Search results

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to “forced innovation” in the health education industry. High-quality training of the future rural health workforce is crucial to ensure a pipeline of rural health practitioners to meet the needs of rural communities. This paper describes the implementation of an online multidisciplinary teaching program focusing on integrated care and the needs of rural communities.

A multidisciplinary teaching program was adapted to allow students from various disciplines and universities to learn together during the COVID-19 pandemic. Contemporary issues such as the National Aged Care Advocacy Program for Residential Aged Care COVID-19 Project were explored during the program.

This case study describes how the program was adopted, how learning needs were met, practical examples (e.g. the Hand Hygiene Advocacy within a Rural School Setting Project), the challenges faced and solutions developed to address these challenges. Guidelines are proposed for remote multidisciplinary learning among health professional students, including those in medical, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, and allied health disciplines.

The originality of this program centers around students from multiple universities and disciplines and various year levels learning together in a rural area over an extended period of time. Collaboration among universities assists educators in rural areas to achieve critical mass to teach students. In addition it provides experiences and guidance for the work integrated learning sector, rural health workforce practitioners, rural clinical schools, universities, policy makers, and educators who wish to expand rural online multidisciplinary learning.

Rural education research has historically been cast in a deficit lens, with rural places characterized by their problems or shortcomings, as if the way of understanding rural itself is to compare it to nonrural locales. These intransigent and narrow perceptions of rurality hinders recognition of the assets and possibilities of rural places. The purpose of this paper is to apply community-empowering, transgressive knowledge to analyses of rural communities to advance rural education research and practice.

In this conceptual paper, the authors propose an asset-based, conceptual framework to ground rural research and education practices: rural cultural wealth.

The authors describe and explore the concept of rural cultural wealth within the context of education. Furthermore, the authors discuss the dynamics of rurality and propose four constructs that comprise the rural cultural wealth framework, rural resourcefulness, rural ingenuity, rural familism and rural community unity, and consider implications for future research and practice.

The goal of this paper is to advance a rural cultural wealth framework aimed to interrupt social reproduction of educational inequities that impact rural students.

In recent years, diversity and inclusion in higher education has become a topic of increased interest both nationally and internationally. Given the importance of this topic in today's world, it is surprising that the research is limited, especially with university students in the rural areas. This study examines on-campus students' perceptions of university diversity initiatives, and their value to the university environment.

Focus-group interviews with both undergraduate and graduate students from a public university in rural Michigan, USA, were conducted. Focus groups were used in this study because they are a particularly good method for generating discussion and stimulating ideas.

Overall, the participants identified several positive attitudes toward diversity and inclusion that included being accepting and respectful. However, it is significant that some participants are limited in their perceptions of culturally diverse backgrounds, which has resulted in some anxiety.

This study not only provides guidance to current institution administrators to create effective inclusive environments in their university. It can also be treated as a model for other rural universities, as building a successful inclusive environment in the future.

This study compared approaches to school closures in four Latin American countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru), describing the impact on the health and educational wellbeing of school-age children and youth, and evaluating their approaches in regard to continuing education through the pandemic.

We collected 75 publicly available documents including scientific and gray literature (government documents and news releases), that referred to school closures and their impact on children’s health and wellbeing. We did thematic analyses using open, axial, and selective coding and applied the latest Health Promoting Schools standards and indicators to the findings.

Results showed that countries followed epidemiological reasons for prioritizing school closures while adopting some policies that abide by Health Promoting School principles. While they emphasized the need to reopen schools so that instruction could continue, school closures were among the longest in the world. The most significant impacts on wellbeing identified in the four countries were related to food security and mental health.

This study focused on a particular set of documents, and it may not capture the full spectrum of relevant information in different contexts or regions.

By comparing school closures approaches among four Latin American countries, this study highlights the importance of context-specific interventions. In a post-pandemic era, lessons learned from these experiences should help foster more resilient and inclusive educational systems and explore the paths forward for following the new Health Promoting Schools framework in the region.

Cross-country qualitative analyses on this topic are rare. This study adds to the knowledge base by eliciting lessons for future health education research and policy efforts.

Leaders are needed in all areas of life. A question arises, “Where do leaders come from and how do they develop the skills necessary to be effective?” Colleges and universities have been developing leadership skills since their inception (Astin, 1996). This study examined students in a college of agriculture to determine if students’ perceptions about leadership skills varied based on participation in collegiate organizations and whether a participant held a collegiate officer position. Results indicated 55% were active in collegiate organizations and 23% held an officer position. For the most part student perceptions related to the impact on leadership skill development did not vary between the groups and were “positive” in nature. It was noted that approximately 36% of all responses were “negative” toward the collegiate organizations’ ability to develop leadership skills. Therefore, recommendations include that individuals in leadership positions should examine their organizations’ ability to develop members’ leadership abilities.

This paper investigates the impact of education on output of rice farming households in Vietnam.

Given the literature review, this paper specifies three empirical models (i.e. linear constant coefficient model, partially nonlinear model and linear varied coefficient model) with variables that well describe the mechanism through which education affects output. The data were collected from 901 rice farming households randomly selected out of ten provinces and city in the Mekong River Delta (MRD) of Vietnam. The models are estimated using ordinary least squares (OLS) and Robinson's (1988) double residual estimators.

Estimates of the empirical models show that seed, fertilizer, labor and farm size have significant impacts on output of rice farming households while pesticide and herbicide do not. Education is also found to have a positive effect on output of rice farming households because it helps them better manage farms of larger size via combining various inputs in a more desirable way.

This paper confirms the positive impact of education on agricultural output, which implies that policies aiming to provide better education to rural people will greatly enhance their income as well as trigger long-term economic and agricultural growth.

The study aims at analyzing the perception of teachers and students about online classes. The work tries to explain the opinions of students as regards the impact of online courses, their comfortability in its usag, and the support received from teachers in online classes along with teachers' opinions on efficacy, teaching practice followed and training received for an online class.

The analysis was carried out using the data collected through two separate structured questionnaires for students and teachers in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi District in Karnataka. Data were recorded in SPSS and analyzed by using descriptive statistics.

The study reveals that students are comfortable with online classes and are getting enough support from teachers but they do not believe that online classes will replace traditional classroom teaching. It also finds that teachers are facing difficulties in conducting online classes due to a lack of proper training and development for doing online classes. Technical issues are the major problem for the effectiveness of the online classes.

Most of the colleges think of implementing online classes in their courses. Hence, it becomes essential to obtain the opinions of participants of online classes before applying for it. This study may help colleges to get a general view of online classes among teachers and students.

Internet and new technologies gained importance in all fields including the education sector which gave scope for online classes. In addition to this, the COVID pandemic worldwide has also added to the relevance of online classes. In this light, it is necessary to understand student–teacher perceptions regarding online classes.

As online teaching/learning is a new phenomenon with reference to regular degree programs in institutions of higher education in India (the situation having being thrust upon both students and faculty due to COVID-19 pandemic), an exploratory-descriptive study was carried out to find out how public university students in India perceive online teaching/learning (OTL) during the present pandemic, the methods of OTL being used by faculty and the challenges being faced by the students.

Online interviews with 40 students of three public universities in Delhi/NCR were conducted using open-ended and close-ended questions. The questionnaire was emailed to 82 university students of Commerce and Management specialisation out of which 40 responded. We analysed each participants interview responses using content analysis technique and categorised the themes/factors that emerged under suitable headings using the coding method. The frequencies of the occurrence of the themes/factors were thus determined and documented, and percentages were calculated. The questionnaire also had Likert-scale questions as they are useful to measure latent constructs.

Inadequate bandwidth and poor network connectivity were found to be major hindrances during OT/L. The other challenges were unsuitable home environment for attending online classes, feeling of isolation and demotivation due to lack of face-to-face interaction and excessive screen-time causing fatigue. Active online methods such as live lectures by faculty and article/case study/discussions facilitated live by faculty were most preferred while the passive method of learning such as online certification courses through education portals such as Swayam/ Coursera/Udemy, etc were least preferred. The level of satisfaction from student–faculty interaction was more than that from student–student interaction.

The study covered three public universities in India and the sample size was small because of limitations created by COVID-19 pandemic situation as campuses were closed and it was not possible to meet students personally to get responses.

Universities should provide data cards or access to university computer labs to those students who are from economically weaker sections of society so that online teaching may be effective. This will also help students who live in very small houses and do not have a quiet corner to study online. Other solution would be to reduce online teaching duration. This issue needs the attention of educational institution leaders as most universities have scheduled classes from morning till evening, as it was during real classroom teaching. Eight hours of online classes every day may not be feasible when Internet access is a critical problem. Teachers should encourage interaction between students so that the feeling of isolation may be reduced and students may be motivated to learn and take more interest in virtual classes.

50% of the Indian population does not have access to the Internet, while a large section that does have, cannot afford the cost of high-speed data that is needed for long-duration online classes spanning over months. Those who can afford it, do not have the privacy to engage effectively in classes on video conferencing portals. Both students and teachers suffer due to poor audio and video quality caused by poor infrastructure. COVID-19 has brought to focus, the severe inequality in some societies. Societies need to take serious cognizance of this issue and take appropriate measures.

This study is very unique as the radical change from real classroom to online teaching in Indian public universities is a very unique phenomenon. The disruption was forced due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and students along with their teachers learned the process “on-the-job”. As the issues and challenges faced by students were unexplored, this study aims to contribute knowledge to this existing research gap.