Comparatively little research has been done on students' perceptions of communication and communication activities in integrated content and language (ICL) environments. In the present study, student statements about communication and communication activities have been collected via interviews and surveys from students attending a mechanical engineering programme in Sweden. These statements are compared with statements from content teachers at the same programme. Results suggest that students and teachers share a common perspective that communication activities should address a couple of apprenticeship genres that students will use in their future professions. Consequently, there seem to be good reasons for identifying and practising the use of apprenticeship genres. However, the focus on a few genres is problematised as some students show frustration when encountering unfamiliar genres. The article therefore also discusses the potential need for a role where communication teachers facilitate communication activities such that students enhance their perceptions of communication and communication activities in order to better prepare themselves for addressing various types of communicative situations.
This article describes different feedback designs that have been developed at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. These feedback activities are part of courses and programmes that faculty at the Department of Communication and Learning in Science, Division for Language and Communication, are involved in. The feedback setup has evolved from many years of designing and delivering writing instruction within STEM education, grounded in the challenge to make feedback a meaningful learning experience for all students and improve students’ understanding of disciplinary academic writing. The feedback designs described are based on dialogue to provide feedback and as a means for students to verbalize their own understanding of text, textual features and how discipline specific content is communicated. Examples of setups are large class active feedback lectures, scaffolded peer response sessions, and guided feedback workshops. These feedback activities are explored, and we argue for how they, potentially, result in more (useful) feedback and feedforward compared to traditional written teacher-student feedback.
This special session, within the conference theme of Incorporating Convergence into Programs, Curricula, and Continuing Education, focuses on Curriculum Agility in engineering education. It will introduce the concept of Curriculum Agility and its current trends, as well as further co-develop the concept behind it. This is done following an iterative design thinking approach, by co-creating guiding principles that engineering institutions can use to make their study programs more responsive, dynamic, and flexible. Curriculum Agility is particularly important in engineering education in order to keep pace with the rapid development of new technologies and materials. In addition, the concept aims to meet students' expectations and needs for more individualized study plans, as well as society's need for forward-thinking engineers equipped to contribute to finding solutions to current and future societal challenges. Thus, to anticipate and meet these challenges, institutions for engineering education need to have an organizational and management structure with the capacity to act within a much shorter timeframe than traditionally seen in universities. Curriculum Agility is a framework for introducing necessary changes in operations to be able to act responsibly and rapidly on change and expectations. This work presents seven principles for Curriculum Agility that have emerged from a series of sessions at international conferences and network meetings. The seven principles currently include: Stakeholder Involvement, Organization and Governance, Decision Making, Program and Course Design, Innovation of Education, and Pedagogy and Didactics. This special session brings educators together to discuss the 'what, how and why' with regard to Curriculum Agility. The overall aim is to further develop a shared vision on Curriculum Agility and build upon the intention of assessing it at different levels in the organization of engineering education institutions. The expected outcome of the special session is a collection of refined, redefined, and perhaps even newly defined principles for Curriculum Agility.
Higher education is today characterised by increasing student groups and high pressure on teaching staff. In these circumstances, it may be difficult to provide appropriate scaffolding of activities that many students find challenging, for example, academic and discipline-specific writing. It may also be difficult to align such support with principles associated with effective learning. In this paper, we present the design of the bachelor thesis writing support for students at a university of technology. The support is delivered by a communication division and reaches approximately 900 students each year. The paper describes the principles guiding the design and use results from a student survey to illuminate the challenges and affordances of the approach. The survey results show that students appreciate the module and its focus on dialogic feedback, student engagement and student activity. Our results also show that one of the challenges for some students is to negotiate advice from multiple sources, primarily content supervisors and writing staff. Despite such challenges, the design is an example of a sustainable, large-scale writing module based on research on feedback and learning.
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