Impact of Teachers' Support Strategies on Students' Engagement of Online College English Class Experiences

During the covid-19 pandemic, students' online learning quality is imbued with teachers' support strategies while students' learning engagement is another great indicator underlies their learning experiences. Through a questionnaire survey of 500 freshmen who have had their college English class online in 2022 fall, an investigation using exploratory factor analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, stepwise regression analysis and parallel mediator model reveals the impact of teachers' support strategies (the six dimensions of challenge, authentic context, curiosity, autonomy, recognition and feedback) on the learners' online college English learning engagement (the four dimensions of cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, social engagement), thus particular concern is also given to the correlation with students' online learning experiences. It was found that even under diversified and comprehensive guiding strategies from teachers, university students' online college English learning engagement is at the medium level, among which the cognitive engagement should be devoted more. The experimental data also shows that teachers' support strategies have significant influence on learners' engagement, especially teachers' feedback and challenge setting will stimulate students to involve more in their study. In addition, both teachers' support strategies and students' learning engagement involves significant reflection of learning experiences accordingly. Based on this learning concept, related proposals see different degrees of prominence reflected in online instructional design, teachers' and students' feedback literacy, and technology-enabled innovative teaching practice are put forward, in order to effectively play the role of teacher scaffolding, learning experiences enrichment and students' engagement enhancement of online English learning. © 2023 IEEE.

Playful Learning During the Reopening of Danish Schools After Covid 19 Closures

This article is based on qualitative and quantitative data collected from teachers and pupils in Danish schools in June 2020, as schools reopened following closures in the spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It investigates the transformations in school life that took place in this period in response to strict official guidelines to prevent the spread of infection, transformations both in school learning environments and in teaching activities. Using factor and cluster analyses and logistic regression, it explores the relation between teaching environment and pupils' emotional, social, and academic wellbeing, identifying correlations between key factors in the environment and the three dimensions of wellbeing. The study contributes both to understanding and dealing with the crisis in which education systems in the Nordic countries have found themselves in and adds relevant knowledge on themes of importance for education in the future.

Hybrid Learning: A Boon or Bane

The context of higher education is changing. The emerge of social, technical, and intellectual forces has pushed higher education to the point of a significant transformation (Garrison & Vaughn, 2008). Technology enhanced learning have raised concerns about the quality of education and learning environment. For the traditional classroom-based teaching and learning, the breakthrough came during the emerge of Covid-19 pandemic. Online learning, once a separated learning system, was fully integrated into teaching and learning to continue providing education amidst the lockdown. Post the reopening of higher education institutions, hybrid learning was widely implemented in almost all universities across the world, to accommodate students' diverse range of learning needs in the post pandemic era. This case study is intended to gain insights regarding the learning experiences, challenges, and benefits in hybrid learning from both the lecturers' and students' perspective. Based from the gathered qualitative data, results show that both students and lecturers have mixed reviews regarding hybrid learning experience. One of the main findings is that hybrid learning creates a more flexible, engaging learning environment compared to traditional face-To-face learning. Lecturers generally feel that hybrid learning has several pedagogical and technological challenges. However, issues concerning quality of lecture delivery and academic malpractice during online assessments has found to be a concern among lecturers and students. In overall, lecturers and students feel that hybrid learning needs to be evaluated from time to time to address the drawback for continuous improvement towards better quality of learning. © 2023 IEEE.

Art-of-Living Intervention Imparted Through a Blended Learning Approach to Nurture Positivity Among Pakistan's University Students During COVID-19: A Growth Curve Analysis.

Art-of-living allows individuals to live a contemplative, mindful, and active life to attain well-being. This study demonstrates the development and implementation of an art-of-living training intervention to nurture positivity among Pakistan's university students during COVID-19. To ensure the efficacy of teaching and learning during the second wave of the pandemic, the intervention was imparted through a blended learning approach comprising two modes: (1) online learning and (2) offline personal and collaborative learning. This approach was based on the emotionalized learning experiences (ELE) format to make learning more engaging, permanent, and gratifying. The study comprised 243 students randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 122) and a wait-list control group (n = 121). Growth curve analysis indicated that positivity together with the components of art-of-living-self-efficacy, savoring, social contacts, physical care, and meaning-and overall art-of-living increased at a greater rate in the experimental group than in the control group from pretest to posttest and from posttest to follow-up measurement. The analysis provided an all-encompassing view of how positivity developed in the two groups over time. There were significant variations in participants' initial status (intercepts) and growth trajectories (slopes). The influence of participants' initial positivity scores suggested that students with high initial positivity scores had a slower increase in linear growth, whereas those with low initial positivity scores had a faster increase in linear growth over time. The success of the intervention may be attributed to the dimensions of ELE-embodied in the two modes-and fidelity to intervention for effectively implementing the blended learning approach. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10902-023-00664-0.

Immersive Education: Designing for Learning

This book focuses on designing and being a designer of immersive education. It introduces readers to the human experiences within immersive learning environments and contributes research evidence on the effectiveness of immersive technologies in K-12 and post-secondary contexts. Through the chapters, illustrative contextual examples and vignettes demonstrate immersive learning in real-world educational practice. Readers will be equipped to design engaging and culturally relevant immersive experiences for learning in a post-COVID world. Immersive Education: Designing for Learning brings researchers, designers, and educators together to offer pedagogical strategies and design guidelines. The originality lies in integrating theoretical and practical knowledge to design meaningful immersive experiences, with attention to sustainability, community, and creativity. Valuable insights are provided to support students and teachers as immersive learning designers and storytellers. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Design of virtual learning experiences for microcontroller programming during COVID-19 pandemic

The social distancing imposed by Covid-19 impacted the development of educational activities at all levels. Engineering education was specially challenged by the suspension of face-to-face activities, which paused the development of laboratory practices. The present work accounts for the design of virtual learning experiences in a Microcontrollers course. The free online tools 'Tinkercad Circuits' and 'Arduino' were used to simulate circuit programming and connections. These tools also allowed remote collaboration between students and teachers during lockdown. The results of the Mechatronics Engineering students (n=30) show that programming skills and hardware knowledge were developed. Additionally, the activities had a positive response from the students. On the other hand, according to the psychomotor domain taxonomy, the students had obstacles to their full development. It is concluded on the importance of integrating simulation to the development of activities and laboratory practices, as well as the advantages of hybrid teaching formats. © 2023 IEEE.

COVID-DRIVEN FRUSTRATIONS AND FULFILLMENTS WITH ONLINE LEARNING: DO MALES AND FEMALES DIFFER?

This paper reports the results of a study to determine whether the emotional impact of online education during the pandemic affected male and female students differently. We see these results as an important contribution to the redesign of courses either for online classes generally or for more urgent applications should a similar event occur. In general, we found that females were more likely to be prone to detrimental emotions than males – stress, negative feelings about the online learning experience, and the need to vent their frustrations. Males on the other hand were more positive about the online learning experience and less likely to vent. © (2022) by Association for Information Systems (AIS) All rights reserved.

Transitioning in a time of crisis: Understanding the impact students' prior online learning experiences have on online course achievement

This quantitative study examines the impact that selected academic and personal demographic characteristics had on the successful completion of online coursework during the Covid-19 pandemic. Focused on a high-research university in the Southeastern United States during the Fall of 2020, this research looked the potential influence that prior online learning experiences had on students' abilities to transition to the online modality during a time of crisis. Data for this study was retrieved from institutional sources and the sample consisted of 5,739 second-year students at the institution. After describing the sample and population, exploratory regressions were conducted to establish models for explaining variance in online GPA performance and percentage of online course completion during the Fall 2020 semester. The resulting models account for 40% of the earned online GPA and 19% of the variance in online course completion percentage.In addition to the aforementioned models, the results of this study showed significant differences in online learning performance by race, with White students significantly outperforming students of color. This held for students with and without prior online learning experiences, which were found to have little impact on the performance of students in the online modality during a time of crisis. The results of the study also showed that academic discipline, while having a negligible relationship in most cases, did negatively impact the performance of some STEM students.This ex-post facto research highlights the fact that crisis learning differs from traditional learning in more ways than originally thought. Overall, performance during the semester studied declined, indicating the impact of added stresses during a time of crisis. The study sheds light on opportunities for future research, including the prospect of investigating how students initially experiencing online learning during a time of crisis perform in subsequent online classes and the need to focus on how teacher preparation and course design may impact learner engagement in the online modality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

"Change Isn't Exactly Easy": Autistic University Students' Lived Learning Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic-related isolation measures caused significant unexpected changes in learning experiences for all university students, including autistic students. So far, there has been a lack of information on autistic university students' lived learning experiences caused by the changes in the teaching delivery formats from face-to-face to online during this time. Our study addressed this gap by investigating eight autistic students' reported learning experiences during the rapid changes caused by the pandemic and discussing student-advocated learning supports.Methods: The participants in this qualitative study were eight formally or self-diagnosed, English-speaking, autistic undergraduate and graduate university students from a mid-sized Canadian university. Participants took part in semi-structured interviews that focused on their learning experiences and preferences before and during the pandemic, including what supports they found helpful. To analyze and interpret the data, autistic and nonautistic researchers used reflexive thematic analysis and a consultative participatory approach.Results: Our findings suggest that individual (i.e., organizational skills;mental health), interactional (i.e., prior experiences interacting with instructors and teaching assistants), and environmental (i.e., sensory environments, class sizes, virtual learning environments) factors, which were interrelated, determined the nature and quality of these autistic students' learning experiences and their academic preferences during the pandemic. We also found that each autistic student reported unique learning experiences and needed individualized supports for their learning.Conclusions: Several interrelated factors (individual, interactional, and environmental) affected the nature and quality of autistic university students' experiences during the pandemic. Each student had unique experiences and needed individualized supports. Community brief What was the purpose of this study?During the COVID-19 pandemic, all university students experienced rapid unexpected changes in teaching and learning formats when they had to switch from face-to-face learning to online platforms. There is almost no published information on autistic students' learning experiences during the pandemic. The purpose of this study was to understand eight autistic university students' reported lived learning experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and to discover potential academic supports that the students identified. What did the researchers do?We interviewed eight Canadian autistic university students (five undergraduates and three graduates) about their lived academic experiences before and during the pandemic, focusing on their experiences with changes from face-to-face to online learning. We also asked them about effective academic supports that universities could provide. Autistic and nonautistic researchers worked together to analyze the participants' responses. What were the findings of the study?The study found that individual, interactional, and environmental factors combined to affect these university autistic students' lived learning experiences and their preferences for either online or in-person learning. Specifically, first, we found that each student's ability to study independently in an organized way and their personal mental health concerns such as anxiety management were key in deciding their learning preferences. Second, each student's prior success in socially interacting with instructors and teaching assistants was important in their preferences for online or in-person learning. Third, each student's sensory experiences on campus and at home including factors such as having to attend large noisy classes or the availability of quiet home-based learning environments were important. We also found that each autistic student experienced learning uniquely and required individualized supports. In this study, the three graduate students reported wanting to return to in-person learning as soon as possible, whereas most undergraduate students preferred online learning. What are the potential weaknesses in the study?We were not able to recruit as many or as diverse a group of students as we would have liked. Additionally, although autistic co-researchers took part in the coding, analysis, and writing of this study, they did not contribute to the earlier design or data collection. In the future, we plan to fully involve autistic co-researchers from the start to ensure we produce research that addresses the expressed needs of autistic people. How do these findings help autistic adults?This study provided evidence of eight autistic university students' lived learning experiences and preferences during the pandemic and described supports that the students indicated were important in helping them learn effectively at university. How do these findings advance the literature?This small-scale study provided early evidence about these autistic university students' preferences for online or in-person learning and the reasons for these preferences. These findings can be used to expand this study to include a greater number and diversity of students to investigate how other factors such as race, economic status, presence of co-occurring conditions (e.g., learning disabilities), and others may also influence autistic university students' learning preferences.

Observation of Online vs Offline Learning Experience

As the outbreak of COVID-19 increased in various countries. India is also majorly affected with the COVID-19 by that education system is affected, and it has transferred the traditional face-to-face teaching to online education platform. Considering student's perspective on both online and offline learning mode in India, we conducted a survey to collect the data. In that survey questionnaire, focus was on the factors and situation which can affect the education system. Using that data, we used Kruskal Wallis test to collect the evidence for which learning mode is better and Naive Bayes Algorithm, we were able to conclude the results. © 2022 IEEE.

Hybrid Protege Training Program in Corporate Setting: An Evaluative Case Study

This study evaluates a hybrid training program focusing on soft skills development for freshly graduated trainees in a multinational biomedical engineering company. The evaluation is conducted as a diagnostic tool to measure the performance of trainees that feeds the return- on- investment (ROI) of the assigned company. We implement an evaluative case study with both quantitative and qualitative methods;- learning analytics and semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data comes from the learning analytics of twenty-nine trainees, while qualitative data comes from five interviewees from the same cohort. We found that the trainees' negative learning experiences are traced to an inadequate time to participate online and a perception of irrelevant online training content. These resulted in lower performance scores and engagement during online sessions compared to face-to-face sessions. The respondents also stated that face-to-face sessions allow in-person interaction with trainers. This factor led to a positive learning experience and potentially heightened engagement that directed to a higher performance score. Instructional design considerations in planning effective hybrid training are deliberately discussed for future practitioners and researchers. © 2022 IEEE.

The Impact of Covid-19 on Student Mental Health and Online Learning Experience

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has affected every facet of human life in the contemporary world. Consequently, university students have to adjust to radically change learning environments. Moreover, the movement restrictions from the government-imposed lockdowns negatively affected students' mental health due to mental issues such as stress, frustration, and depression. The pandemic has caused considerable changes in our daily lives. These reasons are why the virus has hurt individuals' mental health, especially students who had to cope with changes in the education system and even the loss of loved ones. The ambiguity resulting from the pandemic has yet to be fully covered, particularly the students' well-being and the new learning landscape that they are anticipated to navigate seamlessly without their usual support systems. Covid-19 did disrupt the normal and put us all in numerous stressful circumstances' and forced us to have to face overwhelming difficulties at a time. Covid-19 lockdown and pandemic did bring about a sense of anxiety and fear around the world. The spectacle has led to students' long-term and short-term mental health and psychological implications. The paper presents research showing that most students were not prepared for this change, and that indeed they were affected mentally by remote learning. Additionally, the effect of prolonged pandemic fatigue and lockdown on university scholars and academic experiences is unclear. This paper reviews articles about mental health aspects of students and online learning experiences impacted by Covid-19 and provides a roadmap for an ongoing research. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

A CANVAS FOR THE ETHICAL DESIGN OF LEARNING EXPERIENCES WITH DIGITAL TOOLS

The use of digital tools has drastically increased in engineering education, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. These tools generate important ethical issues, in particular in terms of privacy and fairness. However, very few teacher training programmes address those topics, which means that teachers are often left to figure out by themselves how to address these issues when they want (or have) to use digital tools in their teaching. In this workshop, participants will be introduced to a pragmatic approach to the ethical design of learning experiences that involve digital tools using a visual thinking guide called a 'canvas'. Applied and hands-on, this workshop will help participants to develop a practical understanding of the specific ethical issues related to the use of digital tools in teaching and to integrate ethical reflection into design processes when digital technology is involved. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.

Acoustic Comfort in Hybrid Learning Spaces: Students Perspective

Acoustic comfort in classrooms has a great impact on the quality of education. In specific, its impact on teaching and learning experience has been widely studied and the results show that acoustic comfort is linked to learning attributes, e.g. enhancing productivity, memorizing and understanding of the taught material, mental welfare, and motivation. In this paper, we assess the acoustic comfort in hybrid classrooms, at the University of Sharjah, after classes have been reconfigured to comply with COVID-19 social distancing protocols. First, we measured the background noise and reverberation times for different types of classrooms used for teaching and learning. The results showed that most classrooms do not comply with international standards. For example, the background noise levels in the selected classrooms were found to range from 43.9-49.6 dB(A), which is higher than the recommended WHO limits. To evaluate the acoustic comfort from the perspective of the students, a survey was conducted to evaluate students' perception on acoustic conditions at the hybrid classrooms. The results showed that the majority of the students surveyed, 88%, felt that noise in classrooms affected their understanding of the material and communications with the instructor and peers. Noise sources were identified to originate from corridors, maintenance work, and construction sites within close proximity to the classrooms. Better designs are highly recommended to improve acoustic comfort to ensure an excellent student experience and the best learning environment. © 2022 Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. All rights reserved.

First-Year Engineering Students' Experiences and Motivation Amid Emergency Remote Instruction

Contribution: The study provides empirical evidence and a deeper understanding of COVID-19’s impact on first-year engineering (FYE) students’learning experiences and motivation while accounting for gender and race/ethnicity-based variations. Background: In the Spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced campuses to close and shift unexpectedly to emergency remote instruction. These rapid transitions impacted all students, including FYE students. Research Questions: Based on the importance of the first-year experience of engineering students, this study investigated two research questions: 1) How does the rapid transition to emergency remote instruction affect FYE students’learning experiences? and 2) How do students’learning experiences during the pandemic relate to their motivation (self-efficacy and task value)? Methodology: A multimethod approach is used to investigate students’experiences on two dimensions: 1) engagement, learning, effort, concentration, interest, and interactions and 2) time management, study settings, and resources, by using ANOVA, regression models, and structural equation modeling (SEM). Results: Students who reported increased value of learning experiences reported higher self-efficacy and task value. Also, the results indicated that international students reported increased learning of new concepts, concentration in the class, interactions with instructors, and higher self-efficacy, while White and Asian students reported higher task value and availability of resources. IEEE

Disrupted or sustained? Chinese international students' perceptions of transnational hybrid learning amid politics and pandemic

Impacted by the global COVID-19 crisis and its sociopolitical shockwaves, pre-existing physical mobility patterns and traditional study-abroad experiences have been thoroughly disrupted and transformed. US higher education institutions have utilized the practices of transnational hybrid learning to sustain the qual-ity and progress of international higher education. This article focuses on a study programme that integrates online and offline learning in Shanghai, China, coordi-nated by a non-profit international higher education exchange agency in partner-ship with eight US universities and one Chinese university from August 2020 to June 2021. Through semi-structured interviews with 32 Chinese students, this article finds that transnational hybrid learning offers students greater geographical and time flexibility, room for self-paced learning and controls on health risks while ensuring face-to-face interactions and physical activities. In addition, the localization of international education might motivate Chinese students to consider their career development that balances their interests and career prospects in response to political and economic uncertainties. However, the communication and learning gaps, weakened intercultural communication, sustained sociocultural alienation and contradictions of two sociocultural contexts render the overall programme experience less desirable. In sum, this article identifies the potential of virtual mobility beyond geographical and policy constraints in transforming and reimagining the practices of transnational higher education in a post-pandemic world. © 2022 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

Online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic: How university students' perceptions, engagement, and performance are related to their personal characteristics.

University students faced unexpected challenges in online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. Findings from early phases of the Covid-19 pandemic and before show that online learning experiences may vary from student to student and depend on several personal characteristics. However, the relative importance of different students' personal characteristics for their online learning experiences at later phases of the Covid-19 pandemic is still unclear. This cross-sectional, correlational study investigates how personal characteristics of university students are related to five dimensions of online learning perception and to their engagement and performance in online courses. In an online survey, 413 students from German universities provided full information on their online learning experiences and personal characteristics in terms of demographic information, Big Five personality traits, self-regulation skills, three facets of self-efficacy, and two types of state anxiety. Results of multiple regression analyses show that students' age was significantly positively related to all online learning perceptions and engagement in online courses. Our findings also confirm that self-regulation skills and academic and digital media self-efficacy are important factors in various online learning experiences. In contrast, students' personality traits and state anxiety were less important for most online learning experiences. Noteworthy, several bivariate associations between personal characteristics and online learning experiences are not reflected in the multiple regression model. This underscores the need to consider relevant variables simultaneously to evaluate their relative importance and to identify key personal characteristics. Overall, our results show valuable starting points for theory development and educational interventions.

Pharmacy student perceptions of remote learning and wellness during the pandemic: Lessons learned from a metropolitan commuter city.

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study was to assess pharmacy student perceptions of remote learning experiences and personal well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic in a metropolitan commuter city. METHODS: A survey was developed and sent to pharmacy students from the three pharmacy colleges in New York City in January 2021. The survey domains consisted of demographics, personal well-being, classroom experiences, and pandemic and post-pandemic preferred learning modalities and reasons. RESULTS: From a total of 1354 students from professional years one, two, and three across the three colleges, completed responses were received from 268 students (20% response rate). More than half of the respondents (55.6%) reported a negative impact of the pandemic on their well-being. More than half of the respondents (58.6%) reported more time to study. When students were asked their preferred mode of pharmacy education delivery during the pandemic and post-pandemic, a quarter (24.5%) preferred remote learning for all courses during the pandemic, and only a quarter (26.8%) preferred traditional classrooms for all courses post-pandemic. Approximately 60% of the respondents preferred some type of remote learning post-pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: Pharmacy student learning has been and continues to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for pharmacy students in New York City. This study sheds light on the remote learning experiences and preferences of pharmacy students in a commuter city. Future studies could assess pharmacy student learning experiences and preferences after return to campus.

Competitive programming in computational thinking and problem solving education

Building practical programming competency requires a long-lasting journey of discovery, trial and error, learning and improvement. This article presents essential findings of a case study of a Python programming contest with an automatic judgement system for Competitive Programming training extending the learning experiences for students in an introductory course, computational thinking and problem-solving. The benefits and challenges are discussed. Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, a hybrid model of the contest was adopted, that is, some students participated in the contest on-site, while others participated remotely. To alleviate human effort in judging the submissions, the DOMjudge platform, a web-based automatic judgement system, has been deployed as an online automatic judgement system and contest management in competitive programming. The implementation roadmap and framework were provided. The contest problems and contestants' performances were discussed. Not many junior contestants could solve at least one problem(s), and competitive computing training should be offered if the students are keen on open competitions. An empirical study was conducted to evaluate the student feedback after the contest. Preliminary results revealed that the contest offering the chance to stimulate student learning interests could enhance their independent learning, innovative thinking and problem-solving skills, and could thus lead to the overall benefits of the learning experiences, which further encourage them to participate in future contests to improve their learning and therefore enhance their employability. Employers often treasure student experiences in competitive programming events, like association for computing machinery programming contests, Google Code Jam or Microsoft Imagine Cup. Sharp vision requiring skills to tackle unseen problems within a short period is also instrumental to students planning for graduate school. © 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Learning Online During a Pandemic: Student Perspectives

This study explores student experiences of online learning during the global COVID19 pandemic. The paper assesses whether the outcomes of constructivist inquiry-based learning can still be achieved online. A qualitative research approach was used to survey online learning experiences of students. A total of 27 registered Construction Studies university students conveniently sampled across all levels of study completed a questionnaire with close ended questions. The data collection was computed and analysed using SPSS version 27. Mean values, standard deviations and reliability values were computed. Results of the survey indicated that most students spent more time doing work during online learning. Students indicated that they were able to think more critically and discuss concepts and collaborate with other students. There was a handful of students that were more stressed, socially inactive and lacked outdoor activity due to online learning. The sample is drawn from a single university in South Africa and findings cannot be generalized across all student populations. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.