Search

We present a teaching methodology to answer the question 'How can we link teaching with research in our engineering courses?' Due to the combination of hybrid Problem Based Learning with Research Tutored/Oriented Teaching, the methodology enables the students to acquire the skills of 'problem solving', 'working in teams', 'analytic', 'written communication', 'planning my own work', 'organization', 'learning more deeply', 'tackling with unfamiliar problems' and 'innovation'; the last two are directly related to the Scientific Research Process and are considered important for modern engineers. We apply the methodology in the course 'Ecological Modelling of Surface Waters' that we teach in TUM and NTUA following the teaching sequence 'Scope of modelling -- Background knowledge -- Simple model -- Tutorial -- Real case'. Due to its simplicity, the proposed methodology can be easily applied by University researchers, who are usually not familiar with the theoretical aspects of learning.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness and preference of the two different types of self-talk (instructional and motivational) on penalty execution skill in goalball and gain insight on the athletes' perceptions concerning self-talk use and its influence on their performance. The sample consisted of six female athletes, aged 26-40 years old (mean = 33 years), all members of the national goalball team representing Greece in the Paralympic Games in Athens 2004. In each experimental procedure, five athletes were the subjects of an instructional and a motivational self-talk test while executing 20 penalties, with a rest period following the first 10 penalties. One athlete was stable defending the other athletes' shooting and she was not involved in any test during each experimental procedure. Although non-parametric statistics indicated no difference on performance, the results revealed a percentage difference on performance ranging from 1.5 per cent to 26.1 per cent for each athlete in favor of instructional self-talk in all three experimental procedures. Finally, participants showed preference toward the use of instructional self-talk to improve their penalty execution skill. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)