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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a contingent shift to remote working and learning worldwide. However, little is known regarding the impact of this shift on internships. Moreover, much of the available literature studies on internships are focused largely on perceptions by students, less so by supervisors. This paper describes the impact of COVID-19 on public health (PH) internships and examines interns' and supervisors' perspectives on their experiences in internships before and during the pandemic.

A cross-sectional study design was conducted on two cohorts of undergraduate students and their supervisors in Singapore. Participants were surveyed using questionnaires with both close-ended and open-ended questions about various aspects of the internship experience. Data were triangulated from these surveys and module evaluation reports, and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.

COVID-19 disrupted internships significantly, with a reduction in the number of placements offered and necessary changes to the internship scope. Overall, the internship experience has been positive. Supervisors and e-interns reported high levels of satisfaction and documented learning gains such as the development of technical skills and soft skills unique to remote work.

The study findings fill current gaps in the literature on supervisor perceptions and internship experiences during COVID-19. Recommendations are proposed to optimize e-internships, a potentially authentic workplace in the post-COVID era.

This paper aims to identify and evaluate resolutions to key learning and teaching challenges in very large courses that involve practical mathematics, such as foundational finance.

A design-based research approach is used across three semesters to iteratively identify practical problems within the course and then develop and evaluate resolutions to these problems. Data are collected from both students and teachers and analysed using a mixed-method approach.

The results indicate that key learning and teaching challenges in large foundational finance courses can be mitigated through appropriate consistency of learning materials; check-your-understanding interactive online content targeting foundational concepts in the early weeks; connection points between students and the coordinator to increase teacher presence; a sustained focus on supporting student achievement within assessments; and signposting relevance of content for the broader program and professional settings. Multiple design iterations using a co-design approach were beneficial to incrementally improve the course and consider multiple perspectives within the design process.

This paper develops a set of design principles to provide guidance to other practitioners who seek to improve their own courses.

The use of design-based research and mixed-method approaches that consider both student and teacher perspectives to examine the design of very large, foundational finance courses is novel.

The United Arab Emirates and Dubai in particular have in recent years attracted an increased number of Western teachers for all educational levels, especially universities. As part of the orientation for a Western teacher before entering a classroom, the main differences between Western and Middle East culture are often highlighted without an effort to explain how these differences are manifested in students’ behavior in courses, or to suggest how the teacher could address them. This paper aims at helping current and future faculty in their professional practice by considering Emirati Arab cultural characteristics as well as strategies adopted by the author to cope with them. Such strategies have been successful, as her students´ evaluations and academic performance distinctions during the last two years have continuously shown.

In Morocco, universities have opted for online courses as a national effort to contain the coronavirus since the early stage. This article aims to analyze university students’ satisfaction with their distance learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article is based on the statistical analysis of a survey conducted in 2020 at the national level among 800 university students from all disciplines enrolled in open access and regulated access institutions in Morocco. Econometrically, the authors used the ordinal logistic regression model after checking several conditions justifying its use.

Findings from analysis reveal that students lacking basic computer skills have a negative perception of this new mode of learning. The results also show a certain sensitivity of the students to the way in which the courses are taught. The satisfaction of the learners largely depends on the duration of the courses, the interactivity, and the teaching methods adopted. In designing, developing, and delivering distance education courses, students’ needs should be taken care of.

This article suggests that for public policies, professional training for teachers should equip them with the pedagogical skills so that they can adjust their teaching according to students’ levels. Training in digital tools must also be provided to bridge the digital divide and accelerate positive change and adaptation to this new mode of training. In addition, this article highlights the role of interactivity in increasing adaptation to distance learning.

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate a deeper understanding of the uses and users of performance measurement (PM) in the university context.

Empirical data were gathered from four universities. This approach allows for a multilevel and comparative analysis based on the neo-institutional theory. The results are discussed alongside interdisciplinary literature on the use of PM in the public sector.

PM practices at universities have become increasingly popular on institutional, organisational and individual levels. The results indicate that different types of PM are used in universities and that the extent, and scope of PM used by various actors differ. Universities often use PM in a ceremonial and symbolic manner, with the aim of legitimising themselves externally as research-oriented institutions. The use of PM depends on both, exogenous factors (such as isomorphic pressures) and endogenous factors related to the different responses of organisations and individual actors (university managers, and academics). However, the analysis at the internal level reveals different attitudes and some resistance to the use of such kinds of PM. In universities with a local focus, the use of PM for rational decision-making is generally loosely coupled with the reporting performance for external accountability purposes. Moreover, the internal use of PM can be also symbolic.

This paper focusses on four case studies that are currently undergoing changes. The comparative analysis is supported by the use of different data collection methods and several in-depth interviews with key university actors.

The authors assume that the use of PM depends on a number of exogenous and endogenous factors. PM uses and users are discussed in the specific context of the higher education system in Poland. The four business school cases facilitate a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences in terms of the uses and users of PM in the context of internationally and locally oriented universities.

This study describes how two organisations transitioned to teaching Lean online during and post Covid-19. This study aims to establish how Lean teaching and training can be designed and delivered effectively online without adverse effects on the student’s learning experience of Lean concepts.

A case study approach was used to review the design, application and results of the transition to online Lean teaching and training. Qualitative and quantitative methods were deployed to assess the results.

Online Lean learning and application were assured via the design of practical problem-based teaching environments, aided by using the virtual classroom as an obeya room and as a kaizen environment where students worked in teams. Students were enabled to learn and apply Lean tools practically and reflect on their learnings.

This study demonstrates that effective online design can ensure. Lean methods are understood without affecting the student's learning, classroom experience and grasp of concepts.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first studies on implementing Lean training and education online during COVID-19 under the lens of both a training provider and university education viewpoint. The changes validated best practices for virtual Lean education and training in the organisations under study, maintained post-COVID.

The aim of this paper is to generate a streamlined, transparent and effective instrument to fairly measure the contribution made by each student to a group project within a higher education context. The primary aim is to moderate the grades of underperforming students at the end of the project. There is a secondary benefit in alerting underperforming students to raise their contribution mid-task or face a potentially reduced grade at the final stage.

The development of this multi-dimensional instrument is guided by findings from previous research. The quest is to minimise the instructor's administrative work load in applying a moderation-only instrument that is open-source and available at no cost. Based on the literature, the survey instrument seeks to apply a peer-based, equitable and transparent evaluation of each member's contribution to a group task. The survey is applied at mid-task and again at end-task in order to afford underperformers the opportunity to address contribution deficits during the final phase of the project.

The instrument, called TANDEM©, offers a transparent, streamlined, equitable, confidential and practical measure of each student's contribution to a graded group task. Students whose end-task contribution falls below the group average rating receive a proportional reduction in their personal grade. Additionally, the end-task moderation instrument captures a single-item holistic measure of relative contribution that may, in the future, serve as a surrogate for the multi-dimensional measures currently in place.

TANDEM© was developed with group sizes of four or five members in mind. There is no evidence to support its application to three-person groups. Moreover, the application was applied only amongst under-graduate students. It is yet to be applied across post-graduate groups and within online learning environments. Future research into diverse cultural settings would serve to advance understanding of how moderation is perceived across borders.

Several existing group grade moderation methods propose complex algorithms that are “black box” solutions from a student's perspective. In establishing a fair, streamlined, confidential and transparent process for peer-rated moderation, TANDEM© deploys a concise instrument with a relatively small administrative load. TANDEM © may be applied to all groups or can selectively be applied to groups that report moderate, strong or extreme levels of conflict.

Students will appreciate the opportunity to rate peer contributions to group projects. This will dissipate the negative social sentiment that may arise when fellow students benefit from the work of others. Those students seeking conflict resolution within the group will value the transparent and equitable moderation of grades as well as the positive social implications that follow.

This research forms part of an ongoing quest to present a moderation instrument that fairly identifies student contribution to a group project. Whilst the solution proposed is one of many existing alternatives, its focus is on a practical moderation-only instrument that can immediately be applied to a course or major. The benefits lie in the ease of application and minimal administrative workload. This constitutes an original contribution to the individual (course or major) coordinator who seeks to apply a moderation-only instrument without having to commit to an extensive, broad-based group optimisation programme.

This study was conducted to understand students' achievements in learning and to improve the overall curriculum of the first-year experience course.

In this study, a series of questionnaire-based surveys were conducted on students enrolled in the Introductory Seminar for Policy Science, a mandatory first-year experience course offered in the first semester (from April to July) at a university in Japan. The studies were conducted in 2015 (n = 29), 2016 (n = 29) and 2017 (n = 31).

Results revealed that, regardless of the year, students deepened their understanding of policy science and gained increased confidence to explain what group works and reports are throughout the semester. In addition, students' level of worry about life at the university decreased throughout the course in all three years. A stepwise multiple regression analysis (n = 84) revealed that those students who knew what policy science was (B = 0.271) and had the confidence to write their opinions in reports (B = 0.264) more likely answered that they knew what they wanted to study over four years at the university.

This study revealed that the mandatory first-year experience course taught by the same instructor generated similar educational effects for different students in different years. The results elucidated the progressive effects of different components of the course, eliminating possibilities of any bias or specific characteristics of a single group of students.

The purpose of this paper is to share the author’s viewpoint on how to increase student response rate in course evaluation surveys.

The approach is to highlight measures which increased student response rate in online surveys of the author’s teaching evaluation at The University of the West Indies, Jamaica.

This viewpoint suggests that student response rate to course evaluation can be improved by the lecturer’s effective communication. The examples of effective communication are given in this paper.

This work will encourage the lecturers to initiate more student engagement to improve response rate of their teaching evaluation.