Search Results (13)

Generative AI tools offer opportunities for enhancing learning and assessment, but raise concerns about equity, academic integrity, and the ability to critically engage with AI-generated content. This study explores these issues within a psychology-oriented postgraduate programme at a UK university. We co-designed and evaluated a novel AI-integrated assessment aimed at improving critical AI literacy among students and teaching staff (pre-registration: osf.io/jqpce). Students were randomly allocated to two groups: the ‘compliant’ group used AI tools to assist with writing a blog and critically reflected on the outputs, while the ‘unrestricted’ group had free rein to use AI to produce the assessment. Teaching staff, blinded to group allocation, marked the blogs using an adapted rubric. Focus groups, interviews, and workshops were conducted to assess the feasibility, acceptability, and perceived integrity of the approach. Findings suggest that, when carefully scaffolded, integrating AI into assessments can promote both technical fluency and ethical reflection. A key contribution of this study is its participatory co-design and evaluation method, which was effective and transferable, and is presented as a practical toolkit for educators. This approach supports growing calls for authentic assessment that mirrors real-world tasks, while highlighting the ongoing need to balance academic integrity with skill development. Full article

Objectives: The present study examined the sensory preferences adopted by students over three years of training in a specialized training program for security forces (STPSF). It determines their impact on karate performance metrics. Methods: Thirty-one students aged 20 to 26 (SD = 0.81) completed the modified Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic questionnaire (VARK), a tool designed to help identify students’ preferred learning styles. This research suggests a theoretical model in which the balanced and optimal engagement of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities rather than a strict mathematical equation might provide an optimal foundation for improving proficiency in martial arts. Balanced engagement of these sensory modalities can foster a deeper understanding of karate techniques, improve performance, minimize dependence on a single sensory channel, and bolster real-time adaptability. The students were tested at two points: once at the beginning of their enrolment and again after completing their three-year training program. Results: After a relatively intensive intervention over three years, the findings suggest a positive shift in the ratio of the primary modalities, moving toward an optimal balance. Considering the ideal sensory balance of 50:50:50%, the visual modality increased from 45.8 to 50.4, approaching the optimal value. The auditory modality, initially above the ideal level at 53.8, adjusted closer to balance, reaching 51.9. In contrast, the kinesthetic modality slightly decreased from 50 to 47.5, indicating a minor deviation from the ideal state. It was further confirmed that a higher technical level, such as the third kyu, exhibits an equal distribution, approaching the optimal use of the three modalities: visual 51.5 auditory 47.6 and kinesthetic 50.7. Moreover, the progress toward an optimal synergy and a more efficient evaluation of situational possibilities within the decision-making process was more frequently noted in females than in male students. Conclusions: Acknowledging students’ sensory processing preferences can assist the teacher, trainer, coach, and student in advancing interaction, optimizing learning strategies, improving performance, promoting analytical skills, and fostering self-assurance and determination. Full article

This study aimed to explore students’ perspectives on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into scientific collaboration, specifically on writing academic articles and creating scientific posters. The research employed open-ended interviews conducted among 61 civil and military students. Opinions were labelled, coded, and gathered into the following categories: positive impact on collaboration, challenges faced, and educational impact. Among the positives were improving efficiency, enhancing the quality of work, and generating new ideas. The challenges concerned experiencing technical difficulties with AI tools, inconsistency in AI outputs, and AI dependence, which may lead to behaviours on the verge of addiction. Regarding educational impact, students noticed that AI helps improve learning new skills, increases engagement in the task, and enhances critical thinking. As one researcher performed the thematic analyses, Cohen’s Kappa statistic was used to ensure intra-coder reliability. This study highlights the need for further research to optimize the use of AI in scientific collaboration while addressing ethical concerns related to students’ motivations for using AI tools, promoting responsible use, and researching students’ emotions, cognitive processes, and behaviours resulting from their interactions with AI tools. The research provides valuable insights for educators and policymakers to integrate AI effectively into academic practice. Full article

The number of technical students combining work and studies has increased recently. More and more students decide to gain professional experience as early as possible, resulting in a lower attendance rate. This is highly relevant to master’s degree students who struggle to succeed in both academic and professional activities, necessitating research into academic attainment strategies. The paper describes the types of working students, their needs in English, and proposes a way to improve their academic achievement, including English proficiency. A series of tests and an interview were administered to a sample of 363 master’s degree students learning technical English. The chi-square test, Fisher’s test and the Mann–Whitney Z-test were employed in order to assess the language skills acquired by students in blended learning and offline classes, and to validate the designed blended ESP course featuring an e-course and classroom lessons. The findings of the research indicated that working-while-studying students enrolled in the blended course made more significant progress in their English skills, particularly in reading and writing, compared to non-working students who had only traditional offline lessons. The results provide insights concerning the benefits of blended learning to ensure equal opportunities for working-while-studying students and their ways of adapting to a changing learning environment. Full article

Goldberg and Somerville write of the “missed revolutions” that have had a massive impact on industry but have failed to translate to universities. The literature shows how alternative approaches can modernise curricula and improve motivation and trust, such as student-led design of course content. Aligning what is taught to students to improve their experience rather than performance is a method discussed by Obada as constructive alignment. This paper outlines the potential challenges facing engineering education, including a lack of motivation and trust between students and educators and the lack of development of communication skills in graduates. This research aims to use the EM106-Project and Technical Drawing, an undergraduate module at DCU, as a framework by which to test novel curriculum design and pedagogical methods. A modified version of the module will be delivered to second-level students taking part in a dual enrolment programme, with first-year undergraduate engineers taking the standard version of the module. Their experiences will be compared to understand the impact that changes have on student’s views of engineering. Full article

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the impact of using an educational program on the development of creative writing skills in fourth-grade students. Creative writing is an important component of teaching, learning, and assessment at the level of primary education. The objectives of the study aimed to identify the general level of development of creative writing skills and establish any significant differences in the development of specific components of creative writing skills (narrative voice, characterization, mood and atmosphere, language and technical aspects of writing, dialogue, narration, setting, image and plot). A quasi-experimental design with intervention and control groups was used. A total of 146 students from 3 public school institutions in the city of Bacau, Romania, that include elementary grades participated in the study. The research group consisted of 73 students in the intervention group and 73 students in the control group. A paired-samples t test was used to compare the scores for two paired variables. The research results have shown that creative writing skills are developing in young school-age students. Also, it was found that there are significant differences in the students from the experimental group, compared to the students in the control group, at the level of the nine components of creative writing skills. Full article

In recent years, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of mobile applications (apps) has become common in all areas of life for carrying out tasks, facilitating communication, and completing work. Education has been one of the most prominent areas that has presented a strong trend for using mobile apps. For instance, a huge number of Arabic-speaking undergraduate students in Saudi Arabia have been using mobile typing apps to accomplish their academic tasks and for other educational purposes. This phenomenon has influenced the academic writing skills of undergraduate students. In this study, we identify the relationship between academic tasks, academic writing skills, and the use of mobile typing apps among Arabic-speaking undergraduate students by analyzing which skills were affected by typing via mobile apps. A total of 276 Arabic-speaking undergraduate students in Saudi Arabia participated in this study. By applying structural equation modeling to analyze the quantitative data, results revealed that use of mobile typing apps had the strongest effect on the academic writing skills of clarity and cohesiveness. Meanwhile, using mobile typing apps to accomplish academic tasks had less impact on accuracy and vocabulary. Several pedagogical and technical implications are presented at the end of the study. Full article

Technical writing is a crucial skill for engineering students’ effective written communication, which shapes and affects their professional careers. This study designs team-based learning (TBL) instructional modules that are integrated into an existing engineering laboratory curriculum and evaluates their feasibility and effectiveness in improving engineering students’ technical writing skills. The data were collected from structured survey questions distributed to student participants and from the instructor’s independent evaluation of students’ lab reports. The effect of assigning a team leader on students’ writing performances was also evaluated. Our results indicated that students who have received TBL modules perceive a greater improvement in their technical writing skills than those who did not. A strong correlation was found between students’ perception and the instructor’s evaluation of the students’ technical writing skills. Assigning a team leader in TBL instructional modules has not played a significant role in improving engineering students’ technical writing skills. The same happens with gender. Overall, utilization of TBL instructional modules can advance engineering students’ technical writing skills. Full article

In spite of the growing integration of computer-mediated collaborative writing and multimodal composition in second language (L2) classrooms, research on collaborative multimodal writing, as an innovative writing pedagogy, is still underway and largely underrepresented particularly in non-English learning contexts. To bridge this research gap, the author of this study implemented a multimodal writing task in which seven French FL learners jointly created digital postcards describing their vacation activities in groups of two or three over the period of eight weeks. The study sought to explore learners’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges of this type of pedagogy and the factors mediating their writing processes. The analyses of a post-task questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews, triangulated with the finished products, indicated that overall, collaborative multimodal writing was a motivating learning experience. Several themes emerged regarding the perceived benefits (i.e., improvement in their writing skills, genre awareness and semiotic awareness, mutual learning through peer assessment and easy synchronous writing and revising via Google Docs), as well as challenges (i.e., tensions between partners largely due to frustrations over unequal participation, lack of control over the joint text and technical glitches). This paper provides significant implications for collaborative multimodal writing research and pedagogy. Full article

Although Error Analysis (EA) has been broadly used in Foreign Language and Mother Tongue learning contexts, it has not been applied in the field of engineering and by STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) students in a systematic way. In this interdisciplinary pilot study, we applied the EA methodology to a wide corpus of exercises and essays written by third-year students of mechanical engineering, with the main purpose of achieving a precise diagnosis of the students’ strengths and weaknesses in writing skills. For the analysis to be as exhaustive as possible, the errors were typologized into three main categories (linguistic, mathematical, and rhetorical–organizational), each of which is, in turn, subdivided into 15 items. The results show that the predominant errors are rhetorical–organizational (39%) and linguistic (38%). The application of EA permits the precise identification of the areas of improvement and the subsequent implementation of an educational design that allows STEM students to improve their communicative strategies, especially those related to the writing skills and, more precisely, those having to do with the optimal use of syntax, punctuation, rhetorical structure of the text, and mathematical coherence. Full article

Although there is consensus in the literature that writing skills are important in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) studies, they are often neglected. However, some efforts have been made to correct this deficiency, one of them being the development of assessment rubrics. This study seeks to contribute to the discussion by presenting the results of the application of a rubric designed to assess the writing skills of a group of 3rd year engineering students. This rubric, which includes linguistic and rhetorical-organizational criteria alongside the mathematical and technical, was used to assess a number of written exercises and essays submitted by students in a 15-week course. The main interest of this study was to test the efficacy of the rubric as a diagnostic tool, conceived to detect the areas of improvement in the students’ written performance and, ultimately, to also help them to achieve higher levels of competence. This goal was achieved, as one of the main conclusions of the study is that, although students usually master the technical aspects of the course, they must improve the linguistic and rhetorical aspects of their written communication. It can likewise be said that all the participants involved in the study profited in one way or another from the application of the rubric and contributed to identifying the ways in which the rubric itself can be improved for future application. Full article

Mentoring to develop research skills is an important strategy for facilitating faculty success. The purpose of this study was to conduct an integrative literature review to examine the barriers and facilitators to mentoring in health-related research, particularly for three categories: new investigators (NI), early-stage investigators (ESI) and underrepresented minority faculty (UMF). PsychINFO, CINAHL and PubMed were searched for papers published in English from 2010 to 2020, and 46 papers were reviewed. Most papers recommended having multiple mentors and many recommended assessing baseline research skills. Barriers and facilitators were both individual and institutional. Individual barriers mentioned most frequently were a lack of time and finding work–life balance. UMF mentioned barriers related to bias, discrimination and isolation. Institutional barriers included lack of mentors, lack of access to resources, and heavy teaching and service loads. UMF experienced institutional barriers such as devaluation of experience or expertise. Individual facilitators were subdivided and included writing and synthesis as technical skills, networking and collaborating as interpersonal skills, and accountability, leadership, time management, and resilience/grit as personal skills. Institutional facilitators included access to mentoring, professional development opportunities, and workload assigned to research. Advocacy for diversity and cultural humility were included as unique interpersonal and institutional facilitators for UMF. Several overlapping and unique barriers and facilitators to mentoring for research success for NI, ESI and UMF in the health-related disciplines are presented. Full article

The scholarly writings of C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) have both inspired the study of the Middle Ages and confirmed the relevance to the humanities that medieval literary texts can have for the present. He was aware that the straitjacket implied by periodisation can blind us to the universal values presented in medieval literature. Qualitative assumptions made about the (usually undefined) Middle Ages include an alienating remoteness, and also a general ignorance, especially of science and technology. Lewis drew attention to the knowledge of astronomy, for example, and pointed out that medieval technical skills in architecture, agriculture and medicine are important for us to be aware about. Three medieval works illustrate this universality with respect to technical skills (the Völundarkviða); identity and the self (the Hildebrandslied); and the popular love-song (the courtly love-lyric). Lewis cautioned against pejorative terms like ‘Dark Ages’, noted problems of perspective in assessing all pre-modern literature, and showed that earlier works have a continuing value and relevance. Full article