The role of academic community in higher learning : Alternatives to a drive-thru education

The purpose of our paper is to illustrate the fundamental importance of developing academic community among first year students. We argue that a sense of academic community is of fundamental importance in combating the effects of the neo-liberal economic discourse on higher education, and that the values of higher education are incongruent with those of economic rationalism. The discursive commodification of the student, and of education itself, works against the formation of community, both within the university environment and in the wider society. We argue that, at present, the dominant discourse shaping the social practice of higher education is that of neo-liberal economics. Community values stand in opposition to the dominant discourse, and are integral to the long-term survival of a socially critical and socially responsive society. We conclude that the importance of establishing a sense of academic community during the first year of university is justified by its ultimate value to society.

Compliance supplement for audits of institutions of higher learning and other non-profit institutions.

Shipping list no.: 91-743-P.

Experiences and practices of placement offices of institutions of higher learning in Illinois with regard to job placement of members of minority groups.

Mode of access: Internet.

News of institutes of higher learning;

Abstracts of articles appearing in Izvestiya vysshikh uchebnykh zavedenity: khimiya i khimicheskaya tekhnologiya.

The practice of quality assuring learning in higher education

There remains a lack of published empirical data on the substantive outcomes of higher learning and the establishment of quality processes for determining them. Studies that do exist are nationally focused with available rankings of institutions reflecting neither the quality of teaching and learning nor the diversity of institutions. This paper describes two studies in which Associate Deans from Australian higher education institutions and focus groups of management and academics identify current issues and practices in the design, development and implementation of processes for assuring the quality of learning and teaching. Results indicate that developing a perspective on graduate attributes and mapping assessments to measure outcomes across an entire program necessitates knowledge creation and new inclusive processes. Common elements supporting consistently superior outcomes included: inclusivity; embedded graduate attributes; consistent and appropriate assessment; digital collection mechanisms; and systematic analysis of outcomes used in program review. Quality measures for assuring learning are proliferating nationally and changing the processes, systems and culture of higher education as a result.

Improving bilingual higher education: Training university professors in content and language integrated learning

With increasing international mobility, higher education must cater to the varying linguistic and cultural needs of students. Successful delivery of courses through English as the vehicular language is essential to encourage international enrollment. However, this cannot be achieved without preparing university professors in the many intricacies delivering their subjects in English may pose. This paper aims to: share preliminary data concerning Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) at Laureate Network Universities worldwide as few studies have been conducted at the tertiary level, reflect upon data regarding student and teacher satisfaction with CLIL at the Universidad Europea de Madrid (UEM), and to propose improvements in English-taught subjects.

Wellness as higher education curriculum: A comprehensive framework for health education and promotion

A number of studies in relation to the place, impact and purpose of Wellness curricula provide insight into the perceived benefits of Wellness education in university environments. Of particular note is the recommendation by many authors that curriculum design fosters personal experiences, reflective practice and active self-managed learning approaches in order to legitimise (give permission for) the adoption of wellness as a personal lifestyle approach in the frenetic pace of student life. From a broader educational perspective, Wellness education provides opportunities for students to engage in learning self regulation skills both within and beyond the context of the Wellness construct.To realise the suggested potential of Wellness education in higher learning, it is necessary that curricula overlay the principles from the domains of both self-regulation and Wellness, to highlight authentic learning as a means to lifelong approaches. Currently, however, systematic development and empirical examination of the Wellness construct have received limited academic investigation. Despite having a multitude of intended purposes from the educative to the therapy oriented goals of the original authors, most wellness models appear to be limited to the “what” of Wellness. Investigations of the “how” and “why” aspects of Wellness may serve to enhance currently existing models by incorporating behaviour modification and learning approaches in order to create more comprehensive frameworks for health education and promotion.It is also important to note that none of the current Wellness models actually address the educative framework necessary for an individual to learn and thus become aware or understand and make choices about their own Wellness.The literature reviewed within this paper would suggest that learner success is optimised by giving learners authentic opportunities to develop and practice self regulation strategies. Such opportunities include learning experiences that: provide options for self determined outcomes; require skills development; recognise principles of successful learning as outlined by the APA; and are scaffolded according to learner needs rather than in generic ways. Thus, configuring a learner centred curriculum in Wellness Education would potentially benefit from overlaying principles from the domains of both SRL and Wellness to highlight authentic learning as a means to lifelong approaches, triggered by undergraduate experiences.Student perceptions are a rich and significant data base for the measurement of their experiences, activities, practices and behaviours. Wellness undergraduate education, such as the “Fitness, Health and Wellness” unit offered by Queensland University of Technology, offers a context in which to confirm possibilities suggested by the literature reviewed in this paper in a practical, Australian context.

Reconfiguring the higher education value chain

Forces of demand and supply are changing the dynamics of the higher education market. Transformation of institutions of higher learning into competitive enterprise is underway. Higher education institutions are seemingly under intense pressure to create value and focus their efforts and scarce funds on activities that drive up value for their respective customers and other stakeholders. Porter’s generic ‘value chain’ model for creating value requires that the activities of an organization be segregated in to discrete components for value chain analysis to be performed. Recent trends in higher education make such segregation possible. Therefore, it is proposed that the academic process can be unbundled into discrete components which have well developed measures. A reconfigured value chain for higher education, with its own value drivers and critical internal linkages is also proposed in this paper.

The incorporation of web 2.0 into learning design : an implementation model from the perspectives of teachers and students

This paper summarises some of the recent studies on various types of learning approaches that have utilised some form of Web 2.0 services in curriculum design to enhance learning. A generic implementation model of this integration will then be presented to illustrate the overall learning implementation process. Recently, the integration of Web 2.0 technologies into learning curriculum has begun to get a wide acceptance among teaching instructors across various higher learning institutions. This is evidenced by numerous studies which indicate the implementation of a range of Web 2.0 technologies into their learning design to improve learning delivery. Moreover, recent studies also have shown that the ability of current students to embrace Web 2.0 technologies is better than students using existing learning technology. Despite various attempts made by teachers in relation to the integration, researchers have noted a lack of integration standard to help in curriculum design. The absence of this standard will restrict the capacity of Web 2.0 adaptation into learning and adding more the complexity to provide meaningful learning. Therefore, this paper will attempt to draw a conceptual integration model which is being generated to reflect how learning activities with some facilitation of Web 2.0 is currently being implemented. The design of this model is based on shared experiences by many scholars as well as feedback gathered from two separate surveys conducted on teachers and a group of 180 students. Furthermore, this paper also recognizes some key components that generally engage in the design of a Web 2.0 teaching and learning which need to be addressed accordingly. Overall, the content of this paper will be organised as follows. The first part of the paper will introduce the importance of Web 2.0 implementation in teaching and learning from the perspective of higher education institutions and those challenges surrounding this area. The second part summarizes related works done in this field and brings forward the concept of designing learning with the incorporation of Web 2.0 technology. The next part presents the results of analysis derived from the two student and teachers surveys on using Web 2.0 during learning activities. This paper concludes by presenting a model that reflects several key entities that may be involved during the learning design.

Learning the learning rate for prediction with expert advice

Most standard algorithms for prediction with expert advice depend on a parameter called the learning rate. This learning rate needs to be large enough to fit the data well, but small enough to prevent overfitting. For the exponential weights algorithm, a sequence of prior work has established theoretical guarantees for higher and higher data-dependent tunings of the learning rate, which allow for increasingly aggressive learning. But in practice such theoretical tunings often still perform worse (as measured by their regret) than ad hoc tuning with an even higher learning rate. To close the gap between theory and practice we introduce an approach to learn the learning rate. Up to a factor that is at most (poly)logarithmic in the number of experts and the inverse of the learning rate, our method performs as well as if we would know the empirically best learning rate from a large range that includes both conservative small values and values that are much higher than those for which formal guarantees were previously available. Our method employs a grid of learning rates, yet runs in linear time regardless of the size of the grid.

Learning experience and identity development as a research assistant /

What research learning experiences do current students have as research assistants (RAs) in the Faculty of Education at Brock University? How do the experiences of research assistants contribute to the formation of a researcher identity and influence future research plans? Despite the importance of these questions, there seems to be very little research conducted or written about the experiences of research assistants as they engage in the research process. There are few resources to which research assistants or their advisors can refer regarding graduate student research learning experiences. The purpose of this study was to understand the kinds of learning experiences that 4 RAs (who are enrolled in the Faculty of Education at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario) have and how those experiences contribute to their identities as researchers. Through interviews with participants, observations of participants, and textual documents produced by participants, I have (a) discovered what 4 RAs have learned while engaged in one or more research assistantships and (b) explored how these 4 RAs' experiences have shaped their identities as new researchers. My research design provided a separate case study for each participant RA, including myself as a research participant. Then as a collective, I studied all 4 cases as a case study in itself in the form of a cross-analysis to identify similarities and differences between cases. Using a variety of writing forms and visual narratives, I analyzed and interpreted the experiences of my participants utilizing arts-based literature to inform my analysis and thesis format. The final presentation includes electronic diagrams, models, poetry, a newsletter, a website presentation, and other representational arts-based forms.This thesis is a resource for current and future research assistants who can learn from the research assistant experiences presented in the research. Faculty members who hire research assistants to assist them with their research will also benefit from reading about RAs' learning experiences from the RAs' perspective. The information provided in this thesis document is a resource to inform future policies and research training initiatives in faculty departments and offices at universities. Consequently, this thesis also informs researchers (experienced and inexperienced) about how to conduct research in ways that benefit all parties and provide insight into potential ways to improve research assistantship practices.

Learning approaches and student perceptions of teaching quality

This research investigated the links between students' personal characteristics, their approaches to learning and their perceptions of teaching quality in a first-year accounting unit. Significant learning differences were found between Australian and Chinese students, and strong inter-relationships between contextual factors, such as teaching quality, and learning approaches were identified.

Learning Software Engineering via Internet

In recent years, education authorities worldwide, including the German Federal Government, have invested heavily in the development of e-learning and multimedia materials for institutions of higher learning. While for some subject matters the benefits of e-learning seem obvious, there are subjects, often consisting of a number of tenuously connected topics or requiring a balance of learning and training, for which it is a valid question whether appropriate learning materials can be presented via the Internet. Software Engineering belongs to this second group, both for its broad collection of topics and, particularly, for the required emphasis on teamwork and communication training.

Higher education for a sustainable world

Purpose: The paper aims to explore the nature and purpose of higher education (HE) in the twenty-first century, focussing on how it can help fashion a green knowledge-based economy by developing approaches to learning and teaching that are social, networked and ecologically sensitive. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a discursive analysis of the skills and knowledge requirements of an emerging green knowledge-based economy using a range of policy focussed and academic research literature. Findings: The business opportunities that are emerging as a more sustainable world is developed requires the knowledge and skills that can capture and move then forward but in a complex and uncertain worlds learning needs to non-linear, creative and emergent. Practical implications: Sustainable learning and the attributes graduates will need to exhibit are prefigured in the activities and learning characterising the work and play facilitated by new media technologies. Social implications: Greater emphasis is required in higher learning understood as the capability to learn, adapt and direct sustainable change requires interprofessional co-operation that must utlise the potential of new media technologies to enhance social learning and collective intelligence. Originality/value: The practical relationship between low-carbon economic development, social sustainability and HE learning is based on both normative criteria and actual and emerging projections in economic, technological and skills needs.