[publication] Confidence in and beliefs about first-year engineering student success: case study from KU Leuven, TU Delft, and TU Graz #research #STELA

One of our intellectual outputs of the STELA-project is a case study amongt our partners. We did a study about how students feel in the very first beginning of their study and published it at the SEFI-conference.

Abstract:

This paper explores the confidence freshman engineering students have in being successful in the first study year and which study-related behaviour they believe to be important to this end. Additionally, this paper studies which feedback these students would like to receive and compares it with the experiences of second-year students regarding feedback. To this end, two questionnaires were administered: one with freshman engineering students to measure their expectations regarding study success and expected feedback and one with second-year engineering students to evaluate their first year feedback experience.
The results show that starting first-year engineering students are confident regarding their study success. This confidence is however higher than the observed first-year students success. Not surprisingly, first-year students have good intentions and believe that most academic activities are important for student success. When second-year students look back on their first year, their beliefs in the importance of these activities have strongly decreased, especially regarding the importance of preparing classes and following communication through email and the virtual learning environment. First-year students expect feedback regarding their academic performance and engagement. They expect that this feedback primarily focuses on the impact on their future study pathway rather than on comparison to peer students. Second-year students indicate that the amount of feedback they receive could be improved, but agree with the first-year students that comparative feedback is less important.

[Full Article @ ResearchGate]

Reference: de Laet, T., Broos, T., van Staalduinen, J.-P., Ebner, M., Langie, G., van Soom, C. & Shepers, W (2018) Confidence in and beliefs about first-year engineering student success: case study from KU Leuven, TU Delft, and TU Graz. In: Proceedings of the 45th SEFI Conference, pp. 1-9. Azores, Portugal

[Special Issue] Interaction in Massive Courses

It’s a great pleasure to announce that our Special Issue of the Journal of Universal Computer Science about “Interaction in Massive Courses” is online published. Due to the fact that the Journal is part of the Open Access Iniative all chapters are free downloadable. Thanks a lot to all who made this issue possible 🙂 .
Table of Content:

  • Editorial: Interaction in Massive Courses [.pdf]
  • Proposal for a Conceptual Framework for Educators to Describe and Design MOOCs [.pdf]
  • Adapting an Awareness Tool for Massive Courses: the Case of ClassON [.pdf]
  • Developing a Web-Based Question-Driven Audience Response System Supporting BYOD [.pdf]
  • Toward Project-based Learning and Team Formation in Open Learning Environments [.pdf]

[publication] Teaching and Learning in Higher Education – An Integral Approach

Our publication about “Teaching and Learning in Higher Education – An Integral Approach” at this year SITE Conference is now online available:

The presentation has already been published.

Reference: Ebner, M., Scerbakov, N., Taraghi, B., Nagler, W. & Kamrat, I. (2010). Teaching and Learning in Higher Education – An Integral Approach. In C. Crawford et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2010 (pp. 428-436). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.