•Content validity index of .80 is acceptable when more than 10 experts participate.•Fitness for the context and wording are crucial aspects in rubric design.•Wording problems are also caused by ...rubrics' flaws in suitability to context.•Experts appraise rubrics from a critical point of view on teaching and management.•Experts primarily relate rubrics to teaching innovation and education improvement.
The growing trend among universities to promote systems of programme and course evaluation entails more responsibility for faculties and departments. These systems require resources to ensure that they are not only valid and reliable but also effective and sustainable. The design of rubric-based assessment systems may provide a solution, but there is a gap in the research on curriculum evaluation concerning their use and validation. We examine the content aspect of validity in a rubric-based assessment system for course syllabuses using a mixed method that combines an analysis of the agreement among 23 experts with a phenomenographic study. With data gathered through a questionnaire linked to the Delphi technique, content validity indexes were calculated and the experts' different perspectives were identified. The content validity indexes (greater than .80) met the standards set out in literature, and the qualitative study of the experts' feedback showed three different perspectives on the system's use. Beyond providing evidence of the system's content validity, the study highlights the extent to which it is important to give appropriate consideration to experts' – and by extension final users' – experience in order to ensure the successful implementation of rubric-based assessment systems.
Abstract
Background
There is an increasing trend towards person-centred care (PCC) worldwide, suggesting that PCC should be mastered by future health care professionals. This study aims to explore ...programme directors’ views on facilitators and barriers to implementing PCC in four of the largest national study programmes in Sweden training future health care professionals.
Methods
A qualitative design was applied and interviews were conducted with 19 programme directors of Swedish national study programmes in medicine, nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Themes were sorted according to the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) in an abductive approach. COREQ guidelines were applied.
Results
The overarching theme, as interpreted from the programme directors’ experiences, was ‘Person-centred care is on the move at different paces.’ The theme relates to the domains identified by the CFIR as outer setting, innovation, inner setting and process. PCC was understood as something familiar but yet new, and the higher education institutions were in a state of understanding and adapting PCC to their own contexts. The movement in the outer setting consists of numerous stakeholders advocating for increased patient influence, which has stirred a movement in the inner setting where the higher educational institutions are trying to accommodate these new demands. Different meanings and values are ascribed to PCC, and the concept is thus also ‘on the move’, being adapted to traditions at each educational setting.
Conclusion
Implementation of PCC in Swedish higher education is ongoing but fragmented and driven by individuals with a specific interest. There is uncertainty and ambiguity around the meaning and value of PCC and how to implement it. More knowledge is needed about the core of PCC as a subject for teaching and learning and also didactic strategies suitable to support students in becoming person-centred practitioners.
Abstract
Background
Cultural competence development in the formative process of healthcare professionals is crucial for the provision of culturally appropriate health care. This educational issue is ...highly relevant in the growing multicultural composition of southern Chile. The objective of this study was to examine how the healthcare professions curricula at the Universidad de La Frontera, in La Araucanía Region, prepares future professionals to respond to patients' cultural needs.
Method
A sequential transformative mixed methods design composed of two phases was carried out. Phase 1 reviewed all printed material and documentation to explore content that developed cross-cultural skills and competencies in the curricula. In Phase 2 semi-structured interviews were conducted with academics with responsibilities for the development of the curriculum in each career, to detect how academics envisage the incorporation of cultural competence in the curricula.
Results
Regarding curricular contents, findings indicated that the healthcare professions curricula at The Universidad de La Frontera have similar approaches to the inclusion of CCT in subjects’ syllabuses, with inclusion of the different CCT, particularly in the Dental and Medical curricula. However, this coverage showed significant variations in the undergraduate healthcare curricula. The analysis revealed that themes around the Ethics and human values for professional practice; the Psychosocial and cultural determinants of health; the Relationship health-family-community, and to a lesser extent, the Clinician-patient relationship were well covered in the courses. On the other hand, Inequalities in health was the theme with the least contact time in all three courses.
Academics called for a better organisation of the inclusion of CCT in the curricula. They also highlighted the challenges of maintaining the dominant paradigm underlying healthcare models, practices, and orientations within the academic staff and health discipline.
Conclusion
Curricula contents findings indicate that the healthcare professions curricula at Universidad de La Frontera have similar approaches to the inclusion of CCT in subjects’ syllabuses. However, its depth of coverage allows for improvements. The systematization of CCT and teaching–learning methodologies in healthcare professions curricula is necessary to develop formative processes that allow future professionals to be aware of and respectful with patients’ cultural characteristics and needs.
Purpose: This study attempts to assess the status of sustainability across Urban and Regional Planning (URP) Undergraduate programs in Turkey by (1) examining the contents of sustainability courses, ...and (2) acquiring more information about how the courses are taught and evaluated. Research Methods: The study is based on a document analysis of course syllabuses, which are documents including course description, course objectives, course content, reading materials, recommended textbooks, and evaluation techniques. The course syllabuses are examined using both descriptive and content analysis. With the descriptive analysis, the current status, teaching and evaluation methods, and teaching instruments are identified; with the content analysis, common themes are defined. Findings: The results showed that sustainability was taught through different themes, including economic, environmental, and social contexts which are fundamental in URP undergraduate education. The most frequently recurring themes included tourism and conservation, alongside ecology, planning, urban ecology, and environmental issues. It was found that themes such as urban and sustainable planning, improvement, and development all had roots in the theme of sustainability. In contrast, it was also noticed that economy/economics, while important, was barely touched. Implications for Research and Practice: In this study, the findings regarding how sustainability is currently covered in URP undergraduate programs across Turkey have been systematically presented with the expectations that this contributes to curriculum development overall and in a better way.
The course “Teaching English to Young Learners” has always been one of the most important courses of the ELT programs. Together with the new ELT Program introduced in 2018-2019 academic year, Council ...of Higher Education changed the course hours from two hours practical and two hours theoretical to three hours which will basically deal with theoretical issues. As the course will cover some theoretical issues, this study aims to determine the most preferred topics to be taught in this course. The study follows mixed-methods sequential exploratory research design procedures. To form the questionnaire, ELT curriculums of 42 state universities were content analysed in the qualitative part of the study. Then, frequency tables and topics were composed. Eight topics were added to the 51 main topics after having an interview with two experts in the field. Lastly, the final table of topics for the questionnaire was formed and the questionnaire was created in Google Forms. In the quantitative part of the study, the data has been collected from 266 teachers, teacher educators and pre-service teachers from different cities of Turkey. The findings of this study showed that the participants think using visual items, games and songs, developing children’s speaking skill and defining young learners and their characteristics are the most important topics for Teaching English to Young Learners. While participants’ work status revealed some significant differences in their topic preferences, there were no significant differences in terms of their teaching experience.
A first-class syllabus can help promote effective, efficient and engaging learning, but traditional syllabi too often fail to attain this purpose. This paper describes and illustrates a syllabus ...review check-list that was designed to assist faculty at a major university to adopt a problem-centered approach to their courses. The check-list enables the user to identify a typical syllabus; a more effective, efficient and engaging instructional syllabus; and an even more effective, efficient and engaging problem-centered syllabus. The review of the syllabi of 52 faculty members from a major university is reported.
This study explores how different online syllabus formats affect students' engagement and their course-taking intentions. Using a 2 (format: online learning management system vs. instructor's ...website) X 2 (information amount: more vs. less) between-subjects design, an experimental study was conducted with undergraduate students at a large university in the United States Midwest to examine the effects of online syllabus format. This study found that students who read the instructor's website syllabus were more likely to engage with and take the course than students who received the syllabus through an online learning management system. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
This article investigates the course literature in the curricula of 12 major journalism schools at Northern European universities. This analysis of the course literature listed in documentation of ...bachelor programmes traces how journalism education institutions constitute their knowledge base on journalism. It is found that Nordic journalism students are required to read almost four books per study credit on average. Undergraduate academic journalism programmes are professionally oriented, and professional literature by non-scientific publishers occupies a major place in the course literature. A strong emphasis is placed on professional books written in the domestic language, with an average age of seven years. Though the Scandinavian languages show high degrees of similarities with each other, there is very little circulation of literature across the countries within the Nordic area. This analysis of the literature points to a relatively homogeneous educational culture with small differences and raises questions about the qualitative dimensions of instructional design.
While learner-centeredness is important to quantify, education researchers disagree on how best to measure it. The overall aim of this research was to measure the learner-centeredness of introductory ...biology classrooms with a valid and reliable instrument that offers a different perspective than self-reported faculty surveys or expert observation protocols – Palmer et al.'s (2014) syllabus scoring rubric. We investigated whether syllabus rubric scores aligned with both faculty self-reports and expert observations of learner-centeredness from the same classrooms, and whether these other metrics predict an instructor's total syllabus score better than instructor gender or years of teaching experience. Course syllabi from eight instructors who taught the same nonmajors biology course were scored independently using this syllabus scoring rubric. Our results suggest that syllabus learning objectives link to learner-centeredness and, interestingly, that other external metrics of learner-centeredness may predict syllabus rubric scores derived from Palmer et al.'s instrument.
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