Education Commons^™

Leading, Engaging, Selecting And Designing, Hamish Bennett Coates

Professor Hamish Coates

This first edition reviews recent work in the areas of higher education leadership, evaluation, student selection, and in the design of educational standards and processes. Higher education update is published by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)

Reporting Program Impacts: Slaying The Dragon Of Resistance, Nancy K. Franz, Mark Mccann

Nancy K. Franz

Virginia Cooperative Extension has responded to today's environment of enhanced accountability by improving the organization's program impact reporting. Successful strategies to enhance the quantity and quality of program impact reports include new hires, training faculty and administration, individual and small group technical assistance, development of reporting tools, and tying impact reporting to performance and recognition. This holistic approach resulted in enhanced reporting and use of program impacts as well as improved program design and evaluation.

Assessment For Learning: An Outcomes-Based Approach To Enhance Learning, Ian R. Mcandrew, William Muldoon, Indra R. Sinka

Ian R. McAndrew

Effects Of Item Positions On Their Difficulty And Discrimination : A Study In Pisa Science Data Across Test Language And Countries, Luc T. Le

Dr Luc Tu Le

This study was based on a four-cluster rotation design of 13 linked test booklets from PISA 2006 science data. It investigated effects of item positions on their difficulty and discrimination parameter estimates obtained from one and two parameter IRT Partial Credit models. The analyses were done separately for 57 test language groups from 53 countries with a total of about 340,000 students. The results revealed that for all of the test language groups the items tended to become more difficult when they were located later in the test. However, a high linear relationship between the item difficulty estimates by the …

Return On Effectiveness (Roe): A Working Model For Measuring Effectiveness Of Service Training, Raman Attri

Raman K. Attri

A service company selling and repairing complex hardware is always tightly pressed to reduce the labor hours of its service engineers in the filed to reduce cost of service and to keep the profit margins on contracts high. Such companies relies highly on intensive technical training for such engineers to enable them right field skills, improving their performance and addressing the areas of high cost of service. It is very important for such high capital companies to look into ROI of the training and to frame a metric by which business results can be related with investment on the training …

Faculty Influence On Fraternal Residential Learning Communities, Charles G. Eberly, Andrew F. Wall, Brian Warren

Charles G. Eberly

This paper described a survey of fraternity members' satisfaction with their experiences in a Residential Learning Community within Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity. RLCs include a faculty member who has an office within the chapter facility, who teaches a course for credit within the chapter, and who supervises educational programming within the chapter. Chapters who attain RLC status must apply for re-accreditation as an RLC on a periodic basis.

An Analysis Of Attendance At Major League Baseball Spring Training Games, Michael R. Donihue, David Findlay, Peter Newberry

Michael R Donihue

This paper examines the determinants of game-day attendance during Major League Baseball’s 2002 spring training season in Florida. Our model of game-day attendance includes location, quality of game, and time and weather variables. A censored Tobit estimation procedure is used to estimate our model. Our results indicate that the quality of the game, average ticket price, and several location-specific factors affect attendance. Specifically, our results suggest that changes in income have no effect on attendance while increases in ticket prices cause reductions in attendance. Furthermore, the estimated price elasticity of demand for Major League Baseball during the spring training season …

The Increasing Expectation Of Relevance For Higher Education And The Academic Profession: Some Reflections On The Case Of Mexico, Jesús F. Galaz-Fontes, Laura E. Padilla-González, Manuel Gil-Antón

Jesús Francisco Galaz Fontes

Developments in the global context and in national conditions have stimulated a re-examination of higher education relevance in the context of the increasing role of knowledge in the economic and social life of nations. In general, and such is the case also for Mexico, there are increasing expectations regarding higher education potential contribution to society. In this essay we discuss, in the context of the recent evolution of Mexican higher education, the drivers that are elevating the relevance expectations that Mexicans have of higher education. After that, we elaborate how higher education growth dynamics and the increasing social expectations regarding …

La Universidad Vista Por Sus Estudiantes: El Caso De Una Universidad Pública Estatal, Jesús F. Galaz-Fontes, Juan J. Sevilla-García

Jesús Francisco Galaz Fontes

En base a una encuesta organizacional aplicada a 2,697 estudiantes de una universidad pública estatal se identificó la perspectiva de los mismos sobre la institución (infraestructura, gestión, actividades de docencia, etc.) y su trabajo como estudiantes. En general, los estudiantes manifestaron una opinión positiva de la institución excepto en relación a los asuntos relacionados con el gobierno institucional. Los resultados se discuten en cuanto a su aportación a nuestra comprensión de la vida estudiantil.

The School Based Oral English Test (Oet): Perceptions And Practices Of Selected Mara Junior Science College Teachers, Zaitun Abd. Majid, Mimi Looi Lin Eng, Arshad Abd Samad

Arshad Abd Samad

The school-based oral English test (OET) is one of the more recent innovations in assessment in the Malaysian school system. However, since its inception in 2002, the OET has been the topic of various discussions. The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine the perceptions and practices among a small group of MARA Junior Science College English teachers in relation to the OET. Teacher perceptions of the OET will not only influence the effective implementation of the test, but also teaching techniques in the classroom. Specifically, this study sought teacher views regarding the fairness and validity of the OET, …

La Política Azul Y Oro: Historias Orales, Relaciones De Poder Y Disputa Universitaria, Imanol Ordorika, Rafael López González

Imanol Ordorika

No abstract provided.

Predicting Transition And Adjustment To College: Minority Biomedical And Behavioral Science Students’ First Year Of College, Sylvia Hurtado, June Chang, Victor Saenz, Lorelle Espinosa, Nolan Cabrera, Oscar Cerna

Nolan L. Cabrera

The purpose of this study is to explore key factors that impact the college transition of aspiring underrepresented minority students in the biomedical and behavioral sciences, in comparison with White, Asian students and non-science minority students. We examined successful management of the academic environment and sense of belonging during the first college year. Longitudinal data were derived from the Higher Education Research Institute’s (HERI) 2004 Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey and the 2005 Your First College Year (YFCY) Survey. Using a reformulation of the integration model (Nora, Barlow, and Crisp, 2005), we find concerns about college financing, negotiating …

Managing Higher Education: Introduction, Gerd Grözinger, Roberto Rodríguez-Gómez

Roberto Rodríguez-Gómez

This paper presents an introduction to the volume that authors have compiled for Management Revue under the title "Managing Higher Education". Alongside a brief synopsis about each contribution, the article discusses about the importance of management issues for compression of the changes they are experiencing the higher education systems in the world

Pedagogical Agents As Learning Companions: The Impact Of Agent Emotion And Gender, Yanghee Kim, A. L. Baylor, E. Shen

Yanghee Kim

The potential of emotional interaction between human and computer has recently interested researchers in human–computer interaction. The instructional impact of this interaction in learning environments has not been established, however. This study examined the impact of emotion and gender of a pedagogical agent as a learning companion (PAL) on social judgements, interest, self-efficacy, and learning. Two experiments investigated separately the effects of a PAL's emotional expression and empathetic response. Experiment 1 focused on emotional expression (positive vs. negative vs. neutral) and gender (male vs. female) with a sample of 142 male and female college students in a computer literacy course. …

Mathgirls: Toward Developing Girls’ Positive Attitude And Self-Efficacy Through Pedagogical Agents, Yanghee Kim, Q Wei, B Xu, Y Ko, V Ilieva

Yanghee Kim

MathGirls is a pedagogical-agent-based environment designed for high-school girls learning introductory algebra. Since females are in general more interested in interactive computing and more positive about the social presence of pedagogical agents, the environment provides a girl-friendly social learning environment, where pedagogical agents encourage the girls to build constructive views of learning math. This study investigated the impact of agent presence on changes in the girls’ math attitude, their math self-efficacy, and their learning; on the girls’ choice of their agents; and, on their perceptions of agent affability. The results revealed that the girls with an agent developed a more …

Developing A Training Program For Instructional Assistants Within A Large-Scale Emporium-Based Environment: A Nine-Year Evolution Towards Systematic Change, Charles B. Hodges, Jennifer M. Brill

Charles B. Hodges

The Virginia Tech Math Emporium is a large-scale, computer-based learning lab supporting courses designed following the emporium model (Twigg, 2003). In this article the authors discuss challenges and solutions faced between the years 1997 and 2006 involved with hiring, training, and evaluating the staff of instructional assistants working in the Math Emporium. The discussion is grounded in literature from the fields of training and peer tutoring. Directions for future methods of training instructional assistants are suggested.

Assessing Treatment Integrity In Behavioral Consultation, Lee Wilkinson

Lee A Wilkinson, PhD

The trend in school psychology services is a shift from an emphasis on an assessment-based paradigm to one of consultation problem-solving and behavioral intervention. A critical component of consultation-derived interventions and behavior change is treatment integrity. Treatment integrity (or fidelity) refers to the extent to which an intervention is implemented as intended (or planned). Although its importance has been acknowledged in the literature, this construct has largely been neglected in consultation research and practice. This article describes practical approaches for assessing and monitoring the integrity of treatments implemented during the problem-solving process. A treatment-monitoring interview (TMI) is proposed as an …

The Student Opinion Scale (Sos): A Measure Of Examinee Motivation: Test Manual, Donna L. Sundre, A. D. Thelk

Donna L. Sundre

No abstract provided.

Competition And Choice: Determinants Of Access To University Places Via The Victorian School System, Daniel Edwards

Dr Daniel Edwards

The provision of secondary school education in Victoria has changed substantially over the past 50 years. This thesis examines the consequences of these changes for the academic opportunities of government school students. In the 1950s and 1960s, unprecedented numbers of students and near-universal school participation provided a challenge to governments in relation to education provision. As a result, the comprehensive ideal for organising government secondary schooling was adopted. This system became an important vehicle for providing educational opportunities for many students who previously had limited access to the post-primary years. In the 1970s, funding for schooling in Australia received a …

Blink And They're Gone: A "Quick-Take" On Impulse Purchase Behavior And Enrollment Marketing In Higher Education, Oscar T. Mcknight, Ronald Paugh, Vahn Knight

Oscar T McKnight Ph.D.

The college-decision process that prospective students make has been characterized as deliberate and prolonged -- a classic extensive problem solving behavior model. New research indicates that a significant proportion of students engage in impluse purchase behavior when choosing a college. Marketing implications for enrollment management and "Blink An Intervention Model" are presented