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As professional demands in an increasingly competitive academic environment are growing, professors are often assigned to teach outside their area of expertise. This paper investigates the experience of teaching new courses that are outside a faculty member's immediate area of expertise. Key questions concern the extent to which faculty members appreciate the opportunity to be content novices and whether they accept to appear as such in front of their students. This paper uses an online qualitative survey of 70 international faculty members from diverse academic disciplines. It also employs the computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) package NVivo (Version 12) to conduct a series of qualitative analysis. Our findings suggest a fluctuation in the faculty members' responses about the importance of mastering the subject matter and the joy of teaching as a content novice. The study finally provides practical suggestions on how to succeed in teaching outside one's area of expertise.

This paper explores the use of lecture capture in Engineering classes to provide students with the opportunity to enhance their understanding of the course content. Students were asked to provide feedback on what they perceive the benefits and the drawbacks of lecture capture to be. The results show that the students consider lecture capture an effective tool to help them succeed in the course. The videos are available to them 24 hours a day, seven days a week thus allowing students to bridge the gap between what they have understood in the formal class setting and what they are able to better understand after reviewing the videos in a more informal, relaxed environment. In addition, most of the students indicated that the availability of the videos did not encourage them to skip or miss any classes. The main drawback was associated with technical difficulties which resulted in some wasted time.

Many teacher training programs, including MATESOL programs, encourage their trainees to be reflective practitioners. The MATESOL program at The American University of Sharjah (AUS) is no exception and offers the students many opportunities for reflection. This article discusses my experience with a recent cohort's reaction to being asked to reflect on their own teaching and learning in the final course of the program "ELT 619: Practicum in TESOL". Unlike other cohorts, several students in the class were showing what seemed on the surface to me as resistance to keeping a reflective journal and to examining their beliefs about teaching in learning in their lesson plans. Rather than deduct grades and otherwise force students into reflecting as per the course objective and assignments, I decided to conduct an Exploratory Practice investigation of this situation and search for a greater understanding of the students' reactions and apparent resistance to the reflective assignments I gave them. (Contains 1 note.)

For many ESL teachers, finding time for research within the everyday activities of classroom teaching can be problematic. This is often the case with large classes and classes that have few contact hours, where it is difficult to include research activities, particularly those that centre upon gathering relevant information about individual students' perceptions of classroom life. Part of my ongoing practitioner research efforts have focused upon the value of written student feedback in various forms for both language teachers and language learners as a tool to help both the teacher and students work towards greater understanding of classroom life. In this paper, I provide an example of how a principled practitioner research perspective can be adopted productively by busy teachers in ordinary teaching situations to enhance the quality of life in their classrooms. (Contains 3 notes.)

Illustrates how Exploratory Practice (EP), a form of practitioner research, offers a successful and coherent approach to doctoral research and how learner and teacher/researcher understanding can be developed together. EP principles were used to integrate teaching practices and research in an applied setting to aid both the students and the researcher, through a collegial process, to develop understandings of what happens in the language classroom. (VWL)

Abstract Process writing is marking intensive and is often seen to be unmanageable in large classes. The feedback given to students is an important part of the process, but many [...]

This paper presents an attempt to enhance the learning opportunities for undergraduate mechanical engineering students. We introduce a variety of interactive activities in a major elective course to encourage students' engagement in the learning process, enable a better understanding of the course material, and promote critical thinking. To investigate the impact of these activities on learning, feedback was obtained directly from students via surveys, online discussions, and face-to-face meetings. Overall, students valued the teaching approach based on active learning. On completion of the course, the program outcomes were successfully achieved as per the students' perceptions and direct measures calculated by the instructor from the different assessment tools. Group problem solving and out-of-class projects were the most beneficial activities to their learning. Some students raised some concerns related to time management and unclear roles in the group. Suggestions were also given to the instructor to improve further the learning process. The students requested mainly to have more time when solving illustrative problems in the class and add an experimental component to the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As professional demands in an increasingly competitive academic environment are growing, professors are often assigned to teach outside their area of expertise. This paper investigates the experience of teaching new courses that are outside a faculty member's immediate area of expertise. Key questions concern the extent to which faculty members appreciate the opportunity to be content novices and whether they accept to appear as such in front of their students. This paper uses an online qualitative survey of 70 international faculty members from diverse academic disciplines. It also employs the computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) package NVivo (Version 12) to conduct a series of qualitative analysis. Our findings suggest a fluctuation in the faculty members' responses about the importance of mastering the subject matter and the joy of teaching as a content novice. The study finally provides practical suggestions on how to succeed in teaching outside one's area of expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 'flipped' or 'inverted' teaching approach (Lage et al., 2000) reverses the traditional use of in- and out-ofclass time, delivering instructional input to students before class and devoting classroom time to applying this input in small group tasks. This study investigates the use of videoed lectures and attitudes to in-class activities among undergraduate students in first year Calculus classes using either a lecture-based or a 'flipped classroom' approach. Survey results indicate that while the majority of the students embrace the flipped experience and more specifically the in-class group work activities, they lacked the confidence in their self-learning abilities to completely part with an instructor-led class. This finding and its impact on implementing a flipped classroom supports concerns found in the literature that first- and second-year students may need more guidance from their professors before they can truly benefit from the flipped learning model of instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses research investigating to what extent, if any, group work influences the students’ learning experience in Fundamentals of Electronics. Two classes of second year students from the College of Engineering at American University of Sharjah were involved. At least one class project is an established assignment in the class and is usually done in groups. For the purposes of this research, one class completed the project in groups and the other class completed it individually. The students were then given a short test specific to the material covered by the project. They also filled out a short survey and participated in focus group interviews to discuss their experience. The results indicate that although many of the students stated they enjoyed working in groups, a number of them admitted they did not gain a full understanding of the course material through the group work activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of lecture capture in Engineering classes to provide students with the opportunity to enhance their understanding of the course content. Students were asked to provide feedback on what they perceive the benefits and the drawbacks of lecture capture to be. The results show that the students consider lecture capture an effective tool to help them succeed in the course. The videos are available to them 24 hours a day, seven days a week thus allowing students to bridge the gap between what they have understood in the formal class setting and what they are able to better understand after reviewing the videos in a more informal, relaxed environment. In addition, most of the students indicated that the availability of the videos did not encourage them to skip or miss any classes. The main drawback was associated with technical difficulties which resulted in some wasted time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of learner autonomy, as worthwhile as it is to many teachers and learners, is not one that is easily reached. ESL students bring with them their rich cultural backgrounds and expectations of learning, which may not include becoming an autonomous learner. If this is the case, a teacher need not give up on the notion of fostering learner autonomy, but rather work at designing tasks that will provide the life-long learning skills students need to become autonomous. Little (2008) believes that "our capacity for autonomous behavior in any sphere develops not in isolation, but in interaction with others. Thus … growth of learner autonomy is stimulated above all by interaction" (p. 256). Interaction in the classroom can be achieved through group work, pair work, and large class discussion. Outside the classroom, modern technologies have opened up many interactive options for the autonomous learner to continue his/her quest for knowledge. Carefully chosen Web 2.0 activities that utilize technology effectively is one alternative open to teachers who wish to promote learner autonomy in the ESL classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many teacher training programs, including MATESOL programs, encourage their trainees to be reflective practitioners. The MATESOL program at The American University of Sharjah (AUS) is no exception and offers the students many opportunities for reflection. This article discusses my experience with a recent cohort's reaction to being asked to reflect on their own teaching and learning in the final course of the program 'ELT 619: Practicum in TESOL'. Unlike other cohorts, several students in the class were showing what seemed on the surface to me as resistance to keeping a reflective journal and to examining their beliefs about teaching in learning in their lesson plans. Rather than deduct grades and otherwise force students into reflecting as per the course objective and assignments, I decided to conduct an Exploratory Practice investigation of this situation and search for a greater understanding of the students' reactions and apparent resistance to the reflective assignments I gave them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many ESL teachers, finding time for research within the everyday activities of classroom teaching can be problematic. This is often the case with large classes and classes that have few contact hours, where it is difficult to include research activities, particularly those that centre upon gathering relevant information about individual students' perceptions of classroom life. Part of my ongoing practitioner research efforts have focused upon the value of written student feedback in various forms for both language teachers and language learners as a tool to help both the teacher and students work towards greater understanding of classroom life. In this paper, I provide an example of how a principled practitioner research perspective can be adopted productively by busy teachers in ordinary teaching situations to enhance the quality of life in their classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reporting a classroom investigation within the framework of Exploratory Practice (EP) as set out in the introductory paper to this issue, this paper illustrates first how EP offers a successful and coherent approach to doctoral research, and secondly how learner and teacher/researcher understanding can be developed together. EP principles were used to integrate teaching practices and research in an applied setting to aid both the students and myself, through a collegial process, to develop our own understandings of what happens in the language classroom. Data collected through the use of various classroom activities included both analysis of the students' performances and the students' reflections on their performances. The combination of the various forms of data permitted comprehensive discussion of communicative competence over time, by looking at what the students actually do, what the students say about what they do, as well as what others say about what the students do. With the data collected from a small number of students learning English at an International school in Thailand, two girls and two boys ranging in age from 11 to 13 representing four different nationalities, over a six-month period, I was able to see how their communicative competence developed over time. This information ultimately enabled me to better understand my puzzle area concerning the challenges of helping students develop communicative competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including learning and speaking, English language teaching and learning and learning preferences of the Saudi University Students with English speaking teachers.