Community-based learning is essentially a form of
experiential education with a civic underpinnin... more Community-based learning is essentially a form of experiential education with a civic underpinning. In practice, what this means is that students gain academic credit for the learning they derive from participating in and reflecting on an experience within community and society.
Programming is an essential skill that all computing students must master. However programming ca... more Programming is an essential skill that all computing students must master. However programming can be difficult to learn. Compiler error messages are crucial for correcting errors, but are often difficult to understand and pose a barrier to progress for many novices. High frequencies of errors, particularly repeated errors, have been shown to be indicators of students who are struggling with learning to program. This study involves a custom IDE that enhances Java compiler error messages, intended to be more useful to novices than those supplied by the compiler. The effectiveness of this approach was tested in an empirical control/intervention study of approximately 200 students generating almost 50,000 errors. The design allows for direct comparisons between enhanced and non-enhanced error messages. Results show that the intervention group experienced reductions in the number of overall errors, errors per student, and several repeated error metrics. This work is important for two reasons. First, the effects of error message enhancement have been recently debated in the literature. This study provides substantial evidence that it can be effective. Second, these results should be generalizable at least in part, to other programming languages, students and institutions, as we show that the control group of this study is comparable to several others using Java and other languages.
When students leave education and enter employment they often need to be able to work with a team... more When students leave education and enter employment they often need to be able to work with a team towards a shared goal. The requirement to assign grades to these activities makes it difficult to provide opportunities to practice group work in schools or colleges. Common issues encountered include group members who have not contributed significantly obtaining a better grade than is merited and students who perform strongly on an individual basis being anxious that they may receive a lower mark than usual. An assessment rubric that incorporates individual and group elements, and considers the collaborative group process as well as the product, can be used to overcome these issues. Peer and self-assessment can also be useful but clear guidelines are required. The extent of each group member’s contribution to both the process and the product can be difficult to determine directly and a group wiki can be a very effective tool for achieving this. (An electronic version of this article is...
Diversity of students entering third level science education has been widely discussed and attrib... more Diversity of students entering third level science education has been widely discussed and attributed to the government policy on widening of participation in education. This has led to an enhanced number of “non traditional” students entering third level courses in Ireland. The diversity of the current third level student body may be attributed to the raised awareness of students with learning difficulties and also to the increase in multi cultural students in Irish third level colleges. One learning strategy that has been introduced into the teaching practice of first year chemistry courses in the Dublin Institute of Technology has been the use of Chemistry Crosswords. There are many advantages of the Crosswords as a support tool as they; engage students in a “fun” learning activity are designed to revise course work helps students with learning difficulties and students in which English is not their first language to spell chemistry terms correctly in the assigned boxes can be de...
Journal of the Chemical Society, Perkin Transactions 2, 2002
... 2, 2002, 784-795 DOI:10.1039/B109242C (Paper). Enolketo tautomerism of 9-anthrol and hydroly... more ... 2, 2002, 784-795 DOI:10.1039/B109242C (Paper). Enolketo tautomerism of 9-anthrol and hydrolysis of its methyl ether. Geraldine M. McCann, Claire M. McDonnell, Lara Magris and Rory A. More O'Ferrall*. Department of Chemistry, University College, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland ...
Rate and equilibrium measurements for the hydrolysis of the Fe(CO)3-coordinated cyclohexadienyl c... more Rate and equilibrium measurements for the hydrolysis of the Fe(CO)3-coordinated cyclohexadienyl cation lead to pKR = 4.7 compared with pKR = -2.1 for the uncoordinated ion. The hydrolysis yields exo-coordinated cyclohexadienol 10(7)-fold more rapidly than its endo-isomer, despite the isomers being of similar stability. DFT calculations of the energy of isodesmic transfer of Fe(CO)3 from cyclohexadiene to benzene lead to an estimate of pKa 8 for loss of a proton from the coordinated cyclohexadienyl cation to form Fe(CO)3-coordinated benzene. This implies that the coordinated cation is 33 log units (46 kcal) less acidic than the uncoordinated ion.
A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) was developed using WebCT software and was piloted in 2004 i... more A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) was developed using WebCT software and was piloted in 2004 in the School of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences in DIT by the authors. This was one of a number of measures introduced with the aim of supporting and retaining first year undergraduates on the Science ordinary degree programme and was designed as a Chemistry Support Initiative (CSI) for first year Chemistry learning and teaching (O'Connor, 2005). This work was supported through funding from the DIT ...
This Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Chemical and Ph... more This Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at ARROW@DIT. It has been accepted for inclusion in Conference Papers by an authorized administrator of ARROW@DIT. For more information, please contact yvonne.desmond@dit.ie, arrow.admin@dit.ie. ... This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License ... Recommended Citation Cresswell, S., Fox, J., McDonnell, C., O'Connor, C., O'Donnell, C., Seery, M.: Enhancing Forensic ...
Community-based learning is essentially a form of
experiential education with a civic underpinnin... more Community-based learning is essentially a form of experiential education with a civic underpinning. In practice, what this means is that students gain academic credit for the learning they derive from participating in and reflecting on an experience within community and society.
Programming is an essential skill that all computing students must master. However programming ca... more Programming is an essential skill that all computing students must master. However programming can be difficult to learn. Compiler error messages are crucial for correcting errors, but are often difficult to understand and pose a barrier to progress for many novices. High frequencies of errors, particularly repeated errors, have been shown to be indicators of students who are struggling with learning to program. This study involves a custom IDE that enhances Java compiler error messages, intended to be more useful to novices than those supplied by the compiler. The effectiveness of this approach was tested in an empirical control/intervention study of approximately 200 students generating almost 50,000 errors. The design allows for direct comparisons between enhanced and non-enhanced error messages. Results show that the intervention group experienced reductions in the number of overall errors, errors per student, and several repeated error metrics. This work is important for two reasons. First, the effects of error message enhancement have been recently debated in the literature. This study provides substantial evidence that it can be effective. Second, these results should be generalizable at least in part, to other programming languages, students and institutions, as we show that the control group of this study is comparable to several others using Java and other languages.
When students leave education and enter employment they often need to be able to work with a team... more When students leave education and enter employment they often need to be able to work with a team towards a shared goal. The requirement to assign grades to these activities makes it difficult to provide opportunities to practice group work in schools or colleges. Common issues encountered include group members who have not contributed significantly obtaining a better grade than is merited and students who perform strongly on an individual basis being anxious that they may receive a lower mark than usual. An assessment rubric that incorporates individual and group elements, and considers the collaborative group process as well as the product, can be used to overcome these issues. Peer and self-assessment can also be useful but clear guidelines are required. The extent of each group member’s contribution to both the process and the product can be difficult to determine directly and a group wiki can be a very effective tool for achieving this. (An electronic version of this article is...
Diversity of students entering third level science education has been widely discussed and attrib... more Diversity of students entering third level science education has been widely discussed and attributed to the government policy on widening of participation in education. This has led to an enhanced number of “non traditional” students entering third level courses in Ireland. The diversity of the current third level student body may be attributed to the raised awareness of students with learning difficulties and also to the increase in multi cultural students in Irish third level colleges. One learning strategy that has been introduced into the teaching practice of first year chemistry courses in the Dublin Institute of Technology has been the use of Chemistry Crosswords. There are many advantages of the Crosswords as a support tool as they; engage students in a “fun” learning activity are designed to revise course work helps students with learning difficulties and students in which English is not their first language to spell chemistry terms correctly in the assigned boxes can be de...
Journal of the Chemical Society, Perkin Transactions 2, 2002
... 2, 2002, 784-795 DOI:10.1039/B109242C (Paper). Enolketo tautomerism of 9-anthrol and hydroly... more ... 2, 2002, 784-795 DOI:10.1039/B109242C (Paper). Enolketo tautomerism of 9-anthrol and hydrolysis of its methyl ether. Geraldine M. McCann, Claire M. McDonnell, Lara Magris and Rory A. More O'Ferrall*. Department of Chemistry, University College, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland ...
Rate and equilibrium measurements for the hydrolysis of the Fe(CO)3-coordinated cyclohexadienyl c... more Rate and equilibrium measurements for the hydrolysis of the Fe(CO)3-coordinated cyclohexadienyl cation lead to pKR = 4.7 compared with pKR = -2.1 for the uncoordinated ion. The hydrolysis yields exo-coordinated cyclohexadienol 10(7)-fold more rapidly than its endo-isomer, despite the isomers being of similar stability. DFT calculations of the energy of isodesmic transfer of Fe(CO)3 from cyclohexadiene to benzene lead to an estimate of pKa 8 for loss of a proton from the coordinated cyclohexadienyl cation to form Fe(CO)3-coordinated benzene. This implies that the coordinated cation is 33 log units (46 kcal) less acidic than the uncoordinated ion.
A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) was developed using WebCT software and was piloted in 2004 i... more A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) was developed using WebCT software and was piloted in 2004 in the School of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences in DIT by the authors. This was one of a number of measures introduced with the aim of supporting and retaining first year undergraduates on the Science ordinary degree programme and was designed as a Chemistry Support Initiative (CSI) for first year Chemistry learning and teaching (O'Connor, 2005). This work was supported through funding from the DIT ...
This Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Chemical and Ph... more This Conference Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at ARROW@DIT. It has been accepted for inclusion in Conference Papers by an authorized administrator of ARROW@DIT. For more information, please contact yvonne.desmond@dit.ie, arrow.admin@dit.ie. ... This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License ... Recommended Citation Cresswell, S., Fox, J., McDonnell, C., O'Connor, C., O'Donnell, C., Seery, M.: Enhancing Forensic ...
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experiential education with a civic underpinning. In
practice, what this means is that students gain academic
credit for the learning they derive from participating in and
reflecting on an experience within community and society.
experiential education with a civic underpinning. In
practice, what this means is that students gain academic
credit for the learning they derive from participating in and
reflecting on an experience within community and society.