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This empirical study examined preferences between teacher-centered and student-centered teaching methods and academic major with 507 undergraduate college students. Surveys were administered to the students that assessed their level of agreement with teaching methods utilized in the classroom. The results indicate that across all academic majors, students' preferences included a mix of teacher-centered and student-centered approaches, some of which include lecture with student interaction, demonstrations and practice, lecture with use of PowerPoint, free flowing classroom discussion, guest speakers, and games in the classroom. The least preferred teaching methods were predominantly teacher-centered and included the use of unscheduled quizzes, lecture with no visuals, lecture with handwritten notes, and watching a long film. Significant differences were obtained for preferred teaching methods between academic majors.

This study recognises how Industry 4.0 is influencing labour market demands of graduating students and how ongoing discord between employers and educators regarding their preparation is driving work-integrated learning across the sector. Stakeholder involvement in capability development requires expected performance standards to benchmark students for learning and assessment purposes, especially in non-accredited contexts which lack defined standards of competency. Industry stakeholders were engaged to review, validate and extend an established capabilities framework to reflect mega-trends posed by contemporary work and to define dimensions of standardised assessment for the purpose of work-integrated learning. Findings highlighted the need for graduates that are digitally literate, resilient, adaptable, and able to collaborate and communicate with others from diverse backgrounds in virtual and face-to-face settings. The resultant framework provides specific, clear and measurable behaviours that reflect industry expectations of graduating students, translating to authentic assessment criteria for multi-stakeholder evaluation of student performance during work-integrated learning.

This empirical study examined the relationship between Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality types and preferred teaching methods for 507 Saint Joseph's College of Maine undergraduate students. The students completed two instruments: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, Form M (Myers, McCaulley, Quenk, & Hammer, 1998), and a 27-item scale that measured preferred teaching methods in the classroom. Descriptive and inferential statistics indicated that the five most prominent personality types were ISFJ, ESFJ, ESFP, ENFP, and ISTJ. Sensing-Feeling (S-F) preference was the most common followed by Sensing-Judging (S-J) preference in the top five personality types. Across all MBTI dichotomies, the students indicated a preference for teaching methods that involved lecturer-student interaction, using some visual tools such as PowerPoint, and demonstrations and practice. The least preferred teaching methods involved unscheduled quizzes, lecture where the professor talks with no visuals, and library research using experiential activities. Significant differences were obtained between the MBTI dichotomies and preferred teaching methods. The results demonstrate the importance of faculty tailoring and adjusting their instruction to accommodate the needs of their students to increase student achievement, motivation, and engagement in their classroom.

This study examined undergraduate college students' perceptions, general preferences, emotional responses, and comment themes with the transition to a virtual learning classroom during the COVID-19 pandemic from a college in the northeast United States. A total of 148 students (44 males, 104 females) completed an 18-item transition to virtual classes survey. Students indicated that their professors utilized the Learning Management System effectively with virtual coursework, and that their professors adapted and communicated changes in course content during the transition, while indicating their preferences that professors communicate changes in course syllabi or schedule in a timely manner, and that both course syllabi and grades be available on the Learning Management System. Students expressed negative emotions like uncertainty, anxiety, and nervousness when transitioning to virtual classes. Four open-ended questions generated six comment themes with students indicating the need for constant communication, the use of the learning management system, leveraging technology, instructor support, flexibility and characteristics, classroom engagement, and course management.

Understanding how tourists respond to and comply with scams sheds light on tourist self-protection. In this study, a quasi-experimental design was employed to examine external (scam-operation) and internal (personal) factors of scam compliance. Twelve (3 × 4) scenarios were developed from real-world tourist scam cases and presented in the form of videos in an online tourist survey to elicit and observe decisions. A total of 609 participants from Australia and China completed the task, and the data were analyzed through multiple statistical techniques. The results suggested that the external factors of scam compliance did not exert a significant impact. Three internal factors, sensation-seeking, travel experiences, and risk perception, are stronger predictors of scam compliance. This study offers theoretical insights into tourist behavior, and contributes to new understandings of the antecedents of scam compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This empirical study examined undergraduate college students' perceptions about HyFlex/hybrid courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 305 students (73 male, 234 female) completed an online survey that assessed technological strategies, instructional strategies, and perceptions about HyFlex classes. Students indicated that most of their classes during the Spring 2021 semester were a mix of in-person and online, and professors used Google Meet for classes, and the learning management system (LMS) for assignments, syllabi, and rubrics. Student perceptions about their HyFlex classes indicated that they felt challenged in their classes and that course materials were available to them "during" and "after" class. Students also felt a lack of "connection" with other students in the class and were unsure if HyFlex improved their learning. Some of the aspects students liked about the HyFlex model included the "freedom to choose whether to attend in-person or virtually" (66.9%) and "flexibility to view lectures at my own pace" (55.4%), while aspects of the HyFlex model they did not like included "technology issues" (67.5%) and "not enough interaction with my classmates" (60.7%). Two open-ended questions generated comment themes with students indicating the need for classroom flexibility, classroom engagement, instructor communication, leveraging technology, and minimizing distractions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humour for children has received attention from various academic domains. However, the topic is a less explored area in the field of tourism. Addressing this research gap, the present study aims to firstly, identify the main themes of humour which are discussed in the academic literature about children, and secondly to outline how the identified themes can be applied to children's learning experiences in tourism settings. The study employs content analysis to systematically review 190 relevant publications from multidisciplinary fields sourced from ScienceDirect and Scopus. Five overarching themes were identified across studies of various disciplines: social, parents, play, teachers, and characters. The emerging themes were interpreted through the lens of Vygotsky's Socio-Cultural Theory to develop a conceptual framework for children's learning experiences in tourism contexts. The paper enhances our understanding of the children's literature in the context of tourism by providing both theoretical and practical insights. It specifically focuses on how humour can be utilised to enrich children's learning in the realm of tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Host-tourist interaction is a core attraction of ethnic tourism. Yet both parties may confront challenges in such interactions because of different cultural backgrounds. This study aims to investigate host-tourist interaction issues in Vietnam's Central Highlands by adopting a qualitative approach wherein 31 semi-structured interviews were conducted with villagers. Results find that villagers interacted with domestic tourists mostly in private houses, tourist attractions and facilities, and on tours. In such settings, the content of interactions varied from low to high intensity. Derived from the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) theory [Pearce, W. B., & Cronen, V. E. (1980). Communication action and meaning. Praeger], verbal (language) and non-verbal behaviour and cultural patterns were the greatest interaction difficulties. While interaction difficulties occurred across different settings, higher intensity interactions resulted in more positive outcomes. This study enriches the existing knowledge on interaction between ethnic hosts and domestic tourists in the intra-national context. The interpretive theoretical and methodological utility of CMM provided insight into interaction difficulties, and opportunities to facilitate positive interactions in ethnic tourism development. Further implications for villagers, tourists, local policymakers, and tour operators were suggested to build long-term sustainability of the host-tourist relationship in the Central Highlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This phenomenographic study opens the classroom door to investigate teachers' experiences of students learning difficult computing topics. Three distinct themes are identified and analysed. "Why" do students succeed or fail to learn these concepts? "What" actions do teachers perceive will ameliorate the difficulties facing students? "Who" is responsible, and for what, in the learning situation? Theoretical work on threshold concepts and conceptual change deals with mechanisms and processes associated with learning difficult material [Meyer, J. and Land, R., 2005. Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning. "Higher Education", 49 (3), 373-388; Entwistle, N., 2007. Conceptions of learning and the experience of understanding: thresholds, contextual influences, and knowledge objects. "In:" S. Vosniadou, A. Baltas and X. Vamvakoussi, eds. "Re-framing the conceptual change approach in learning and instruction". Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, chap. 11]. With this work as a background, we concentrate on the perceptions of teachers. Where do teachers feel that the difficulties lie when studying the troublesome knowledge in computing? Student and teacher-centric views of teaching reported in other literature are also to be seen in our results. The first two categories in the "what" and "who" themes are teacher-centric. Higher level categories in all themes show increasingly learner centred conceptions of the instructional role. However, the nature of the categories in the "why" theme reveals a new dimension dealing with teacher beliefs specific to the nature of troublesome knowledge in computing. A number of prior studies in tertiary teaching concentrate on approaches to teaching [Trigwell, K. and Prosser, M., 2004. Development and use of the approaches to teaching inventory. "Educational Psychology Review", 16 (4), 409-424], and attitudes to scholarship of teaching and learning [Ashwin, P. and Trigwell, K., 2004. Investigating educational development. "In: Making sense of staff and educational development", 117-131]. Our focus on learning difficult topics extends this work, investigating teacher conceptions of causality in relation to learning difficulties. We argue that teacher conceptions of enabling factors, for learning difficult computing topics, can act to limit the nature and scope of academics' pedagogical responses. Improved awareness of teacher's beliefs regarding student learning difficulties both extends and complements existing efforts to develop a more student-centred computing pedagogy. (Contains 2 notes, 1 table and 3 figures.)

Debugging is often difficult and frustrating for novices. Yet because students typically debug outside the classroom and often in isolation, instructors rarely have the opportunity to closely observe students while they debug. This paper describes the details of an exploratory study of the debugging skills and behaviors of contemporary novice Java programmers. Based on a modified replication of Katz and Anderson's study of novices, we sought to broadly survey the modern landscape of novice debugging abilities. As such, this study reports general quantitative results and fills in the picture with qualitative detail from a relatively small, but varied sample. Comprehensive interviews involving both a programming and a debugging task, followed by a semi-structured interview and a questionnaire, were conducted with 21 CS2 students at seven colleges and universities. While many subjects successfully debugged a representative set of typical CS1 bugs, there was a great deal of variation in their success at the programming and debugging tasks. Most of the students who were good debuggers were good novice programmers, although not all of the good programmers were successful at debugging. Students employed a variety of strategies to find 70% of all bugs and of the bugs they found they were able to fix 97% of them. They had the most difficulty with malformed statements, such as arithmetic errors and incorrect loop conditions. Our results confirm many findings from previous studies (some quite old)--most notably that once students find bugs, they can fix them. However, the results also suggest that some changes have occurred in the student population, particularly an increased use of debugging tools and online resources, as well as the use of pattern matching, which has not previously been reported. (Contains 4 tables, 5 figures, and 1 note.)

This paper describes an empirical study that investigated the knowledge that Computer Science students have about the extent of their own previous learning. The study compared self-generated estimates of performance with actual performance on a data structures quiz taken by undergraduate students in courses requiring data structures as a prerequisite. The study was contextualized and grounded within a research paradigm in Psychology called "calibration of knowledge" that suggests that self-knowledge across a range of disciplines is highly unreliable. Such self-knowledge is important because of its role in "meta-cognition", particularly in cognitive self-regulation and monitoring, as well as in the credence that instructors give to student self-reports. Our results indicated that Computer Science student self-estimates are highly correlated with performance, more so for estimates provided after the performance than before. This high level of calibration, however, was likely the result of a number of conditions that do not always hold: that the students already had domain expertise, that the quiz had unambiguous and verifiable answers, and that students expected their estimates to be validated. When these conditions are not met, it becomes more important for students to have direct feedback about their performance so as to uncover those areas where their intuitions might mislead them. Students also had weak knowledge about their standing relative to their peers, particularly those in the lower performance quartiles, exhibiting the well known "better-than-average" heuristic. There was, additionally, no correlation between calibration ability and degree of liking or difficulty with the data structures material, suggesting that instructors and researchers should not treat liking or difficulty as reliable indicators of the learning that has occurred. (Contains 1 note, 4 tables and 4 figures.)