Revising the Program Portfolio: Elevating Academic Program Performance and Strategic Alignment

At many institutions, program review is an underproductive exercise. Review of existing programs is often a check-the-box formality, with inconsistent criteria and little connection to institutional priorities or funding considerations. Decisions about where to concentrate resources across the portfolio can be highly politicized. This report profiles how academic planning exemplars use program review as a strategic tool, integrating data on academic quality, student demand, and resource utilization to improve the economics of challenged programs and prioritize programs for investment and expansion.

Developing a Credit for Prior Learning Program: System-Wide Strategies for Program Creation, Operations, and Recruitment

Credit for prior learning programs help students complete degrees more quickly and for less money. This report addresses the challenges of scaling up a credit for prior learning program at the university system level, and explores the delineation of responsibilities between system staff and institutional staff.

Assessing Merit Aid and Need-Based Aid At Private Institutions

Institutions provide students with full tuition merit awards through formal scholarship programs for outstanding performance in academics, leadership, community service, and athletics. This brief outlines how institutions fund and utilize merit to increase retention rates, particularly for minority and first generation students.

Using an animated pedagogical agent to interact affectively with the student

This work proposes an animated pedagogical agent that has the role of providing emotional support to the student: motivating and encouraging him, making him believe in his self-ability, and promoting a positive mood in him, which fosters learning. This careful support of the agent, its affective tactics, is expressed through emotional behaviour and encouragement messages of the lifelike character. Due to human social tendency of anthropomorphising software, we believe that a software agent can accomplish this affective role. In order to choose the adequate affective tactics, the agent should also know the student’s emotions. The proposed agent recognises the student’s emotions: joy/distress, satisfaction/disappointment, anger/gratitude, and shame, from the student’s observable behaviour, i. e. his actions in the interface of the educational system. The inference of emotions is psychologically grounded on the cognitive theory of emotions. More specifically, we use the OCC model which is based on the cognitive approach of emotion and can be computationally implemented. Due to the dynamic nature of the student’s affective information, we adopted a BDI approach to implement the affective user model and the affective diagnosis. Besides, in our work we profit from the reasoning capacity of the BDI approach in order for the agent to deduce the student’s appraisal, which allows it to infer the student’s emotions. As a case study, the proposed agent is implemented as the Mediating Agent of MACES: an educational collaborative environment modelled as a multi-agent system and pedagogically based on the sociocultural theory of Vygotsky.

Caracterização dos cursos de mestrado em educação no Rio de Janeiro: um enfoque perceptivo

O objetivo deste estudo é analisar algumas características dos Cursos de Mestrado em Educação no Rio de Janeiro, especia! mente as que foram agrupadas nas variáveis: Organização Didática, Relacionamento Professor-Aluno e Orientação Acadêmica. Foi assumido um enfoque perceptivo, isto é, tais caracte rísticas foram colhidas através da percepção dos próprios mestrandos, considerados corno percebedores especialmente:qualificados. Através de um questionário fechado, testado anteriormente em pesquisa-piloto, os mestrandos manifestaram sua percepça-o so bre algumas características do curso de mestrado e essa percepção foi depois relacionada com variáveis da situação dos sujeitos. Verificou-se que o fator "conclusão da dissertação" par~ ce influir na maneira de perceber o curso, levando a uma visão menos crítica do que a situação contrária. E como a amostra revelou-se selecionada (pessoas que co~ cluiram a dissertação, na maioria) pode-se verificar como) pessoas selecionadas, têm mais possibilidade de êxito, mesmo em situações não muito favoráveis. De fato, a maioria dos mestrandos nao recebia bolsa de estudos ou ajuda financeira de qualquer espécie e tinha um regime de trabalho bastante severo, tanto durante o curso como na fase de elaboração da dissertação. Foi dito que a amostra é selecionada e o fator seletivo parece ter sido a própria tarefa de responder ao questionário. Em- ~ bora s~ tratasse de urna tarefa facilitada, o pequeno numero que respondeu (75 mestrandos) parece ter sido justamente o grupo mais motivado, porque mais bem sucedido e assim, desejoso de colaborar. ~ verdade que tal seleção poderia ser considerada diversa da que se faz habitualmente ao admitir candidatos, mas parece que, na prática, o resultado foi o mesmo: separar um grupo com características mais desejáveis. Concluiu-se do valor da seleção, no curso de pós-graduaçao. Fatores como idade e engajamento no magistério superior deveriam ser levados em conta na aceitação dos mestrandos. No entanto, a seleção não resolveria tudo. De fato, o grupo selecionado da amostra denota pouco espírito crítico e uma certa acomodação ao sistema. Não seria esse resultado uma crítica ao próprio sistema, que inclusive com sujeitos motivados e capazes (o que se deduz de seu êxito escolar) chega a isso? A necessidade de uma reformulação dos Cursos de Mestrado em Educação, no sentido da educação libertadora e, portanto, outra conclusão que se impõe.

A recepção da criança com deficiência intelectual ao texto literário na educação infantil

The focus of this thesis is children's reception to literary texts starting from literary livelihood in an inclusive literary context, looking for the possible evidences that are present in the construction as reader/hearing of literature. Based on a study case, we search the ways of participation of a child (girl) with intellectual deficiency in situations of offering and reception of literary texts, looking for the understanding and explication of some aspects of her processing and the building up of an initial reader. The data were taken starting from observations in moments of reading and story-telling in the period from November to December/2008 and May to June/2009 in a public school of children education, in Natal- Brazil, in which there was a registered student showing intellectual deficiency associated to Down syndrome. As research tools we used: field diary, interview scripts and video recordings. The analyses were based on research from Amarilha (2001, 2006a, 2006b), Bettelheim (2007), Coelho (2008), Iser (1996), Jauss (1979, 1994), Luria (1990a, 1990b), Vygotsky (1991, 1993), Wallon (2007, 2008) amongst others. The research showed that although expressing little verbalization and limited levels of attention, body attitudes, movements and talks of the child under investigation, denounced engagement and rendition to the sonority of the texts shared. These data gives us traces that, under a mediating action, the child with intellectual limitation can turn into a reader/hearing subject of literature, developing a sensitive and a selective attitude towards the literary text. Amongst other aspects, we identified that (1) a conception of deficiency present through the school that recognizes his/her potential of developing and learning (2) the situation of sharing, that favours a relation with the texts through the other, and (3) the relevance of orality providing the semantic paths that help the child in the building up of meaning, presenting themselves as fundamental to her/his viewing of the literary text, and, therefore, the formation of the reader. Thus, recognizing her/his capacity and possibilities, we think it is important to guarantee to the child with intellectual deficiency, a space towards interaction with the fictional text in which the child can learn and live its ludic and interactive character, to enjoy its hearing abilities, benefiting, then, from the aesthetic experience lived, mainly, in collective situations mediated through the more experient reader and shared with her/his different pairs. The research shows yet that, looking after conditions that guarantee a comfortable environment to the story hearings in the classrooms that focus on children education, being aware of a selection and the prosody of stories, the didactic contract, the attention to individual reactions, enlarge the possibility of any child deficient or not to enjoy her/himself as reader/ hearing subject of literature, engaged in its richness and magic

Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean 2010-2011: Internacional integration and macroeconomic policy challenges amid global economic turmoil

Includes bibliography

Contribution of energy services to the Millennium Development Goals and to poverty alleviation in Latin America and the Caribbean: executive summary

Includes bibliography

Contribution of energy services to the millennium development goals and to poverty alleviation in Latin America and the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

A study on the capacity of statistical offices of the Caribbean to produce Environment, Social, Economic and Gender Statistics

Statistical organizations of the Caribbean countries continue to face serious challenges posed by the increased demand for more relevant, accurate and timely statistical data. Tangible progress has been made in delivering key products in the area of economic statistics. The central banks of the subregion have assisted greatly in this respect. However, even in this branch of statistics there are still several glaring gaps. The situation is even worse in other areas of statistics including social and environmental statistics. Even though all countries of the subregion have committed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as well as to other internationally agreed development goals serious challenges remain with respect to the compilation of the agreed indicators to assist in assessing progress towards the goals. It is acknowledged that appreciable assistance has been provided by the various donor agencies to develop statistical competence. This assistance has translated into the many gains that have been made. However, the national statistical organizations require much more help if they are to reach the plateau of self reliance in the production of the necessary statistical services. The governments of the subregion have also committed to invest more in statistical development and in promoting a statistics culture in the Caribbean. The training institutions of the subregion have also started to address this urgent need by broadening and deepening their teaching curricula. Funding support is urgently required to develop the appropriate cadre of statistical professionals to deliver the required outputs. However, this training must be continuous and must be sustained over an appropriate period since the current turnover of trained staff is high. This programme of training will need to be intensive for a period of at least five years after which it may be reduced. The modalities of training will also have to be more focused and in addition to formal training at educational institutions there is much room for on-the-job training, group training at the national level and much more south-south capacity building. There is also an urgent need to strengthen cooperation and collaboration among the donor community in the delivery of assistance for statistical development. Several development agencies with very good intentions are currently operating in the Caribbean. There is a danger however, that efforts can be duplicated if agencies do not collaborate adequately. Development agencies therefore need to consult with each other much more and share there development agenda more freely if duplication is to be averted. Moreover, the pooling of resources can surely maximize the benefits to the countries of the subregion.

A relação entre teoria e praxis segundo adorno

Neste ensaio, pretende-se analisar a concepção de Adorno acerca da relação entre teoria e prática com o intuito de explicitar o significado da autonomia da teoria e do intelectual, por ele postulada. Será demonstrado que tal formulação está voltada contra o ativismo dos movimentos estudantis europeus dos anos 60, contra a noção de engajamento e as diretrizes gerais da política cultural comunista, além de se opor à teoria do realismo crítico formulada por Lukács. A autonomia da teoria, como se verá, está ligada à defesa da autonomia estética e as relações existentes entre sujeito-objeto na atividade cognitiva.

Quality management, environmental management maturity, green supply chain practices and green performance of Brazilian companies with ISO 14001 certification: Direct and indirect effects

This study aims to test a new conceptual model based on the relationship between quality management (QM), environmental management maturity (EMM), adoption of external practices of green supply chain management (GSCM) (green purchasing and collaboration with customers) and green performance (GP) with data from 95 Brazilian firms with ISO 14001. To our knowledge, such links and relationships are not simultaneously identified and tested in the literature. The results indicate the validation of all of the research hypotheses. This paper highlights that an improvement in green performance will require attention to quality management, environmental management maturity, and green supply chain. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Um olhar para o Programa Acessa Escola: condições dos laboratórios de informática das escolas públicas de Guaratinguetá

Considering the necessity of implementation of the Information Technologies and Communication (ICT) in the public Brazilian schools, the São Paulo State government hearing the call of the federal government and, with the objective to promote the digital inclusion, created the Programa Acessa Escola. The research that we realized and bring expressed on this text, is about such program and allowed us comprehend how it had been developed in the public state schools of the city of Guaratinguetá. By visiting the schools, we saw the manner that each school make use of his informatics laboratory; how they understand the government Project; how they develop actions of use of the laboratory and, particularly, how they use the informatics laboratory to the teaching and learning of mathematics helping the professor and the students. To make possible to understand this use, was realized interviews with the responsible intern of each one of the 14 (fourteen) schools of Guaratinguetá; with the pedagogical coordinator or director of the school and with the mathematics teacher. By the analysis, realized using a qualitative approach of phenomenological nature, we understand that the intern see himself as an auxiliary of the student and professor in the use of the laboratory. The director or pedagogical coordinator understand that the laboratory is an excellent resource to the school, but still exist the necessity of more resources that allow to attend properly the community; and the mathematics teacher consider important the program in the school as much for the students digital inclusion as for the teaching but they feel not safe to use into his classes, because they consider that there is a lack of capacitation and collaboration to make their activities relevant to the learning. That make possible to recognize what is the function of the intern and what is the way that the students and professor ... ( Complete abstract click eletroctronic access below)

Comunicação pública e democracia digital nos processos de participação cidadã: uma análise do Portal Brasil, sob os princípios de E-engagement

This article conducted an analysis of Portal Brazil, specifically in the areas of “Education” and “Economy and Employment”, by according to the principles of e-engagement defined by the Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD). For understanding of this work, were elucidated concepts such as public communication - trajectory, principles and relations -, digital democracy, e-government and engagement and civic participation. Through this analysis was realized the importance of public communication in the processes of opinion formation and stimulus to citizen participation, as well as the performance of the internet as a facilitator instrument in the processes of relationship between State and Society

Quality management, environmental management maturity, green supply chain practices and green performance of Brazilian companies with ISO 14001 certification: Direct and indirect effects (Reprint from vol 67C, pg 39-51)

This study aims to test a new conceptual model based on the relationship between quality management (QM), environmental management maturity (EMM), adoption of external practices of green supply chain management (GSCM) (green purchasing and collaboration with customers) and green performance (GP) with data from 95 Brazilian firms with ISO 14001. To our knowledge, such links and relationships are not simultaneously identified and tested in the literature. The results indicate the validation of all of the research hypotheses. This paper highlights that an improvement in green performance will require attention to quality management, environmental management maturity, and green supply chain.