The presence of mathematics anxiety in future primary school teachers and factors affecting abatement

This study reflects on the implementation of various teaching initiatives for reducing anxiety toward mathematics in students studying to become primary school teachers. We highlight similarities between these practices and those promoted by the 'Whole Teacher' approach - in particular, the aim to develop attitudes along with knowledge and skills. Here, the negative past associations with mathematics and anxiety toward mathematics that students bring with them have been a key consideration when designing the subject content and delivery. Given the important role these students will have in shaping mathematics education in the future, we suggest frameworks such as that of the 'Whole Teacher' could be extended to the university setting. We investigate four years of student feedback pertaining to a first year undergraduate mathematics unit, contending that the teaching initiatives introduced over time have helped students develop a positive attitude toward mathematics. We note, however, that the student-teacher relationship was still the most prominent factor directly identified by students who previously had a fear or negative attitude toward mathematics.

Graduating Students' Perceptions of Learning Design in an Undergraduate Engineering Course

BACKGROUNDUndergraduate Civil Engineering Course at Deakin University, Australia is relatively a new course. It graduated its second main cohort in 2013. Since its beginning in 2012, this study has been running an internal annual Course Experience Surveys targeted at uncovering the graduating students’ perceptions on three components of contemporary learning system provided by Deakin University learning design, learning environment and the human factor. Learning design covers the learning curriculum, learning resources, learning activities and learning supports; learning environment includes physical environment, virtual environment and psychosocial environment; and human factor includes learners, facilitators/teachers and help/support staff and their culture. There is a common agreement among educators in higher education that these three components of learning system should interact and complement each other in order to maximise student learning. This paper coversonly learning design aspect of the overall surveys from 2012 and 2013.PURPOSEThe aim of this study is to analyse the students’ perceptions of learning design provided by Deakin University to its undergraduate civil engineering students in 2012 and 2013. This will help track down the progresses in different aspects of learning design and to understand whether the learning design provided by the institution have actually helped students in their learning and met their learning expectations.DESIGN/METHODThis study adopts questionnaire approach to collect original data by asking students about their perceptions of learning design provided by the institution. 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire survey (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree) is developed and responses are collected. The responses are then statistically analysed in order to uncover the students’ perceptions of learning design provided by the university.RESULTSThe statistical analysis shows that the graduating students in both 2012 and 2013 did not perceive some important aspects of the learning design of the undergraduate civil engineering program/course as good as they expected. Moreover, in line with the shift in the learning design paradigm from content-centric to more inclusive learning design where soft skills, self-directed learning skills and research skills are incorporated, graduating students clearly perceived these changes. However, respondents’ perceptions on some components of learning design got slightly down in 2013 compared with 2012 particularly the ‘learning resources’, ‘learning activities’ and ‘learning supports’.CONCLUSIONSThe shift in the learning design paradigm of the undergraduate civil engineering program/course at Deakin University from teacher-centric to student-centric between 2012 and 2013 has not been perceived by students positively as expected. Students have clearly indicated that they prefer improved curriculum, quality learning resources, customised learning activities and additional learning supports in order to successfully implement student-centric learning design.

The representation of engineering education as a social media topic on Twitter

Online social media systems have created new ways for individuals to communicate, share information and interact with a wide audience. For organisations, social media provide new avenues for communication and collaboration with their stakeholders. The potential value of social media tools to assist in the successful communication and marketing inside and outside of engineering organisations has been identified. In the context of engineering education, the potential of social media to open new modes of communication, interaction and experimentation between students and teachers has also been identified, and a limited number of examples can be found documented in the literature. One of the most widely-used social media tools is the ‘microblogging’ service Twitter. This research presents an analysis of nearly 19,000 tweets relating to ‘engineering education’ collected over a period of almost a year. Social network analysis is used to visualise the Twitter data. The Twitter social media communication is examined to identify who is active on this topic, who is influential, and what is the structure of the online conversations relating to engineering education. This work provides insights regarding how engineering education is currently represented in social media internationally, and offers a methodology to those interested in related future research.