Discounting and discovery: How hybrid courses impact faculty job contentment in post-secondary educational institutions

Higher education institutions in the United States continue to explore ways in which they can improve student outcomes and continue the dissemination of knowledge while concurrently managing increased budget pressures, enrolment challenges, evolving stakeholder demands, shifts in technology, and wider societal headwinds. One option which they have increasingly turned to is the use of hybrid education. Business schools in particular are deploying hybrid education courses as one option in managing increased contention over rising tuition costs and more intense domestic and international competition. Accordingly, special consideration was given to faculty within the business discipline and the impacts of teaching hybrid education on their contentment using the FSSE scales of sense of belonging and teaching environment. While hybrid education is not a new phenomenon it is still rapidly evolving and despite its widespread use over the last two years during the COVID-19 global pandemic, very little is known about the impact that hybrid education has on faculty, in particular how it affects their job contentment. Recognizing that the faculty are not a homogenous group and that each institution represents a unique environment in which they work, this study explores the relationships between individual faculty, the teaching modality of hybrid, and the effects of their membership in different academic disciplines and institutional types. Using data from the 2020-2021 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) and building upon Hagedorn's framework for job satisfaction, this study proposes a new model of faculty contentment with which to assess the relationships between faculty job contentment, their environmental and personal characteristics, and teaching modality. The study also reveals many significant relationships between faculty and environmental characteristics and sense of belonging while teaching hybrid courses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

In the eye of the beholder - how course delivery affects anatomy education.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic caused major shifts in students' learning strategies as well as teaching environments that profoundly affected the delivery of anatomy courses in medical schools. The Department of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine had a unique experience where the anatomy course in 2019/2020 was first taught in-person before transferring to an online course delivery, while the inverse happened in 2020/2021. The core curriculum, course material and examination criteria were the same in both academic years. The aim of the study was to determine whether course delivery affected students' perceptions of the course and whether it impacted students' engagement and success. METHODS: The students' perceptions of the course were assessed via an anonymous course survey (student evaluation of teaching, SET). The questions in the SET assessed the usefulness of teaching modalities rather than students' satisfaction. Most questions were in the form of statements to which students responded with their level of agreement on a five-point Likert scale. Differences between responses in 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney test. Effect size was estimated using Cliff's delta and association between responses was assessed using Spearman's r coefficient. RESULTS: Students' perceptions were significantly affected by changes in course delivery. Students' success and engagement were higher in 2019/2020 when in-person teaching preceded online teaching. Furthermore, students' views on course organization and the usefulness of continuous assessment were more positive in 2019/2020. Finally, students' perceptions of the usefulness of online materials and activities were more positive in 2019/2020. All comparisons between the two academic years were statistically significant (P ≤ 0.0001 for all comparisons, Mann-Whitney test). CONCLUSIONS: Students' perceptions of the anatomy course were dependent on the teaching environment they were exposed to at the beginning of the course. A transfer from in-person to online course delivery was more successful than vice-versa. This has important implications for structuring hybrid courses in medical education in the future.

Remote access laboratory setup for physical computing courses

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced educational institutes worldwide to rapidly adapt to a remote-only learning environment. This poses significant challenges for laboratories involving hands-on training and interaction with specialized equipment, such as those of physical computing courses. In this context, we present a simple, low-cost solution for conducting remote laboratories in microcontroller and PLC programming, by adapting existing lab hardware and extending it to function remotely. A key element of the proposed setup is a physical input simulator board, which allows remote users to issue inputs (digital and/or analog signals) to the development hardware, through a graphical user interface application running on the workstation PC. The latter is also equipped with a camera and a light, so as to form a complete remote access and monitoring solution. This setup was used during the coronavirus lockdown in two courses of the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Hellenic Mediterranean University, receiving a very positive evaluation from the students. The proposed setup can also be used as a hybrid solution for laboratories during normal conditions, and to facilitate efficient use of teaching resources by allowing 24/7 access to the laboratory units. © 2022 IEEE.