Teaching Digital Editions of the Bible and Ancient Sources. A Reflection

This pedagogical article presents an example of how one can teach novice students to build and to work with their own digital editions of ancient sources. It discusses modern approaches to digital editions and promotes teaching SQL databases in ancient studies programs. It provides a detailed guide on how one can structure a student database that will be beneficial to students of all levels and disciplines.

Moving from plagiarism police to integrity coaches: assisting novice students in understanding the relationship between research and ownership

Much of the discourse surrounding plagiarism is one of fear—a fear of being caught and punished, but many plagiarism examples happen unintentionally as students struggle with a new language, new ideas, and new communities in tertiary education. Specifically, many students are challenged with the task of writing a research paper, which involves finding academic sources, reading those sources to answer a research question, and integrating direct quotations and paraphrasing. Because novice writers often struggle with these skills, what is a developmental stage is instead interpreted as plagiarism. Much of the discussion of plagiarism involves implicit and explicit definitions of ownership, but there is little research about how students understand the concept of ownership in relation to ideas and language. In this qualitative study, we present data from 18 international students at an American-style university in the Middle East who write an introductory research paper as part of a composition course. Results show that perceptions of plagiarism changed in relation to owning ideas, owning language, and owning time spent on the research process and that distinguishing these boundaries is often difficult for students even within their own final research papers. We suggest teaching more robust note-taking strategies, discussing ownership in terms of a writer’s choices in guiding readers through the paper, and creating an environment where students can understand the complexities of plagiarism rather than simply fearing being caught.

Schematic Structure and Stance in Students’ Writing in Business Communication: A Comparative Study of Native English Speaking and Iranian Students

This study reports on two knowledge elements of stance and schematic structure in order to help novice students increase the efficacy of their writing in business communication. With this regard, Santos’ (2002) Business Letters of Negotiation Model and Hyland’s (2005b) Stance Model of Interaction were drawn upon. Sixty business emails written by native English speaking (NS) and Iranian students of Business Management Departments in universities were analyzed. Two raters explored the corpus for their moves/steps frequencies and a concordance software was used in order to explore stance markers frequencies. To investigate whether Iranian and NS writers are statistically different from each other, the findings of frequencies were submitted to one-variable Chi-square test. The results showed that NS and Iranian writers are not different from each other in their content staging while they are providing information/answers or negotiating. Running counter to moves 2 and 23, move 3 turned out to have different results; there was a significant difference between NS and Iranian writers in their request of information/action/favors. Results presented no significant difference between NS and Iranian writers in their employment of hedges and attitude markers of stance with regard to one-variable Chi-square test results. For boosters, Chi-square test detected a significant difference between the groups only in move 2. There was a significant difference, however, between NS and Iranian writers in their use of self-mention markers in moves 3 and 23. The results of this paper have both theoretical and pedagogical significance.

A Guided Scratch Visual Execution Environment to Introduce Programming Concepts to CS1 Students

First-year computer science (CS1) university students traditionally have difficulties understanding how to program. This paper describes research introducing CS1 students to programming concepts using a Scratch programming language guided visual execution environment (VEE). The concepts addressed are those from an introductory programming course (sequences, variables, operators, conditionals, loops, and events and parallelism). The VEE guides novice students through programming concepts, explaining and guiding interactive exercises executed in Scratch by using metaphors and serious games. The objective of this study is, firstly, to investigate if a cohort of 124 CS1 students, from three distinct groups, studying at the same university, are able to improve their programming skills guided by the VEE. Secondly, is the improvement different for various programming concepts? All the CS1 students were taught the module by the same tutor in four 2-h sessions (8 h), and a qualitative research approach was adopted. The results show students significantly improved their programming knowledge, and this improvement is significant for all the programming concepts, although greater for certain concepts such as operators, conditionals, and loops than others. It also shows that students lacked initial knowledge of events and parallelism, though most had used Scratch during their high school years. The sequence concept was the most popular concept known to them. A collateral finding in this study is how the students’ previous knowledge and learning gaps affected grades they required to access and begin study at the university level.

Political participation instruction for monk and novice students in Thailand

This research aimed (1) to study the political participation of the monk and novice students in MCUKK as the guideline to develop the political participation instruction for MCUKK students, (2) to suggest the ways to promote the political participation instruction of the monk and novice students. The population of the research was the bachelor degree students: monks and novices (n = 266) of MCUKK. The key informants (15) including 1 educational administrator, 2 directors of Political Science Programs (Bachelor and Master), and 2 lecturers, 10 students selected by Purposive Sampling. This study was conducted by means of the mixed research methodology: quantitative research and qualitative research. The tools used in this research were the five-rating scale questionnaire and an in-depth interview. The research findings indicated that (1) the political participation of the students in four studied aspects were statistically rated the moderate level; (2) the university lecturers should pay attention to educating the legal rights and importance of political participation in terms of voting, political news, political campaign and political rally for the students. The finding suggested that teaching political participation should be managed properly, although there is the law that prohibits monks or novices to get involved in politics.

Dietary Habits of Female University Students in Eastern Slovakia in the Context of Sports Activity

(1) Background: The aim of the research was to expand the current knowledge about the diets of female university students in relation to the frequency of their sports activity (SA). We were specifically interested in the eating frequency, the distribution of the amount of food during the day, including breakfast in the diet, and the timing of dinner before bedtime. (2) Methods: The sample in this cross-sectional research consisted of 1055 female freshmen university students from the two universities in eastern Slovakia. Data were obtained through a set of selected questions from a questionnaire battery. (3) Results: We found a significant rank–order correlation between the frequency of meals during the day and the level of SA, as well as between the consumption of breakfast and SA. Furthermore, we found a significant indirect dependence on the distribution of meals during the day and SA. The results indicate a better dietary pattern of the more active female students in terms of the frequency of meals. (4) Conclusions: “The healthy behaviour”, which includes proper diet and regular SA, was monitored in the cross-sectional research we conducted, the results of which consistently point to opportunities for further improvement. There is a need for universities to develop professionally targeted programmes that will enable novice students to modify their health behaviours during their studies.

Improving Novice Students’ Computational Thinking Skills by Problem-Solving and Metacognitive Techniques

Admittedly, the teaching and learning of programming courses in the computer science and information technology programs have been extremely challenging. Currently, most instructors depend on either the problem-solving technique or the metacognitive technique to help students develop a range of cognitive skills, including metacognitive skills, which are important in the development of a strong computational thinking skill required for 21st-century learning. Studies focusing on the practices of instructors in using both techniques are scarce, thus motivating the researchers to carry out this study. This study was based on a qualitative approach involving a case-study design in which five (5) male and five (5) female instructors were selected from 10 pre-university centers in Malaysia as the respondents and participants in an intervention program. The research instruments used were an interview checklist and intervention guidelines. As anticipated, the findings showed that the activities of each technique could only help students develop certain sub-skills of the computational thinking skill, thus underscoring the need for instructors to integrate both techniques in their teaching practices. Thus, it could be reasoned that using either the metacognitive technique or the problem-solving technique alone would not be sufficient to help students develop strong computational thinking skills, as each technique has its strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, it becomes imperative for instructors to leverage the strengths of both techniques by integrating both of them in the teaching and learning of programming courses.

Seeing Beyond the Theory: Empowering Novice Nursing Students in Their Ability to Save Lives Through Primary and Secondary Prevention

Students in early-level nursing courses often doubt their ability to intervene effectively to impact health, much less save a life, due to lack of hands-on experience and confidence. Theoretical concepts introduced in early-level courses are abstract terms that can be difficult for the novice student to grasp. Two strategies were designed to take early-level nursing students beyond the theory and increase their awareness of the power of prevention through risk identification, advocacy, health education, and early intervention. Opportunities to apply concepts such as health education, role of the nurse, communication, growth and development, and family systems theory were provided through use of these strategies. Both assignments have been well received by early-level students and other instructors. Informal feedback indicates that these strategies can enhance students' confidence in their perceived ability to promote health and prevent adverse outcomes. The strategies presented in this article respond to the call to provide opportunities within the curriculum that facilitate application of theoretical content; they can empower novice students in their ability to impact lives and can set them up for success as they progress through the program.