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Green building education, an important aspect of sustainability in higher education, has rapidly expanded across the world. Yet, a bespoke pedagogical model integrating the essential elements of green building knowledge into a university course is lacking. To plug this deficiency, this study aims to develop an innovative pedagogical model that incorporates four types of teaching activities, namely, lecture, virtual reality (VR)-aided site visit, physical site visit and practicum-based project.

Based on an extensive review of the relevant literature and course materials, a pedagogical model was constructed for application to the teaching and learning activities of a university’s hospitality and real-estate programme. Using a case study approach involving in-depth interviews with green building professionals and a workshop coupled with an online survey on building professionals, the model’s transformative effectiveness was evaluated.

The study finds that the pedagogical model was able to effectively equip students with the essential green building knowledge pertinent to the different stages of a building life cycle. Concerns about wider applications of the model, including barriers to implementation in other academic programmes and resources for updating the VR platform, were identified.

The VR-aided and project-based pedagogy model is novel and effective in delivering green building education. Future work, particularly expanding the VR platform to cover more green building cases, thereby allowing multiple case studies to be conducted, is recommended for illustrating further contributions and implications of the model.

This study examines the social organizational structure of one early childhood education (ECE) center in Finland and the relationship between this structure and the roles and the responsibilities of the members of the organization.

The research is a qualitative case study with ethnographic features. Its variables for content analysis are based on Henry Mintzberg's theory of organizational design.

The study's results show that the organizational structure of the ECE center follows the organizational configuration of a Professional bureaucracy and that the multiprofessional teams follow the configuration of a Simple structure. The structures for centralization and decentralization are suitable for a professional bureaucracy, but the roles of the members of the organization and the processes for shared decision-making lack clarification. The shortage of qualified ECE teachers disrupts the function of the organization and the work of ECE leaders.

The educational background of subjects may have affected the findings.

The study uses Henry Mintzberg's organizational structure theory to evaluate how and why power is distributed and activities are coordinated at the ECE center. The results also show what parts of the organization pose challenges that most commonly disrupt the organization's operations. With these findings, it is possible to expand the understanding of roles and responsibilities in the currently reforming ECE environment and what ECE centers need to function effectively. The study is part of a larger research project and will be continued to examine the leadership culture of the ECE center.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate undergraduate student perceptions about the application of immersive technologies for enhancing the student learning experience. This study assesses the viewpoints of students from varying multidisciplinary backgrounds about whether immersive technologies can enhance their learning experience and increase their level of engagement in the context of higher educational delivery.

The research used a case study methodology adopting a questionnaire-based research mixed methods approach. In total, 83 participants completed the questionnaire. The purpose of the research was to evaluate and interpret students’ perspectives at higher educational level about the use of immersive technologies towards enhancing their learning experience. There was also a focus on remote educational delivery due to the legacy of COVID-19.

The findings suggest that there is still more empirical work to be undertaken regarding the application of immersive technologies in higher education. The study revealed that there are immersive benefits though preference for face-to-face teaching remains popular. The negative connotations associated with immersive technology use in higher education, (e.g. virtual reality), such as cost of equipment and motion sickness, substantiates the themes identified in the academic literature.

The study explores a diversity of immersive technologies and their application in higher education (HE) contexts. Findings indicate that although there are acknowledged pedagogical benefits of immersive technology use in HE prevalent barriers remain that require further empirical research if immersive technology use is to be universally used in the sector.

Incorporating flipped learning (FL) into teaching English as a foreign language may improve student learning outcomes. This study gathered information on Saudi EFL teachers' readiness and willingness to apply FL. So, it aims to describe Saudi EFL teachers' readiness and willingness to apply FL in language classrooms and to find suitable guidelines for Saudi EFL professional development (PD) designers to follow.

This descriptive study involved 153 male and female Saudi EFL teachers as participants, investigating the perspectives and perceptions of these teachers within the context of foreign language teaching in Saudi Arabia. Surveys in Qualtrics were employed as the primary data collection tool for the study.

Results showed that teachers' self-efficacy of their current teaching was high. Most participants had positive attitudes and abilities related to FL, although they also identified potential challenges related to its engagement and assessment. Teachers expressed a strong willingness to participate in PD in this area, with a preference for online videos and group workshops.

The study emphasizes the importance of PD for Saudi EFL teachers. In addition, it offers guidelines for planning effective PD.

This case aims to enhance students’ scholarship and understanding of performance management systems with respect to the formulation of key performance indicators (KPIs). Specifically, working through this case and the assignment questions, students will be able to:▪ critically analyse process-based and outcome-based performance indicators;▪ recommend the right mix of process- and the outcome-based KPIs;▪ apply the specific, measurable, aligned, realistic and time-bound (SMART) framework to the KPIs;▪ create SMART KPIs; and▪ propose when to involve team members in decision-making.

The Director of the Centre for Learning and Innovative Pedagogies (CLIP), Dr Tanushree Sharma, was in for a surprise when the Dean and the Advisor to the school expressed their dissatisfaction with her approach to framing performance indicators for the management of the Centre.

They categorically advised her to change her process-based orientation to an outcome-based one and create tangible ground-level outcomes. Their feedback made her realize why, in spite of having rolled out several initiatives, the Centre was struggling to demonstrate its impact on student learning and faculty development. It dawned on her that the Centre’s inability to showcase a tangible impact on the school could mar the collective hard toil of the team.

Accepting the feedback and recognizing the merit of designing outcome-based SMART performance indicators, she started working towards them. Although she was able to conceptualize a broad framework, she was uncertain about whether to include only outcome-based KPIs. She was also unsure whether to unilaterally create and assign the key responsibility areas (KRAs) and KPIs or co-create them with her team members. A confluence of factors weighed heavily on her mind – the pressure of limited time, remote working because of the pandemic, moderately experienced team members, voluntary team membership, lack of positional power and her limited organizational influence. With less than a month to the proposal submission, she had no time to waste.

The case is suitable for courses on performance management systems, human resources and leadership; however, it is particularly relevant to framing KRAs and KPIs, developing outcome-based KPIs and applying the SMART framework to developing KPIs. It can be used in both postgraduate and undergraduate programmes at business schools.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

The purpose of this study is to scrutinize the influence of individual learning styles on the effectiveness of augmented reality (AR)-based learning in structural engineering. There has been a lack of research examining the correlation between learning efficiency and learning style, particularly in the context of quantitatively assessing the efficacy of AR in structural engineering education.

Using Kolb’s experiential learning theory (ELT), a model that emphasizes learning through experience, students from the construction management department are assigned four learning styles (converging, assimilating, diverging and accommodating). Performance data were gathered, appraised, and compared through the three dimensions from the Knowledge, Attitude and Practices (KAP) survey model across four categories of Kolb’s learning styles in both text-graph (TG)-based and AR-based learning settings.

The findings indicate that AR-based materials positively impact structural engineering education by enhancing overall learning performance more than TG-based materials. It is also found that the learning style has a profound influence on learning effectiveness, with AR technology markedly improving the information retrieval processes, particularly for converging and assimilating learners, then diverging learners, with a less significant impact on accommodating learners.

These results corroborate prior research analyzing learners' outcomes with hypermedia and informational learning systems. It was found that learners with an “abstract” approach (convergers and assimilators) outperform those with a “concrete” approach (divergers and accommodators). This research emphasizes the importance of considering learning styles before integrating technologies into civil engineering education, thereby assisting software developers and educational institutions in creating more effective teaching materials tailored to specific learning styles.

The study aims to assess the effectiveness of engaging tutors in designing and using ICT integrated lesson activities in strengthening their pedagogical use of ICT competences.

Survey data from an intervention group of 70 tutors from two teachers colleges (TCs) were used to compare their level of ICT competences and domains of professional practice before and after the intervention. Document analysis, lesson observations and feedback from the learning management system (LMS) were used to describe tutors’ experiences from the intervention.

There was a statistically significant increase in tutors’ level of pedagogical use of ICT competences and domains of professional practice associated with hands-on practice in designing and implementing the intervention.

The intervention focus on hands-on practice, actual teaching and learning needs, and the use of active learning strategies like flipped classroom and the LMS, were useful means for tutors to make sense of pedagogical use of ICT competences.

The results offer useful insights to teacher education institutions and policymakers on how to prepare professional learning and supportive policies to enhance teaching and learning with ICT for addressing the learning needs of the subject matter.

Creating 16 ICT integrated lesson activities helped tutors to learn pedagogical use of ICT competences by doing. Use of such intervention could be a useful strategy in teacher education institutions to reposition ICT competence development from reproducing technological competences toward developing knowledge creators who could innovate their pedagogical practice with support from mentors, digital learning resources and networks.

Entrepreneurship education (EE) is critical for developing the skills of tomorrow's entrepreneurs and leaders. While significant research examines the content, student learning processes and outcomes, less studied are the entrepreneurship educators and their pedagogical preferences. Following a cognitive process model of decision-making, this study explores how self-efficacy, philosophy of teaching, entrepreneurship training and teaching experience influence entrepreneurship educator preferences to follow either a teacher-centric or a student-centric approach. This study also includes gender in a secondary analysis of the relationships.

The data were collected from 289 entrepreneurship educators in 2021, and fuzzy-set comparative qualitative analysis (fsQCA) was used to obtain configurations of conditions (causal recipes) that lead to teacher-centric or student-centric model. A secondary analysis explores whether there are different configurations of conditions when gender is added to the analysis.

The results of our fsQCA analysis reveal multiple configurations of conditions (causal recipes) that result in a preference for either a teacher-centric or student-centric approach to teaching entrepreneurship. The authors find that teaching experience is the main condition for the teacher-centric model, while self-efficacy and entrepreneurship training are the main conditions for the pathways leading to student-centric model. The fsQCA results also show that the configurations are affected when gender is taken into account in the analysis.

This study, one of the first of its kind, uses a configurational approach to examine pathways that contribute to the teaching preferences of entrepreneurship educators. This paper uses self-efficacy, teaching philosophy, teaching experience and entrepreneurship training as conditions to identify multiple unique pathways that result in either a teacher-centric or student-centric pedagogical model in EE. Notably, differences by gender are also found in this study.

Researchers have opined that the quality of commitment to pedagogical approaches by lecturers is one of the most important factors in determining student academic success. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the mediating effect of research informed teaching on the relationship between lecturer commitment to use of pedagogical approaches and teaching quality, with a view towards enabling delivery of high quality teaching and learning in HEIs.

The research is based on an online survey of the perception of 186 undergraduate and postgraduate students in four major UK universities. Covariance-based structural equation modelling (SEM) methodology was used to quantity and clarify the influence of lecturers' pedagogical attributes on teaching quality, mediated by research-informed teaching.

Findings reveal that: lecturers' pedagogical attributes have significant positive effect on teaching quality, research-informed teaching have significant positive effect on teaching quality, lecturers' pedagogical attributes have weak positive effect on research-informed teaching, and research-informed teaching partially mediates (indirect effect) the relationship between lecturers' pedagogical attributes and teaching quality.

Structural equation models are useful for clarifying concepts in pedagogy and have implications for education managers on how to improve teaching and learning in HEIs.

The paper presents a unique quantitative model for measuring the degree of teaching quality in universities.