approach shown to be successful with advanced graduate students actually writing papers, and a series of adaptations designed to make it suitable for graduate students still undertaking preparatory coursework prior to commencing their research projects. A 16 h adapted version was trialled in central China in 2016. Responding to recommendations in the literature, half the course hours were devoted to demystifying the task of article writing, including identifying take-home messages from data, selecting target journals, and writing to meet the criteria of editors and referees. Our decision to devote the remaining course hours to strategies for developing discipline-specific English skills proved congruent with students' pre-course perceptions of their major challenges. Outcomes included strong student engagement with course tasks, enhanced awareness of the links between English learning and the design, conduct and reporting of scientific research, and increased student confidence to write a paper for international submission. The context-specific adaptation process discussed provides an approach that could be useful in other contexts where instruction in writing for publication is needed.
•Teaching article writing to graduate students before they do research is challenging.•We adapted an approach found successful with working scientists for this purpose.•Half the course hours were allocated to discipline-specific English development.•Remainder demystified article writing using input from science collaborators.•Participants reported increased skills and confidence to read and write international articles post-course.
•LMS features explain six times more course load variance (36%) than credit hours (6%).•Students report time load to be most important but also most manageable.•Low psychological stress manageability ...is most correlated with course load (−0.79).•Number of prerequisites of a course correlates positively with course load (0.40).•Mixed models employed to infer course load via LMS and enrollment data.
Credit hours traditionally quantify expected instructional time per week in a course, informing student course selection decisions and contributing to degree requirement satisfaction. In this study, we investigate course load measures beyond this metric, including determinants from course assignment structure and LMS interactions. Collecting 596 course load ratings on time load, mental effort, and psychological stress, we investigate to what extent course design decisions gleaned from LMS data explain students’ perception of course load. We find that credit hours alone explain little variance compared to LMS features, specifically number of assignments and course drop ratios late in the semester. Student-level features (e.g., satisfied prerequisites and course GPA) exhibited stronger associations with course load than the credit hours of a course; however, they added only little explained variance when combined with LMS features. We analyze students’ perceived importance and manageability of course load dimensions and argue in favor of adopting a construct of course load more holistic than credit hours.
Industry 4.0 and 5.0 topics are emerging fields and have seen rising demand recently. There is a critical need, on the other hand, for improved methods of instructing programming languages since a ...growing lack of student motivation during the pandemic has had a deleterious influence on the education of programmers. In this context, online/hybrid computer programming courses must be addressed with innovative solutions to support the field with well-educated professionals. In this paper, we present a case study to propose an innovative tailored instructional design for the online/hybrid learning environments for programming courses in engineering faculties. To develop the instructional design, the Kemp Instructional Design Model was followed. The instructional design is a result of the main outputs of the RECOM “Redesigning Introductory Computer Programming Using Innovative Online Modules” project, which aims to bridge the gap between the existing course design in programming courses and the needs of "Covid” and “post-Covid” generation students.
