Background: This study investigated the development of engineering students' approaches to learning and views on collaboration in a PBL environment. Material and methods: An explanatory mixed research approach was employed with participants from four PBL-implementing engineering courses in Qatar and China. 197 students responded to two surveys,…

We found that actively engaging students in our introductory microbiology course was a challenge given our large class sizes and many non-majors taking the course as a program requirement. Therefore, we introduced a novel active learning strategy to our course. Students grouped into teams of three had to create PowerPoint virtual posters on one of…

Direct instruction approach has been widely used in higher education. Many studies revealed that direct instruction improved students' knowledge. The characteristics of direct instruction include the subject delivered through face-to-face interaction with the lecturers and materials that sequenced deliberately and taught explicitly. However,…

Today, multidisciplinary cooperation is an important objective of higher vocational education in Europe as well as other countries. The aim of this study was to explore how, and to what extent, fourth year bachelor students from different domains cooperate in multidisciplinary teams at two research centers. Data for 71 students were collected with…

This research compares the industry readiness, product development skill level, and overall knowledge gains of students taking an undergraduate research course (treatment) to those who did not (control). This 2-semester Applied Interdisciplinary Product Development (AIPD) course for sophomores brought together interdisciplinary teams of food…

A study was conducted on the views of the nature of engineering held by 114 first-year engineering majors; the study built on prior work on views of the nature of science held by students, their instructors, and the general public. Open-coding analysis of responses to a 12-item questionnaire suggested that the participants held tacit beliefs that…

Background: Patient safety has become a priority and prerequisite for the provision for effective quality care. Simulation is seen as one method to ensure patient safety as this method allows for the attainment of skills and promotes the transference of these skills into safe clinical practice. Method: A pretest-posttest research design was used.…

Problem-based learning (PBL) has proven to be highly effective for educating students in an active and self-motivated manner in various disciplines. Student projects carried out following PBL principles are very dynamic and carry a high level of uncertainty, both conditions under which agile project management approaches are assumed to be highly…

Working in collaborative groups has been shown to have beneficial outcomes; however, these benefits are linked to the quality of group member interactions. "Heedful interrelating," which entails interacting with sensitivity to the task at hand while paying attention to how one's actions affect overall team functioning, is theorized to be…

This paper describes an audit workplace simulation and investigates its effects on students' perceptions of competences, required as important in the auditing industry. Within the competence-based teaching framework, this training activity involves cooperative learning as it combines first-undergraduate and senior students within one team. First,…

University teachers provided first year Arts students with hundreds of cinematic images online to analyse as a key part of their predominantly face-to-face undergraduate course. This qualitative study investigates the extent to which the groups engaged in learning involving their analysis of the images and how this was related to their perception…

Using a students' workshop as a laboratory, this article summarises the observation of three years' implementation of a new study module for a Bachelor Program in Engineering Design (Interior and Furniture Design) at the University of Forestry, Sofia, Bulgaria. The article offers an analysis of group dynamics and the difficulties and issues…

The connection between fieldwork and development of graduate attributes is explored in this paper. Digital technologies present opportunities to potentially enhance the learning experience of students undertaking fieldwork, and develop core digital attributes and competencies required by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and employers. This…

The aim of this investigation is to assess the correlation among different competencies-assessment systems available on the market to measure social skills in the university environment. In order to carry out the research, three self-perception competency tests were used, and 30 competencies were evaluated in a Likert scale with several response…

This study examined differences in student satisfaction and perceptions of online teamwork in two cohorts of an undergraduate educational technology course: one delivered fully asynchronously and the other incorporating synchronous Google Hangouts sessions in student online teamwork. Participants included 50 undergraduate students at a large…