Cross-Border Higher Education: The Expansion of International Branch Campuses     

Paniagua  Jordi  Villó  Cristina  Escrivà-Beltran  Maria 《Research in higher education》2022,63(6):1037-1057

Research in Higher Education - The international expansion of higher education has intensified in recent decades with a rapidly growing number of international branch campuses appearing on the...  相似文献   

Making a difference in poor communities: relations among actors in Mexican schools     

Juan Carlos Silas-Casillas  Cristina Perales-Franco 《International journal of qualitative studies in education》2014,27(8):992-1019

Even in marginalized towns it is possible to find school communities that have developed relationships that encourage the construction of institutional cultures and management structures prone to superior academic performance compared to others within the same context. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research project conducted in 8 towns and 16 schools in Mexico. The analytical framework is based on Kenneth Gergen’s social constructionism. The paper highlights the role of the school’s principal in the construction of relationships in the school community and the build-up of practices leading to shared meaning and goals. The desire and ability of the principal to promote dialogue and provide spaces for it are central, as well as her or his ability to interpret and translate the needs of parents and community, and the systemic norms from the Ministry of Education, to the reality of the community and the parents.  相似文献   

Population validity for educational data mining models: A case study in affect detection     

Jaclyn Ocumpaugh  Ryan Baker  Sujith Gowda  Neil Heffernan  Cristina Heffernan 《British journal of educational technology : journal of the Council for Educational Technology》2014,45(3):487-501

Information and communication technology (ICT)‐enhanced research methods such as educational data mining (EDM) have allowed researchers to effectively model a broad range of constructs pertaining to the student, moving from traditional assessments of knowledge to assessment of engagement, meta‐cognition, strategy and affect. The automated detection of these constructs allows EDM researchers to develop intervention strategies that can be implemented either by the software or the teacher. It also allows for secondary analyses of the construct, where the detectors are applied to a data set that is much larger than one that could be analyzed by more traditional methods. However, in many cases, the data used to develop EDM models are collected from students who may not be representative of the broader populations who are likely to use ICT. In order to use EDM models (automated detectors) with new populations, their generalizability must be verified. In this study, we examine whether detectors of affect remain valid when applied to new populations. Models of four educationally relevant affective states were constructed based on data from urban, suburban and rural students using ASSISTments software for middle school mathematics in the Northeastern United States. We found that affect detectors trained on a population drawn primarily from one demographic grouping do not generalize to populations drawn primarily from the other demographic groupings, even though those populations might be considered part of the same national or regional culture. Models constructed using data from all three subpopulations are more applicable to students in those populations than those trained on a single group, but still do not achieve ideal population validity—the ability to generalize across all subgroups. In particular, models generalize better across urban and suburban students than rural students. These findings have important implications for data collection efforts, validation techniques, and the design of interventions that are intended to be applied at scale.  相似文献   

Assessment and teaching of science skills: whole of programme perceptions of graduating students     

Yvonne Hodgson  Cristina Varsavsky  Kelly E. Matthews 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2014,39(5):515-530

This study reports on science student perceptions of their skills (scientific knowledge, oral communication, scientific writing, quantitative skills, teamwork and ethical thinking) as they approach graduation. The focus is on which teaching activities and assessment tasks over the whole programme of study students thought utilised each of the six nominated skills. In this quantitative study involving two Australian research-intensive universities, the teaching activities identified by students as developing the broadest number of skills were laboratory classes and tutorials. Lectures were only effective for developing scientific knowledge and, to a limited extent, ethical thinking. Assessment tasks that students perceived to utilise the broadest range of skills were assignments and oral presentations. The findings of this study document the students’ perspective about their gains in skill sets, and the teaching activities and assessment tasks that require them to use and thus develop these skills. The findings provide an opportunity to evaluate the constructive alignment of skills development, teaching activities and assessment tasks from a student’s perspective. Further research is required to actually measure the skills that students gain over their whole programme of study.  相似文献   

Development of a virtual tool for learning basic organisation and planning in rural engineering projects     

María Dolores Redel-Macías  Carlos Castillo  Cristina Aguilar Porro  María Polo  Encarnación V. Taguas 《European Journal of Engineering Education》2014,39(5):507-517

This paper presents a virtual lab for the contents of an Engineering project, for designing an agro-industrial building, which is also useful for a range of different transversal courses in Engineering sciences. The aims of this tool are to analyse the most important contents of a project-document (calculation, regulations, drawings and budgets), as well as their relationship with the activities which make up the work and the schedule. The design criteria we considered were: its online applications and their compatibility with Moodle; the inclusion of different learning approaches, such as exploratory learning and inquiry-based learning; its interactivity, and the use of multimedia elements for visualisation and direct analysis on material common to Engineering subjects. The students’ perceptions of the improvements brought by the virtual lab were analysed statistically through a series of questions over two academic years. The results of the questionnaires suggested that most of those who had used the e-learning tool valued positively its overall suitability for reaching the objectives in their subject as well as the way it improved the working methodology. The practical knowledge acquired by the students was also highly valued. In addition, the lack of constraints commonly related to field trips (expenses, time and complexity) illustrates the utility of self-access learning tools in key transversal disciplines such as Engineering projects.  相似文献   

From the dominant engineering education perspective to the aim of promoting service to humanity and the common good: the importance of rethinking engineering education     

Fátima Monteiro  Carlinda Leite  Cristina Rocha 《European Journal of Engineering Education》2019,44(4):504-518

ABSTRACT

Recognising the broader role and impact of engineering in contemporary society makes it necessary to rethink engineering education to strengthen its purpose of service to humanity and to the common good. From this perspective, future engineers need a more comprehensive education that is not only bound to the technical area but also incorporates critical reflection and ethical education. With the objective of facilitating the process of rethinking engineering education, the present study analyses the official mission of Portuguese higher education institutions offering engineering courses to identify current engineering education conceptions and the importance attached in them to the service to humanity view. The results reveal that the dominant conception is centred on the economic view of engineering and of the engineer. These results reinforce the need to build a new perspective that strengthens the role of engineering as a service to humanity, social justice and the common good.  相似文献   

Modes of differentiation in children’s writing construction     

Clotilde Pontecorvo  Cristina Zucchermaglio 《European Journal of Psychology of Education - EJPE》1988,3(4):371-384

In this paper we aim at analyzing the modes of differentiation in children’s writing development during the presyllabic phase that, in the theoretical framework developed by Ferreiro and Teberosky, comes before the discovery of sound correspondance. Seventeen Italian children were interviewed seven times during the implementation of research on «Educational Continuity» between «scuola materna» and primary school. We first examine how minimum quantity and internal variation rules appear in Italian children as organizing principles for controlling quantity and quality of writing, and as necessary conditions for the differentiation process. Starting from this, it is possible to find two differentiation modes in writing; aformal one, and a mode in which some type ofexternal referent is used (meaning or object features). For most children the two modes are alternatives, and passing from one to another is a possible but not necessary step. The external group (which is older) has significantly less quantity repertoire than the formal one: this can explain why looking for an external point of reference can be an outcome of the child’s formal research for differentiating writings.  相似文献   

Academics’ perceptions of the impact of internal quality assurance on teaching and learning     

Orlanda Tavares  Cristina Sin  Pedro Videira  Alberto Amaral 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2017,42(8):1293-1305

Internal quality assurance systems are expected to improve the institutions’ core mission of teaching and learning. Using data gathered through an online survey, distributed in 2014/2015, to the teaching staff of all Portuguese private and public higher education institutions, this paper examines the impact of internal quality assurance systems on teaching and learning from the perspective of academics. Findings suggest that Portuguese academics feel that, despite the positive contribution of internal quality assurance towards an increased awareness of teaching quality issues at their institutions, the practical effects of these systems have been more related to increasing bureaucracy than to substantive improvements in teaching and learning. The use of information with a view to improvement and teaching staff involvement in the development of quality assurance were found to induce positive changes in teaching and learning, in academics’ perceptions. Based on the findings, the paper makes recommendations for institutional practice.  相似文献   

Internal quality assurance systems in Portugal: what their strengths and weaknesses reveal     

Orlanda Tavares  Cristina Sin  Alberto Amaral 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2016,41(7):1049-1064

In Portugal, the agency for assessment and accreditation of higher education has recently included in its remit, beyond programme accreditation, the certification of internal quality assurance systems. This implies lighter touch accreditation and aims to direct institutions towards improvement, in addition to accountability. Twelve institutions have already undertaken the certification, and both self-assessment and external assessment reports are available. Based on the qualitative analysis of the nature of institutional strengths and weaknesses highlighted in these evaluation reports, the paper aims to understand whether the identified strengths and weaknesses are related to procedural and organisational matters or to cultural change (values and beliefs), in turn offering an insight into the quality culture(s) which characterise higher education institutions in Portugal. Findings suggest that the quality culture of the analysed institutions is somewhere between responsive and reactive. Overall, all reports dwell more on the prioritisation of formal and structural procedures, both regarding strengths and weaknesses. External reports point towards more weaknesses related to stakeholders’ participation. Both aspects are more frequent in polytechnics than in universities. These findings suggest that polytechnics are more reactive, whereas universities are more responsive. Therefore, accountability apparently continues to be, for the time being, a more pressing concern than improvement.  相似文献   

The contribution of vocabulary knowledge and semantic orthographic fluency to text quality through elementary school in Catalan     

Cristina Castillo  Liliana Tolchinsky 《Reading and writing》2018,31(2):293-323

Building a text is a multidimensional endeavor. Writers must work simultaneously on the content of the text, its discursive organization, the structure of the sentences, and the individual words themselves. Knowledge of vocabulary is central to this endeavor. This study intends (1) to trace the development of writer’s vocabulary depth, their vocabulary fluency in writing, and the features of the text they produce (productivity, lexical richness, and text structure) through elementary school and (2) to determine the contribution of the writer’s performance and the text features to the quality of the text. One hundred and eighty bilingual Spanish/Catalan speakers from first, third, and sixth grade took part in the study. They participated in three researcher-created tasks; a synonyms/antonyms task to orally assess vocabulary depth; a semantic orthographic fluency task to examine their vocabulary fluency in writing; and a text writing task to evaluate text quality. Data was analyzed using structural equation modeling in order to examine the relationship between the target writer’s performance and the text features of the written compositions, and the externally evaluated text quality. Results revealed that both writer’s performance on vocabulary depth and semantic orthographic fluency and text features improved with school level. However, the capacity to establish meaning relations between words contributed more directly to the quality of texts than the speed to find words with a specific phonographic correspondence. External evaluation of text quality was more variable for younger students than for older students and was affected by school level mediated by writer performance and text features.  相似文献