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Developing oral presentation skills is an essential objective of higher education. While previous research emphasized the importance of practice for developing oral presentation skills (OPS), it remains unclear what the optimal amount of practice is. This experimental field study examined the added benefit of an extra practice session in virtual reality (VR) on the progression of 35 graduate students in OPS, using a pre-test post-test design. In addition, the mediating effect of public speaking anxiety (PSA) was examined and the relation between PSA, preparation practices, perceived utility of VR and OPS was explored. Questionnaires and performance assessments were used in data collection. Results showed that participants gained benefits from practicing a third time before a virtual audience. Both anxious and non-anxious participants progressed similarly on presentation skills and experienced the VR intervention comparably. However, the optimal number of practice presentations remains unclear and should be further investigated.

Feedback plays a central role in learning. Crucial to this is the nature and timing of the feedback. This experimental study explores the efficacy of immediate computer-mediated feedback within a virtual reality environment designed to facilitate the development of pre-university students' presentation skills. Two conditions were established to assess the efficacy: immediate computer-mediated feedback; a control condition of delayed expert-mediated feedback. Results showed improvement but no statistically relevant difference in performance gains between the two conditions, suggesting both can facilitate learning. Furthermore, students perceived the environment to be an effective and motivating platform in which to practise presentation skills. For educators seeking viable alternatives to face-to-face presentation practice and feedback, the finding that immediate computer-mediated feedback is potentially as effective in aiding presentation performance is crucial for two reasons: first, it expands practice opportunities for students; second, it could result in less pressure on resources, including time and staffing.

The COVID19-Pandemic has forced educators to transform their lessons into online versions in a short period of time. This study compares teachers' perception regarding their online teaching expectations (prior to the transition to remote teaching) and experiences (after a month of online teaching). Two surveys were completed by 200 Dutch teachers. Results demonstrated a significant change in the perception of teachers regarding their resolutions to implement technology in their lessons in a post-corona era. In this regard, teachers' gender and prior experiences with the use of ICT seem to play a small role. Findings of this study provide implications for the professionalisation of teachers, such as characteristics of teachers and intentions to implement technology in teaching, as well as experienced positive and negative aspects of online teaching. Future research should focus on constructing and testing educational design principles for effective professionalisation of teachers in adopting technology in their educational practices.

Whilst the importance of online peer feedback and writing argumentative essays for students in higher education is unquestionable, there is a need for further research into whether and the extent to which female and male students differ with regard to their argumentative feedback, essay writing, and content learning in online settings. The current study used a pre-test, post-test design to explore the extent to which female and male students differ regarding their argumentative feedback quality, essay writing and content learning in an online environment. Participants were 201 BSc biotechnology students who wrote an argumentative essay, engaged in argumentative peer feedback with learning partners in the form of triads and finally revised their original argumentative essay. The findings revealed differences between females and males in terms of the quality of their argumentative feedback. Female students provided higher-quality argumentative feedback than male students. Although all students improved their argumentative essay quality and also knowledge content from pre-test to post-test, these improvements were not significantly different between females and males. Explanations for these findings and recommendations are provided.

Although scholars emphasised the essence of feedback delivered on virtual reality-based tasks, it remains unclear whether the acquisition of students' oral presentation skills can be enhanced by the timing of feedback. An exploratory study, recently conducted in a Dutch university, explores the potential differential impact of immediate versus delayed feedback within a virtual reality-based task, in which students present to a virtual audience and receive feedback generated by the computer on presentation behaviour. By making use of an experimental study design, the potential effects of immediate feedback are compared with a control condition of a virtual reality-based presentation task with delayed feedback directly provided after the presentation. Performance assessments, including validated rubrics for oral presentation skills, were used for data collection. The results demonstrated no differences between the impact of immediate and delayed feedback on students' presentation performance. However, significant differences in performance were traceable for students from differing study domains. As such, students following a technical study showed lower presentation scores in comparison to students from non-technical higher education curricula. More studies are needed to investigate comprehensive learning environments on students' presentation skills in virtual reality, since combining different forms of feedback could foster students' learning outcomes.

In Europe, there is a growing interest in honors education, not only in the bachelor's but also in the master's degree. The Dutch government, for instance, is actively promoting excellence in both bachelor's and master's degrees through honors programs (Siriusteam). Most Dutch universities have honors programs at the bachelor's level or are developing them. Some universities have also recently introduced honors into their master's programs, stimulated by recent publications (van Eijl, Wolfensberger & Pilot). Because honors master's programs are a new phenomenon in higher education and are still exceptional in the United States of America, the authors have undertaken a research project to study them (van Ginkel & van Eijl). For this exploratory project, a mixed method approach was used (Creswell & Plano-Clark; van Ginkel & van Eijl) in a study that was carried out at the start of the academic year 2009-2010. First, an Internet search identified Dutch and non-Dutch honors master's programs. Second, a literature review facilitated a comparison between Dutch honors master's programs and Dutch honors bachelor's programs. Third, staff members provided insights into the honors master's within the discipline of law at the University of Utrecht. Interviews with teachers revealed specific information about a representative example of Dutch honors master's courses. Fourth, in line with the interviews, a small quantitative survey yielded an impression of the interest of students in supplemental activities included in the master's stage of their study. Thirty-seven master's students from different disciplines completed the survey. The study revealed the existence of different kinds of honors master's programs not only in The Netherlands but also in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, and Ireland. These honors master's programs are found in the humanities, social sciences, hard sciences, and professional schools. The programs are diverse with respect to content, focus, and scheduling, and they are, as far as the authors could trace, very new. It is concluded that the emergence of honors master's programs shows a new focus on promoting excellence in university teaching and learning not only among undergraduates but now also at the master's level.

Research has shown that honors programs often provide active networks of students that contribute to the development of the students' talents (De Boer & van Eijl; van Eijl, Pilot & Wolfensberger). These contact networks are also described as "learning communities" (Wilson et al.) and "honors communities" (van Eijl, Pilot & Wolfensberger). Such communities foster productive interaction among students, teachers, and other professionals during their affiliation with the program and beyond. As a result of such connections, students discover new learning opportunities and gain experience in organizational and leadership skills. In honors programs, in particular, these contacts are an essential component of what defines and separates honors activities as special enhancements of a student's overall educational experience (van Eijl, Wolfensberger & Pilot). Our study focuses on design principles, key characteristics, strategies, and successful examples that characterize the development of honors communities. We focus particularly on commuter students because they comprise the majority of honors students in the Netherlands. Nearly all universities in the Netherlands are city universities, where students either rent rooms in the neighborhood or live at home. One of the challenges for an honors director is to create a vibrant honors community within this specific context. We make the assumption that for commuter students a more careful and intentional implementation of an honors community is necessary because most students leave campus when classes are finished (Jacoby). And, as Kuh, Gonyea and Palmer found in their research, commuter students are overall less engaged than students who live on campus. Extra activities have to be organized and strategically timed to suit these students, and the challenge is complicated by competition with numerous other events taking place in the city. Our study analyzes five different honors communities of commuter students in order to suggest some best practices for creating maximum benefits for students.

While previous research in higher education emphasized the essence of feedback by the teacher, the peer or the self, it remains unclear whether the acquisition of students' oral presentation competence differs depending on the feedback source. This quasi-experimental study examines the effectiveness of the feedback source on 144 first-year undergraduate students' progression in cognition, behaviour and attitude towards presenting, as three interrelated elements of oral presentation competence. Mixed methods of multiple-choice tests and performance assessments using rubrics were used for data collection. Results demonstrated the superiority of teacher feedback for encouraging students' presentation behaviour, while cognition and attitude towards presenting developed significantly irrespective of the particular feedback source. However, the self-assessment condition revealed less impact on developing presentation behaviour and attitude compared to other feedback sources. Optimizing peer feedback and self-assessment in curricula requires knowledge about underlying feedback processes characterizing successful feedback of the various sources.

Previous research revealed significant differences in the effectiveness of various feedback sources for encouraging students' oral presentation performance. While former studies emphasised the superiority of teacher feedback, it remains unclear whether the quality of feedback actually differs between commonly used sources in higher education. Therefore, this study examines feedback processes conducted directly after 95 undergraduate students' presentations in the following conditions: teacher feedback, peer feedback and peer feedback guided by tutor. All processes were videotaped and analysed using a coding scheme that included seven feedback quality criteria deduced from the literature. Results demonstrate that teacher feedback corresponds to the highest extent with the majority of the seven identified feedback quality criteria. For four criteria, peer feedback guided by tutor scores higher than peer feedback. Skills courses should incorporate strategies focused on discussing perceptions of feedback and practising providing feedback to increase the effectiveness of peer feedback.

Training of bad news delivery skills usually takes place with classic role play. Research of the use of virtual reality (VR) shows that this innovation has a positive impact on learning (van Ginkel et al., 2017). As bad news delivery is considered a challenging task by health care professionals, including physiotherapists (Hiller, 2017), we developed a VR learning environment for practicing conversational communication skills for this target group. Developing the VR tool required insight in (a) the phases in the conversation, (b) the communication practices of the physiotherapists, such as meeting the needs of the patient and c) the educational design principles of instruction, learning activities and feedback. To gain these insights, we conducted a literature study and semi-structured interviews with physiotherapists. Three tools were developed: 1. A rubric for bad news delivery: a mainly instructional method. 2. An interactive PDF combining the rubric and VR-video's: mainly instructional. 3. An online VR learning environment: feedback method. The rubric, interactive PDF and VR learning environment have been discussed and tested in several demo sessions with both students and physiotherapists. Findings: are: The rubric and the interactive rubric are mainly received as positive on instructiveness. The VR-environment gives useful feedback generated in three ways: (1) the conversation performed is displayed within the rubric (2) it shows constructive feedback on each sentence (3) it shows feedback in short labels related to the rubric. The tools improve bad news delivery in practice and stimulates using a patient-centered approach in physiotherapy, in which the message is adapted to the needs of the patient (Sparks et al., 2007; Hiller & Delany, 2018). This may lead to higher patient satisfaction, and has a positive effect on the way the patient may deal with the outcomes of the conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most challenging communication skills for healthcare professionals is the delivery of bad news to patients. Professionals are often insufficiently equipped with such skills. Although literature largely focuses on bad news concerning severe medical conditions, there are many health care contexts in which patients may be confronted with bad news, including physiotherapy. In this project we developed a rubric for assessing and developing physiotherapists' bad news delivery skills. In literature on formative assessment, rubrics are assessed as adequate teaching instruments (van Ginkel et al., 2017), since they explicate criteria and provide information on: the current performance (feed-back), the desired level of performance (feed-up) and suggestions to bridge the gap between the actual and the desired performance (feed-forward). The rubric was constructed by identifying communication models and insights into bad news delivery in existing literature in the domains of (1) communication in physiotherapy (2) medical teaching and learning and (3) conversation analysis. The effectiveness of the rubric was evaluated by an expert group of physiotherapists through semi-structured interviews. The expert's evaluation enriched the rubric with respect to content-related aspects and form-related aspects. The result is a validated rubric instrument, constructed through iterative cycles of development and refinement. The rubric is concerned with the content and structure of bad news conversations as well as the non-verbal aspects, their related levels in performance and adequacy. The criteria correspond to those emphasized in literature and professional practice. The rubric helps to improve bad news delivery in practice and stimulates using a patient-centered approach, in which the message is adapted to the needs of the patient (Sparks et al., 2007). This may lead to higher patient satisfaction and improve the way the patient may deal with the news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blended learning offers a learner-centred approach that employs both in-class learning and digital technology to facilitate online learning. Such an approach is especially advantageous to adult-learners in higher education as it meets their educational needs. However, adult-learners' participation in blended learning programmes remains challenging due to a general lack of online interaction, and no clear teaching strategies that address this concern. Literature relating to adult-learners' educational needs and online interaction was consulted in order to design teaching strategies that foster adult-learners' online interaction. The aim of this study is to further validate these teaching strategies, hence a multiple case study was carried out using a mixed method approach. As such, eight teachers and sixteen students from four courses across three universities in Belgium and the Netherlands were interviewed. Additionally, a questionnaire testing a pre-defined set of variables was distributed to 84 students. The results lead to a set of validated teaching strategies that help teachers to further develop their professional skills and expertise. The teaching strategies can be grouped into three categories, namely 1) the teacher's online presence, 2) collaborative learning activities and preparatory learning activities, and 3) the distribution of learning content and learning activities across online and in-class learning. An elaborate set of validated teaching strategies is included. This study aids towards teacher professional development and adds evidence-based knowledge to teaching strategies and instructional frameworks for adult-learners in higher education. Teaching/learning strategies, adult-learning, cooperative/collaborative learning, teacher professional development, online learning. • Online learning is a pillar of blended learning. • Blended learning appeals to adult-learners as it offers flexibility in time and place. • Lack of interaction with online content seems prevalent among adult-learners. • Teaching strategies may address insufficient interaction with online content. • Teaching strategies may further teacher professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]