STUDENT PERCEPTION OF ONLINE LEARNING DURING COVID: FINDINGS FROM A INDIAN UNIVERSITY

The pandemic threw student lives in disarray as they were forced to transition overnight to an online system of education for which they and the faculty were least prepared. In addition to the uncertainty relating to academic schedules, mode of examinations and evaluation patterns, students were forced to adapt to learning online without the facility of books, laboratories, libraries, computer systems and interactive classrooms. What was the perception of students regarding online learning as a result of this quick transition has been explored through a case of private university in Delhi-NCR region with an enrolment of 12000 students. The students were administered a survey with questions on the economic impact of the pandemic, ownership of digital devices, access to internet, and perception of online education. The 2463 student responses received indicated that perception of online learning was quite low even at the level of higher education despite the access to smartphones and internet. The factors scores relating to perception of quality of online education however were found to significantly vary across age, ownership of device and economic impact of covid.

Exploring Pre-service Teachers’ Perception of Interactional Activities in Lesson Planning

With the plethoric number of students in Cameroonian classrooms today, there is a common cry from teachers about the impracticability of creating interactional language lessons in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. The implication of this is that, if interactional lessons have been identified as cardinal in the process of language learning, our learners are not or are less likely to be learning English as a foreign language. This paper holds that no teacher will be able to create interactive lessons if they do not fully understand what it is and how it works. The paper therefore investigates student teachers’ perception of interaction on a less theoretical stance to posit that their readiness to teach is governed by their perception of the concept of interaction and an understanding of how it works. Data were collected from two batches of 30 pre-students students from the Department of English at ENS Yaounde in 2018 and 2019. Upon completion of three semesters that qualify them to do practicum, they were asked to submit language lessons meant for interactive classrooms. The lessons were coded identifying trends related to interactive activities and later classified. Evidence from the data demonstrates significant recourse to previous learning culture of top-bottom lessons and high incidences of question–and-answer as a dominant pattern of interaction. In keeping with this, the paper questions the training approaches and argues that the inability of pre-service teachers to demonstrate practical understanding of classroom interaction is counterproductive to what potentially holds as language learning and that modules of training which allow teachers to seek patterns would be more productive than those which train them on classroom interaction.

Interactive Classrooms with Jupyter and Python

Jupyter notebooks are a great way to incorporate basic mathematical hacking skills in the classroom. Teachers with no background in computing can easily start using the notebooks. Students are able to see how technology can help them solve and communicate solutions to a wide variety of problems.

Do interactive learning spaces increase student achievement? A comparison of classroom context

Research on interactive learning space classrooms has reported that instructors and students find them engaging, and engagement is expected to increase learning outcomes. Positive findings about interactive classrooms, though, are often confounded with active learning pedagogy since instructors who teach in interactive classrooms tend to also promote active learning pedagogy. More research is needed to tease apart learning gains from the instructional design, classroom context, and the related incorporation of technology. This study examined the relationship between learning gains and classroom context (traditional and interactive learning space) in a pretest/posttest design and reviewed student survey responses about learning experiences. Participants were enrolled in one of two sections of a course. Both groups were taught by the same instructor using active learning pedagogy with the same activities, materials, and assignments. The results showed that classroom context did not result in differences in students learning overall. Some findings pointing to subtle differences, however, indicate that the interactive classroom could have made the classroom instruction more effective and efficient.

Environmental Science Education in the 21st Century

Technology is helping biology instructors redefine their pedagogical “toolboxes” for the 21st century classroom. Indeed, online multimedia learning tools are evolving to fill the niche to assist student transition from simple inquiry-based learning (textbooks, less student responsibility, rote memorization of facts) to professional science practice (higher-end inquiry, more student responsibility, higher order thinking). Moreover, these tools are creating interactive classrooms, empowering motivated instructors to be facilitators of learning who allow students opportunities to construct their own knowledge while exciting the next generation of thinkers, doers, and global-minded citizens. This chapter reviews one example of an online multimedia learning tool—the CHANCE research module—that is being used in high school and undergraduate classrooms in the United States, China, and other international locations to transform environmental science education by exposing students to international environmental issues and problems through the analysis and evaluation of real-research data from factual ecosystems, highlighting evidentiary support for the benefits and successes of these research-based modules, and showcasing what is being learned, through assessment research, about the use of these modules in Chinese undergraduate classrooms.