The present study evaluates the language improvement courses in the undergraduate curriculum of the Department of English Language Teaching (ELT) at Eastern Mediterranean University. The language improvement courses are: Oral Communication Skills I and II, Reading Skills I, II, and Advanced Reading Skills, Writing Skills I, II and Advanced Writing Skills, and English Grammar I and II. In this evaluation study, the adapted version of Bellon and Handler&rsquo / s (1982) curriculum evaluation model was employed. The participants of the study were six instructors teaching the language improvement courses and students enrolled in these courses. The data, both qualitative and quantitative, were collected through course evaluation questionnaires for students, interviews with students and teachers, classroom observations, and examination of relevant written documents such as course policy sheets, course materials, and assessment tools used in the courses. The results of the study show that generally the language improvement courses were effective in terms of five aspects specified in the evaluation model employed in the study, as perceived by the students and the instructors. However, the students and the instructors suggested making some changes to the existing language improvement courses to make them more effective and better adjusted to the students&rsquo / needs and expectations. Some important conclusions drawn and recommendations made were: Practice (i.e. practice and production) component in the language improvement courses should be enhanced, a wider variety of authentic materials should be used in the courses, various methods and activities should be utilized in teaching-learning process, and intra-subject and inter-subject relationships (i.e. continuity and coherence) between or among the courses need to be strengthened.

Blended and online courses can require more student self-regulation than traditional in-person courses. Instructors and course designers can support student motivation and self-regulation in a variety of ways, such as by including motivational strategies in the course materials. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the following three factors: the motivational strategies employed in the online course materials of a blended German language course, student engagement in the course, and student usage of the course materials. Selected course activities were analyzed using a checklist based on Keller's ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction) model for motivational design to identify the motivational strategies that were present. At the end of each unit, students completed surveys about their level of engagement with the online portions of the blended course and their perceptions of the online activities. At the end of the semester, data about student usage of the online activities was collected from the Canvas Learning Management System. The results of this study show that a wide range of motivational strategies are used in the online materials of this course and that students were highly engaged in this course. Students found the grammar and vocabulary activities to be the most motivating and the most useful for their language learning. The number of Attention strategies in an activity was strongly correlated with how often students used the activity, and the number of Attention strategies also predicted how often students would use the activities, likely because Attention strategies increase ease of use of the materials and encourage student curiosity. The number of Satisfaction strategies in an activity predicted how motivating students would find the activity, likely because Satisfaction strategies allowed students to use their new skills in realistic contexts and experience intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. There was a strong correlation between how motivating students found an activity and how useful they found the activity for their language learning. Including more motivational strategies, particularly Attention and Satisfaction strategies, can enhance the student experience and increase student motivation; however, students are most likely to be motivated by activities that they find useful for their language learning.

The model of the five-sided classroom was developed for, and has been used in, recent international basic courses on teaching in higher education as an instrument for the analysis of learning settings to be utilized prior to the planning of a concrete course. It suggests the learner(s), the teacher, the physical surroundings, the institution, and society as main influential factors for the potential proceedings and effects of a learning arrangement. It is shown how the model has been embedded practically in the courses, with positive response by the participants. The experience shows evidence in favor of a systemic approach to didactics, including measures concerning the working conditions of teachers.

Thesis (M.A. (English Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / The purpose of this study was to investigate the significance of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) approach for the first year Law Degree students at the University of Limpopo. Qualitative, ethnographic research was conducted to determine the views and perceptions of the participants. Data was collected through interviews and questionnaires with a selected sample of respondents, and the data was analysed using thematic analysis. Themes were generated to present the data based on the objectives of the study, which were aligned to the literature review. The study has highlighted how the ESP approach could be used in the existing English module drawing from the participants’ conceptions. The findings revealed that even though the English module is considered important in the law degree by students and lecturers, the content of the module should be designed in a manner that fits the Law field. The study recommends that relevant content be designed to develop essential skills such as problem-solving and critical thinking and the module content should be designed with the specific content that fits the law degree.

As previous research has suggested, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought implications for different fields, in which higher education is not an exception (Blankenberger & Williams, 2020; Bidwell et al., 2020; Dhawan, 2020). The social distancing restrictions adopted by several governments including the Swedish one to contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have implied that most higher education institutions temporarily closed and/or transitioned face-to-face designed courses into online environments in a matter of weeks, or even days, forcing the teaching staff to increasingly adopt digital technologies to continue the course delivery (Rad et al., 2021; Bidwell et al., 2020; Hodges et al., 2020; Dhawan, 2020). Through collecting data at a Swedish university, this inductive and pragmatic study utilized a convergent mixed methods approach to study teachers ́ lived experiences during the COVID- 19 period, and explore the implications of change brought on by the pandemic to the design of courses at the higher education level, with the aim of contributing to future action in the field.  The temporal component (Sweeting, 2014) was utilized as a unit of comparison for analyzing the results of the interview and questionnaire data to deepen the understanding of the COVID-19 implications of change on course design through time, especially looking towards the future. The study’s findings suggest that the main changes brought on by the pandemic to higher education course design relate to the alteration of teaching format, the increased presence of course design as a topic in the teaching agenda, and the increased digitalization of course design, with associated challenges such as the technical and the communication, interaction, and engagement aspects of course design, and opportunities such as the highlighted digital possibilities for course design. Furthermore, the main implication brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic to the future of course design is expected to be associated with the advanced digitalization of higher education course design. This future implication has been problematized by the study through utilizing the conceptual framework provided by Selwyn’s (2011) understanding of the relationship between education and digital technologies, inviting higher education teachers and institutions to question the role of digital technologies in the present and future moments of higher education course design, and learn from the present for improving the future.

An interprofessional approach to pediatric behavioral care is increasingly important in the care of pediatric patients, who present to healthcare settings with a wide variety of concerns ranging from potty training to depression. Previously, much of the care of these patients have focused on a narrow approach to the problem, based on the expertise of the professional providing care. Faculty from three disciplines: Social Work, Psychology, and Medicine collaborated to design a course for students from these three disciplines to collaborate in attaining three goals: (1) reinforce the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration, (2) share clinical techniques and skills in a simulated interprofessional setting, and (3) practice collaboration within interprofessional teams. We detail the course goals and design and topics covered and discuss implementation of this course. Suggested module content and pedagogical design are discussed, and case examples are detailed with the goal of encouraging the adoption of similar courses.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:22:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Catia Veneziano Pitombeira.pdf: 1810045 bytes, checksum: 97d648508e867d0ffa1b1827b48e46a1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-10-29 / This research aims to describe and interpret the phenomenon technology formation enabled by the Language Teaching Technologies class which is part of an undergraduate Language and Literature distance course on Portuguese/Spanish at a confessional university in the State of São Paulo, in order to identify the formation perceived by the students and the emerging traces of complexity, given the moment of paradigm transition lived by the researcher when designing the mentioned class. The research development was based on the complex thinking epistemology (Morin, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2011; Moraes, 2002,2004), articulated with education and teacher formation theories (Freire, 2002, 2008), and with issues regarding teacher technological education from the perspective of Lopes (2005) and Moraes (2007), connected to different visions of instructional design according to Moraes (2008), Graves (2000), and Freire (2013). The Hermeneutic-Phenomenological methodological approach (van Manen, 1990; Freire, 1998, 2007, 2008, 2012) was adopted and the research instruments were part of the class activities: Students from the 5th semester (a) participated in the Class-Activity Forum which preceded a videoclass; (b) answered a Teaching Practice Questionnaire from which was possible to draw their profile and collect their impressions about their performance and about the proposed activities; and (c) produced a dissertative-reflexive report. These written texts represent the participants registers on how they have been living the phenomenon on focus while unveiling the way they interpret the life experience they have been involved in, as suggested by the methodology that supports this study. The interpretation of the texts revealed the participants' reflection about technology formation, as well as about the course design, providing the teacher-researcher with moments of reflection upon the development of new online technological education courses, and the creation and elaboration of courses under the perspective of complexity / Esta pesquisa busca descrever e interpretar o fenômeno a formação tecnológica oportunizada pela Aula Tecnologias para o Ensino de Línguas, em um curso de graduação em Letras Português/Espanhol a distância de uma universidade confessional do estado de São Paulo, visando à identificação da formação percebida pelo aluno e dos traços de complexidade emergentes, em razão do momento de transição de paradigma vivido pela pesquisadora ao desenhar a aula do referido curso. O desenvolvimento desta pesquisa se fundamentou na epistemologia do pensamento complexo (Morin, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2011; Moraes, 2002, 2004), aliada a questões de educação e formação de professores (Freire, 2002, 2008), e questões de formação tecnológica de professores sob a ótica de Lopes (2005) e Moraes (2007), articuladas com as diferentes visões de desenho Instrucional, de acordo com Moraes (2008) Graves (2000) e Freire (2013). A linha metodológica adotada para este estudo foi a Hermenêutico-Fenomenológica (van Manen, 1990; Freire, 1998, 2007, 2008a, 2012) e a pesquisa contou com os alunos do 5º. período do curso de Letras como participantes. Os instrumentos de investigação fizeram parte das atividades do curso: (a) os alunos participaram do Fórum Aula-Atividade que antecede uma teleaula; (b) responderam ao Questionário Prática Docente para levantamento do perfil e das impressões acerca de sua atuação e das atividades propostas; e (c) produziram um relato dissertativo-reflexivo. Esses registros escritos foram as manifestações das experiências vividas pelos participantes como sugere a metodologia que proporcionou respaldo a esta pesquisa. A interpretação desses textos revelou a reflexão dos participantes acerca da formação tecnológica bem como sobre o desenho a Aula, proporcionando para a professora-pesquisadora momentos reflexivos sobre o desenvolvimento de novos cursos de formação tecnológica a distância, bem como subsídios para a criação e elaboração de cursos sob a perspectiva da complexidade

This is a study of students’ meaning making in web-based higher education courses. Conditions for students meaning-making change when interaction technology is used to support educational practices. Widened Participation policy activities often use web-based programs to attract “new” groups of more experienced students. The study used a communicative approach and focused on how previous experiences influenced actions and meaning making when students encountered challenges related to course objectives. Mediated Discourse Analysis was used to analyse asynchronous communication in 10 groups during 18 weeks of a 4-year part-time distance education program, training childminders for a Bachelor of Education, specialising in early childhood.  Appearances of meaning-making were traced to changes and breaks in student communication and presented as themes of orientations of actions namely:  • participation, the manifestation of presence, engagement in course work and the creation of space for engagement  • positioning, the creation of a student identity, the organisation of work, and the construction of a group culture  • reference, the orientation actions took in a nexus of practices. Where did students go for examples and to challenge theoretical concepts? • changing experience is a collection of moments of reification, when students came to make realisations of relevance to subject and task.  This study tells an alternative story to research on web-based education stating difficulties to achieve in-depth communication. The mediated environment offered strength for meaning-making and knowledge building as time, in the opportunity to develop new perspective through thinking and in encountering concepts again and again. As numbers, in the necessary impact of other’s experiences. And as distance, provided by the shift of actions in asynchronous communication, forcing thoughts into written language and making them accessible for reflection and criticism. If we are serious about widening participation we should regard students not only as numbers but instead as a valuable resource that may contribute to change in education. In this context, the combination of new groups of students and web-based scenarios provides future avenues for an informed pedagogical approach to higher education.

There is a lack of empirical research on the motivational regulation and reactions of higher education students enrolled in blended courses. Studies that target this focus with nontraditional adult learners enrolled in the community college are even more difficult to locate. In this mixed-methods exploratory case study, I explored in what ways nontraditional adult learners' motivational regulation and their motivational reactions to course design relate to their perceived learning experience in a blended technology course with a flipped design. Specifically, I investigated how nontraditional community college students described their goals for participating in a blended course prior to the start of the class, in what ways they utilized motivational regulation strategies within the course, how they described their motivational reactions to a blended course developed with a flipped design, and how they perceived their goal accomplishments at the end of the course. The following A Priori questions guided my research: 1. In what ways do five nontraditional community college students describe their goals for participating in a blended technology course with a flipped design prior to the start of the class? 2. How do these students describe their motivational regulation experiences in the blended technology course on their responses to the Motivational Regulation Strategies Questionnaire? 3. How do these students perceive the motivational aspects of the course design as measured by the Course Interest Survey? 4. In what ways do these students perceive they achieved their described goals at the end of the course? I collected quantitative and qualitative data in the Fall semester of 2017 from five purposefully selected nontraditional adult community college learners who voluntarily engaged in the inquiry. I used several data collection instruments throughout the study. I collected quantitative data via three questionnaires: (1) a Demographics, Goals, and Interest Survey (2) the Motivational Regulation Strategies questionnaire, and (3) the Course Interest Survey. I gathered qualitative data through (1) participant electronic journals, (2) semi-structured interviews and (3) a researcher's reflective journal. There are both practical and theoretical implications to this study. The results of this research suggest guidelines on how to design an effective blended course for nontraditional students enrolled in the community college arena. The information gleaned might be used to further develop and redesign future blended courses for nontraditional community college students who seek alternative modes of content delivery for the purposes of continued learning and convenience of integration into their busy lifestyles. The findings from this study contribute to at least two bodies of empirical research literature: (1) motivational regulation strategies employed by nontraditional community college students and the (2) development of blended courses with motivational design to help nontraditional community college adult learners obtain their learning goals.