A present absence: undergraduate course outlines and the development of student creativity across disciplines

While recent scholarship has suggested that colleges and universities have an obligation to help cultivate students’ creativity, existing evidence suggests that this priority is infrequently and imperfectly realized in practice. In order to further examine the potential prevalence of this gap, the present study conducted a qualitative analysis of all publicly available undergraduate course outlines from one Canadian university for the 2013–2014 academic year. Using a modified version of an existing analytical tool, we scrutinized syllabi from across academic disciplines for explicit and implicit references to student creativity, understanding these texts as significant locations at which meanings about teaching and learning are enacted. Based on this analysis, we argue that creativity occupies a relatively circumscribed position in many ways – particularly in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics disciplines, but may nonetheless be fostered through the deployment of relevant activities. Implications for the development of student creativity are considered.     

Stepping out: collaborative research across disciplines

This paper offers the experiences and insights of two faculty members, located in two separate disciplines, as they engaged in collaborative research. While knowledge created by stepping out and reaching across disciplines reflects the reality of an increasingly complex world, their experiences highlight both the benefits of a supportive collaborative partnership as well as the risks and discomfort experienced without tangible discipline support, when researchers stray too far from their home discipline. While transparency and attention to process is critical to all researchers engaged in collaborative partnership, its necessity is heightened when venturing beyond the territory of familiar disciplines.     

Conceptualization and measurement of digital citizenship across disciplines

A corollary to the exponential growth of digital technology is the increase in research interest in the construct of digital citizenship (DC) in diverse disciplinary areas. Although the term DC is used widely in research, scholars do not commit to a common definition. This integrative review investigates the conceptualizations and measurements of DC, across disciplines, in the extant literature. A systematic search of 11 databases identified a total of 350 unique items that contain “digital citizenship” in the title or keywords published by December 2018, with the majority published after 2010. Of these, 114 were peer-reviewed journal articles published in a wide range of discipline-specific venues, more than half of which were education-related. In-depth analyses show that each of the dominant conceptualizations of DC has been adopted by different disciplines, albeit with different popularities in adoption. Findings also revealed widely shared stakeholder concerns and research foci in DC research across the disciplines. However, there is a stark lack of empirical research on the young children, and an absence of commonly deployed research instruments in DC-related research. The present integrative review implicates the need for interdisciplinary collaboration for significant advances in DC research to address issues in policy and practice.     

Academic salary compression across disciplines and over time

Academic salary compression occurs when professors of lower professorial rank earn salaries close to—or even higher than—salaries of more senior faculty. We present a modified maximum likelihood method for fitting flexible Dagum distributions to limited data that provide only the minimum, maximum, mean, and sample size, and we use this method to study salary compression across 15 academic disciplines over the past 22 years. After examining mean-based compression ratios, we estimate salary percentiles and explore stochastic dominance relationships between estimated salary distributions for different disciplines and professorial ranks. Although salary compression is not seen in most academic disciplines, it is prevalent in business-related disciplines, is increasing in these disciplines, and exhibits examples of stochastic dominance. In addition, salary compression increases as competing nonacademic salaries increase. Finally, we evaluate our methodology, showing that it would likely be useful in a variety of settings.     

The academic value of internships: Benefits across disciplines and student backgrounds

While student benefits from internship experience have been frequently documented in research, the emphasis has been on internship effects on employment and career indicators. This work is concerned with effects on academic outcomes and focuses on the robustness of such effects across academic disciplines as well as for different achievement levels of students, student gender, and ethnicity. We present findings from a longitudinal sample (n > 15,000) that covers an extensive range of subjects and disciplines for large undergraduate cohorts. Main effects and interactions for student background characteristics were investigated showing stable academic benefits for advantaged and disadvantaged students. Further, using ordinal logistic multi-level modelling, we explored the impact on the probability of attaining a higher degree classification for different student scenarios, thus illustrating the practical significance of these internship effects. Effects are less likely to stem from maturation or self-selection. Findings are therefore discussed against a background of motivational approaches suitable to integrate both direct and indirect paths from internship experience to academic outcomes to career indicators.     

New perspectives on reading and writing across the disciplines

ABSTRACT

There’s a level of public anxiety that at times approaches moral panic around the argument that those born into a digital age have lost the ability as well as the desire to read or write long-form text. That anxiety haunts higher education, too. From rigorous research in the reading-heavy disciplines to conversations among colleagues after class, the internet is often held as responsible for the failure of too many of our students to be able to read enough disciplinary material in enough depth to allow them to take the next steps in the dialogic that constitutes a university education. We look to research that suggests that to blame changing technology is at best an oversimplification. While the capacity to deep read complex texts and to respond orally and in writing are foundational skills that are complicated by the rise of digital technologies, research on what has come to be termed reading non-compliance suggests the problem is of much longer standing. The ways in which we engage text may have changed, but the failure to read for class preceded digital technologies and their distractions (Hobson). We argue we can best serve our students now by encouraging biliteracy (Wolf and Barzillai) so they are able to shift between the reading-for-information that involves scanning, clicking, and linking, and the deep, immersive reading vital for the rich and productive engagement that enables critical, creative, and ethical learning.     

Ideational border crossings: rethinking the politics of knowledge within and across disciplines

This article explores the merits, possibilities and difficulties of making intra and trans-disciplinary ‘border crossings’ essentially of an ideational kind. Drawing ideas from complexity literature, the article lauds the potential of ‘concept studies’ as means of making such crossings and addressing enduring issues (e.g., of equity and health) within education, Physical Education (PE) and Health. The article suggests, however, that the culture of neoliberalism and extant power relations may prohibit rather than nurture and encourage any willing exchange of ideas or sharing of resource, presaging border closure rather than ‘border crossing’. Talk of the latter in periods of austerity may become shorthand for ‘rationalisation’, offering new language for a newly invigorated politics of erasure, rather than announcing desire to nurture and actualise new voices and new ways of sharing ideas towards investigating and dismantling enduring social hierarchies and trends.     

突出生命科学跨学科性的普通化学教学

随着时代的发展,订正生命科学教学的相关课程非常必要。一个重要的策略是要重新设计诸如生物、化学和物理等入门课程,更好地反映其学科的相互依存性,加强学生学习生命科学的准备工作。本文介绍一个与医学相关的普通化学教学方法,充分演示生物学和化学的跨学科性质。这一创新方法提供了一种模式,使得学科壁垒在本科生的早期自然科学课程中可极大地消除。这一修订的课程分为三个主要教学模块:(1)普通化学原理,(2)炎症的医疗方法,(3)连接化学、生物学和心理学的神经科学。与预期相符,这个修改后的普通化学教学方法极大地提高了学生的兴趣,在生物学和化学之间架起了桥梁。这为培养21世纪的科学家奠定基础提供了一种跨学科教学的模板。     

Exploring just sustainability across the disciplines at one university

Abstract

We examined The University of Vermont’s new sustainability requirement for undergraduates through the lens of just sustainability. We found that sustainability courses are proposed in diverse disciplines. Regardless of discipline, most proposed courses address all three pillars of sustainability (social, ecological, and economic). Discussions of environmental justice are less widespread; only 17% of proposed courses in science, technology, and math departments addressed environmental justice. Our results provide examples for others interested in integrating sustainability across diverse disciplines and in emphasizing environmental justice. We also call attention to the fact that institutions of higher education may need explicit reminders or requirements to adequately include considerations of environmental justice in sustainability studies.     

Teaching and learning across disciplines: student and staff experiences in a newly modularised system

Within modular degrees it is sometimes possible for students to broaden their education by taking modules from outside their main programme of study. This is one significant aspect of modular degrees which has not been studied. In an effort to better understand this issue, the research reported in this paper explored the experiences: (1) of students taking modules from outside their programme of study and; (2) of staff teaching modules with significant numbers of students from other programmes. In total, 820 undergraduate students responded to an on-line survey; 12 academic staff members participated in interviews. The survey focused on students’ reasons for choosing the module, their experiences of assessment and their perceptions of workload. Interviews with academic staff focused on the influence of non-programme students on teaching and assessment practices. The discussion addresses the implications of student choice and classroom diversity for teaching and assessment in modular systems.     

Going virtual and going wide: comparing Team-Based Learning in-class versus online and across disciplines

Education and Information Technologies - Team-based learning (TBL) is an active learning pedagogy developed for in-class sessions and based on the collaborative work of small groups of students....     

Scientific sensemaking supports science content learning across disciplines and instructional contexts

Science consists of a body of knowledge and a set of processes by which the knowledge is produced. Although these have traditionally been treated separately in science instruction, there has been a shift to an integration of knowledge and processes, or set of practices, in how science should be taught and assessed. We explore whether a general overall mastery of the processes drives learning in new science content areas and if this overall mastery can be improved through engaged science learning. Through a review of literature, the paper conceptualizes this general process mastery as scientific sensemaking, defines the sub-dimensions, and presents a new measure of the construct centered in scenarios of general interest to young adolescents. Using a dataset involving over 2500 6th and 8th grade students, the paper shows that scientific sensemaking scores can predict content learning gains and that this relationship is consistent across student characteristics, content of instruction, and classroom environment. Further, students who are behaviorally and cognitively engaged during science classroom activities show greater growth in scientific sensemaking, showing a reciprocal relationship between sensemaking ability and effective science instruction. Findings from this work support early instruction on sensemaking activities to better position students to learn new scientific content.     

Computer self-efficacy of university faculty in Lebanon

Faculty use of technology is a critical issue in higher education; administrators and students are expecting faculty instruction to incorporate technology in classroom and distance education. Competition is demanding technologically proficient graduates for schools and colleges. Research indicates that computer self-efficacy (CSE) may be one determinant of who uses technology and who does not. A survey of education faculty at the Lebanese University in Beirut, Lebanon, conducted in 2006, revealed varying degrees of CSE; of 127 respondents, 14 had low levels of CSE; 68 were at a moderate level, and 45 self-evaluated themselves to have high CSE. Although other barriers may deter the implementation of technology in teaching, strategies and techniques for increasing CSE should be developed. For those with low CSE, special attention must be given to enhancing their levels of CSE.

Understanding the development of interest and self-efficacy in active-learning undergraduate physics courses

Modeling Instruction (MI), an active-learning introductory physics curriculum, has been shown to improve student academic success. Peer-to-peer interactions play a salient role in the MI classroom. Their impact on student interest and self-efficacy – preeminent constructs of various career theories – has not been thoroughly explored. Our examination of three undergraduate MI courses (N?=?221) revealed a decrease in students’ physics self-efficacy, physics interest, and general science interest. We found a positive link from physics interest to self-efficacy, and a negative relationship between science interest and self-efficacy. We tested structural equation models confirming that student interactions make positive contributions to self-efficacy. This study frames students’ classroom interactions within broader career theory frameworks and suggests nuanced considerations regarding interest and self-efficacy constructs in the context of undergraduate active-learning science courses.     

Effects of class size on alternative educational outcomes across disciplines

This is the first study to use self-reported ratings of student learning, instructor recommendations, and course recommendations as the outcome measure to estimate class size effects, doing so across 24 disciplines. Fixed-effects models controlling for heterogeneous courses and instructors reveal that increasing enrollment has negative and significant effects on student satisfaction in Sociology, Political Science, Computer Science and Engineering, and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Educational outcomes in Linguistics, Psychology, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Math, Physics, Cognitive Sciences, Visual Arts, History, and Philosophy are unaffected by class size. Other disciplines, including Economics, have inconclusive findings. No discipline benefits from increasing enrollment.     

Improving teaching in different disciplines of natural science and mathematics with innovative technologies

Education and Information Technologies - The study describes an innovative methodology for teaching natural and mathematical sciences in the context of distance learning using modern technological...