Active learning through community outreach: A case study of service-learning in a natural hazard, vulnerability and risk class

The popularity of service-learning is increasing, especially at a time where college students want to make a greater impact in their communities. One place we found that students can make a meaningful impact in their communities is promoting community resiliency to natural hazard events through a community outreach project. This article provides a case study of how incorporating service-learning through a community outreach project can increase student engagement, enhance the depth of understanding of a given topic, build communication and teamwork skills, and contribute meaningfully to the students’ community. This article shares how the instructor of a Natural Hazards, Vulnerability and Risk course implement service-learning through a community outreach project, and provides evidence for how such outreach can enhance student learning and address the common problem of student apathy and disengagement. We also discuss the transferability of our approach to other STEM and social science related courses.

Teacher Frustration and Emotion Regulation in University Language Teaching

Few jobs come without irritations, and foreign language instruction comes with its own particular set of frustrations which, when accumulated, can lead to stress and eventual burnout for teachers. One mechanism for reducing such frustrations is that of emotion regulation, the cognitive and behavioral strategies individuals employ to manage the emotions they experience or display. To date, no known studies have reported specifically on the in-class frustration experienced by language teachers, or on how teachers regulate their feelings of frustration. Herein, the authors discuss the experiences of seven EFL teachers at a university in Japan obtained through a series of semistructured interviews, classroom observations and corresponding stimulated-recall sessions. The authors discuss four salient thematic frustrations: student apathy, classroom silence, misbehavior in the context of relational strain, and working conditions. The results reveal that participants applied contextually-dependent emotion regulation behaviors, the success of which was often contingent on the participants’ levels of confidence and control over the stressors. Thus, participants showed more success in managing pervasive low-level stressors such as apathy and silence, and more support would be welcome to aid them to manage more debilitating stressors such as student misbehavior. The authors offer suggestions for teachers, trainers and institutions on reducing frustration.

Opportunity to Learn: Investigating Possible Predictors for Pre-Course Test Of Astronomy STandards TOAST Scores

As discipline-based astronomy education researchers become more interested in experimentally testing innovative teaching strategies to enhance learning in undergraduate introductory astronomy survey courses ("ASTRO 101”), scholars are placing increased attention toward better understanding factors impacting student gain scores on the widely used Test Of Astronomy STandards (TOAST). Usually used in a pre-test and post-test study design, college faculty might naturally assume that the pre-course differences observed between high- and low-scoring college students might be due in large part to their pre-existing motivation, interest, experience in science, and attitudes about astronomy. To explore this notion, 11 non-science majoring undergraduates taking ASTRO 101 at west coast community colleges were interviewed in the first few weeks of the course after taking the TOAST as a pre-test to better understand students' pre-existing affect toward learning astronomy with an eye toward predicting student success. The goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the incoming knowledge of students taking undergraduate introductory astronomy classes and provide guidance for how faculty can best meet those students’ needs and assist them in greater achievement. Perhaps surprisingly, there was only weak correlation between students' motivation toward learning astronomy and their pre-test scores. Instead, the most fruitful predictor of TOAST pre-test scores was the quantity of pre-existing, informal, self-directed astronomy learning experiences, sometimes occurring many years before course enrollment. This data suggests that professors should be wary of correlating low incoming pre-course scores with student apathy toward their subject.

Connecting the Past and the Present

Given our deep history of socially-situated artmaking and the human propensity for learning in social contexts, participation in community art offers a wealth of educational potential. Supported by research from neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, education and the arts, as well as concrete examples from higher education, this chapter will outline the theoretical basis for a curriculum rich in community art and establish such practices as a potential antidote to student apathy in contemporary classrooms. This body of interdisciplinary research situates community-based art education at the intersection of transformative community art, social learning theory, and student engagement. By first generating a community of practice within the classroom, then providing students with an opportunity to apply course content, contribute to their immediate culture, and take advantage of some of our most entrenched educational tendencies, community-based art education can be invaluable to student learning and engagement.

Using Wikipedia to Teach Written Health Communication

Unlike first-year writing courses, upper-division writing courses often require students to engage in discipline specific writing. In the author's upper-division course, Writing in the Health Professions, students examine health literacy as it pertains to both oral and written patient-provider communication. Students edit and expand a Wikipedia article for the final course assignment. The advantages of this assignment are threefold. First, students write for an authentic audience, decreasing student apathy. Second, students engage civically, improving health information accessed by millions of people across the world. Finally, students improve content of existing articles and broaden the scope of new articles written, leading to more diverse content and perspectives. In this chapter, the author discusses the above assignment, providing descriptions of scaffolding activities. Potential drawbacks of using Wikipedia to teach students how to write using plain language is discussed, in addition to strategies that might limit these difficulties.

Connecting the Past and the Present

Given our deep history of socially-situated artmaking and the human propensity for learning in social contexts, participation in community art offers a wealth of educational potential. Supported by research from neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, education and the arts, as well as concrete examples from higher education, this chapter will outline the theoretical basis for a curriculum rich in community art and establish such practices as a potential antidote to student apathy in contemporary classrooms. This body of interdisciplinary research situates community-based art education at the intersection of transformative community art, social learning theory, and student engagement. By first generating a community of practice within the classroom, then providing students with an opportunity to apply course content, contribute to their immediate culture, and take advantage of some of our most entrenched educational tendencies, community-based art education can be invaluable to student learning and engagement.

Using Wikipedia to Teach Written Health Communication

Unlike first-year writing courses, upper-division writing courses often require students to engage in discipline specific writing. In the author's upper-division course, Writing in the Health Professions, students examine health literacy as it pertains to both oral and written patient-provider communication. Students edit and expand a Wikipedia article for the final course assignment. The advantages of this assignment are threefold. First, students write for an authentic audience, decreasing student apathy. Second, students engage civically, improving health information accessed by millions of people across the world. Finally, students improve content of existing articles and broaden the scope of new articles written, leading to more diverse content and perspectives. In this chapter, the author discusses the above assignment, providing descriptions of scaffolding activities. Potential drawbacks of using Wikipedia to teach students how to write using plain language is discussed, in addition to strategies that might limit these difficulties.

Burnout in Science Teachers

The burnout is seen in almost all the profession such as nursing, teaching etc. This paper focuses on the burnout of science teachers in Haryana. And determine the likely factors that are associated with this phenomenon. It explored the different causal factors for burnout to study the problems in Indian context. All the teachers mentioned apathy is the major cause of teacher burnout. The student apathy produces stress on the teacher and develops burnout symptoms. The other area involving teacher burnout was that of administration, lack of respect, changes in student behavior were also contributing teacher burnout. Other factors causing burnout are Nepotism/Politics, paper work, overcrowded classes, and workload, Athletics over Academics, Serious nature and lack of resources or infrastructure. Thus overload of stress directly leads to teacher burnout.