Mari Murtonen

Utilizing Mixed Methods in Teaching Environments to Reduce Statistics Anxiety

Abstract Many students deem statistics courses to be the most difficult in their programs of study, providing mostly negative experiences characterized by high levels of anxiety. Recent research on statistics anxiety has identified several teacher characteristics that help reduce students’ statistics anxiety levels. However, little attention has been placed on the role that the research-based curriculum plays in reducing anxiety levels. Thus, the present paper introduces a curricular framework for alleviating students’ negative feelings towards statistics. Building on the works of Onwuegbuzie and Leech (2004, 2005a), we contend that the best way to accomplish this is by eliminating statistics courses from curricula and replacing these with research methodology courses at different levels that simultaneously teach students both quantitative and qualitative techniques within a mixed methodological framework. We illustrate how quantitative and qualitative research courses can be re-designed as courses in exploratory and confirmatory techniques that teach quantitative and qualitative methodologies within each course, either simultaneously or sequentially.

University students’ understanding of the concepts empirical, theoretical, qualitative and quantitative research

University research education in many disciplines is frequently confronted by problems with students’ weak level of understanding of research concepts. A mind map technique was used to investigate how students understand central methodological concepts of empirical, theoretical, qualitative and quantitative. The main hypothesis was that some students have a confused conception of empirical. The mind maps revealed that in the beginning of the course, 75% of the students hold a problematic conception of research, and after the half year course, still half of the participated students had problems with expressing a scientifically sound conception of research. In addition to general undevelopedness of the maps, a severe confused conception of drawing a link from empirical to qualitative or quantitative, but not to both, was found. This finding indicates that some students have problems with understanding the very basic and central concept of empirical.

University chemistry students' learning approaches and willingness to change major

A questionnaire with 22 Likert type items was developed to collect cross-sectional data from university chemistry students of different study years (N = 118). The aim was to obtain information on their learning approaches as well as their study preferences. Students willing to change from their major subject to medical education represented a considerable portion (N = 49) of the whole subject group, thus the special characteristics of these students were also analyzed. The factor analyses of the dataset revealed six distinct approaches: submissive surface, memorizing surface, technical surface, active deep, processing deep and practical deep. Statistically significant changes in the learning approaches with study years were found for the technical surface and practical deep approaches. The former was most common for introductory level students desiring to change their major subject. The scores in the practical deep approach increased with a greater number of study years. Significant gender differences were observed for the technical surface and processing deep approaches. Male students scored higher on the processing deep scale and female students willing to change their major scored highest on the technical surface scale. Finally, the students were grouped based on a cluster analysis yielding four groups: submissive, diligent, enthusiastic and technical students. Those willing to change their major belonged mostly to the superficially-oriented technical group, while advanced level chemistry majors occupied the deeply-oriented enthusiastic group.

Educating Novices At The Workplace: Transformation Of Conceptions And Skills Of Students On A Metal Industry Course

Traditional formal education has often been accused of being disconnected from the learning of real working life competencies. Recent studies have shown that students may feel that formal education is ‘too theoretical’, and graduates often claim that they do not possess the competencies needed to do their jobs (e.g., Mora, Garcı́a-Aracil, & Vilas, 2007; Stenström, 2006; Tynjälä, Slotte, Nieminen, Lonka, & Olkinuora, 2006; van der Velden, 2006;). A similar criticism often levelled by entrepreneurs and employers is that the slow process of formal education hinders it from responding to the acute needs of working life (e.g. Billett, 2007). The content and pedagogical practices of formal education programmes may not serve the needs of current jobs. To overcome these problems, some employers have adopted an old – but until recently largely forgotten – practice of educating workers in the workplace. This ‘education on demand’ may be realised through different models, varying from close co-operation between formal education and industry to the traditional dual system of vocational education and training, as in Germany, or to specialised training programmes organised wholly by companies themselves (for more on corporate universities see, e.g. Andresen & Lichtenberger, 2007; Rademakers, 2005). The goal in all these models is to bridge the gap between education and work, and to provide students with real life experience so as to better equip them with the skills and knowledge needed in productive working. The aim of this chapter is to examine a specific example; the company-based training of shipyard workers. Our assumption is that training carried out in an authentic work environment, and its close vicinity in the company school, could provide a promising starting point for realising the connective model of work experience (Griffitths & Guile, 2003; Guile & Griffiths, 2001) described in Chapter 2 of this volume. Thus, we examine whether features of the connective model are present in a shipyard metal industry course run by the company in the workplace. We also examine company-based training from the expertise development point of view and analyse how the transition from novice towards

Development of an Online Learning Platform for University Pedagogical Studies-Case Study.

Due to a high demand of university pedagogical staff development courses in our university, we were faced with the problem of not being able to offer university pedagogy courses for everyone who wanted to study them. Additionally, we wanted to seek ways to improve our already existing teaching. As a solution, we created a web based learning platform called UTUPS (University pedagogical support). The platform allows us to reach a wider audience and offer courses more conveniently to our teaching staff. Since the platform was released in Autumn 2015, offered modules have been completed cumulatively over 300 times. We propose a learning environment like UTUPS can significantly increase the flexibility and scale of studies that a university can offer. We will provide a thorough explanation on why and how the environment was made, a technical description of the current UTUPS platform, compared it to already existing solutions and analyse its strengths and weaknesses. In order to evaluate the platform, we will utilize primarily student feedback and refer to literature and existing solutions when relevant.