An analysis of Ph.D. examiners’ reports in engineering

In recent years, there have been increasing calls for an overall transformation of the nature of engineering Ph.D. programs and the way theses are assessed. There exists a need to understand the examination process to ensure the best quality outcome for candidates in engineering. The work we present in this paper uses data collected between 2003 and 2010 for a total of 1220 Australian Ph.D. theses by analysing examiner reports. Our analysis indicates that Ph.D. theses in engineering, N?=?106, differ considerably from those in other fields in areas such as gender of candidates and examiners and the examiners’ geographical location. We also found that assessment areas such as significance and contribution of the thesis, publications arising from the thesis, breadth, depth and recency of the literature review and communication and editorial correctness are areas in which the proportion of text of engineering examiners' comments differs significantly from other fields.     

University Students' Writing: Types of Errors and Some Comparisons Across Disciplines

The purpose of this study was to identify the writing errors made by 310 first year university students in 13 disciplines using a checklist of five writing error categories, each with a number of sub‐categories. The overall median error rate was 3S.0 errors per 1000 words. Punctuation and capitalisation was by far the most common category of error, and sentence structure, word usage, spelling and vocabulary followed in descending order of frequency. Law and Economics students exhibited the highest error rates while Geography, Mechanical Engineering, Philosophy, English, Statistics, Linguistics, Geology, History and Sociology students had error rates near the median value, and French and Psychology students made fewest errors. The major error sub‐categories that best indicated difference between good and poor writers were the use of commas and some aspects of sentence construction.     

Student Perceptions of the Value of Physics Laboratories

Science instruction literature provides us with goals for laboratory instruction and guidelines for designing and implementing science labs in the post‐secondary setting. How well are we doing in our attempt to provide a meaningful and positive learning experience for our students? This paper describes the results of a study to determine whether students view the lab component of second‐year physics courses at a mid‐sized Canadian University as a valuable learning experience. The results of a survey, administered over six semesters and completed by 168 students, indicate that students do acknowledge the value of labs. The results also identify the factors that influence the students’ perceptions of value in physics labs. This paper discusses the four factors found to have the greatest influence on students’ perceptions of the value of labs: (1) the pressure to complete an experiment within the allotted time, (2) the information provided on the lab instruction sheets, (3) the help provided by lab staff and graduate teaching assistants, and (4) the students’ level of preparedness.     

Examining PhD and research masters theses

The examination of research theses has only relatively recently attracted research interest that has focused on what examiners do and how consistent they are. The research questions in this study address firstly whether PhD and research masters theses were treated by examiners as qualitatively different on 12 indicators of importance across the areas: contribution of the thesis, the literature review, approach and methodology, analyses and results and presentation. Secondly what was the examiner assessment of quality of a recently examined thesis on the same indicators and, finally, how well the indicators were reflected in a holistic assessment of thesis quality. The work reported here draws on the responses of 353 PhD and 74 research masters thesis examiners. Findings showed the examiners generally rated the relative importance of the indicators very similarly at both degree levels. Further the order of importance across indicators was essentially the same for the two levels of thesis. Anticipated differences did emerge with the examiners giving higher quality gradings for all contribution indicators for PhD as compared with research masters theses. The 12 specific quality indicators, individually and collectively were strongly related to the holistic assessment of thesis quality, particularly at the PhD level.     

ENGINEERING IN CHILDREN’S FICTION - NOT A GOOD STORY?

Responding to concerns that engineering is a poorly understood occupation and that young people are exposed to stereotyped images of scientists and engineers at an early age, this investigation sought to identify how science and engineering is portrayed in contemporary junior fiction (ages 8–12) and to what extent. An examination of 4,800 junior fiction titles in one region in New South Wales, Australia, identified as few as 71 titles that addressed themes related to engineering and the sciences. While the crazy, nerdy, scientific stereotype exists in these stories, mostly in humorous vein, we found that fictional characters were split between the nerdy, eccentric, and the more serious and professional types who were depicted as more popular. The emphasis was on male characters, but not exclusively so. There were limited details that could be associated with engineering. Where building, making, and working with machines featured, they were depicted as male activity and primarily connected to vehicles, mostly cars. We concluded that while young people, particularly girls, were unlikely to gain accurate or compelling images about engineering as an occupation from this source at present, as a medium for informing the young and their parents, the potential of fiction was considerable.     

A journey towards sustainable feedback

Meeting students’ expectations associated with the provision of feedback is a perennial challenge for tertiary education. Efforts to provide comprehensive, timely feedback within our own first year undergraduate public health courses have not always met students’ expectations. In response, we sought to develop peer feedback activities to support the development of ‘self-evaluative strategies’ that would acknowledge the centrality of students in the feedback process. We describe these activities, their staged development and the qualitative and quantitative data gathered from students and the teaching teams to evaluate this. Our first steps towards embedding peer feedback with first year students indicated they are willing to engage in the process and appreciated the opportunity to provide and receive feedback, but the quality and extent of the peer feedback was largely superficial. Students’ reflections on the feedback received were also shallow. Supporting students to develop self-evaluative skills cannot be achieved in the short term, but must be embedded in courses and consistently reinforced, with greater emphasis placed on the development of a dialogue around feedback that connects students with peers and educators.     

Kids,College, and Capital: Parental Financial Support and College Choice

Parents vary in both their willingness and ability to pay for their children’s college expenses, yet there is little research on how adolescents’ expectations of future financial support from parents affect their college enrollment decisions. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study, I fill this gap in the literature by examining the predictors of parents’ plans to pay for college and estimating the effect of having a parent that plans to pay for college on an adolescent’s probability of college attendance. The results suggest that after parents’ ability to pay is taken into account, social class remains a strong predictor of whether parents plan to pay for their children’s college education. Additionally, parent’s plans to pay for college have a measurable impact on children’s college enrollment as long as the child is aware of or agrees with the parent’s plans. Therefore, it is likely that socioeconomic differences in parents’ pledges of financial support to adolescents contribute to postsecondary stratification. The results from this study suggest that policymakers and researchers who are concerned about educational inequality should pay greater attention to the role of parental financial support in structuring children’s ability to access college.     

Regulation and socio-emotional interactions in a positive and a negative group climate

Collaboration in an online environment can be a socially and emotionally demanding task. It requires group members to engage in a great deal of regulation, where favourable emotions need to be sustained for the group’s productive functioning. The purpose of this cross-case analysis was to examine the interplay of two groups’ regulatory processes, regulatory modes, and socio-emotional interactions that contribute to or are influenced by emotions and socio-emotional climate perceived in the group. Specifically, this study compared a group of 4 students unanimously reporting a positive climate to a group of 4 students unanimously reporting a negative climate after completing a 90-min online text-based collaborative assignment. By drawing on two data channels (i.e., observed regulatory actions and socio-emotional interactions during collaboration and self-reported data about emotional beliefs and perceptions), four contrasting group features emerged: (a) incoming conditions served as a foundation for creating a positive collaborative experience, (b) regulation of emotions during initial planning, (c) negative emotions served as a constraint for shared adaptation in the face of a challenge, and (d) encouragement and motivational statements served as effective strategies for creating a positive climate. Implications for researching and supporting emotion regulation in collaborative learning are discussed.