Undergraduates

An important determinant of students’ morbidity and mortal-
ity rate is the access to and use of quality healthcare services. The provision of quality health care is an increasingly dif
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ficult task. Globally, universities do have health centres to pro
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vide  quality  and  affordable  health  care  to  students  of  the  in-
stitution. Access to quality health services provided by the
university  management  is  crucial  to  having  a  reduced  rate  of 
students’  morbidity  and  mortality.  Attitude  towards  utiliza
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tionof health services will be related to the availability of drugs,
health care providers, equipment and accessibility. The World
Health Assembly mandated sound health for all people in the
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year 2000 because it was necessary for socially productive life. In low resource countries, the hospital bed-population and
doctor-population ratio was about 0.4 and 0.2 per 1,000 popu-
lation respectively, while the corresponding figures for the de
-
veloped countries are 6 and 3 per thousand population.

"Project Summary

In brief, we wanted to develop the student guidelines that we had already drafted in ourdepartment, mainly by listening to colleagues and identifying areas of best practice. In addition,we wanted to hear students talk about their experiences of supervision and theirrecommendations for improving quality. Our aim was to produce a set of guidelines that could beused by colleagues across the UK. Once we secured the funding from the LTSN, we collecteddata from both supervisors and students.A key feature of the project was the supervisor workshop (April, 2002). We were pleased that50 colleagues came to participate in the workshop from all over the UK (36 institutions wererepresented). We were fortunate also in having Professor Wendy Hollway (Open University) givethe keynote address, which usefully focussed on the regulatory climate surrounding qualitativeresearch in psychology. She also urged the audience to think carefully about theory in qualitativeresearch, notably with regard to generalisation, subjectivity and ethics. The day’s programmethen centred around small group discussions of the following key questions:

What makes a good undergraduate qualitative project? Give examples of good and badwork

Which qualitative methods are most appropriate for undergraduate level projects, and why?

How much data should students collect at this level, and what are the factors whichmediate this question?

What are the key ethical issues generated by undergraduate qualitative research, and howcan these be addressed?"

Risk management is recognized as an important exercise in order to achieve better performance of construction projects. Success in construction project is indicated by its performance in the achievement of project time, cost, quality, safety and environmental sustainability objectives. Construction projects in Nigeria and generally in the region and the world run a high risk of being well over budget and significantly late. While some degree of cost and time schedule risks is inevitable in construction projects, it is possible to improve risk management strategies to minimize their negative impact. Nigeria’s construction industry poor construction budget and schedule performance informed the need for this study. The objective of the study was to investigate the extent of the risk management practices at planning phase and the affect of these practices on project cost and schedule performance. The risk management practices at construction project planning phase include: risk identification and profiling, architect/engineer selection; site selection and validation, needs identification and validation and cost and schedule development. The study targeted architects, engineers, project managers, quantity surveyors, contractors, and, regulatory authorities in operation in Nigeria and key clients with major investments in the construction industry. The study used both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection. Literature review, physical and email delivered questionnaires and structured interviews was used to collect data. The data was processed using SPSS. Correlation analysis was used to analyze the relationships between the independent and dependent variables.
The research project indicated that risk management practices at planning stage had an effect on project performance. The research project indicated that most projects in Nigeria had some input from a qualified engineer and architect. However most respondents had not studied risk management. While the study indicated that risk management was widely practiced at 92%, the process was mainly informal. The process of risk management was not adequate and no measures were put in place to mitigate the risks. Various project team members had different chances in managing the various risks with the client having the best chance of managing most risks at the planning stage by involving skilled professionals in decision making.
The research project found out that the consulting engineers and architects were often selected before the design phase of a project. This meant that many projects did not benefit from professional input at planning stage. The most used method of selection used for consultants was the quality and cost based selection method. 45.2% of the projects surveyed had poor time performance while 35.7% of the projects had poor cost performance. The project site selection and needs identification happened during planning stage in majority of the projects surveyed and often without the involvement of construction professionals. The site works contribution variations was found to be over 10% of the estimated cost in 45% of the projects surveyed.
Projects were conceived for various reasons customer request, business need and social need ranking high.
Compliance with external politics and organization strategies were key criteria used in project needs validation. The research project found out that expected income, and, return on investment as criteria for project validation, was not used 52.4% of the projects. This was surprising and contrary to expectations. This could be a result of external political strategies being key criteria in project needs validation. There were change orders in 80.5 % of the projects and their effect was fairly large. The preliminary budget development process in most projects was done without the involvement of professionals. There were some projects that were closed before construction works, as the initially anticipated budget was not feasible. In many projects, contractors and consultants were forced to work within unfavorable client financial schedules resulting in incomplete and poor design and delay in construction works. There was strong relationship between designs done in less than two months and the occurrence of variations, change orders and design changes during construction.
This research project recommends a formal and structured risk management practice during project planning and with the involvement of construction professionals and end users. The researcher recommends that risk management be included in the curriculum as an examinable subject for all students undertaking construction related studies. There is need for continuous development seminars in risk management for all construction professionals in Nigeria and especially those in construction projects planning and procurement departments of both private and government developers. This research further recommends that qualified project managers who are either architects or engineers be included in all construction projects site selection, needs identification, and, in preliminary budget and schedule development. End users and beneficiaries should be involved in needs identification at the early stages of a project.

A reference work for specialists in student counselling and for those who employ counsellors in mental health services. It provides an analysis of research in this area and provides useful information on the extent and severity of student mental health problems and the effectiveness of counselling and psychotherapy across the student population. This is the first publication to systematically identify, assess and review research in this area.

This study investigated Undergraduates’ Attitude towards the utilization of OER among Undergraduates and the influence of gender and area of specialization on their attitude towards the use. The study adopted a descriptive method of the quantitative research. 3 research questions were developed and answered. 398 respondents were randomly sampled from 3 purposively selected area of specializations. Frequency counts, percentage, rank order and mean were used to answer research questions 1 to 3. The findings of the study were: Undergraduates have a positive attitude towards utilization of OER for learning; There was difference between male and female undergraduates’ attitude towards the utilization of OER for learning in favor of male undergraduates; and There were no significance differences among undergraduates based on Area of Specialization. The study concluded that students have a positive attitude towards use of OER for learning. The research recommends that institutions should endeavor to create their own OERs where students can access anytime and anywhere.

ICT use helps to facilitate easy access to electronic information for research and learning purposes by undergraduates. The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of gender on the use of ICT among undergraduates in two university libraries in Nigeria. Undergraduates from three faculties were randomly selected to give a sample of 223, which is 30% fraction of the total population of 12,353. Questionnaire was the data collection method used. The undergraduates used ICT for research purpose and to support course of study. ICT use was higher among the undergraduates in Lead City University than those in University of Ibadan. ICT use was influenced by gender in both universities. Recommendations based on the outcome of this study were highlighted in this paper.

Depressive personality disorder (DPD) was included in the appendix of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) for further study. Questions abound regarding this disorder in terms of its distinctiveness from extant diagnostic constructs and clinical significance. This study examines the interrelations between three assessments of DPD and their relations to pathological personality traits and disorders in a sample of undergraduates (N = 182). The DPD indices evinced adequate convergence with each other (mean r = .60) and similar pathological personality profiles. The authors also tested the incremental validity of the DPD scores in relation to psychological functioning, after controlling for depressive symptoms and the DSM-IV personality disorders (PDs). The DPD scores manifested limited incremental validity, mainly in the form of predicting lower levels of positive affectivity. Our results suggest that this is not specific to DPD, however, as the official PDs also manifested limited incremental validity.

This study was conducted to examine the prevalence and correlates of drug abuse among undergraduate athletes in Lagos State Nigeria. Disproportionate stratified random sampling was adopted to select two hundred and fifty athletes. Data were collected through interview and analysed using frequency measures, chi-square of independence and student’s t-test. The findings of the study revealed that there is high prevalence of drug abuse among undergraduate athletes in the study area. Factors identified for abuse of drug include peer influence, desire to feel good, dealing with stressors, such as pressure to perform, injuries, physical pain, improving sexual performance and depression among others. Gender and peer group also have significant effects on drug abuse. Some of the common substance abused are tramadol®, alcohol, codeine, marijuana, alcoholic herbal bitters like daberu®, agbara®, bajinatu®, baby oku®, eru jeje®, alomo®, yahoo® among others. Undergraduate athletes abuse drugs for reasons other than boosting performance, drugs are abused for pleasure, as analgesic, for medical reasons and as aphrodisiac. To mitigate this menace, interventions like, alcohol and drug skills training programmes should be periodically organized for undergraduate athletes, contingency management of drug abuse should be adopted, which involves rewarding athletes each time they are tested negative or shun lifestyle that can lead to abuse of drug. Also strict measures should be taken to dissuade undergraduate athletes from taking these substances.
Keywords: Drug Abuse, performance enhancement, aphrodisiac, undergraduate, athletes

This study is aimed at determining Information Literacy (skills and standards) among undergraduate’s students who majors in English Language at Al-Hussein Bin Talal University. The participants in this study are 142 Male/Female students. The researchers used a questionnaire developed by Mittermeyer and Quirion (2003) to achieve their aim and objective. The results of this study pointed that information skills are not mastered by AHU students, thus this study is recommended for students in AHU University and other institutions of higher learning.

This data article represents academic performances of undergraduate students in a select Nigerian Private Tertiary institution from 2008 to 2013. The 2413 dataset categorizes students with respect to their origins (ethnicity), pre-university admission scores and Cumulative Grade Point Averages earned at the end of their study at the university. We present a descriptive statistics showing mean, median, mode, maximum, minimum, range, standard deviation and variance in the performances of these students and a boxplot representation of the performances of these students with respect to their origins.

The demand for English proficiency in communication in both social and academic contexts in Thailand has been increasing. As a weakness in English skills may cause the loss of job and educational opportunities, many Thai universities provide international programs to provide their students with opportunities for advancement in higher education and future careers. Nevertheless, English is a friend and foe of Thai students because they are learning English in an unsupportive environment – English is only used in the classroom. More opportunities to use the English language in a wider learning process in and outside the language classroom are therefore crucial. The Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach was thus selected to design a course which aims to develop the English communication ability of the Thai undergraduate students in the international program under focus in this study, since CLIL is in instructional approach that encourages the use of an additional lang...

This national study utilizes the Geospatial Thinking Survey (GTS) to assess the geospatial thinking abilities of undergraduates in the United States. A survey of 1479 students from 61 public universities provided the data. The mean score of geography majors was the highest, while that of criminal justice majors was the lowest. The mean score of students who studied at least three college geography courses was significantly higher than those students who took less than three college geography courses. College geography courses apparently bolster student geospatial thinking abilities, thereby corroborating the stronger geospatial thinking skills of geography majors. Moreover, individual questions of the GTS represent different geospatial thinking domains. The results of the internal comparisons of the GTS questions suggest that undergraduate instructors should identify students who need their geospatial thinking ability strengthened in certain domains.

The extent to which university departments foster learning literacies that equip students with the diverse skills required for employment in a digital world is an issue that is under increased scrutiny in British higher education. The Learning Literacies in the Digital Age report (LLiDA by Beetham et al. 2009) offers a framework of learning literacies, which encompasses a range of literacies including academic, information, digital and media literacies. Building on the LLiDA framework, this article outlines and discusses an approach
that aimed to extend the development of information literacies of first-year undergraduate students along with digital and media literacies. The central characteristics of this approach involved students working collaboratively, in teams, on an enquiry-based learning task using
the institutional virtual learning environment’s wiki tool. The task involved developing and creating a wiki on exactly the kind of learning literacies that students were meant to acquire during this enquiry. This dual development was underpinned by the collaborative input of
staff from academic and central services departments. Student survey feedback and observation were used to map the various gains in the areas of 1) collaboration and communication skills, 2) information literacy (IL), academic practice (study skills) and employability skills, 3) media and digital/computer literacies and, finally, 4) disciplinary skills.
The findings confirm the usefulness of the LLiDA framework as well as point to its potential for further development to map literacies specific to the discipline.

Abstract: It has been suggested that research experiences are an important element that should be included in all undergraduate Biology curricula. This is a difficult suggestion to accommodate due to issues with cost, space and time. We addressed this challenge through development of a capstone project in which Biology majors work in groups to develop novel theoretical research proposals with guidance from a faculty mentor. Though students are not directly working at the bench, they are being mentored in aspects of the scientific process such as synthesizing information from the literature, asking novel research questions, constructing logical aims, designing experiments and writing scientifically. Since this project began, we have mentored 417 students in proposal writing and have assessed their experiences through pre- and post-surveys. Students have made gains in several areas, but most notably in their ability to pose novel questions and develop an experimental plan, and in the ...

The primary objective of this research study poster is to explore differences in sources selected by undergraduate students in relation to two factors: 1) purpose of search, and 2) scores on the Problem-Solving Inventory (PSI) based on sources undergraduate students select for both course-related and everyday-life information-seeking purposes. Also considered are differences in self-efficacy, intolerance of uncertainty, and external locus of control scores reliant upon sources selected initially during a search process. Two main research questions were the focus of this study. First, what types of information sources do undergraduates tend to use first during an everyday-life or course-related search, and is context important? Second, do certain user characteristics influence the selection of the first source selected during information searches? A series of chi square and one tailed t tests were performed to examine these research questions in depth. The overarching goal of this research is to use these results to better understand and structure information services for undergraduates.

The smartphones ownership among the undergraduates in Malaysia was recorded as high. However, little was known about its utilization patterns, thus, the focus of this research was to determine the utilisation patterns of smartphones based on the National Education Technology Standard for Students (NETS.S) among engineering undergraduates in Malaysia. This study was based on a quantitative research and the population comprised undergraduates from four Malaysian Technical Universities. A total of 400 questionnaires were analyzed. Based on the results, the undergraduates' utilisation level of smartphones for communication and collaboration tool was at a high level. Meanwhile, utilisation for operations and concepts tool and research and information fluency tool were at moderate level. Finally, smartphones utilisation as digital citizenship tool and critical thinking, problem solving and creativity tool were both at a low level. Hence, more training and workshops should be given to the students in order to encourage them to fully utilise smartphones in enhancing the higher order thinking skills.

Purpose: The internet has profoundly changed the way medical knowledge is shared and accessed. To be a computer-literate physician in the 21st century, the necessary skill-sets need to be learnt sometime during graduate medical training. The current study aims to assess the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) skills and training needs among undergraduate medical students in South India. Methods: A Cross-sectional, questionnaire based survey was administered among undergraduate medical students (n=734) of SRM Medical College Hospital, Chennai, south India. Variables studied include ownership, access to and ease of use of computers and a self-reported assessment of competence to perform specific ICT tasks.

Results: 46.2% of the medical graduates were using a computer ‘almost every day’ and the mean age of first contact with computers was 12.2 +3.8 years. Male students spend more time online than female students (p<0.001). Beyond sending emails and making PowerPoint presentations, majority were not confident in key ICT skills such as online literature search (74.3%) and statistical analysis (79.2%). Less than half of the students had had training in computers previously and more than two-thirds want to take part in computer training programs.

Conclusions: Although a fair degree of self-learning is evident among the medical graduates, key ICT skills such as accessing online health resources need to be imparted systemically.
Formal computer usage training programs - based on needs as measured in the current study - need to be incorporated in to the medical curriculum to equip the physicians of tomorrow with
the skill of life-long self-learning.

Key words: Computer Literacy, Medical graduates, Medical education, Medical Informatics, Internet, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)"

This paper provides a case study that focuses upon the interpretation of freehand drawings produced by a sample of final year degree students of business studies in response to the question: “What is Corporate Social Responsibility?” Student generated freehand drawings are used to bypass cognitive verbal processing routes, thereby facilitating students to produce clearer images of their level of understanding. In using freehand drawing, we are trying to create a creative learning environment where students can develop their understanding of complex ideas and narratives at their own individual pace. The drawings themselves provide insights into how soon-to-be-graduates of business perceive their society and the corporations that operate within it, and thus communicate their understanding of corporate social responsibility.

Try researcher in this study to identify the objectives of the National Educational and sources to derive educational objectives and the methods and means to achieve the objectives of National Education and the subjects and courses that are taught in the subject of national education in the levels of education in a range of

The success of using agile methodologies for collaborative work in industry, has led to adopt these methodologies for teaching Software Engineering. The curricula has evolved in recent years in order to introduce the use of agile development, so that the students practice their use and train the required skills for project-based collaborative work. Agile methodologies are characterized by being iterative and incremental, with short cycles, constant deliveries and a high level of interaction among team members. These characteristics constitute a challenge for educators and students since, in short periods of time, it is necessary to evaluate and provide feedback to individual and group work, regarding aspects like methodology usage, tools management, and collaboration within the team. For that reason, a Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environment has been developed to assist academics in evaluating and providing feedback to students. The CSCL environment is based on the collaborative platform GitLab, which has been adapted to implement concepts associated to SCRUM, an agile methodology widely adopted. Additionally, the use of GitLab allows to automatically collect information regarding individual and team work of students. Using GitLab data collected, a Learning Analytics platform has been developed in order to analyse group and individual work during the execution of student projects using SCRUM. The objective is to determine if SCRUM helps students to elaborate better software, by evaluating methodology adoption and quality of the resulting software. A prototype of the platform was developed and used in a Software Engineering undergrad course at a Spanish University, in which 79 students divided into groups of 3-4 people, developed two independent projects. Preliminary results show that the proposed CSCL environment helps in providing insight for evaluating and giving feedback to students. Additionally, the data collected by the CSCL environment showed a good correlation of SCRUM adoption by students and quality of resulting software.

The rapidly developing interest in qualitative methods in psychology (defined as interpretative studies of specific issues or problems in which the researcher is central to the sense that is made – Elliott, Fischer, & Rennie, 1999) is currently being paralleled by students’ use of qualitative methods in final year research projects, which is itself a piece of independent research required for programme accreditation by the British Psychological Society. Whilst most students produce qualitative projects of a good standard, there is evidence that both students and supervisors of such research experience demands specific to this methodology.

Student anxiety with qualitative methods

Following a national workshop exploring the supervision of undergraduate qualitative research, Madill, Gough, Lawton and Stratton (in press) report that students experience anxiety around their ability to deploy qualitative methods despite teaching on and practice in such methods at Levels 1 and 2. This is echoed in supervisors' concerns about student preparedness for designing qualitative research, interviewing participants and conducting qualitative analyses, which often translate into heavy time-demands on both final year students and their supervisors.

Student satisfaction with supervision

The project supervision system within the Department of Psychology at Leeds is typical of most UK psychology departments in offering one-to-one project supervision with final year students. Student feedback (June 2005) evidences satisfaction with the supervision process; students, however, also report anxiety about their projects and a need for more reassurance about their project management and further opportunities to ‘chat through’ their progress.

Seeking to enhance the experience

Whilst the Department is entirely satisfied with the quality and quantity of supervision to final year students (many students report supervision as ‘excellent’ and supervision is part of the Department’s teaching observation system), there is a case for seeking to enhance the student experience, and potentially the final written product, in relation to project work. We are seeking to achieve this by establishing, monitoring and evaluating ReGrouP (Research Groups in Psychology), a series of trial discussion groups to facilitate peer interaction in the design, implementation and analysis of qualitative project work. The project, running from October 2005, has received funding from the Higher Education Academy Psychology Network, under its Departmental Teaching Enhancement Scheme.

Collaborative work is good for students

Despite student caution about group work, there is evidence that when students participate as stakeholders, the reported benefit is high. Mitchell-Williams et al (2004) report that collaborative work, rather than diluting the research experience, contributes to students’ ownership of their projects. They become more responsible for absorbing ideas and processes useful to their own project (McMichael, 1992) without having to ‘surrender power to the experts’ (Ashworth, 2004, p 157).

Aims of the group work project

As well as enhancing student learning, the groups aim to promote the development and subsequent articulation of research skills (e.g. interviewing, data analysis) and group skills (e.g. managing criticism, progressing a discussion, etc).

The timings and aims of the discussion groups reflect both the pivotal times in the research process and the usual focus of one-to-one supervision meetings. A sample of these groups will be systematically observed over the year and, in conjunction with formal student feedback and focus groups, the researchers hope to isolate how students:
•engage with group work whilst maintaining responsibility and ownership of personal project work;
• manage group discussions that require a disclosure of independent, personal work;
• seek and receive peer feedback on their work;
steer group discussions to a level at which they can participate in and benefit from;
• evidence learning that occurs through the discussion;
utilise group work to enhance their own research;
• combine the learning available in one-to-one supervision with that available through group work.

The groups will run throughout the current academic year, and analysis of group activity will be conducted by the end of Summer 2006. The outcomes of the study will be available by September 2006.

References

Ashworth, P. (2004) Understanding as the transformation of what is already known. Teaching in Higher Education, 9 (2).

Elliott, R., Fischer, C.T. & Rennie, D.L. (1999). Evolving guidelines for publication of qualitative research studies in psychology and related fields. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 38, 215-229.

McMichael, P. (1992) Tales of the unexpected: supervisors’ and students’ perspectives on short-term projects and dissertations. Educational Studies, 18 (3), 299-310.

Madill, A., Gough,B., Lawton, R., & Stratton, P. (in press). How should we supervise qualitative projects? The Psychologist.

Mitchell-Wiliams, Z., Wilkins, P., McClean, M., Nevin, W., Wastell, K. & Wheat, R. (2004) The importance of the personal element in collaborative research, Educational Action Research, 12 (3).

Background: Mentoring is a crucial step for career success and there is lot of stress of different engineering courses in the new environment along with emotional immaturity and new challenges. A well-designed and structured mentoring programme for the budding engineers has been introduced at IIT. A specialized institutional support is required for an IIT student to facilitate success. To facilitate this high level of success for every student, the approach should be active and antecedent. Mentoring has always been an important part in an engineering students' career. Material and methods: A mentorship programme were designed for engineering students (n-120) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur. Two-day workshop was conducted to sensitize senior students of third semester (n-15) who volunteered to be dedicated mentors. After sensitization, 120 B.Tech first semester students were divided among these mentors by a lottery system. At the end of the mentorship programme, perception of mentors and mentees was done by content analysis of all the data collected by open ended and close ended questionnaire. Results: A total of 120 students and 15 mentors completed the feedback questionnaire. Mentors themselves consider this programme helpful in their self-improvement as role models, advisors or career counselors and in improving their communication skills and mentees were of the view that the programme helped them emotionally and academically. Conclusion: Mentor-mentee programme in IIT enhanced the engineering students professional and personal development and both mentors and mentees were extremely satisfied with this programme for career development.

Try researcher in this study to identify the objectives of the National Educational and sources to derive educational objectives and the methods and means to achieve the objectives of National Education and the subjects and courses that are taught in the subject of national education in the levels of education in a range of

This study examined the effect of the ASEI-PDSI approach in the teaching and learning of mathematics in selected secondary schools in Vihiga County, Kenya. Two research objectives the study sought to achieve were: (i) to determine the effects of the ASEI – PDSI approach on students ’ achievement in mathematics, and (ii) to determine the effect of ASEI-PDSI approach on students ’ views and attitudes towards the learning and teaching of mathematics. The study was based on the information processing theoretical construct. According to this theory, the learner during instruction is involved in active information processing that engages him/her to directly attend to the stimulus conditions and using his thought processes acts and reacts to the information. The approach embraces the three principles of active learning; hands-on activities, minds-on and mouths-on activities. Questionnaires, interview schedules and video recordings were used to collect information from the subjects. In the ...

Student engagement has been known to be positively associated with academic performance, but there has been a lack of studies that highlight this phenomenon among Malaysian undergraduates. This study seeks to examine the factor structure of the Student Engagement Instrument (SEI) in a Malaysian sample. The scale was administered to 290 undergraduate students from the Faculty of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences as well as the Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences of the International Islamic University of Malaysia. Principal axis factor with Promax rotation was used in exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and revealed a six-factor solution that was consistent with the factor structure found in the original study by Appleton et al. (2006). A new factor labelled belongingness which was not discussed in previous studies was also discovered, which is worth exploring. Student engagement has been known to be positively associated with academic performance, but there has be...

The smartphones ownership among the undergraduates in Malaysia was recorded as high. However, little was known about its utilization patterns, thus, the focus of this research was to determine the utilisation patterns of smartphones based on the National Education Technology Standard for Students (NETS.S) among engineering undergraduates in Malaysia. This study was based on a quantitative research and the population comprised undergraduates from four Malaysian Technical Universities. A total of 400 questionnaires were analyzed. Based on the results, the undergraduates' utilisation level of smartphones for communication and collaboration tool was at a high level. Meanwhile, utilisation for operations and concepts tool and research and information fluency tool were at moderate level. Finally, smartphones utilisation as digital citizenship tool and critical thinking, problem solving and creativity tool were both at a low level. Hence, more training and workshops should be given to the students in order to encourage them to fully utilise smartphones in enhancing the higher order thinking skills.

Our purpose is to examine the possibilities of Bakhtinian dialogical analysis for understanding students’ experiences of medical training. Twenty-three interviews were conducted with eleven British medical students intercalating in psychology. Forty emotionally resonant key moments were identified for analysis. Our analysis illustrates students’ use of the professional genre to present their training as emotionally neutral. However, we show how medical training can be framed in more unofficial and affective-laden ways in which threshold moments of crisis are presented as space-time breaches characteristic of the genres of adventure-wonder and adventure-ordeal. This affect was often depotentiated in the narratives through brief allusion to the professional genre. This cycling between genres suggests that the students were searching for an appropriate way in which to frame their experiences, a central dilemma being the extent to which medical training makes sense within an immediate and affect-laden, or future-orientated and affect-neutral, pedagogy. Finally, we identify how consultants are an important aspect of the affective experience of medical training who, at their best, offer inspiring exemplars of flexible movement between official and unofficial ways of being a doctor. In conclusion, we demonstrate the potential of genres to make sense, and to organize the experience, of medical training spatially in terms of moving between personal and impersonal contact, temporally in terms of moving between the extraordinary and routine, and affectively in terms of moving between potent and neutral affect. Learning to use the professional genre is part of enculturation as a doctor and can be helpful in providing a framework restoring coherence and composure through engaging with, and reformulating, difficult experiences. However, it is important to take seriously the resistance many of the students demonstrated to the professional genre as a possible barometer of its acceptability to the general public.