East Meets West in Assessment Development: Western Technical Assistance to Eastern Needs. Part III. Reform of an Examination System: Shoulder to Shoulder in the Polish SMART Project

This is Part III of a three part series describing the consultancy and training demands that are encountered in technical assistance projects in Central and Eastern Europe. Part I dealt with strategic issues for a successful delivery of "Western Technical Assistance to Eastern Needs." Part II highlighted project management and co-operation aspects in delivering support to the Romanian Assessment and Examination Service. In this part, we address training of Polish subject experts who were preparing to take on responsibility for a decentralized and strongly innovative final exam, the Matura.     

The Dynamics of Opinion Formation in Local Popular Referendums: Why the Dutch Always Say No

There is growing research on voting behavior in referendums.However, the dynamics of opinion formation in popular referendums,referendums initiated by the electorate to approve or rejectdecisions made by representative bodies, has not yet been studied.This is especially unfortunate as voting decisions in popularreferendums differ from those in other referendums in interestingways. Opinion formation can be a very dynamic process in popularreferendums, making the referendum campaign crucial. This paperstudies the dynamics of opinion formation in popular referendumsand relates them to particular characteristics of the campaignsand the issues at hand. Based on the literature, we consideredthe effects of the intensity of the yes and no campaigns, familiaritywith the issue, and partisan cues. Our study uses content analysisdata and data from public opinion surveys dealing with variouspopular referendums held in the Netherlands. The study revealedseveral factors that contributed to the volatility of opinionsin the referendum campaigns: the issue (new and did not fittraditional political schemes), lack of support from societaland community organizations for the position of the local authorities,and low profile campaigns on the part of local authorities.While some of these factors are general and may play a rolein referendums everywhere, some can be considered ‘typicallyDutch’, related to the characteristics of popular referendumsin the Netherlands and the country’s political system.     

The key to success in elite athletes? Explicit and implicit motor learning in youth elite and non-elite soccer players

In sports, fast and accurate execution of movements is required. It has been shown that implicitly learned movements might be less vulnerable than explicitly learned movements to stressful and fast changing circumstances that exist at the elite sports level. The present study provides insight in explicit and implicit motor learning in youth soccer players with different expertise levels. Twenty-seven youth elite soccer players and 25 non-elite soccer players (aged 10–12) performed a serial reaction time task (SRTT). In the SRTT, one of the sequences must be learned explicitly, the other was implicitly learned. No main effect of group was found for implicit and explicit learning on mean reaction time (MRT) and accuracy. However, for MRT, an interaction was found between learning condition, learning phase and group. Analyses showed no group effects for the explicit learning condition, but youth elite soccer players showed better learning in the implicit learning condition. In particular, during implicit motor learning youth elite soccer showed faster MRTs in the early learning phase and earlier reached asymptote performance in terms of MRT. Present findings may be important for sports because children with superior implicit learning abilities in early learning phases may be able to learn more (durable) motor skills in a shorter time period as compared to other children.     

Modular programming of curricula

A large scale modularisation of curricula in higher education based on relatively large modules is discussed. These modules are flexible courses and not the well known small instructional modules within a course. The idea of these so-called programme modules, together with some applications and implications are discussed in the context of the Dutch higher educational system which is quite similar to that in other Western European countries. One implication is a less static concept of what a curriculum is. This may affect students, teachers, curriculum planners and legislators in their thinking about what kind of education a university can offer (in the near future) to its potential clients.     

Measuring perceived social presence in distributed learning groups

Social presence—the degree to which ‘the other’ in a communication appears to be a ‘real’ person—has captured the attention of those dealing with learning in groups through computer-supported collaborative learning environments. The concept is important because it affects participation and social interaction, both necessary for effective collaboration and knowledge construction. This article reports on the construction and validation of a self-reporting (Dutch-language) Social Presence Scale to determine perceived social presence in distributed learning groups using computer-supported collaborative learning environments. The result is a one-dimensional scale consisting of five items with an internal consistency of .81. We used a nomological network of similar constructs for further validation. The findings suggest that the Social Presence Scale has potential to be useful as a measure for social presence.