Health behavior tracking via mobile games: A case study among school-aged children

Abstract Mobile devices are increasingly being used, in various ways, to collect data and are also increasingly related to individuals’ health behaviors. Because of the paucity of available data about the process of mobile data collection in tracking daily health behaviors among children, we designed this pilot study to determine the possibilities and the enhancing and inhibiting factors of a continuous data collection process using a mobile game. Twenty 10–12-year-old school children from two schools participated in the study. We asked the participants to play a game that recorded their health-related behaviors for seven consecutive days, answering 14–16 questions daily. The questions related to children’s eating habits, hygiene habits, hobbies and activities, networks, media use and devices, and sleep. In this article, we describe and discuss the process of data collection with its advances and challenges, including the planning and preparation of the survey according to its content and technicalities, training the pupils and their teacher to use the device and the health game, implementing the survey, and concluding the process. Additionally, we present viewpoints on educating children using collective health data.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Marjorita Sormunen is a university researcher, whose research interests are school health promotion, health education, and social marketing in health promotion. She uses different methodological approaches in her research and is interested in new technological innovations harnessed in research. This study belongs to her research project, where Finnish and French parents and teachers, and Finnish pupils were studied.
Hanna Miettinen is an early stage researcher, and her research interests include young adults' health behavior and health outcomes, specifically with a focus on Internet-use associations. She has worked on research projects regarding children's health behavior. These research interests and work experiences provide a link to the research reported in this paper. Both authors work at the University of Eastern Finland, Department of Nursing Science, and have qualifications and work experience as teachers of health sciences. They belong to the SHE (Schools for Health in Europe) international research group.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Children learn by watching, by listening, and by doing. Parents have a strong influence on children's physical and social environment through their own decisions and possibilities, and their own behavior serves as a role model for their children influencing children's behavior. School has its own important meaning in children's lives, being an environment, where health issues are learned both formally and informally. These behaviors, and especially behavioral patterns, however, are quite challenging to reveal, especially in children. Crosssectional data, the collection of information from one point in time, is currently available, but much less is known about health behaviors that occur for longer periods. This study presents an innovative data collection method, which allows for tracking the daily recurrent health behaviors of children through use of a mobile game. In addition to presenting information about the method, several issues related to children as participants in digitally mediated research are discussed.

Introduction
Utilizing mobile technology for data collection is an increasing but already much-used method in research. It has certain advantages, such as the possibility of gathering various types of data, like text-based or visual data (Şahin & Yan, 2013). According to Sugie (2016), it is appropriate in the collection of data from hard-to-reach groups. Moreover, it also allows for the collection of daily or realtime data from individuals over a period of time (Mays et al., 2010;Ravert, Calix, & Sullivan, 2010;Rönkä, Malinen, Kinnunen, Tolvanen, & Lämsä, 2010;Şahin & Yan, 2013). Daily data are collected at multiple points from individuals in their immediate environments, giving researchers the possibility of capturing real-time situations from the lives of participants without being present themselves. As Ravert et al. (2010) mentioned, there are several ways to gather multiple-point data. Participants may be asked to respond at set intervals daily in connection with a recurrent event or may be prompted by research personnel. In addition to advantages related to the research method itself, the costs of daily recording can be minimal compared to studies requiring observers (Raento, Oulasvirta, & Eagle, 2009). However, with device costs and wireless services counted in, expenses can exceed paper-based data collection (Mays et al., 2010).
Software for mobile phones enables individuals to track different kinds of data, including images, text, location, and motion. Tracking one's own behavior is especially popular when it is related to health and a healthy lifestyle, with participants being able to gather information throughout the day in relation to activity, eating habits, or weight, for example. This personal data can either be entirely for a person's own use or can be shared with other people (Shilton, 2012). Information related to health behaviors or health activities can also be gathered and used for research purposes (e.g. Abril, 2016). The data can be rich in content and may generate new data analysis methods and ways of presenting the results.
According to Plowman and Stevenson (2012), finding out young children's daily activities is challenging. In their study, parents were involved in the data collection, taking photos of their children using mobile phones six times during one day of the week when the researchers sent them text messages containing instructions. The researchers organized three rounds of data collection. Furthermore, the parents and children were interviewed based on the pictures and texts. This mobile phone diary technique allowed researchers to gain insights into a toddler's and a family's life. In another study (Christensen, Mikkelsen, Nielsen, & Harder, 2011) focusing on children's (aged 10-13) daily mobility, using a global positioning system (GPS), children carried a tracking device for one week to determine their physical activity. At the same time, a number of the participating children also answered questions about their activity by mobile phone as prompted five times a day. These examples introduce the variation in mobile data collection techniques related to the health and daily activities of children.
Mobile games are much used as entertainment and daily activities and increasingly in education (Kearney, Schuck, Burden, & Aubusson, 2012). The use of games in scientific research and, particularly, in data collection is still very rare. In this study, we used multiple-point data collection to gather 10-11-year-old children's (n = 20) daily activities related to health. We present here the process, benefits, and challenges of seven-day mobile game data collection.
The primary purpose of this study was to test a novel use for mobile data collection to find out its suitability in investigating children's daily health behaviors. The research questions were: (1) Is a continuous data collection through use of a mobile game a suitable way to collect health behavior-related research data among 10-to 11-year-old children?
(2) What are the enhancing and inhibiting factors that emerge during the data collection process?
Since health behaviors are largely examined by cross-sectional design, this study contributes by presenting a digital research method for continuous data collection. Thus, it extends the existing knowledge about the use of mobile devices in research. Moreover, the study may serve as an inspiration for educators on how to use health data at school as well as what issues have to be considered if doing so.

Digitally mediated research
The research method we used in this study can be categorized as a digital research method. Digital research methods can be further defined as the use of digital devices, such as tablet computers, mobile phones, or certain online platforms, for research purposes. Applying this method, the participant and the researcher have an easy access to the study at convenient times and locations. (Bailey et al., 2015;Roberts, Hine, Morey, Snee, & Watson, 2013.) We believe that this method is well-suited to school-aged children, who mostly are motivated and accustomed to using mobile devices in their everyday lives. In this study, we applied the method for tracking the health behaviors at several time points per day, for seven consecutive days.

Questionnaire development
In previous intervention studies (Sormunen, Kirilina, Goranskaya, & Tossavainen, 2014;Sormunen, Tossavainen, & Turunen, 2013), researchers aimed to develop collaboration between home and school when examining children's health issues, and this is what guided the development of questionnaires. Since much cross-sectional information about children's daily behaviors have already been collected, more specific information about children's daily health routines is often missing. Therefore, we designed a questionnaire to track children's daily health-related activities for seven consecutive days.
For weekdays, the questions related to wake-up time, teeth brushing in the morning, content of breakfast, journey to school, school lunch, hobbies, use of screen time, content of evening meal, teeth brushing in the evening, place of cell phone during the night, bedtime, washing in the evening, and daily changing health-related questions (quiz) with correct answers to keep children motivated. On Saturday and Sunday, the questions concerned the activities of the day and social networking during the day, with school-related questions left out. Hence, the questionnaire contained 14-16 questions per day. In addition, we included six background questions on children's opinions in relation to whether they liked to go to school or not and about their academic success, home resources (living in two homes, having own room), and parents' education and work status.

Game development and game content
The game development process started on May 2015. At the beginning of the process, we participated in a national "Finnish Game Jam" event (Finnish Game Jam, 2015). In the event, we received current information about game development and exchanged experiences on using games for a variety of purposes. After this, we chose a smart device game application to be used for the study's data collection. We reviewed all technical aspects of the game following the necessary practical matters. Together with technical help, we focused on developing the game's layout and content to fit the purpose of the research. We modified the game to fulfill all the required elements for conducting the research.
The modified game layout consisted of different checkpoints, also called symbols ( Figure 1). These symbols presented different daily activities and contained four types of answers: taking photos (home meals and teeth brushing), writing times (waking, bedtime), multiple selection (school trip, a place for cell phone, quiz), and free writing space (school lunch, hobbies, use of screen time, weekend activities, social network). When the children touched one of these symbols, they received a survey question concerning the symbol topic and were informed to use the answer type as requested. After answering the question, the symbol disappeared from the screen. Only the quiz questions were interactive in terms of offering an explanation for the child after a right or a wrong answer and gave a badge as a reward for a right answer. The application informed the children to select the symbols in a daily function order. A unique daily QR (quick response) code was also used to ensure easy access to the game. We also conducted a pretest of the application with three children aged 10, 14, and 17.

Participants and research setting
This study was part of a larger, international study, in which the data were collected in Finland and France from elementary school parents and teachers in spring 2015. Among 51 Finnish schools that voluntarily participated in the study, two schools' (A and B) headmasters agreed to continue the study with pupil participation. Since this was considered a pilot study and was intended only for a small group of pupils, we used a convenient sample of two schools. One classroom teacher from each school was responsible for monitoring and supervising the study process in class. In School A, the class size was 23 pupils, and in School B, it was 16 pupils. The sample comprised 20 fifth and sixth grade pupils aged 10-11 years. All participated in the study on a voluntary basis.

Ethical considerations
The University of Eastern Finland Committee on Research Ethics (statement 19/2014), the head of the education sector in both municipalities, and the schools' headmasters approved the study. Before commencing data collection, we explained the aim and content of the study and the data collection procedures to the parents and the children, and the teacher sent the same information beforehand to homes together with the consent forms for parents and children. We explained the participants' rights to the children, including the fact that their participation was voluntary, that they would keep their anonymity, that they were free to withdraw from the study any time, and that the collected data would be handled with confidentiality. All consenting children gave their permission to use the data for research purposes, including visual data. Each child received an individual number code to play the game.

Data collection process
In August and October 2015, we (researcher and assistant or technical advisor) visited the two schools, each for two days. On the first day, the parents received information about the study more specifically and gave their consent for their children to participate if a responsible teacher had not yet received the consent previously. On the second day, the teacher and the pupils received detailed information about the study process, the aims, the methods, and ethical issues. The children who chose to participate to the study and who possessed a permission paper signed by their parents or guardians filled out an informed consent form. The teacher gathered the pupils who were not willing or allowed to participate and left the classroom before the actual initiation of the study.
In School A, the pupils had the opportunity to use their own mobile device or borrow one from the research project. Those who wanted to borrow a device were given a mobile device with a charger and an instruction manual on how to use the device. Two children used their own mobile phone. Those who wanted to use their own device received instructions and help in how to download and install the developed health game application to their device. In School B, all pupils used the school's own mobile devices. Before starting the study with the health game application, we trained the children in how to use the device, and introduced the game with the help of a data projector in the classroom. We guided children systematically and provided time for additional questions. We also instructed them in all technical issues, including research data transfer through the Internet, and gave them a written instruction sheet containing the research team's contact information.
We trained the teachers privately in a separate room. The teacher's role was to remind pupils daily to use the game, take care that they charge the device in the morning at school, and make sure they were available if any technical problems occurred. We also added them to an online discussion forum where they would receive technical support at any time of the day. As with the pupils, the teachers also received written instructions.
We gathered the children's background information before implementing the survey and asked them to play the game daily for seven consecutive days. The days for tracking were decided beforehand, starting from Thursday afternoon and ending the next Thursday morning, including the weekend. By playing this health game, children's data were transferred and saved in a database. We told the children to complete the playing at the same time each day. We also asked them to behave as usual and not change their behavior during the week.
Children answered the health game questions privately during the day but had an opportunity to ask technical questions of their teachers and the research team. They also received help from their teachers in transferring the responses in the survey through the school's wireless network. We followed the data transfer online and contacted the teacher immediately if any problems occurred.

Data analysis
The data analysis consisted of two phases. The aim of the first phase was to examine what seemed to arise from the data and to produce an initial overview of how the children had responded in general. After checking all the responses (written text, numbers, photos), we converted them into Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 22.0) forms. We then checked the data again, cleaned them, and coded them for further analysis. We read the written texts thoroughly, printed and examined the photos, and performed a descriptive analysis of the numerical data. In the second phase, we examined the data in more detail to find out if certain behavioral patterns could be identified in relation to individual children. In this article, we present examples primarily of the analysis of the first phase.

Participants
Eleven pupils out of 23 in class Grade 5 in School A and 9 pupils out of 16 in combined class Grades 5 and 6 in School B agreed to participate in the study. Thus, the participation rate was 51%. Girls participated more than boys (14 and 6, respectively) did. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2017.1311500

Missing information
A total of 5-16% of responses was missing daily (Table 1), and the mean percentage of missing responses was 12%. The children played the game quite regularly throughout the week with no large differences in daily response rate. No dropouts occurred during the week.

Pupils and teachers' experiences
The motivation for using the health game remained high among pupils during the week. The teachers did not report any complaints from the children, and when we collected the groups' experiences, all expressed their satisfaction in the game. According to the pupils' opinions, the game was easy to use technically, they remembered to play it with minor exceptions, and they found tracking their own behaviors and activities during the week fun and interesting. Similarly, the teachers experienced the pupils' daily use of the game as being easy, and they supported them if any problems occurred.

Visual examples of results
Below are two examples of descriptive data. In the first example (Figure 2), two children's teethbrushing habits in the mornings and in the evenings are illustrated. According to these results, Child 1 practiced teeth brushing regularly but only in the evenings. Child 2's teeth-brushing habits were more irregular, and three answers were missing. We chose the data of these two children to illustrate the different habits related to health behaviors, and as an example of a health behavior pattern (Child 1).
In the second example ( Figure 3) is a summary of 17 children's bedtimes and length of night's sleep on one weekday and weekend day. Only the children who had responded to both the bedtime and wake-up time questions during these days were included. The data showed that most of the children went to sleep on weekday evening at 10:00 pm and on weekend evening, at 10:00 pm or 11:00 pm. Furthermore, four children went to sleep at midnight or after midnight on weekend. Thirteen children had a one-to three-hour lapse between bedtimes on weekday and weekend evenings. On weekday, the most usual length of night's sleep was 9 or 10 hours and on weekend, nine hours. On weekend, the variation between the lengths of night's sleep was larger than on weekday.

Educational viewpoint
An educational component took place a week after the data collection ended. We pre-analyzed the results and presented them to the participating pupils in a separate session in both schools separately. We presented each result using a data projector; we weighted the "good" and "bad" options together with children with possible explanations and discussed the benefits of related health habits for personal health and for learning. For example, when we discussed variation of bedtimes during the weekdays and weekends, the children gave their opinions and expressed their own experiences of the issue. Furthermore, they discussed given topics related to theme such as, "What issues influence bedtime?" or "What helps the onset of sleep?" In addition to the most common explanations for late bedtimes, several more issues also arose, illustrating the difference in children's home environments and parenting cultures. Many health behaviors were also related to each other, such as bedtime and use of a mobile phone or watching television, and natural discussions occurred based on those connections.

Discussion
This study served three purposes by (a) testing a novel use of mobile data collection method, (b) investigating children's daily health habits in their immediate environments, and (c) acting as an educational component. For this article, we report the process of data collection more specifically, but we also obtained interesting and promising viewpoints in two other areas. For example, in the area of investigating children's daily habits, a lot of information can be obtained using mobile devices as described in this study. It is possible to examine children's social networks, home or school

Figure 3. Children's (n = 17) bedtimes and the length of night's sleep in hours on weekday and weekend.
Note: The numbers have been rounded to nearest full time (e.g. 9:25-9:00 pm, 9:30-10:00 pm, and 12:00 pm or over to 12:00 pm). environments, hobbies, or behavioral, repeated/recurrent habits in general. Furthermore, the change between two or more time points can be measured, and authentic data can be gathered from longer periods than when using a cross-sectional design. Looking at the educational points in this study, the findings illustrated the importance of examining one's own health habits and comparing these habits to those of one's peers. In any case, the children played a large role in analyzing their own responses and giving explanations or speaking in the group. Working in a group evidently raises questions about the number of participants; not all children are confident in expressing their opinions in a large group. The groups in this study contained 9 and 11 pupils, which were large enough to create discussion and small enough to encourage pupils to ask or talk about their own experiences if they wished. One of the benefits of organizing educational sessions based on self-monitoring is the possibility to correct inaccurate or even incorrect beliefs about certain health-related activities. For example, discussions about whether to brush one's teeth before or after breakfast or whether to take a cell phone to bed or place it in another room during the night were very lively and certainly brought out new ideas for the children to consider.
Since the responsible teachers were interested in joining the study voluntarily, they also showed a strong commitment to it. They took responsibility for the study's progress with oral and written instructions from the research team. We did, however, experience some technical difficulties after our research team left the first school, but these were quite easily solved after a few instructional phone calls and messages. Even though the teachers were not highly advanced technology users, they were interested in bringing new technology into their classrooms. In addition, both teachers were very motivated to connect the technology with health education, giving a high priority to health issues. Our experience of visiting the schools was wholly positive, and we easily achieved a mutual understanding of the objectives of the project.
The health game proved to be workable and was able to record health-related activities at several points during the day. A positive aspect compared to "traditional" mobile data collection, whether prompted or gathered at pre-set intervals, was the autonomy of the children in relation to their playing. No previous research justified the use of a data collection period of seven days in a row, but some good experiences were found in previous literature (Christensen et al., 2011), in which a sevenday period was deemed long enough to be able to capture patterns of certain behavior or identify unusual activity. Daily mobile data collection periods of even 30 days have been reported previously, but with older participants and related to only one health-behavior assessment daily (Mays et al., 2010). In this study, the children experienced a week of continuing data collection as appropriate.
As Sugie (2016) mentioned, frequent collection of detailed data by smartphones may cause the problem of missing data. Even though recording health activities 14-16 times a day could be seen as a large task, response rates per day were very high compared, for example, to the study of Christensen et al. (2011), in which the response rate for the prompted text messages was 66%. Most likely, this is suggestive of the children's motivation to use the game, and the game content can thus be judged as interesting. The game itself cannot be described as addictive, so the reason for using it can be assumed to result from pupils' own motivation and interest. Moreover, the pupils were instructed to use the game preferably only once in the morning and once in the evening, limiting the actual daily data collection to two points in the day. Using the game twice or five times a day was, however, solely a decision of the child, and was not monitored by adults. Independence and responsibility may have affected the pupils positively, increasing their motivation to play the game regularly. Another motivator might have been the variation in response possibilities; in addition to written text, short multiple-choice response options and photo shootings were included as data collection methods. Generally, the children were satisfied in the easiness of the game and liked to complete the daily questions. The easy use and good experiences of using the game are consistent with findings reported by Mays et al. (2010) among college students.
In any technical situation, technical expertise is a requirement for success. The problems experienced during the study were mostly due to issues that had not been recognized before the study started. In School A, the school's wireless network was not tested properly beforehand, and therefore, the QR codes did not work as expected. As a result, after an unsuccessful attempt to download the daily game base, we decided to download the game for the pupils for the entire week. For pupils who used their own devices and data services, no problems in connections occurred. In School B, the game was downloaded to schools' devices for the entire week before the study started, and we observed no problems. As with the children in Christensen et al.'s (2011) study, the children in this study were responsible for the devices they borrowed, and they were very careful with them.

Ethical issues, limitations, and future directions
It was not possible to have all the children play the game due to parents refusing to give their consent and the fact that some children did not want to participate. As in any data collection process, participation was voluntary. Parents expressed some of their concerns about playing the health game to the teacher or the research team, including uncertainty about whether the game application would save geographic locations into the mobile devices as the children brought them home or whether children would record family specific information while at home. Other concerns related to issues of privacy in the use of mobile data collection, as reported previously (Shilton, 2012;Sugie, 2016), and they are very important to note in the planning phase. Not all parents came to the information session where these issues were clarified, and no one asked the research team about these issues beforehand. At one of the schools, some families were not very familiar with mobile devices, and their children did not have one of their own. Therefore, the parents might have had negative attitudes toward the game. However, some children who did not own a phone received permission and participated in the study. Even though they did not have a phone, they were skilled in using the school's device, because they had used it in school for studying purposes. Moreover, children in general cannot avoid seeing their peers using mobile phones, and therefore, the novelty value may not be very large.
In addition to parents' refusal, a few pupils refused to participate in the study. For example, the teacher at one of the schools explained that a group of girls had decided together to stay out of the study, and all the boys had. Therefore, the boys were underrepresented in this study, which may have influenced the actual research findings. Nevertheless, refusing to participate in the study is a decision that has to be respected.
It is possible that the Hawthorne effect changed the children's health routines during the study week, as in any research involving behavior monitoring. This has been reported previously among adults using mobile data collection (Raento et al., 2009;Sugie, 2016). We tried to avoid this effect by repeatedly reminding the children and their parents, both orally and in written text, not to change anything about their living environment or habits during the week. As in Christensen et al.'s (2011) study, in which the researchers feared that children's routines might be affected by carrying a GPS device despite children reporting no effect of wearing the device, the children in this research study reported no changes in their normal daily behaviors or environments due to the tracking.
Since some pupils, especially girls in early adolescence, might be vulnerable in relation to their appearance and excessive self-monitoring (Helfert & Warschburger, 2013), using a game to monitor one's own behavior for a week was a critical issue to acknowledge after the study ended and in the planning phase. Therefore, after pre-analyzing the results, we went back to the study school, gathered the group who had participated in the study, and concretely ended the study. We collected the borrowed devices, made the health game inactive, and discussed with the pupils how it felt to record their own behavior and to stop recording it. The visit took place one week after the data collection ended. The teacher did not participate in the session.
During the education session in which the study was officially ended and the preliminary results introduced, we had to be aware of the nature of the topics under discussion. Although no deeply sensitive topics were included in the health game, some areas might still have been embarrassing or difficult to discuss or manage for 10-11-year-old children. Some issues the children pointed out were, for example, the late bedtimes of one of their classmates or photos of their breakfasts. They did, however, discuss these things positively and openly; when only one child indicated very late bedtimes every night, she mentioned it herself, and other children mentioned that this issue had already been discussed with her previously. Similarly, when the photos of breakfasts were presented, the children wanted to show what breakfast was their own, whereas others, whose photos were not available, hoped that their photos were presented too. Thus, the children were obviously very used to talking about their own habits and commenting on others with positive intentions.
Since the finalizing education session was based on the research results and was offered only to the study participants, the other classmates did not have the possibility of receiving health education from us. That option could have been offered to them using a different setup, even when the personal experience of tracking their own behaviors was lacking. In terms of equality, offering a tailored health education session to all available pupils at school in this age group would have been a good option, since all the children are in a relatively similar phase in their lives.

Conclusions
Based on this study, real-time data collection using a mobile game for children has a clear advantage for several reasons. First, the majority of the children were familiar with mobile devices, especially with mobile phones, and they were interested in using them in their free time. Compared to other situations, in which paper questionnaires are given to children each day, using a mobile devices is presumably much more intriguing. Second, the children normally carried their device with them, and therefore, they were able to play the game during the day in their everyday environments. Therefore, they did not have to go to a different setting to fill in the questionnaire, and their parents and school teachers did not have to be involved at all. This gave the children autonomy in relation to their own time. Third, the game application motivated children to play the game daily, even we did not consider it very motivating. Electronically taking photos, writing up one's own activities, and choosing the "correct" choice on multiple-choice questions was experienced as fun.
As a conclusion, multiple-point data collection using a smart phone or tablet game is a modern and innovative method for gathering data from children. However, the process is long and involves collaboration between many professionals. Additionally, it requires ethical considerations not only involving the children taking part in a time-consuming study but also to ensure that all the children have equal opportunities to participate in the study. When applied appropriately, it offers a variety of possibilities and a platform that children like to use and are able to use largely independently of adults.

Funding
This study was supported by grants (Marjorita Sormunen) from Finnish Foundation for Nursing Education, Finnish Association of Nursing Research, and Finnish Cultural Foundation. The authors wish to thank the children, their parents, and school teachers for their cooperation in taking part of this study.


extfieldsofstudy:
Political Science
Medicine

text:
Identifying Shared Values for School-Affiliated Student Organizations

Objective. To identify shared values for student organizations. Methods. A three-round Delphi approach was utilized to identify and prioritize shared values among student organization leadership. In round 1, student leaders selected 15 values from a list of 36 organizational values and were given an opportunity to include up to five suggestions not incorporated within the original list. Student leaders narrowed the 15 values to 12 in round 2. The top 12 priorities were ranked in round 3 and participants were invited to write a brief statement regarding their perspectives of the results. Results. Twelve shared values were identified and ranked: professional development, improving leadership of your members, advancing the role of pharmacy, planning quality events, networking, improving the academic experience for peers, community service, learning from pharmacy shadowing/speakers, social outlet, recruitment/gaining student membership, attracting students to events, and gaining national/local attention or awards. Conclusion. This study contributes to the small but growing body of literature concerning student organizations in pharmacy education and provides a foundation by which this work could be advanced. Given the importance of student organizations in promoting student development, identifying strategies for supporting and facilitating the effectiveness of these groups is critical for optimizing student outcomes and institutional effectiveness.

INTRODUCTION
Student organizations play an important role in doctor of pharmacy degree programs. For students, involvement in student organizations can promote the development of key professional and social skills, provide opportunities for relationship and network building, and create immersion opportunities in pharmacy and health care through activities such as service learning, volunteerism, clinical competitions, patient care projects, and seminars. [1][2][3] Specifically, research suggests that engagement in student organizations can improve altruism, accountability, honor/integrity, organizational skills, and relationship skills in student pharmacists. 1,2 Student organization involvement also remains an important aspect of a postgraduate application. 4 At the institutional level, student organizations can also provide a number of important benefits, including, but not limited to, fostering alumni engagement, creating strategic relationships with professional organizations, and complementing student skill development provided in the curriculum. Since student engagement in educationally purposeful activities is a critical aspect of student success, 5 institutions have a vested interest in providing students with opportunities to engage in meaningful educational activities within and beyond the academic curriculum. In pharmacy education, there are a wide range of student organizations that represent a diversity of purposes, interests, specialties, skills, and activities. 3 Student, faculty, and alumni involvement in organizations that align with institution or divisional goals can further promote success through retention, agency, and branding. [6][7][8][9] There is little guidance or research concerning how to best position student organizations for success in the midst of rapidly evolving education and health care systems. As schools and colleges of pharmacy work to prepare aspiring pharmacists for the ongoing challenges of health care, [10][11][12] it is timely to consider how student organizations might work with the institution and one another to foster student growth and development. As noted in prior research, for example, institutions should identify strategies that promote unity within the entire student body while also meeting the unique and diverse needs of the community. 3,13 Understanding the shared goals of student organizations can help position an institution and its organizations to better support and draw upon institutional stakeholders to optimize outcomes.
Achieving our institutional goals will require strategic and intentional efforts to support student organizations. At the University of North Carolina (UNC) Eshelman School of Pharmacy, the school's transformed curriculum was implemented in fall 2015 with the goal of developing exemplary pharmacy practitioners, leaders and innovators, and lifelong learners. While the transformed curriculum specifically addresses academic experiences associated with re-engineered classroom experiences, increased opportunities for problem-solving and innovation, and enhanced early immersion into the patient care experience, 10,14 it also gives consideration to the role of the co-curriculum in promoting student development of core skills and competencies.
The purpose of this study was to identify shared values for student organizations at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in an effort to inform ongoing curriculum design. This study was a first step toward creating a unified vision for the student organizations and fostering their capacity to prosper amid the school's curriculum transformation. It is also timely for all schools given the 2016 Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) accreditation requirements emphasizing personal and professional development (Standard 4), affective domain elements (Standard 12.3), and assessment (Standard 25). 15

METHODS
The Delphi technique has been used extensively to reach consensus in pharmacy education. Aronson and colleagues used a modified Delphi process with student pharmacists to develop a definition of professional engagement. 16 Janke and colleagues used the technique to define competencies for student leadership development in pharmacy curricula. 17 Mackellar and colleagues used a modified two-round Delphi survey to reach consensus on seven criteria to assess pharmacy students' communication skills with patients. 18 This study used the Delphi technique to facilitate consensus building among student organization leadership at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. The Delphi technique is an iterative process in which experts are used to arrive at group consensus when little or no agreement exists. 19,20 In this process, researchers gather experts, provide a question, and synthesize the feedback collected to assist the group in reaching agreement. 20 The Delphi process has been traditionally conducted with the use of paper surveys. However, with the advancement of technology, e-Delphi research has become more prevalent than the traditional method due to it being more time and cost efficient and its potential to limit risks such as participant attrition. 20,21 In this study, the e-Delphi Technique was incorporated with Sieber and Sulzer-Azaroff and colleagues' approaches to guide student organization leaders at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in identifying a list of core values. [22][23][24] This study was exempt from full review by UNC's Institutional Review Board.
In fall 2015, students were invited to participate as "organizational value experts" if they were elected or appointed leaders for the 2015-2016 academic year from student organizations recognized by the school. One representative was invited for student organizations with 25 or fewer active members and two representatives were invited for student organizations with more than 25 active members. The participation of the president-elect or vice president was requested for all organizations.
In August 2015, a recruitment email was sent to the president and vice-president of 20 student organizations by the school's student senate president. Of those invited organizations, 15 organizations had 25 or more active members while five organizations had fewer than 25 active members. In this email, the student leaders were asked to submit names and email addresses of organizational value experts using a Google Sheet (Mountain View, CA). These student leaders were then invited to participate in a three round Delphi study.
Round 1 of the study was conducted by email. In round 1, a list of 36 organizational values were included in a Qualtrics survey ( Table 1). The list was created by the student senate president and vetted against the literature, student experiences, and the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy's strategic plan core values. The participants were asked to select any 15 items that reflected the values of the student organization they were representing for the study and were provided with an opportunity to include up to five suggestions that were not incorporated in the original list. The responses were analyzed through Qualtrics (Provo, UT) and the top 15 items were reformatted into a new Qualtrics survey in preparation for round 2.
The second round was conducted during an in-person meeting to minimize participant attrition. Upon receiving a brief introduction, the participants were sent the list of 15 items through a Qualtrics survey and asked to select their top 10 items. The participants' responses were analyzed through Qualtrics and the top 10 items were reformatted into a new Qualtrics survey. Round 3 commenced immediately following the analysis of data from round two. In round 3, the participants were asked to rank their top 10 items.
Based on participant responses in round 3, the items were ranked according to mean scores, which were calculated according to weights for each position of an item. In other words, a ranking of 1 would receive 10 points, a ranking of 2 would receive 9 points, a ranking of 3 would receive 8 points, and so on, and these scores were summed and averaged by the total number of responses. The mean-ranked items were sent to respondents in a new Qualtrics survey and participants were invited to write a brief statement regarding their perspectives of the results. The researchers used thematic analysis to analyze the statements. 24 Results are presented according to the final ranking list from round 3. Continuous data is presented as mean (standard deviation, SD).

RESULTS
Of the 34 organizational value experts invited to participate, 31 (91%) completed the initial survey, representing 19 (95%) of the 20 organizations recognized by the school. Rounds 2 and 3 of the study were conducted inperson. Twenty-nine (85%) of the 34 invited organizational value experts participated. Of the 20 organizations invited, 18 (90%) were represented. About 53% of the participants held a B.S. degree prior to being enrolled, 17% held a B.A. degree, and 30% earned no college degree prior to enrollment. The majority of the participants were between ages 21-25 (83%) while about 17% were over the age of 25.
Since 12 items were advanced to round 3, the mean rank score for each item was weighted on a scale of 1 to 12, with a ranking of 1 multiplied by 12, a ranking of 2 multiplied by 11, and so on. The mean scores ranged from 9.86 (2.03) for professional development to 4.28 (2.85) for gaining national/local attention or awards ( Table 2). The final 12 items were ranked in the following order, with the percentage of #1 votes indicated in parentheses: professional development (selected as top priority by 14%), improving leadership of your members (17%), advancing the role of pharmacy (28%), planning quality events (3%), networking (0%), improving the academic experience for peers (14%), community service (14%), learning from pharmacy shadowing/speakers (3%), social outlet (3%), recruitment/gaining student membership (3%), attracting students to events (0%), and gaining national/local attention or awards (0%). Of the 12 items considered as priorities, nine items received a number one ranking. Advancing the role of pharmacy and improving the leadership of your members accounted for almost half of the number one votes (45% or 13/29 votes), while four items received only one vote each (3.4% or 1/29 votes each): planning quality events, social outlet, recruitment/ gaining student membership, and learning from pharmacy shadowing/speakers. Upon completion of round 3, the participants were given a chance to voice their opinions by writing brief statements about the position of the top ranked items. Of the 29 participants present, 12 (41%) provided a brief statement regarding the item rankings. Three topics emerged from the written comments. First, some comments (n53) raised questions concerning the responsibility of student organizations providing professional development. Second, some comments advocated for the importance of community service and ranking this priority higher (n55). Lastly, a few comments suggested moving the value of improving the academic experience for peers closer to the top of the list (n53).

DISCUSSION
It is critical that schools and colleges of pharmacy contribute to the growth of students who will become change agents in a health care system with evolving challenges. 25 Given the importance of student organizations in promoting student development, identifying strategies for supporting and facilitating the effectiveness of these groups is critical for optimizing institutional effectiveness. This study demonstrates the use of the Delphi method for identifying the shared values of school-affiliated student organizations as a first step toward identifying opportunities for unifying student organizations and fostering their capacity to prosper amid the school's curriculum transformation. As noted below, our results have provided key data for informing the ongoing development of curricular and co-curricular experiences in the school's curriculum transformation process and may be useful for other schools and colleges of pharmacy. Curriculum transformation can impact how students experience extra-and co-curricular activities. For example, in our transformed curriculum, students will rotate during years 2 and 3 so that half of the cohort will be in the field and the remaining students will be on campus for didactic coursework. 10 This approach raises several important questions for student organizations. What does this mean for the school's student organizations that have historically operated on a more traditional class schedule? How might the academic curriculum transformation impact student involvement and executive leadership transitions? To "learn well," it is important that students are actively engaged with the course content both inside and outside of the classroom by "questioning, applying, testing, and reflecting on what they are learning." 26 Thus, while it is important that student academic experiences are transformed and made available through the core curriculum, extracurricular activities such as student organizations also provide unique opportunities for pharmacy students to develop skills. 27 Historically, curriculum reform has been a world in which academic affairs (ie, faculty, lecturers, instructors) and student affairs staff have rarely, if at all, collaborated to the mutual benefit of the students served and the program. 26 However, such relationships could prove advantageous. Data from this study is being used to inform decisions of the school's co-curricular working group, which makes recommendations to the school's Curriculum Transformation Steering Committee (CTSC) as it relates to co-curricular experiences. Among the five charges to the group was to re-engineer the student organizations to ensure they are co-curricular and complementary to the curricular experience.
Even for those not undergoing curricular transformation, the process described here can position schools and colleges of pharmacy to respond to accreditation requirements. Standard 4 of the 2016 ACPE Standards, for example, emphasizes that "the program imparts to the graduate the knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and attitudes necessary to demonstrate self-awareness, leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship, and professionalism." 15 In addition, Standard 12.3 asserts that "cocurricular activities complement and advance the learning that occurs within the formal didactic and experiential curriculum" and Standard 25 requires a description of how the college or school "uses information generated by assessments related to its organizational effectiveness, mission and goals, didactic curriculum, experiential learning program, co-curriculum activities, and interprofessional education to advance overall programmatic quality." 15 Pharmacy student organizations have a rich history of providing students with critical personal and professional development opportunities. 1-3 Using a method like the Delphi can help schools identify opportunities students have to gain skills through co-curricular experiences, an understanding of how these skills may align with program outcomes, and initiate conversations to assess potential skills gained through student organization involvement for accreditation purposes.
In addition to meeting accreditation requirements, the methods described here can help schools across the nation establish and promote the expectations for student organizations and other co-curricular activities. Since the Delphi method traditionally engages "experts," the sample size is small yet reflective of the most engaged students in these programs. Extending this sample out to the broader scope of the student body could help foster the culture of the institution, curriculum, and co-curriculum toward important value setting and learning experiences. Other institutions could model this study to gain a better understanding of student organizations and their positioning to core institutional and professional values.
The Delphi process should also help student organizations to reflect on what purpose they each serve within the school of pharmacy and profession. This starts with understanding what values they most associate themselves with and determining if this aligns with the intended purpose or mission of the organization. Participants can use the results of the Delphi study to understand the breadth of values and experiences offered through student organizations as a means to add value to their education in ways outside the classroom. While not all organizations have the same values, students should be able to choose those they participate in and reflect on the values gained by being involved in such organization. The identification of and reflection on these benefits by students is essential in personal growth, and can be initiated by organizations' individual reflection on their values as identified by the Delphi study.
This study contributes to discussions regarding the impact of co-curricular involvement on students' success. Involvement is a multi-dimensional construct that includes academic, social, and political layers (eg, social organizations, academic organizations, community service). Though previous scholarship suggests that student involvement plays a significant role on the undergraduate level, few studies have examined the impact of student involvement in graduate or professional education. 29,30 However, several studies have explored motives for pharmacy student involvement. Cox and colleagues found that involvement in organizations increased as student pharmacists neared graduation. 31 Roulin and colleagues found that the majority of the 197 students reported that their engagement stemmed from internal motives, but pressures to become more marketable for job placement served as a primary external motive towards the end of one's academic program. 32 Philips and colleagues found that student pharmacists were motivated to pursue leadership positions in student organizations in an effort to exhibit to employers that they were well-rounded and increase their networking opportunities. 27 One may deduce that the aforementioned research suggests that cocurricular involvement is relevant as students consider both the importance of securing accolades (ie, cv and resume) to become more marketable during job recruitment and also having the opportunity to actually gain useful skills to utilize during employment. This is an important conversation occurring both in pharmacy education as AACP is seeking to assess co-curricular experiences and across the horizon of higher education as student involvement continues to increase.
This research also extends a small but growing body of literature concerning student organizations in pharmacy education and provides a foundation by which this work could be advanced. Next steps, for example, could include the development of a shared mission for student organizations that provides newcomers with information on what to expect and current members with broadly accepted beliefs. Over time, organizations will need to "change their mission. . .in order to respond in purposeful ways to changing times, student characteristics and educational needs." 33 In addition, our research team has initiated a study aimed at identifying skills that pharmacy students gain through involvement in a student organization at our school. The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy has a strong history of student involvement and evaluating the relationship between organizational culture and student involvement could help us better understand the mechanisms underlying student engagement in extra-and co-curricular activities and how these activities impact student development. The school's Educational Renaissance and curriculum transformation provide a unique and timely opportunity to consider these relationships while informing change that promotes student development and institutional effectiveness. 10 This study is not without limitations. First, the sample size was low as only student leaders were used in the initial phase of prioritizing the values. The student leaders were generally upper-class students who had been heavily engaged in co-curricular activities. However, future studies should give consideration to the broader student body to ensure their commitment, gain their trust, and utilize their expertise as well. 34 Additionally, two organizations were not represented due to scheduling conflicts. Inclusion of general members and increased attempts to have representation from all organizations should occur in future phases of the research. The timing of the study was also a limitation. The study was completed during the middle of the first semester of the transformed curriculum. Thus, students' priorities were primary linked to their experiences from the traditional curriculum. However, future work will include the perspectives of the first cohort of students who have experienced the transformed curriculum. Lastly, it is important to note that this study emphasized the student leaders' perceptions regarding the shared values for student organizations. Future studies may expand this work by exploring how the academy may perceive or rank student organization values and compare these held perspectives with those of the students to develop a more comprehensive understanding.

CONCLUSION
We engaged in this process understanding that each student organization has a distinct mission and set of values. The goal was not to modify the individual organization's mission nor create a mission that incorporates every aspect of each participating organizational mission. The purpose was to come to a consensus of shared values to inform efforts among organizations. Other universities could model this study to gain a better understanding of their organizations.


s2fieldsofstudy: Education Physics

text:
Tennis balls judgment model based on numerical simulation

According to the principle of “eagle eye”, assuming that in the absence of the wind and air density uniform, tennis because of deformation produced by hitting, accurate to tennis in flight by gravity, air resistance, the tennis movement into the vertical direction and horizontal direction. Solution can be obtained using the ideas of calculus, thus draws the tennis range, fall to the ground, placement time and location. Increase the rotation of the tennis, according to the formula of sports biomechanics, the pressure difference to produce in vertical direction of the velocity and angular velocity magnus force, solving the stead yunus force coefficient, through the best tennis in the vertical direction of the time needed for higher level computation, model are described in detail in tennis trajectories of the rotating cases and placement, and intuitive simulation diagram of the flying track.

Introduction
Tennis event has swept the world, is a kind of traditional elegant event that integrates competitiveness and appreciation. In competitive process, except for referees, it needs multiple linesmen to judge drop point through getting close to line-out. Even so, due to tennis running speed in the air is so fast, after landing, it often has disputes on players' drop point is in line or out of line.
"Hawk-eye" is called instant review system, it utilizes high speed camera to simultaneous capture tennis flight trajectory basic data from different perspectives; then generates the data into three-dimensional images ;finally it utilizes instant imaging technique to clearly presents tennis movement route and drop point. "Hawk-eye" indicated drop point is a shadow, is not achieved by shooting but by precise calculating flight data. Zhao Yang analyzed tennis players drop point anticipation accuracy influence factors, explored high level athletes and low level athletes' tennis drop points' prediction and judgment differences generation factors [1][2][3]. All above literatures are analyzing from drop point importance, and little literatures are starting from tennis drop point prediction and judgment. According to "Hawk-eye" principle, the paper establishes tennis flight route models in case with rotation, non-rotation, and considering air resistance, judges tennis drop point, utilizes Matlab software to draw intuitional flight trajectory graph [4][5][6].

Tennis force analysis
Tennis belongs to one kind of balls events; it has common features of ball kind event. If it ignores air resistance, then in case there is no rotation, only suffers gravity effects, its trajectory is standard parabola. But tennis soaks in the air, air has viscosity, so it has resistance on moving objects, in ball kind event, air resistance has great impacts on ball horizontal displacement, calculate tennis shooting range should consider air resistance effects.
According to fluid mechanics principle [7], air resistance can divide into friction resistance and pressure resistance. For tennis, its surface is not smooth, so it has friction resistance. And due to its movement speed is fast, Reynolds number is larger, then it surely has pressure resistance [4], the two items resistance compounds into air resistance that is always in the opposite direction of tennis movement speed.
Due to coefficient ω is unknown, it should calculate its size by inputting trajectory passed coordinate point (0.2215, 1.5517, 1.0485), then can define trajectory equation; its trajectory equation is equal to a section of vertical direction's parabola that opens with certain arc. By establishing calculus solved mathematical model, and utilize Matlab software, respectively draw its vertical direction parabola trajectory and horizontal direction deflection trajectory, then it can work out tennis drop point in case it has rotation.

Matlab numerical simulations
Make specific quantization on initial values data, it also can make specific quantization on drop point coordinate, similarly, utilize Matlab software, it can accurate describe tennis flight trajectory in the air. In the following, list known quantities one by one: Finally, tennis drop point is (1.5249, 12.1991, and 0).

Model expansions
In tennis playing process, due to it should generate horizontal deflection, it often exerts rotation so that ball will increase Magnus Force that is vertical to speed direction and angular speed direction in movement, force changes, and trajectory naturally will change, and its flight route is not just in one plane but is a space curve. Magnus force size is in direct proportional to speed size, for convenience, it can be written into Gv F M , G is related to air density, tennis radius, rotational speed, its size is unknown, so it needs to solve by another coordinate point that trajectory goes through.
For the purpose of calculation convenience, it still needs to transform coordinate system, take speed horizontal projection as x axis direction, offset direction as y axis direction, vertical direction z axis remains unchanged, then after axis transformation, it has following relationship:   Figure  3 shows:

Conclusion
The paper applies integral principle to correctly describe tennis flight speed changes and trajectory curve; it avoids errors that are caused by unchanged speed and other assumptions. In addition, when establish model, we apply coordinate rotation transformation method, it greatly reduces calculation difficulty, and by coordinate transformation, transform three-dimensional figure into two-dimensional figure, it strengthens tennis flight route intuition to a certain angle, but increases steps of transforming coordinates into original coordinates, it needs more rigorous logic. The paper result is more specific and accurate comparing to other literatures.


Incorporating Different Forms of Feedback in Teaching Writing: An Insight into a Real Classroom

Responding constructively to students‘ writing has been a challenge for the teachers. Many studies have been conducted exploring the effective ways of giving feedback. However, how those different forms can be combined, can work in real classrooms and what the effects can be have been less discussed. This paper is an attempt to project an experience of applying different forms of feedback in teaching writing. In other words, it intends to discuss the underlying role of different forms of feedback and its result in responding to students‘ written text. With this purpose, 30 samples of students‘ writings (along with provided feedback) have been collected and analyzed. The paper also tries to discuss the possible problems during applying this combined approach of providing feedback along with probable solutions. Novice teachers in similar ESL (English as a second language) or EFL ( English as a foreign language) context may find the paper useful since it shows how to combine different methods of giving feedback to students written text with the aim of developing students‘ writing skills.

Introduction
To teach writing at university level, feedback, more specifically, constructive feedback is the most important tool employed by the teachers in class. -Feedback is a fundamental element of the process approach to writing. It can be defined as input from a reader to writer with the effort of providing information to the writer for revisions (Keh, 1990, p.294)‖. Feedback is meant to be incorporated in students' writing as the part of writing development process. Giving feedback can be considered as a skill also since while responding to students writing, several issues are needed to be considered carefully .The reason is, students' comprehension and reception of the feedback and their attitude toward the feedback have a greater impact in the process of teaching writing. On the other hand, the nature of giving feedback is another noteworthy issue on the part of the teachers since feedback needs to be specific, relevant and explanatory and clear enough to be understood by the students as suggested by the researchers (Karim & Ivy, 2011;Sommers, 1982;Wen 2013;Zamel, 1985) and to maintain these techniques while giving feedback, only one single technique is not sufficient. Teachers need to go beyond practicing just one form of feedback for students writing as different situations and contexts require different things.
But, unfortunately, it is seen that many teachers fail to take care of these requirements while providing feedback to their students' writing. While it should be intensive and detailed, they end up just pointing out the mistakes in the student's writing in bullet point or in vaguely written phrases which are -often confusing, arbitrary, and inaccessible (Zamel, 1985, p.79)‖. At the worst condition, just the error parts are underlined randomly with a very general and vague statement like -be careful about grammatical mistakes‖ or -problem in idea organization‖ and so on. These kinds of feedback definitely are of no use for the students as these feedbacks do not succeed in providing the help to the students that how to overcome the mistakes in writing. These create a -misfit …between what a teacher gives and what students would like to get (Lee, 2008 as cited in Wen 2013, p. 429 However, it is also seen that, while students generally expect detailed feedback for their writing, as contrary, many of them are found not ready to accept and incorporate the feedback in their writing. Their lack of knowledge about the aim of feedback creates ego problem or false assumption against it. They view feedback as a threat to their image and thus do not feel interested about it.
In Bangladesh, where intensive writing is not wellpracticed, the teachers face worse situation. The students from mainstream Bangladeshi schools and colleges are not habituated to get feedback constructively for their writing because of the existing exam-oriented education system. Rather, they are comfortable in cramming which they find to be of no help at university level. Thus, the process-oriented writing method which implies different types of feedback is perceived difficult to the students and at the same time challenging to the teachers.
In this article, I am going to a share a similar experience of teaching writing combining a number of forms of feedback to the undergraduate students. In this process, the appeared difficulties from both the students and the teachers will be addressed and possible ways to deal with the difficulties will be discussed with reference to my classroom teaching experience.

Literature Review
In literature, different types and forms of feedback are found as mentioned by many researches in their studies. Ur (2003) pointed out two types of feedback processes; one is formative which is based on instant correction and assessment of students' writing assignments. Another is summative which believes in evaluating students' writing at a certain point of time. According to him, feedback could be direct (errors to be fully or partially corrected) and indirect (errors to be indicated not corrected). He differentiated the idea of assessment from the idea of correction. The former gives general information about learners' performance in writing as good or bad while the later provides specific information about learners' performance through illustration of the learner's strengths and weakness in writing.
The ideas of ‗direct feedback‖ and -indirect feedback‖ were also discussed by many other researchers (Ferris, 2003(Ferris, , 2006Ferris & Roberts, 2001;Robb, Ross, and Shortreed, 1986). According to them, -direct feedback‖ is something which explicitly remarks which parts of the students' text should be corrected and -indirect feedback‖ is something which does not provide immediate correction on the students' text rather leaves it only just by underlying or pointing out the problematic sections in coded sign. Biber, Nekrasova, and Horn (2011) argued in their study that indirect feedback is practiced more than direct feedback in giving written feedback.
Their study also found out a number of facts such as: for ensuring writing development, written feedback is more successful than oral feedback, peer feedback is more useful than teacher feedback and commenting is more effective than error location and -in general, focus on form and content seems to be more effective than an exclusive focus on form (p.1)‖. Khan (2003), in her study, attempted to compile many other kinds of feedback found in the studies of different authors which the teachers around the world practice commonly. A brief description of those forms of feedback is given below.
Error Correction (Alwright, 1975: Norish, 1983Hendrickson, 1984;Chaudron, 1988cited in Khan 2003: It is a very common and traditional approach of feedback to the teachers which implies coded sign to indicate mistakes and errors in students' writing. The author alerts the reader here that since this technique can create disappointment among students because of getting so many corrections, the teacher should be careful and correct the mistakes and errors -selectively and only those areas highlighted where students need help (p.5)‖.
Peer Feedback (Lynch, 1988;Robinson, 1991;Arndt, 1993;Keh, 1996cited in Khan 2003: This is comparatively a new concept in our context since it employs students to check and give feedback to each other. Though this form of peer evaluation is helpful for students to develop -analytical power‖ and to be autonomous yet, it could produce negative result among students. It may happen if students are not well-trained and well-guided in responding toward peer's writing. Since students are used to get feedback from teachers so getting feedback from peer might be assumed by the students as a threat of losing face. Conferences (Freedman & Sperling, 1985;Hedge, 1988;Keh, 1996;Arndt, 1993cited in Khan 2003: It is a -face to face meeting between the teacher and the student, and can be arranged individually and or in groups (p.7)‖. Both teachers and students find this new form of giving feedback very useful as they can have intensive session regarding developing students' writing.
Written Comments (Rairnes, 1983;Fathman & Whalley, 1990;Leki, 1990cited in Khan 2003: Following this approach, teachers give feedback in written comments either -in the margins or between the lines or at the end (p.9)‖. Here the author intends to say that while practicing this form of feedback, the written comments should be specific, clear, detailed and constructive to the students.
Reformulation (Cohen, 1982;Alwright, 1988 cited in Khan): Reformation focuses on global errors rather than local errors and applies rewriting strategy keeping the original idea intact.
Text Approximation (Holes, 1984cited in Khan 2003: This is a process oriented feedback giving method which focuses on multiple drafts and revisions to -approximate an English text of similar type‖ (p. 11).
Taped Commentary (Hyland, 1990;Schriver, 1991;Boswood & Dwyer, 1995 cited in Khan): Following this method, teachers' remarks are recorded on tape. In addition, to make the identifying process easy for the students, numbers are written on students' written text along with teacher's comment. (Khan 2003): This is the most common method for giving feedback where teachers evaluate students' writing giving different grades (A, B, C) or number (7/10, 9/10). The author mentions that this method is more applicable in examination purpose and for classroom context; she suggests a combination of other methods along with this one.

Grades/Numbers
It is important to mention that in literature, there is an ongoing debate on the ground that which stage of students' writing should be taken into consideration for giving feedback. Researchers like Keh (1996); Krashen (2003); and Truscott (1999) opine that the teachers should give feedback focusing on ‗high order concerns' i.e. organization of contents, coherence, development of ideas etc. than ‗lower order concerns' (i.e. grammar, sentence structure).
On the contrary, Ferris (2003) strongly claims that the teachers should provide feedback on all aspects of students' text including content, rhetoric structure, grammar and mechanics. Even it is declined in his study that giving feedback while writing may cause de-motivation to students. But, he suggests by saying that feedback is important and effective when it is delivered at intermediate stage of the writing process. Now, in this paper, I will discuss how feedback was given to my students' writings incorporating the error-correction, written comments, grading and conferencing methods of giving feedback. These methods were particularly followed since in our context, students are more habituated and familiar to these methods of feedback comparing with other methods. To add, these mentioned methods do not demand for any technological support which is in other way convenient for the English language teachers of public universities in Bangladesh where we have limited access to multimedia in classroom. Moreover, to deal with a large number of students in class, these selected methods are easy going and less time consuming than other methods to apply in a typical classroom situation of Bangladeshi public universities. In executing this process of giving feedback to my students' writings, my students' attitude, problems that I faced, and my attempts to solve those problems will be focused as well.

Methodology
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) approach has been followed to conduct this qualitative study. Following this particular approach, this paper examines each step involved in giving feedback to students' writings along with the students' experience of gradual development of their writing and their mentality to accept and incorporate the feedback in their writing. A detailed analysis of students' writing, provided feedback and students' attitude toward the feedback and how they have incorporated these into their writing are presented and discussed with the researcher's own interpretation. In addition, this study tries to offer an insight on how a combination of different forms of feedback played a constructive role in teaching the writing course -English for Academic Purposes 2 (EAP 2)‖ to the undergraduate students of a public university. This is also a reflective and experimental study in nature since the study has been initiated from the experience of teaching this course for six months (a regular semester) including class tests on writing, assignments and two examinations. Students' assignments were the major source of data for the study.

Participants
The course was taught to the first year, second semester students of English Department from a very renowned public university in Bangladesh. They were thirty in number who already have done another introductory writing course EAP 1. They had submitted thirty assignments on a specific topic given by the author. Analyzing the students' writing texts, three sample copies out of thirty copies had been selected finally with the purpose of demonstrating them in the paper as examples of nature of feedback that was provided to the students' writing texts.

Data Collection Tool
Since this is a reflective and experimental study, students' submitted assignments were the main tool of data collection. The students had to submit their writing assignments incorporating the feedback given by the author. Besides, the author's reflection, observation and experiences of teaching the course were also interpreted as data for the study.

Data Collection Method and Analysis
The author had kept a manual record of the given feedback in a notebook. Some of the students' assignments were also photocopied to keep hard document for the study. Students' attitude and willingness to incorporate the feedback were also observed closely with manual note taking method. Descriptive analysis method has been followed to accomplish the discussion section of the paper.

First Step: Instruction for the Task
The course EAP 2 intends to offer a detail understanding about different types of essay and report writing which demand different forms of feedback (such as, error-correction, conference, written comments, grading etc.) .
At first, I started teaching the basic principles of writing i.e. how to form a thesis statement, how to support the thesis with evidence, how to use transitional words, how to restate the thesis in conclusion etc. After performing a good number of practice sessions, I taught the students the four steps of writing i.e. pre-writing, drafting, revising and editing. Next, I also taught the four bases for revising an essay which are unity, support, coherence and sentence skills. The rationale for teaching the four bases was that it would be helpful for students to understand how to revise a piece of writing instructionally and effectively. Students also practiced each base with a sample essay in the form of group work to make the class more engaging. Different classroom activities were practiced in the class such as, revising a part or a whole part of an essay, discussing the effects of changes etc. Such kinds of activity were done to remove students' anxiety in revision. Further, such activities also helped my students to get a proper idea about the feedback giving process, ways of giving specific feedback positively, and understanding any logical written comments of teacher on their drafts. After that, students started writing the first draft of a process essay titled ‗Effective Techniques to Improve Writing Skills' and submitted it for assessment.
Though I had discussed and introduced the idea of feedback to my students earlier, I was worried about my students' psychological state that whether they were able to receive the feedback positively. So, to know their attitude toward feedback, I applied ‗conference' technique to collect students responses on the previously given feedback. I tried to know whether they comprehended the feedback or were willing to incorporate these in their writing. From that conference session, I got some valuable information regarding my written comments on their writings. I understood that the feedback which I provided was quite specific and beneficial in nature as reported by the students. Thus, my first task to set the mindset of my students was done and I initiated the next step.

Second Step: How Did I Give Constructive Feedback
Keeping in mind all the feedback techniques, I followed an eclectic approach which was a mixture of error-correction, written comments, grading and conferencing. The rationale was that it would prevent me from being biased to follow any single technique. Most importantly, the aim was to engage my students in the process approach of writing more actively and positively.
I started checking the submitted copies of the students' assignments using imperative comments rather than negative one. For example, I commented ‗this writing needs to contain enough argument to support the thesis' rather than ‗this paper does not contain enough arguments'. The second sentence is a general comment which will not help the student to bring the changes accordingly. But, the first one is quite specific and well-focused which will guide the students to accept the changes rationally. Besides, writing specific comments makes the feedback process more action-oriented also through which the teacher can provide specific action to be taken and the recipient can take it easily and rationally.
Then, after highlighting the specific points to improve, I tried to identify the main ideas in their writings instead of finding error in sentences. If anybody failed to develop the main ideas in the draft, I discussed through written comments how to achieve that properly. In other words, I focused here on global errors (higher order concerns) rather than local errors (lower order concerns).
After that I returned the first drafts among the students and further advised them to read and comprehend the written feedback carefully. They were told to discuss with me after the class if they had any confusion. Thus, another conference session took place and strikingly I found out that students were very serious about the revision as they had to submit second draft of the writing by the following week. I realized that by using conference technique, I was not only able to elicit students' responses but also to perceive the suitability of my written comments on their first drafts. I took notes on different important aspects as reflected in the conferences by the students.
After the submission of the second draft, I arranged group activity in class and asked each group to exchange their copy with another group. They were instructed to make comment on the writings as readers and to give grades to the concerned essays. The idea of putting grades injected excitement and enthusiasm in the students in doing the task. Students incorporated the feedback received from other group and revised finally to submit the final draft of the assignment.

Third Step: Analysis of Students" Sample
Here is the analysis of some of the samples of students' writing and the responses I provided: 4.3.1. Sample of students' writing 1 There are many ways to improve writing skill. Effective techniques are many important to make good writing. Brainstorming, effective word choice, accurate use of grammar, writing coherent sentence structure are more important effective techniques to improve writing skill.

Teacher response (Written Comment):
It is a very well focused introductory paragraph. Your thesis sentence is also clear. Your sentence structure is simple and expressive. But, I think you need to be more cautious regarding subject-verb agreement, use of appropriate word( second sentence) and use of unnecessary and extra words (last sentence).
I also rewrote it for the students to show an example how the text could be corrected: There are many ways to improve writing skill. Some effective techniques may make our writing accurate and meaningful. Brainstorming, appropriate word choice, accurate use of grammar, writing coherent sentence structure are some of these effective techniques which can be followed in writing to improve our writing skill.
Students' response on the given feedback (collected from the conference session which was followed by the class where written comment was given): As this was my first assignment at University so I was quite nervous. However, I understand my mistakes and will try to correct my grammar following the feedback. Thank you to say nice words for my introduction. Really, it gives me confidence to write the whole assignment.
It can be noted here that how specific and logical comments help the students to understand their mistakes in writing. Besides, students did not feel threatened and thus positive attitude toward feedback and motivation to writing practice can be fostered among them.

Sample of students' writing 2
The best way to improve one's writing skill one must have to find a good writing partner. If one has a writing partner, he/ she must read your writing and must find out mistakes that one have done. And then, he/she would inform that person about the mistakes and thus one can give up wrong/mistaken writing forever.

Teacher response (Written Comment):
Your idea is very innovative. However, you need to be careful of proper use of sentence structure and subject-verb agreement rule as such care will help you to produce accurate sentence in your writing. I have rephrased your writing to give you a clear idea about the use of accurate sentence structure and selection of appropriate form of words. Here is an example how you can rewrite it: An efficient study partner can possibly act as an important contributor to any student who is looking forward to improving his writing skill. In other words, if one has a writing partner, he can share his writing confidently with the partner and elicit responses from him too. Most importantly, the student can request the partner to read his writing carefully and find out mistake that the piece of writing carries. And then, the partner can inform him about the mistakes and thus he can be aware of his mistakes in writing and continue to write correctly.
Students' response on the given feedback (collected from the conference session which was followed by the class where written comment was given): While I was submitting this assignment, I had fear in my mind that you would not accept the idea of having writing partner. But, amazingly, when I first read your written comment, I felt very happy because you supported my creative idea of keeping a partner. However, I feel sorry for my poor sentence structure. But, I can assure you that I have not copied from any source. Now, I have learnt seeing your sample writing that how to construct my sentence by selecting proper words, using transitional words to express the meaning clearly.

Sample of students' writing 3
Everyone expects a good writing about any topic. But all the persons don't afford to have a good writing. To improve writing skill one must follow some techniques. There are so many suggestions by the famous writer to improve in writing. Now, I am writing some techniques to improve one's writing skill in the below.
Teacher response (Written Comment): I appreciate your opening paragraph. Almost all of your sentences are correct. However, you need to take care of your sentence structure, word choice and the meaning of the sentences. Now, I am rewriting your paragraph in order to give you a hint that how to construct meaningful sentences. Here is an example how you can rewrite it-Everyone expects to write in an organized way on a given topic. But, sometimes this cannot be possible as one may not know the ways to write appropriately and accurately. To improve one's writing skill, one must follow some techniques. Experts have pointed out some important techniques which contribute to the improvement of the writing skill. In this essay, I will discuss some effective techniques which are necessary to improve one's writing skill.
Students' response on the given feedback (collected from the conference session which was followed by the class where written comment was given): I always fear to write anything because I cannot make meaningful sentences. Though, I read a lot but I don't feel any interest to write. But, after joining this writing class, I feel motivated to think and write, in other words, I want to express my feeling through writing. I understand your rewriting clearly and will try to form meaningful sentences in the next draft. All these words said by the students justify the effectiveness of giving clear and comprehensive feedback in terms of using a mixture of different forms of feedback. It also shows that, in teaching writing, feedback does not only help students to develop their writing skill but also to build a rapport between the teacher and students which are very important for any classroom situation.

Fourth Step: Experienced Difficulties
While giving feedback to students regarding their assignments, I have faced some challenging situations. These are pointed out below: a. Firstly, I had a large number of students in my class (30 students were in the class which is a very common scenario in any public university in Bangladesh). Giving detailed and intensive feedback to every student was very difficult and time consuming. b. Next, for lack of multimedia support it was difficult to demonstrate some lesson-concerned examples before students. Sometimes I faced hard time to hold up students' concentration without having audio-visual support. c. When the students were asked to submit their assignment using MS Office programme, many of them informed that they did not know how to operate MS office programme. The most striking fact was that, many students were found who did not have access to computer (this is another common scenario for the students of public universities here). This situation was complex enough to go ahead with writing task. d. Motivating introvert and shy students into group and pair work was a big challenge in the class. e. Another important issue was dealing with plagiarism in students' writing. Though I had taught them previously how to refer somebody's work properly, but lack of their sincerity or consciousness made it difficult to avoid plagiarism in writing. f. The most important problem as faced by me was students' misunderstanding about the given feedback on their draft. Students of poor proficiency failed to understand the written comments sometimes. Moreover, some students were unwilling to accept and incorporate the feedback showing the tendency of being overconfident in writing since, they have the highest grade (A+) in English in their S.S.C and H.S.C. g. Some of the students, instead of incorporating the feedback, they changed their whole writing and submitted a new writing in the second draft either for not comprehending the feedback or for being frustrated.

Fifth
Step: Applied Techniques to Overcome the Perceived Problems a. In order to manage the class properly, I made 10 groups and each group was consisting of 3 students. As I wanted to reach every student, I organized the conference session especially for the low proficiency learners who need extra time and care from teacher. b. To ensure students' computerized assignment submission, I assigned one student to every group who has access to computer and can help the other. Besides, I suggested them to go to any nearby cyber café for typing. c. While selecting group members, I formed mixed ability students' group i.e. mixing up good and struggling students in each group. d. Since the tendency of copying from another source cannot be removed from their writing overnight, I kept emphasizing the importance of original writing in conferences. I also warned them mentioning how plagiarism may affect their higher study. e. I used black pen instead of red pen to keep up students' positive attitude toward their writing task and to minimize the fear of getting feedback on their writing. f. I always arranged conferences immediately after giving written feedback to the students to ensure their proper comprehension of the feedback and keep them motivated and confident toward the writing task. It helped to remove misunderstanding between me and the students regarding the feedback on their writing.

Implications
Applying different forms of feedback helped the lower proficiency students particularly since they were in need of intensive feedback than the others. So, this process oriented method was very useful for them in their different steps of writing. Moreover, the students reported me that it helped them to realize the fact that it is more important to focus on the writing process rather than the final product in the phase of developing writing skills. They have got the message that feedback is not something to undermine them rather to scaffold to reach their target level of competency in writing.
On the other hand, since the paper shows an example of how different feedback techniques could be implied in teaching writing, the young and novice teachers who are concerned with teaching writing to undergraduate students may find it useful to get an insight of this practical implication of different forms of feedback. Though these process and feedback oriented system of teaching writing may seem less exciting, yet the effective changes in students' writing could be the appropriate reward to carry out the process.

Limitations
While giving specific and detailed feedback is a challenge for the teachers, here combination of different forms of feedback may create more pressure on the part of the teacher which could be a big challenge to carry out the process. Moreover, to ensure the effectiveness of the given feedback, the teacher needs to take enough preparation thus it demands the teachers' hardworking ability and energy. There is another limitation of the process which I have observed in my class. I had to put extra effort to keep my students motivated and engaged in the process as many of them were feeling pressurized because of the amount of writing and feedback they had to undergo. Teacher's friendly behavior in this case can help to minimize the problem.

Conclusion
This paper reflects the author's personal experience and observation of conducting a writing class using different forms of feedback (error-correction, written comments, grading and conferencing). The outcome shows that a mixture of different methods of giving feedback is beneficial for the students since it is successful to give detailed, specific, clear and finally constructive feedback to the student which is the expected nature of the feedback for teaching writing. Though combining different forms of feedback may seem new and complex, but the teachers who are passionate and interested to implement new and different approaches in teaching writing may find the paper useful and instigative.