Enriched Engagement
University of Valencia
Featured Academic Mentoring in the Era of COVID-19: Experiences from a Data-Stewardship-as-a-Service Program View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Francisca Onaolapo Oladipo
On 18 March 2020, The Government of Uganda announced a 30 days closure of schools at all levels to forestall the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the special academic programmes that were affected was the Data Stewardship-in-a-box program. Also known as Stewardship-as-a-Service, the initiative was established in Kampala International University on 19th September 2019 as part of the efforts towards building a data-focused culture. The inaugural class comprised of ten graduate students of Computing, Information Technology, Engineering, and Applied Sciences. The initiative was implemented as a mentor-mentee model where senior researchers are responsible for nurturing the academic and research careers of the Data Stewards in a controlled environment. Despite its novel nature, the initiative ran uninterrupted until January 30th, 2020 when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. There were uncertainties among the academic and research communities on how the declaration will change the faces of learning. Of particular concern was how to keep the Data Stewardship program running in the face of all the uncertainties. A new model, therefore, had to emerge. This paper presents how the internet was used to deliver Data Stewardship as a service in the COVID-19 era where face-to-face interactions were Impossible and how the initiative was transformed into a COVID-19 Data Response through the installation and deployment of FAIR data points in Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tunisia, Kenya and Zimbabwe and facilitated the continuity of education through remote learning through the development of an LMS-in-a box.
Mathematics and Reading View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Vochita Mihai
Medaille College is a Liberal Arts Colleges in Western NY with focus on student success. The college is presented with a higher percentages of freshman students that could be categorized by the word underprepared. In Intermediate Algebra courses around 70% will refer to their abilities to succeed at mathematics nonexistent or that mathematics is not their forte. One way to help students to build their confidence in doing mathematics is to introduce the mathematical concepts by nontraditional methods (active learning, inquiry based learning, etc). This paper is about different strategies used in order to keep the students active and involved during mathematical courses. Reading skills and working collaboratively influence drastically mathematical understanding. Approaches that promote active learning require that students do something as read, discuss, write, that requires higher order thinking. There is a link between active learning and working in groups(collaboratively). Clever reasoning along with algebraic knowledge will help to solve what seems to be an impossible algebraic problem. Incorporating new pedagogical methods into the teaching process will increase students’ capabilities of understanding mathematical concepts. Furthermore, their confidence level will increase and with that their chance to succeed in mathematics. Some interesting mathematical problems are included.
Nature of Science in Optics’ Textbooks View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Brahim El Fadil, Abdelkrim Hasni
This study addressed the representation of the nature of science (NOS) in high school science textbooks used in Quebec (Canada). A content analysis method was adopted to analyze the NOS in relation to optics’ knowledge in Grade 9 science and technology textbooks and Grade 11 physics textbooks. All these textbooks were approved and authorized by the provincial Ministry of Education. Our analysis points out that most of these editions provided poor representation of NOS. None of them indicates that scientific knowledge is subject to change, even though the history of optics reveals evolutionary and revolutionary changes. Moreover, the analysis shows that textbooks place little emphasis on the discussion of scientific laws and theories. Few of them argue that scientific inquiries are required to gain a deep understanding of scientific concepts. Moreover, they rarely present empirical evidence to support their arguments.
The Effect of Contextualization on Mechanical Physics Problem Solving: A Neurophysiological Approach
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Patrick Charland
In their critical review of available studies related to contextualization of physics, Taasoobshirazi, & Carr (2008) showed the lack of quality empirical studies and called for more rigorous research on the topic. Thus, considering the work of Haussler et al. (1998) who observed that certain types of contexts (technical or humanistic) do indeed promote girls' or boys' engagement, the overall goal of the project is to assess the extent to which contextualizing mechanical physics teaching can influence girls' and boys' engagement and performance. The study was conducted on 65 university students (32 females; 33 males) who were given a task consisting of 18 mechanical physics problems (6 technical and 6 humanistic contextualized and 6 decontextualized) on a computer. The problems were presented in a quasi-random order. Drawing on methods from neuroscience, cognitive (electroencephalography, pupillometry) affective (electrodermal activity and automatic facial recognition of emotions) and behavioral (traces, questionnaire responses) engagement data were collected live during the task. These results are likely to provide empirical support for the relevance, or otherwise, of contextualizing physics teaching.
