Student directed learning Research Papers (original) (raw)

2024, The Law Teacher

This article describes, evaluates and reflects upon student creation of cloud-based digital flashcards as an authentic formative and summative assessment task designed for the deep learning of constitutional law. The usefulness of digital flashcards in online legal education is explored. The undergraduate law student participants in the study responded differently to the assessment task depending upon the constitutional law topic they were assigned, the perceived relevance of constructing digital flashcards to professional practice and how they reacted to this creative task. Building digital flashcards provides a potentially powerful authentic assessment task for the study of constitutional law provided it is designed to support semester long creation, validation and sharing of digital flashcards that students perceive as professionally relevant and educationally useful. Student recommendations for designing an assessment task involving the creation of digital flashcards are evaluated.

2024, Proceedings of the XXIInd International CALL Research Conference

Little is still known about student preferences towards using ChatGPT in their learning journey. A classroom-based study was undertaken within a Japanese university to address this. Students worked in groups to create and teach short classes about using ChatGPT to learn English. After all the classes were finished, a survey about student opinions was administered. A thematic analysis of the responses highlighted ChatGPT's usefulness for planning language learning strategies, scheduling, and practicing conversation, while drawbacks included problems with understanding and trusting the feedback provided by the technology.

2024, String Research Journal

Socio-musical connections and teacher identity development in a university methods course ...

2022, The Canadian journal for the scholarship of teaching and learning

For some students, law school leads to a perception of legal education as favouring technical proficiency and structural similarity over innovation and creativity, leading to disengagement in learning. To address this, we offered a creative option in two first-year law courses, worth 20% of the grade. Students who chose this option created a diversity of artistic works, including short stories, visual arts, literary criticism, culinary art, music and lyric composition, film, a blog, a video game, and a board game. Some of these works were of startling originality; all engaged in law in unconventional ways. We assessed the work using a rubric with descriptors relating both to artistic merit and legal knowledge or law studies. Later, we surveyed all 30 students who had submitted a creative project. The survey instrument used both open-ended questions and a set of statements that students rated on a 1-5 Likert scale. When asked to rank whether the project positively contributed to thei...

2022, The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

In the 21st Century, Canadian universities are increasingly emphasizing the importance of student engagement. This research paper, by analyzing the reflections of undergraduate students on their experiences in a co-curricular service learning assignment – integrated into a course that included more traditional assignments – in the context of situated learning theory, advocates for a community-focused assignment as a component in a “traditional” lecture-and-discussion based course as a tool for enhanced engagement through active, collaborative learning. While the case study explored is a drama course, the anticipated audience is pan-disciplinary, as the article casts more broadly by providing brief, general guidelines on implementing an experiential learning assignment and encouraging all professors to reflect on their classroom theory and praxis to the end of augmenting student engagement. Au 21e siècle, les universités canadiennes accordent une place de plus en plus importante à l’...

2022

To me, emotions have been a source of self-discovery and self-acceptance. These emotions are facilitated by the people I encounter everyday. We each hand out and collect emotions to guide our attitudes. It was my intention in this study to investigate the extent to which bringing out this human trait into the classroom would positively impact on attitudes towards diversity, and towards learning, and, ultimately, improve learning among a diverse group of learners. This dissertation set out to investigate the potential benefits of using the creative arts (drama and music) as alternative methods of teaching to support learning in a newly integrated school. The research reported in this project investigated, through a qualitative case stUdy, the use of emotional pedagogies, through the creative arts, as an alternative teaching strategy that promoted learning in the classroom. Learning activities involving the use of drama and music were used in the Learning Area of Life Orientation classes within grades 8, 9, 10 and 11. The design of the lessons positioned learners in a social context that encouraged ' the exploration and acceptance of learner diversity by engaging them in the creative arts. The aim was to investigate the extent to which using drama and music in integrated classrooms would increase learner engagement and improve their learning. The findings of the case study reported in this dissertation suggest that some learners tend to benefit more from the use of certain methodologies (music and drama) than others. This implies that further studies beyond this single case study are needed to establish the value of using such methodologies to promote learning. However, while limited to a small case study of one school, the findings do offer significant lessons for enhancing learning among diverse learners in integrated schools and classrooms. The use of creative arts as teaching methods could possibly offer teachers in integrated schools a medium for opening dialogue and communication with and among learners from diverse social and educational backgrounds, a task most newly integrated schools are still grappling with. The findings of the study also have implications for further research involving bigger samples of schools and learners to investigate the extent to which the use of these methods in teaching content would increase learner engagement and improve learning.

2022

of the use of Metacognitive Writing Strategies Anxiety and Self-efficacy’s Relationship with Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of the use of Metacognitive Writing Strategies There is growing interest in promoting metacognition among college and university students, as this has been linked with positive student learning outcomes. This study explores the relationship between student writing anxiety and self-efficacy on undergraduate students ’ self-reported use of metacognitive writing strategies. Using undergraduate student survey data from a large, research-intensive university in Ontario, Canada, we found reductions in writing anxiety and increased self-efficacy had a statistically significant association with students ’ perceptions of using metacognitive writing strategies. These findings have implications for both theory and practice. They demonstrate that writing metacognition is influenced by emotional factors, such as the level of anxiety and the extent of self-beliefs aroun...

2022

Using poetry, role play, readers ’ theatre, and creative manipulations of space through yarn and paper weaving, a workshop in 2008 challenged one of educational development’s more pervasive and least questioned notions (“constructive alignment ” associated most often with the work of John Biggs). This paper describes the reasoning behind using humanities approaches specifically in this case and more generally in the Challenging Academic Development Collective’s work, as well as problematising the notions of “experiment” and “results ” by unarchiving and re-archiving such a nonce-event. The critical stakes in using an anti-empirical method are broached, and readers are encouraged to experience their own version of the emergent truths of such approaches by drawing their own conclusions. En 2008, par le biais de la poésie, du jeu de rôles, du théâtre lu et de manipulations créatrices de l’espace avec de la laine et des tissages en papier, un atelier a mis au défi une des notions les pl...

2022, Visual Inquiry

This article tells the story of an elementary school math teacher faced with the challenge of preserving a classroom devoted to innovative and creative learning, as his independent day school moved towards standardization and traditional educational approaches. After being informed that his instruction needed to come into closer alignment with the rest of the school he invited his students to brainstorm ways in which they could inconspicuously remain empowered agents of their own learning. The class decided to set aside one hour each week as a time for self-directed learning. During this time they produced math-based carnival games culminating in an event they called ‘Math Palooza’. Reflecting on this experience, the author realized the importance of using critical self-reflection to interrogate the status quo and as a safeguard from falling into habitualized methods of instruction and obsolete forms of curricular design.

2022, Global Education Review

This essay discusses creativity in the classroom, constraints and the lack of creativity modeling in undergraduate teacher education programs, and some simple changes that can be made. This lack of models and modeling of creativity in the teacher education classrooms leads to a lack of creativity in teaching, activity design, tasks, and assessments. Issues related to lack of creativity in the education system are discussed from the student, faculty, state, and government levels.

2021

2021, Instructional Science

We examined undergraduate research experiences (UREs) participants' and their faculty mentors' beliefs about the professional practices and dispositions of research scientists. In Study 1, 63 science interns and their mentors rated... more

2017, Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

North American universities are encouraged to increase opportunities for undergraduate research experiences (UREs). To this end, many universities offer directed studies courses (DSCs) which are 1-2 semester long courses involving one-on-one instruction, with a focus on student-led independent research. Building on the understanding of dynamics generally related to UREs, this paper seeks to compare the motivations, benefits, and barriers specifically related to DSCs from student, instructor, and administrator perspectives. Based on a set of qualitative focus group discussions at a small undergraduate liberal arts institution, we present the similarities and differences in these perspectives and recommend a set of best practices for DSCs. All three groups reported motivations for engaging in a DSC that addressed working with a particular student or instructor, assistance with graduate school preparation, and meeting program requirements. In terms of perceived benefits of DSCs, both students and instructors indicated the mentoring relationship and practical outcomes arising from DSCs. Students recognized the benefits of developing research skills, but stressed the motivation and benefit of independent learning more than was found in other studies. Instructors focused on benefits of research engagement and relationship building. The major challenges to participating in DSCs were workload and time (all groups), unprepared students and lack of guidelines (instructors and administrators), and the oral presentation requirement and lack of information about DSCs (students). Based on these results, we suggest increased clarity in DSC expectations, consistent standards of quality, and promoting research processes common to the DSC's home discipline.

2015