ABSTRACT
We introduce "Ricerca Operativa Applicazioni Reali" (ROAR;in English, "Real Applications of Operations Research"), a three-year project for higher secondary schools. Its main aim is to improve students' interest, motivation, and skills related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics disciplines by integrating mathematics and computer science through operations research. ROAR offers examples and problems closely connected with students' everyday life or with the industrial reality, balancing mathematical modeling and algorithmics. The project is composed of three teaching units, addressed to grades 10, 11, and 12. The implementation of the first teaching unit took place in Spring 2021 at the scientific high school IIS Antonietti in Iseo (Brescia, Italy). In particular, in this paper, we provide a full description of this first teaching unit in terms of objectives, prerequisites, topics and methods, organization of the lectures, and digital technologies used. Moreover, we analyze the feedback received from students and teachers involved in the experimentation, and we discuss advantages and disadvantages related to distance learning that we had to adopt because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABSTRACT
The occurrence of the global health crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the education system around the world to consider remote learning. This mode of learning involves the use of advanced technology that entails an interactive learning experience in an online educational setup. This study aimed to determine the benefits gained and the challenges encountered by the teachers and students in remote learning. Findings showed that the respondents perceived several advantages ranging from personal benefits to improving overall performance while enjoying personal freedom to explore other things aside from academics. Although they had several challenges encountered, the opportunities it has brought to both students and teachers outweigh them all, which provide a prospect for a better student outcome having remote learning set up in the new normal.
ABSTRACT
Fall 2020 presented myriad challenges for teachers trying to plan curricula to meet students' social-emotional and learning needs following an unprecedented spring and summer of isolation and loss due to the pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 (Rivera and Wallace 2020). The result of creative planning and adjusting of curricula for remote instruction led to a new component of thinking about differentiation: Beyond differentiating to students in the classroom, teachers were and continue to differentiate to students in different learning environments. The unit presented in this article is an example of how the authors reimagined their Earth and Space Science class for ninth- and tenth-grade students for remote instruction that included strong data analysis and critical-thinking components. As written, the unit emphasizes building a strong classroom community online, creates opportunities for students to follow their own curiosity, and teaches transferable skills--specifically argumentative writing skills--that will support students' success across subject areas.
ABSTRACT
The quality of life of students at school is an increasingly topical issue in relation both to public health issues, made more acute by the pandemic and successive confinements, and to the technical nature of future jobs which means training has become an economic issue. There are therefore two issues, one linked to health and the other to school performance. A cross-sectional design was adopted. Questionnaires were administered to 470 volunteer student's seventh grade US to the first year of the Senior Technician Curriculum aged from 12 to 23 years (139 girls and 331 boys, mage = 15.7 years). Latent profiles analysis and the Games-Howell post hoc test were used. Analyses carried out with MPlus reveal three possible profiles. They also show that these profiles have a strong predictive power on motivation and perceived health.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 outbreak has forced our education process into online learning. Unfortunately, the suddenness has left both teachers and students unprepared, causing students to experience some degree of anxiety, particularly in foreign language speaking skills. This study aims to investigate students' perception of voice notes to reduce students' speaking anxiety. This study employed a quantitative approach with a survey study and used a questionnaire as the instrument. The participants of this study were tenth-grade students of SMAN 1 Malang who took extra English class as their cross-interest subject in high school. This study showed positive responses regarding using voice notes in a speaking activity conducted in ELT class as students thought it could reduce their speaking anxiety. Voice note then provides a new learning media that is less stressful and pressuring on ELT in an online setting.
ABSTRACT
Oftentimes the increase in industrial development is the cause of environmental problems. Environmental problems can be overcome by the presence of humans who care about the environment or have environmental literacy skills. Environmental literacy skills can be instilled from an early age, for example through practicum learning in schools. However, considering that the Covid-19 pandemic is one of the obstacles in carrying out the practice, virtual laboratory-based online learning is carried out. This study was aimed to improve students' environmental literacy through virtual laboratory-based online learning that has been developed. This research is quasi experiment with pre-test and post-test research design Control Group Design. The total sample of the study was 70 students of class X of state senior high school. The research instrument used was in the form of test questions about environmental changes material and environmental literacy questionnaires. The results showed that the N-gain value of environmental literacy in the experimental class was 29% high, 60% moderate, 11.42% low with the percentage of attitudes 66.62% and 63.43% behavior. Meanwhile, for the control class, the N-gain value was 9% high, 48.57% moderate, 42.85% low and 68% attitude and 67% behavior. This shows that virtual laboratory-based online learning contributes to increasing environmental literacy skills.
ABSTRACT
It was previously found that students have low in learning collaboration, which is the learning process has not facilitated them to develop their skills. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects of project-based learning (PjBL), Predict-Observe-Explain (POE), and Predict-Observe-Explain based Project (POEP) on student collaboration skills in Biology education. The pretest-posttest non-equivalent control design was used and it involved 144 tenth grade students from Tarakan, Indonesia. This research was conducted from August to December 2020, while observation sheets was used to assess the student collaborations skills. The instrument used is the student collaboration skill observation sheet refers to Greenstein, 2012. The collaboration skills observation sheet has a score of 1-4 from each aspect. The aspects used are working productively, showing respect, compromise, and responsibility. Data collection in this study was carried out using WhatsApp, and Google Classroom as learning platform. The results of the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) showed that PjBL, POE, and POEP affected their collaboration skills (p < 0.005). The LSD test result showed that PjBL, POEP, POE, and conventional learning models were significantly different in improving the skills. The POEP class had the highest posttest score, hence it can be used to improve student collaboration skills. This research contributes to providing a learning experience that empowers students' online collaboration skills.