Discovering the campus together: a mobile and computer-based learning experience

One of the most relevant difficulties faced by first-year undergraduate students is to settle into the educational environment of universities. This paper presents a case study that proposes a computer-assisted collaborative experience designed to help students in their transition from high school to university. This is done by facilitating their first contact with the campus and its services, the university community, methodologies and activities. The experience combines individual and collaborative activities, conducted in and out of the classroom, structured following the Jigsaw Collaborative Learning Flow Pattern. A specific environment including portable technologies with network and computer applications has been developed to support and facilitate the orchestration of a flow of learning activities into a single integrated learning setting. The result is a Computer-Supported Collaborative Blended Learning scenario, which has been evaluated with first-year university students of the degrees of Software and Audiovisual Engineering within the subject Introduction to Information and Communications Technologies. The findings reveal that the scenario improves significantly students’ interest in their studies and their understanding about the campus and services provided. The environment is also an innovative approach to successfully support the heterogeneous activities conducted by both teachers and students during the scenario. This paper introduces the goals and context of the case study, describes how the technology was employed to conduct the learning scenario, the evaluation methods and the main results of the experience.

Early Christian School Texts on Papyri: the database

Database of papyrus school texts which may be identified as Christian on the basis of the presence of some internal indicator: Christian symbols, textual content originating from the Bible or of a clearly Christian origin proposed as a copying exercise, or Christian contents not part of the exercise itself, such as prayers or invocations.

Deferred effects of nursery school on adolescents' school performance in Spain

This research analysis the long-term effects of nursery school attendance before the age of three in Spain. The effects are measured when the individuals are adolescents and attend secondary school. The article deals with the controversy over the long-term effects of nursery school attendance and its potential effect on reducing inequalities and social exclusion. The results estimate a significant long-term effect of nursery school attendance on improving educational performance, although the beneficial effects are lower among adolescents residing in the lower status households.

Teaching ethnic diversity in journalism school

It has been found that the symbolic elites have a prominent role in the discursive reproduction of racism in society, because they control the public discourse through which many ethnic prejudices are spread and shared. This special position of the mass media requires that the professional education of journalists, also featuring such topics as ethnic studies, diversity and racism, is optimally adapted to the multicultural societies in Europe, North America and Australia. This paper reports about an extensive research project examining ethnic education of journalists in these white-dominated countries, by examining the websites of many journalism and communication departments. Consistent with the general finding that white symbolic elites primarily deny or ignore (their) racism in society, none of the academic programs, anywhere in the world, mentions special classes on racism in the mass media. Finally, a practical proposal is made for a course on ethnic reporting in multicultural societies.

El papel de los diarios de difusión nacional en la Revolución de Asturias de 1934: el caso de ABC y Heraldo de Madrid

La Revolución de Asturias de 1934 supone uno de los capítulos más cruentos de la Segunda República española, en tanto en cuanto muestra que las diferencias sociales, económicas y políticas del momento podían estallar violentamente en cualquier momento.La prensa, muy comprometida ideológicamente,también participó de este acontecimiento de una u otra forma. Esta investigación pretende abordar el caso concreto de ABC y Heraldo de Madrid, los dos periódicos más vendidos del país, y cómo su información y sus opiniones pudieron contribuir a destacar y motivar estas diferencias.

Welfare of naive and sophisticated players in school choice

Two main school choice mechanisms have attracted the attention in the literature: Boston and deferred acceptance (DA). The question arises on the ex-ante welfareimplications when the game is played by participants that vary in terms of their strategicsophistication. Abdulkadiroglu, Che and Yasuda (2011) have shown that the chances ofnaive participants getting into a good school are higher under the Boston mechanism thanunder DA, and some naive participants are actually better off. In this note we show thatthese results can be extended to show that, under the veil of ignorance, i.e. students not yetknowing their utility values, all naive students may prefer to adopt the Boston mechanism.

The role of awareness, information gathering and processing in school choice

This paper studies the determinants of school choice, focusing on the role of information. Weconsider how parents' search efforts and their capacity to process information (i.e., tocorrectly assess schools) affect the quality of the schools they choose for their children. Usinga novel dataset, we are able to identify parents' awareness of schools in their neighborhoodand measure their capacity to rank the quality of the school with respect to the officialrankings. We find that parents education and wealth are important factors in determiningtheir level of school awareness and information gathering. Moreover, these search effortshave important consequences in terms of the quality of school choice.

The importance of relative performance feedback information: Evidence from a natural experiment using high school students

We study the effect of providing relative performance feedback information onperformance, when individuals are rewarded according to their absolute performance. Anatural experiment that took place in a high school offers an unusual opportunity to testthis effect in a real-effort setting. For one year only, students received information thatallowed them to know whether they were performing above (below) the class average aswell as the distance from this average. We exploit a rich panel data set and find that theprovision of this information led to an increase of 5% in students grades. Moreover, theeffect was significant for the whole distribution. However, once the information wasremoved, the effect disappeared. To rule out the concern that the effect may beartificially driven by teachers within the school, we verify our results using nationallevel exams (externally graded) for the same students, and the effect remains.

How different are returns to education? Evidence from German school choices

This study presents estimates of returns to post-secondary educationand wage differentials among graduates fromdifferent secondary schoolsin Germany. I use an empirical model that captures the basic features ofthe German education system. It controls for selection into post-secondaryeducation and treats latter as endogenous in the wage equation. Myresults show that OLS estimates are severely biased. The direction ofthe bias depends on the secondary school type. Annual returns topost-secondary education differ significantly: they are eight timeshigher for graduates from the highest secondary school than for graduatesfrom the lowest secondary school.

Characterization and Application of Educational Virtual Environments for Science Teaching in Secondary School

This work describes the characteristics of a representative set of seven different virtual laboratories (VLs) aimed for science teaching in secondary school. For this purpose, a 27-item evaluation model that facilitates the characterization of the VLs was prepared. The model takes into account the gaming features, the overall usability, and also the potential to induce scientific literacy. Five of the seven VLs were then tested with two larger and highly heterogenic groups of students, and in two different contexts – biotechnology and physics, respectively. It is described how the VLs were received by the students, taking into account both their motivation and their self-reported learning outcome. In some cases, students’ approach to work with the VLs was recorded digitally, and analyzed qualitatively. In general, the students enjoyed the VL activities, and claimed that they learned from them. Yet, more investigation is required to address the effectiveness of these tools for significant learning.

La trayectoria residencial de la inmigración en Madrid y Barcelona. Un esquema teórico a partir del análisis cualitativo

El presente artículo busca proponer un esquema teórico que refleje el comportamientoresidencial de la población inmigrante en España. Dicho diagrama es el resultado de 50entrevistas en profundidad realizadas en las áreas metropolitanas de Madrid y Barcelona.El análisis del contenido de las entrevistas permite diferenciar etapas en el proceso migratoriode integración: el aterrizaje, la llegada, el asentamiento y la estabilización. Estas etapassintetizan el recorrido de un inmigrante extracomunitario en el camino hacia la satisfacción consu situación residencial.Cada etapa presenta diferencias en los criterios de localización residencial; en el tipo devivienda al que el inmigrante aspira; y en la composición del hogar. Asimismo, las etapasevolucionan de acuerdo con el origen del inmigrante, su capital humano, su acceso a redessociales y según si su proyecto migratorio es individual o familiar.