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The purpose of this paper is to propose a new standard of assignment rubrics to minimize various interpretations and confusing expectations of the assignment outcome among all stakeholders and enhance the assignment rubrics to function not only as a grading tool but also as an assignment guiding tool for self-managed learning among open and distance learning (ODL) learners.

The paper looks into the problems and issues related to assignment rubrics such as various interpretation, confusing expectations and the need to have appropriate descriptions in the rubrics in order to reflect proper learning outcome among the assignment stakeholders. To solve these issues, the paper explores the new and improved requirements which were imposed to support the new assignment rubrics for courses in the university via a self-guided manual known as Rubrics Formulation Guide.

Based on the feedback received from university’s lecturers, who also functioned as moderators, it was indicated that the time taken to moderate the assignment rubrics had drastically reduced and in terms of grading, the clarity of the assignment performance expectations among the learners showed improvement, whereby as compared to the previous semester, there was significant drop for the application of remarking of assignments among May 2014 semester learners.

The paper includes implications of developing innovative rubrics that enhance common understanding and consistent expectation of what the final outcome of the assignment should be.

This paper fulfills the purpose of expanding the potential of assignment rubrics which is to guide and grade.

Algorithmic and computational thinking are necessary skills for designers in an increasingly digital world. Parametric design, a method to construct designs based on algorithmic logic and rules, has become widely used in architecture practice and incorporated in the curricula of architecture schools. However, there are few studies proposing strategies for teaching parametric design into architecture students, tackling software literacy while promoting the development of algorithmic thinking.

A descriptive study and a prescriptive study are conducted. The descriptive study reviews the literature on parametric design education. The prescriptive study is centered on proposing the incomplete recipe as instructional material and a new approach to teaching parametric design.

The literature on parametric design education has mostly focused on curricular discussions, descriptions of case studies or studio-long approaches; day-to-day instructional methods, however, are rarely discussed. A pedagogical strategy to teach parametric design is introduced: the incomplete recipe. The instructional method proposed provides students with incomplete recipes for parametric scripts that are increasingly pared down as the students become expert users.

The article contributes to the existing literature by proposing the incomplete recipe as a strategy for teaching parametric design. The recipe as a pedagogical tool provides a means for both software skill acquisition and the development of algorithmic thinking.

This study aims to demonstrate which course elements were responsible for community building, fostering subjectification and learning for being in an online course on environmental and sustainability education (ESE) during the COVID-19 pandemic and physical distancing.

The study investigates a graduate-level course on Environmental Education for Sustainable Living that due to COVID-19 had to be taught mainly online. A retrospective analysis was conducted when the facilitators reflected on why the course, against expectations, appeared to have affected so many students in such a meaningful and profound way as shown by their personal reflections and the course evaluation. Methodologically, this study can be described as explorative and interpretative, although it was complemented by a standardised empirical analytical end-of course evaluation.

Within the context of this study, sense of community is linked to and facilitated by the online learning environment and the educators’ and students’ roles throughout the course. This study found that interaction and inclusion can be augmented by a hybrid educational design and supported by the mutual efforts of educators and students. Reflective tasks and discussions most prominently evoked subjectification. The encouragement of students to see themselves as central subjects and the inclusion of creative tasks supported both personal exploration and sense of community.

This study provides educational institutions teaching online with valuable information regarding course elements that foster subjectification and create a sense of community. This is particularly of interest for the design of online ESE emphasising learning for being and more relational approaches towards teaching and learning.

The sustainability of the global food system hinges on its environmental resiliency and safety, including the health and well-being of its labor force. Single disciplinary courses in liberal arts or science often fail to highlight the overlap between environmental and social vulnerabilities that lead to food insecurity and diminish the sustainability of food systems. This paper aims to present the design and delivery of a successfully co-taught, interdisciplinary module on agricultural labor and sustainable food systems as a case study.

The authors designed a co-taught module in which they joined each other’s respective history and science class sessions at the undergraduate business college where they teach. Innovating the cross-disciplinary content of food security, immigration status, labor exploitation and pesticide exposure, they approached sustainability from the disciplinary perspectives of labor history and environmental science to show how these elements had both unique and overlapping impacts across food systems levels. Comparisons between pre- and post-module survey responses, alongside assessments of a co-authored exam question, measured the effectiveness of this module is changing students’ perspectives as food consumers and as citizens.

This module altered students’ understanding and perspectives around issues of food systems sustainability. Assessments indicated that students increased their awareness of agricultural workers at the front end of the food system, during production; students also gained awareness beyond consumption as they came to see the connections between workforce invisibility and ecosystem degradation.

These insights are valuable to educators at all institutional levels who seek to collaborate on sustainability initiatives and teaching, both in the singular, robust modules and in building modules that will lead to the development of entire courses focused on sustainability. The module described here builds on previous demonstrations of the value, significance and effectiveness of cross-disciplinary collaborations; it pioneers the use of the food system as the link between social and environmental sustainability education.

To construct a scientific and reasonable indicator system, it is necessary to design a set of standardized indicator primary selection and optimization inspection process. The purpose of this paper is to provide theoretical guidance and reference standards for the indicator system design process, laying a solid foundation for the application of the indicator system, by systematically exploring the expert evaluation method to optimize the index system to enhance its credibility and reliability, to improve its resolution and accuracy and reduce its objectivity and randomness.

The paper is based on system theory and statistics, and it designs the main line of “relevant theoretical analysis – identification of indicators – expert assignment and quality inspection” to achieve the design and optimization of the indicator system. First, the theoretical basis analysis, relevant factor analysis and physical process description are used to clarify the comprehensive evaluation problem and the correlation mechanism. Second, the system structure analysis, hierarchical decomposition and indicator set identification are used to complete the initial establishment of the indicator system. Third, based on expert assignment method, such as Delphi assignments, statistical analysis, t-test and non-parametric test are used to complete the expert assignment quality diagnosis of a single index, the reliability and validity test is used to perform single-index assignment correction and consistency test is used for KENDALL coordination coefficient and F-test multi-indicator expert assignment quality diagnosis.

Compared with the traditional index system construction method, the optimization process used in the study standardizes the process of index establishment, reduces subjectivity and randomness, and enhances objectivity and scientificity.

The innovation point and value of the paper are embodied in three aspects. First, the system design process of the combined indicator system, the multi-dimensional index screening and system optimization are carried out to ensure that the index system is scientific, reasonable and comprehensive. Second, the experts’ background is comprehensively evaluated. The objectivity and reliability of experts’ assignment are analyzed and improved on the basis of traditional methods. Third, aim at the quality of expert assignment, conduct t-test, non-parametric test of single index, and multi-optimal test of coordination and importance of multiple indicators, enhance experts the practicality of assignment and ensures the quality of expert assignment.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a qualitative observational study of how middle managers in healthcare in the UK on a work-based masters programme in leadership were introduced to foundational aspects of creativity and delivering innovation through an assignment on contemporary architectural design.

The assignment involved individual research of a recent architectural design followed by group poster presentations of findings and structured analysis. No prior knowledge of design was required. An activity theory approach was used to explore common principles of creativity and leading innovation, key features of design processes and tools for facilitating implementation.

A total of 89 managers in seven cohorts completed the assignment. Data from process records and group work, artefacts and follow-up evaluation questionnaires were analysed within an interpretive approach. Analysis of data lent support for the view that exploring architectural design as an activity system helped participants to develop conceptual and applied links between management performance, creative collaboration and delivering innovation in their own, different field of practice. Where participants expressed limited self-efficacy regarding the capacity for fostering creativity, this was usually ascribed to systemic inhibitors.

Exploring architectural design could provide a relatively low-cost, highly stimulating component of management development programmes seeking to harness the contribution of creative industries to foster work-based creativity and innovation.

This study explores a novel use of architectural design within the context of work-applied development programmes for healthcare managers.

This paper aims to provide evidence that online well-designed educational tasks can provide more relevant and richer active learning environment for business English learners. The benefits of online tasks, as an education tool, became more apparent and gained more importance during the events related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The task design is based on task-based interactions and in a sequence of tasks with the support of an online learning management system (LMS). The findings suggest that online task-based learning (and would-be blended learning in the future) enables meaningful and authentic activities promoting interactions and communicative competences to prepare for learners of business English to enter the workplace.

The overarching aim of the study is to explore how task-design-utilizing online LMS could contribute to enhancing the learning process and to the development of the learner's communicative competences. The study included two aspects, namely: (1) the design of online tasks and (2) pilot evaluation. The task design involved tasks that required interactions between the learners. The pilot evaluation relied on data collection via questionnaires.

Two aspects relating to the findings: (1) a description of the teaching initiatives which was designed to see how blended learning and online tasks can enhance learning and develop the skills of the learners: with questioning techniques targeting communication skills, simulated workplace situations and timely feedback and peer influence; (2) the findings of the pilot study evaluation to see the actual implementation of online tasks. The students' responses corroborate the teachers' comments. The findings of this research showed that LMS tasks, which were designed for this study, helped the learners to enhance their competence in business English. Such competences included communicative skills needed for learners to enter the workplace such as interpersonal skills, presentation skills and negotiation skills in contexts. These findings lead to significant recommendations regarding the way forward for developing active blended learning.

Firstly, teachers need to be trained and involved in designing such online tasks and materials to be used in active blended learning. More training in language teaching methodologies should be investigated to adapt the transition from a traditional to a computer-assisted language learning teacher. This helps teachers to design and implement online simulated workplace tasks. Secondly, time for the use of online tasks should be allocated satisfactorily. This can be achieved by building online learning sessions into class schedule or developing active blended courses. The time for the use of online simulated tasks should be allocated satisfactorily with lab or simulation room, in which students would be shown how to access the online tasks designed on the university LMS and the way to practice with different kinds of tasks.

In this study context, the online tasks design can initiate at activity-level blending to support face-to-face (F2F) activities, for example, online activities to support tasks for the topic Make a request or Offer for help. This can be extended to course-level blending when more online activities are designed to use with F2F activities such as online comparing and contrasting tasks to develop skills in connections with the awareness of cultures. The findings of the research suggest to develop and to implement online tasks alongside with classroom learning and teaching to enable the objectives of business English programme at university for preparing learners to enter the workplace. The recent pandemic highlighted the need for effective methodologies for active blended learning. It is now required that professionals in higher education to collect evidence base to inform future practice of such methodologies. Further significant research efforts should be directed towards collecting such evidence of the effectiveness and improvements of such methods. The support of higher education management professionals in securing funding for such research will be essential.

To encourage more just open educational practices, the purpose of this paper is to describe Jose Medina’s theory of epistemic justice and develop a framework applying this conception of epistemic justice to OEP through learning design. The authors hope this framework will help researchers and practitioners develop more equitable learning experiences in open educational contexts.

This paper is conceptual and design-oriented. This paper seeks to draw relationships between José Medina’s work in The Epistemology of Resistance, recent empirical studies in learning design and OEP. By analyzing relationships between these works, this paper lays out design principles that can empower educators seeking to create equitable open learning experiences.

This paper finds several generative intersections between the social justice centered epistemology presented by Medina, empirical learning design studies and OEP. This study finds that structured learning designs which integrate well-researched principles may provide guidance for further practice and research in ways not generally discussed in open education literature. This paper builds on these findings by describing practical ways these intersections can be implemented in OEP.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first theoretical analysis of the relationship between epistemic justice and OEP.

In the wake of the pandemic (COVID-19) throughout the United States, many educators had to promptly switch to online modality to continue to provide education to students with safety through physical distancing requirements. This study mainly focuses on delivering an Information Systems module aligned with the information systems curriculum model during a pandemic.

The authors used data collection techniques from student assignments and course tasks. These data are used for the purpose of academic assessment for the Information Systems program. The student performance is assessed on a 5-point scale (1 being low and 5 being high) for the synchronous and the asynchronous tasks related to the course. The authors compared the student performance during the pandemic to the pre-pandemic semester.

This study revealed that the technical module of an information systems course can be successfully delivered during a pandemic in a remote session. However, the authors found that there is a decline in the student performance in synchronous tasks and asynchronous tasks. But the decline of the student performance in the synchronous tasks is greater than that of the asynchronous tasks. The result of this study helps the Information Systems program with their assessment and to improve their course delivery during a pandemic.

In this paper, the authors examine the delivery of a technical module in the field of information systems via online learning models. The authors particularly examine the synchronous and asynchronous online learning models in the delivery of the technical module. The lessons learned from transitioning to the online modality can help universities better prepare for the future during unprecedented times.

This paper describes a two-month summer intensive course designed to introduce participants with a hands-on technical craft on robotics and to acquire experience in the low-level details of embedded systems. Attendants started this course with a brief introduction to robotics; learned to draw, design and create a personalized 3D structure for their mobile robotic platform and developed skills in embedded systems. They were familiarize with the practices used in robotics, learning to connect all sensors and actuator, developing a typical application on differential kinematic using Arduino, exploring ROS features under Raspberry Pi environment and Arduino – Raspberry Pi communication. Different paradigms and some real applications and programming were addressed on the topic of Artificial Intelligence. Throughout the course, participants were introduced to programming languages (including Python and C++), advanced programming concepts such as ROS, basic API development, system concepts such as I2C and UART serial interfaces, PWM motor control and sensor fusion to improve robotic navigation and localization. This paper describes not just the concept, layout and methodology used on RobotCraft 2017 but also presents the participants knowledge background and their overall opinions, leading to focus on lessons learned and suggestions for future editions.