Building a community of learners within the STEM higher education classroom

Building rich and authentic learning experiences in the STEM classroom, is a challenge for many educators within Higher Education. While many Higher Education Institutions have embraced the need to transform current teaching and learning practices and include a range of online tools, this has often been met with some resistance and approaches that do not always recognise the academic who are a critical component to the success of the transformational process. Over the last decade the Internet has evolved from being a tool used by a few dedicated educators to one that is being used by the majority of educators. However, what is important is how this great resource is used in teaching and learning to allow students to build knowledge. The ability for students to construct knowledge and engage in higher order thinking skills is at the heart of educational practices, and building a community of learners has the potential to support these practices, especially within STEM education. This paper explores the relationship between students and an academic teaching in a technology rich STEM learning environment and their adoption of social community and shared tools. In particular the paper reports on the critical components that make a successful community of learners and the educational tools and approaches that were successfully used to enhance the student learning experience in a STEM classroom.

Reterritorializing multimodal design in the classroom through a socially mediated Indigenous heritage

National or International Significance Flows of cultural heritage in textual practices are vital to sustaining Indigenous communities - a national and international priority (Commonwealth of Australia, 2011). Indigenous heritage, whether passed on by oral tradition or ubiquitous social media, can be seen as a "conversation between the past and the future" (Fairclough, 2012, p. xv). Indigenous heritage involves appropriating memories within a cultural flow to pass on a spiritual legacy. This presentation reports ethnographic research of social media practices in a small independent Aboriginal school in Southeast Queensland, Australia that is resided over by the Yuggera elders and an Aboriginal principal. Quality of Research The purpose was to rupture existing notions of white literacies in schools, and to deterritorialize the uses of digital media by dominant cultures in the public sphere. Examples of learning experiences included the following: i. Integrating Indigenous language and knowledge into media text production; ii. Classroom visits from Indigenous elders; and iii. Publishing oral histories through digital scrapbooking. The program aligned with the Australian National Curriculum English (ACARA, 2014), which mandates the teaching of multimodal text creation. Data sources included a class set of digital scrapbooks collaboratively created in a preparatory-one primary classroom. The digital scrapbooks combined digitally encoded words, images of material artifacts, and digital music files. A key feature of the writing and digital design task was to retell and digitally display and archive a cultural narrative of significance to the Indigenous Australian community and its memories and material traces of the past for the future. Data analysis of the students' digital stories involved the application of key themes of negotiated, material, and digitally mediated forms of heritage practice. It drew on Australian Indigenous research by Keddie et al. (2013) to guard against the homogenizing of culture that can arise from a focus on a static view of culture. The interpretation of findings located Indigenous appropriation of social media within broader racialized politics that enables Indigenous literacy to be understood as a dynamic, negotiated, and transgenerational flows of practice. It demonstrates that Indigenous children's use of media production reflects "shifting and negotiated identities" in response to changing media environments that can function to sustain Indigenous cultural heritages (Appadurai, 1696, p. xv). Impact on practice, policy or theory The findings are important for teachers at a time when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures is a cross-curricular policy priority in the Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2014). The findings show how curriculum policies can be applied to classroom practice in ways that are epistemologically consistent with Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Theoretically, it demonstrates how the children's experiences of culture are layered over time, as successive generations inherit, interweave, and hear others' cultural stories or maps. Practically, recommendations are provided for an approach to appropriating social media in schools that explicitly attends to the dynamic nature of Indigenous practices, negotiated through intercultural constructions and flows, and opening space for a critical anti-racist approach to multimodal text production. Timeliness The research is timely in the context of the accessibility and role of digital and multimodal forms of communication, including for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Linking classroom learning and research to advance ideas about social-ecological resilience

There is an increasing demand in higher education institutions for training in complex environmental problems. Such training requires a careful mix of conventional methods and innovative solutions, a task not always easy to accomplish. In this paper we review literature on this theme, highlight relevant advances in the pedagogical literature, and report on some examples resulting from our recent efforts to teach complex environmental issues. The examples range from full credit courses in sustainable development and research methods to project-based and in-class activity units. A consensus from the literature is that lectures are not sufficient to fully engage students in these issues. A conclusion from the review of examples is that problem-based and project-based, e.g., through case studies, experiential learning opportunities, or real-world applications, learning offers much promise. This could greatly be facilitated by online hubs through which teachers, students, and other members of the practitioner and academic community share experiences in teaching and research, the way that we have done here.

Languaging in virtual learning sites : studies of online encounters in the language-focused classroom

This thesis focuses upon a series of empirical studies which examine communication and learning in online glocal communities within higher education in Sweden. A recurring theme in the theoretical framework deals with issues of languaging in virtual multimodal environments as well as the making of identity and negotiation of meaning in these settings; analyzing the activity, what people do, in contraposition to the study of how people talk about their activity. The studies arise from netnographic work during two online Italian for Beginners courses offered by a Swedish university. Microanalyses of the interactions occurring through multimodal video-conferencing software are amplified by the study of the courses’ organisation of space and time and have allowed for the identification of communicative strategies and interactional patterns in virtual learning sites when participants communicate in a language variety with which they have a limited experience. The findings from the four studies included in the thesis indicate that students who are part of institutional virtual higher educational settings make use of several resources in order to perform their identity positions inside the group as a way to enrich and nurture the process of communication and learning in this online glocal community. The sociocultural dialogical analyses also shed light on the ways in which participants gathering in discursive technological spaces benefit from the opportunity to go to class without commuting to the physical building of the institution providing the course. This identity position is, thus, both experienced by participants in interaction, and also afforded by the ‘spaceless’ nature of the online environment.

Mini-Mental State Examination sentence writing among community-dwelling elderly adults in Brazil: text fluency and grammar complexity

Background: In normal aging, the decrease in the syntactic complexity of written production is usually associated with cognitive deficits. This study was aimed to analyze the quality of older adults' textual production indicated by verbal fluency (number of words) and grammatical complexity (number of ideas) in relation to gender, age, schooling, and cognitive status. Methods: From a probabilistic sample of community-dwelling people aged 65 years and above (n = 900), 577 were selected on basis of their responses to the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) sentence writing, which were submitted to content analysis; 323 were excluded as they left the item blank or performed illegible or not meaningful responses. Education adjusted cut-off scores for the MMSE were used to classify the participants as cognitively impaired or unimpaired. Total and subdomain MMSE scores were computed. Results: 40.56% of participants whose answers to the MMSE sentence were excluded from the analyses had cognitive impairment compared to 13.86% among those whose answers were included. The excluded participants were older and less educated. Women and those older than 80 years had the lowest scores in the MMSE. There was no statistically significant relationship between gender, age, schooling, and textual performance. There was a modest but significant correlation between number of words written and the scores in the Language subdomain. Conclusions: Results suggest the strong influence of schooling and age over MMSE sentence performance. Failing to write a sentence may suggest cognitive impairment, yet, instructions for the MMSE sentence, i.e. to produce a simple sentence, may limit its clinical interpretation.

Supporting Whole-Class Collaborative Inquiry in a Secondary Mathematics Classroom

Recent mathematics education reform efforts call for the instantiation of mathematics classroom environments where students have opportunities to reason and construct their understandings as part of a community of learners. Despite some successes, traditional models of instruction still dominate the educational landscape. This limited success can be attributed, in part, to an underdeveloped understanding of the roles teachers must enact to successfully organize and participate in collaborative classroom practices. Towards this end, an in-depth longitudinal case study of a collaborative high school mathematics classroom was undertaken guided by the following two questions: What roles do these collaborative practices require of teacher and students? How does the community’s capacity to engage in collaborative practices develop over time? The analyses produced two conceptual models: one of the teacher’s role, along with specific instructional strategies the teacher used to organize a collaborative learning environment, and the second of the process by which the class’s capacity to participate in collaborative inquiry practices developed over time.

Health, education and community: Assets and needs of a small urban community in north east Tamaulipas, Mexico: A community based participatory research assessment

This study explored the health, education, social assets, needs, attitudes, and behaviors of residents of Ferrocarril #4, a small urban community in Tamaulipas, Mexico. A collaborative Participatory Action Research approach was used to emphasize community involvement. Using Triangulation to ensure validity, qualitative methods included key informant in depth interviews, participant observation and participatory discussion groups with women and men. A personal interview with a probability sample of women was done. The median age of interviewees was 37 years. The majority was married or had a partner. Over half of respondents completed grades 6-9. Employed women (25%) earned a median weekly salary equivalent to ∼56 USD. Women with health insurance (67.7%) were covered mainly through Social Security and Seguro Popular. One in 5 reported bad health. Barriers to care were primarily money and transportation. To improve health care, women wanted a full service clinic in or close to the community and affordable health care. Socially, 28% of respondents had no close friends in the community and most did not participate in beneficial community activities. Many women did not socialize with others and help from neighbors was situational. Primary school teachers lacked parental support and it interfered with classroom efforts. Healthy community discussion groups focused on personal and environmental hygiene and safety. Valuable assets exist in the community. To date, collaborative efforts resulted in a school First Aid station, a school nurse visit weekly, posting of emergency contact phone numbers in the school and community center, and development of a student health information form. ^

The cost of publicly financed dental care in relation to community water fluoridation in Texas

Dental caries lead to children being less ready to learn and results in diminished productivity in the classroom. Tooth decay causes pain and infection, leading to impaired chewing, speech, and facial expression, in addition to a loss in self-esteem. There have been many studies supporting the safety and efficacy of community water fluoridation in reducing dental caries. Water fluoridation has been identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century. The decline in the prevalence and severity of tooth decay in the United States during the past 60 years has been attributed largely to the increased use of fluoride; in particular, the widespread utilization of community water fluoridation. However, in the decades since fluoridation was first introduced, reductions in dental caries have declined, most likely due to the presence of other sources of fluoride. Questions have been raised regarding the need to continue to fluoridate community water supplies in the face of possible excessive exposure to fluoride. Nevertheless, dental caries continue to be a significant public health burden throughout the world, including the United States, especially among low-income and disadvantaged populations. Although many poor children receive their dental care through Medicaid, the percentage of Texas children with untreated dental caries continues to exceed the U.S. average and is well above Healthy People 2010 goals, even as state Medicaid expenditures continue to rise. The objective of this study is to determine the relationship between Medicaid dental expenditures and community water fluoridation levels in Texas counties. By examining this relationship, the cost-effectiveness of community water fluoridation in the Texas pediatric Medicaid beneficiary population, as measured by publicly financed dental care expenditures, may be ascertained.^