Assessing university brand personality through logos: an analysis of the use of academics and athletics in university branding

For colleges and universities whose survival depends on external stakeholders, developing a strong brand should be an important component of their marketing strategy. University brand managers could benefit from developing a better understanding of how consumers interact with their brand in order to develop more effective recruiting material, advertisements, and other marketing efforts. The current study applies the concept of brand personality to university academic and athletic logos and examines subsequent relationships between the perceived brand personalities. Results of an online survey indicate that competence is a brand personality dimension mostly associated with academic logos, and excitement is the brand personality dimension mostly associated with athletic logos.     

Engaging the community, targeted interventions: achieving scale in basic education reform

In 1983, after over 10 years of working on mathematics education reform in the Philippines, I wrote a paper for a Tokyo conference arguing that education reform in developing countries such as the Philippines should begin by working on macro-problems, namely the social, political, and economic environment of the schools, as a context for the micro-problems, the usual concerns of curriculum, teacher training, textbooks, and so forth. This article recounts how we carried out this approach to education reform in three large-scale initiatives: the Third Elementary Education Project (TEEP), the Synergeia Foundation, and the Ateneo Center for Educational Development. The TEEP is an education project for the 23 poorest provinces in the Philippines, which began in the mid-1990s and was carried out fully from 2000 to 2006. The Synergeia Foundation, Inc. and the Ateneo Center for Educational Development are organizations which have been working with elementary schools on the scale of whole towns, cities, and provinces. They are also now beginning their work with high schools. What these initiatives have in common is that they begin by engaging the community, the school superintendents and supervisors, principals, teachers, parents, and political and civic leaders. A process is followed to have them focus on the realities of their schools, develop consensus on strategic plans and priorities, and participate in the process of achieving goals. Implementation then focuses on what we call targeted interventions, such as teacher training, educational materials, and physical facilities, which address the agreed-on priorities. The evaluation of the Third Elementary Education Project (TEEP) at its end in 2006 shows that the approach leads to major improvement on a large scale. We are seeing the same kind of results in the work of Synergeia Foundation, Inc. and the Ateneo Center for Educational Development.     

Computer conferencing and the university community

In this paper, Terry Evans of the Institute of Distance Education at Deakin University (Geelong, 3217, Australia) and Daryl Nation of the School of Social Sciences at Gippsland Institute (Churchill, 3842, Australia) argue that Dialogue is the essence of the practice, research and theory in distance education. Dialogue is crucial for real understanding, and for ‘quality in learning’... students are actively engaged in constructing meaning rather than recipients of information as embodied in mechanistic conceptions of the learner.

The authors hope to develop international dialogue amongst teachers and researchers in distance education. The editors of this journal also want to encourage this dialogue through further publications, and correspondence.     

University and community: Evolving perceptions of the African university

For the past two decades universities in Africa have been engaged in a re-examination of their relationship with society. In the light of this, the popular characterization of the African university as reflecting colonial, international, stages of development, or levels of integration models, appears inadequate to describe the challenge involved in creating an African identity for the university. Similarly, conceptions of the university as an instrument for creating an educated, planned or changed society or to think of it in terms of preserving and reflecting the dominant features of society, seem inadequate to describe fully the demands of contemporary and future society upon the university. A new framework of thought is urgently required; such a framework would encompass the desired aims of both the university and society and the relationships - dynamic and organic - between them. This article attempts to formulate such a framework and indicates its implications for the structure, content and operation of the university in Africa.     

The Emotionally Affected University Student: support from the university community

The study measured the general attitudes towards disability of academics, administrative staff, and students in a small rural University. Respondents were also asked to comment on the nature of support that might be provided for a student with an emotional disability. There were some significant differences in level and nature of support for students with an emotional disability among academics, administrative staff, and students. These differences were related to the levels of comfort with, and sympathy felt towards, students with an emotional disability. However, overall the results suggest that university students with expressed emotional difficulties are liable to be relatively negatively regarded and are not liable to receive much concrete assistance for the difficulties they face. It is proposed that the data supports the notion that academics, of all the groups measured, are best placed to decide types of support for students with an emotional disability on a case by case basis.     

对构建生态校园的理性思考

构建生态校园是一个包含丰富内涵的目标体系.当前,我国高等教育迅速而深刻的变革所导致各种影响生态校园的矛盾日益彰显,需要我们把生态校园作为一种价值取向加以确立,并积极寻求应对之策.     

让党旗在社区高扬:关于高校学生社区党建工作的几点思考

当前我国高校学生社区建设及后勤产业化改革不断推进,在学生社区开展大学生党建工作,既是大学生思想政治教育工作的迫切需要,又是大学生党建工作的内在要求。高校必须站在全局的高度,注重大学生社区的文化与环境建设,营造良好育人氛围,强化组织建设,使社区党建工作和院系党建互为补充、相互促进。     

创业型大学的创业生态系统初探——以麻省理工学院为例

麻省理工学院倡导的"创业生态系统"将创业活动与创业教育良好地结合起来,能够为我国高校创业教育培养模式提供借鉴。案例研究发现,这个创业生态系统由众多的功能互补且密切联系的项目与中心、学生团体和创业课程等诸多要素共同组成。其中创业活动、学生团体和创业教育这三股力量交互作用,成为推动该生态系统不断演化的主要动力。     

高校与社区文化建设--以湖北师范学院学生深入社区实践为例

高校参与社区文化建设是新时期和谐社会建设的需要.文章以高校参与社区实践为例,探讨了高校与社区文化互动的意义以及创建教书育人的新模式.     

Generative methodology: an inquiry into how a university can acknowledge a commitment to its Aboriginal community

This paper maps ethical and epistemological issues around attempts by a university to negotiate with the traditional custodians of the Sydney basin, the Darug, to facilitate the intergenerational transmission of knowledge within their community, and through the university curriculum. The theory and practice of research raised some important methodological questions about what constitutes knowledge in Aboriginal and western contexts. The project brought us to reflect upon the epistemological basis of our research to consider whether it was history, ethnography, cultural resource management or memory work. As we worked through these issues during the process of consultation and negotiation with Senior Darug, the inquiry began to focus on how a university can acknowledge a commitment to its community. Such a commitment for a university must be built around attentiveness and respect, rather than an epistemology of control. We find that respecting the power structures and organisation of an Aboriginal community is a crucial step for a university in performing such a commitment. Respect for the established power relations in these communities constitutes the very basis of a generative methodology.     

在合并中提高在改革中发展

近年来,我国高等教育管理体制进行了空前的改革和调整,改革的重点是解决计划经济年代形成的条块分割、低水平重复建设、优化组合教育资源的问题,提高整体办学水平和人才培养的综合素质.按教育部提出的"合作、共建、调整、合并"的方式,全国高等学校合并重组,调整规模空前.实质性合并的高校发展大多经历了"打破原有办学格局,重新调配办学资源,统一办学思想和观念,深化内部管理体制改革"的磨合期.做好高校合并的前期工作,尽量缩短磨合期是学校快速发展的基础.     

Assessing the impact of a university teaching development programme

Four different indicators are used to assess the impact of a year‐long university teaching development programme in an Australian research‐led university. All four indicators show small positive outcomes. Teachers who complete the programme have higher rates of receipt of teaching awards and teaching development grants than their colleagues who do not participate in the programme. Students in the classes of teachers who complete the programme report, on average, higher satisfaction scores than students in the classes of the same teacher before she/he completed the programme. Students in the faculties where the programme is completed by a higher proportion of academic staff report greater change to levels of satisfaction in the quality of their degree over the seven‐year period of the study. The methodology adopted involves several new approaches to evaluation and confirms the need for the use of an evaluation framework and multi‐indicator strategy.     

Building an indigenous learning community through lesson study: challenges of secondary school science teachers

Universalists believe that indigenous knowledge should not be studied since it excludes non-indigenous people. A qualitative method was used to explore the impact of lesson study on a science teacher at a secondary school. The research indicated that lesson study has positive impacts on teachers professionally by improving their science content knowledge, developing their teaching strategy and skill, enhancing their interest in working collaboratively, and creating a sense of an indigenous paradigm. The four categories of impact are interrelated and mutually influential. Through a lesson study, a relationship of mutual trust is well established in an indigenous learning community.     

A framework for fostering a community of practice: scaffolding learners through an evolving continuum

This paper proposes a framework of an evolving community of practitioners along a simulation, participation, and codetermined interactions continuum. Simulation, participation, and codetermined interactions are three models of learning, which describe how learners can be brought through a scaffolded process within a community experience. The framework also focuses on the processes rather than on the outcomes or products of a community. In this paper, we describe a case study of a group of heads of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in schools being scaffolded through an experiential workshop to achieve learning outcomes such as ICT‐based project work (as product) and other constructivist dispositions of learning (as processes). The proposed framework is intended to be sufficiently broad so that learners are supported from simulation to codetermined interactions where autonomy of learners’ co‐construction efforts are encouraged and experienced.     

The quest for an entrepreneurial university in East Asia: impact on academics and administrators in higher education

In the last decade, universities in East Asia have taken knowledge transfer more seriously, especially when the state funding for higher education was reduced while other private funding sources were diversified. Universities in East Asia collaborate with the industrial and business sectors on projects related to research, development, and knowledge transfer to enhance their global competitiveness. This article examines how the quest for an entrepreneurial university in East Asia has affected academics and administrators in higher education, with particular reference to the perceived impact of an entrepreneurial university on academic life.     

Differences between high and low academic achieving university students in learning and study strategies: a further investigation

The outcome evaluation of Pare-Chocs, a school-based cognitive-behavioural (CB) prevention program for adolescent depression, was conducted with 53 adolescents at risk of school dropout and exhibiting high depressive symptoms using a theory-driven evaluation model. Our results show a significant relationship between the intervention and proximal variables: Experimental-group students presented less cognitive distortions and better problem-solving strategies at post-treatment and follow-up. Greater participation intensity predicts less cognitive distortions and better problem-solving strategies at follow-up. Moreover, less cognitive distortions at post-treatment and follow-up are linked to less depressive symptoms. These promising results encourage future evaluative research on school dropout prevention programs linked with at-risk students’ characteristics. For practitioners, they suggest that the implementation of a CB prevention program for depressive symptoms in school settings could lead to decrease depression risk factors and improve protective factors among youth at risk of school dropout.