Promoting entrepreneurship education among university students: design and evaluation of an intervention programme / Fomento de la educación emprendedora entre el alumnado universitario: diseño y evaluación de un programa de intervención

For the consolidation of entrepreneurial education as a field of research, a number of challenges must be met, among them, a better connection between pedagogical objectives and the design of programmes, as well as greater methodological rigour in the evaluation of their impact. With this in mind, this paper analyses the results of an entrepreneurial education programme carried out with a group of students from a Spanish university, contrasting the results with a control group. The results indicate that, after this process, the participating students displayed greater entrepreneurial potential than the group of students that had not participated. However, this difference is due more to a loss of entrepreneurial intention in the group not participating in the programme than to an improvement in the participating students.     

University entrepreneurship in a developing country: The case of the P. Universidad Católica de Chile, 1985–2000

Privatization in higher education is usually understood either as the surge of private institutions or as universities’ growing reliance on private sources of funding or otherwise operating more like firms. Joining the growing literature on university entrepreneurship, this is a case study on the less examined problem of entrepreneurial universities in developing countries. In a period of roughly 15 years, the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile, founded in 1888, turned itself from a mostly teaching institution to a research-oriented university, responsible for one-fourth of the Chile’s mainstream scientific output and 40% of all Ph.D.s awarded nationally. Yet, public funding represents today only 17% of its revenues, down from almost 90% in 1972. How such academic development could have occurred as the State withdrew and the market took hold of Chilean higher education after the reforms introduced by the military rule of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) is the theme of this work. Universidad Católica’s policies and strategies are described, and the factors contributing to its success, together with their limitations, identified. The case suggests that orientation to the market can be more a means for survival and growth under the pressure of privatization, than a result of a ‘Triple Helix’ strategy of universities, government and industry to generate innovation out of academic knowledge. Secondly, while in the industrialized world, higher education entrepreneurship is associated with knowledge production for economic development (‘Mode 2’), entrepreneurial universities in the context of developing countries may just be finding their way to the academic, disciplinary mode of research.     

A Conceptual Change Teaching Strategy to Facilitate High School Students' Understanding of Electrochemistry

Recent research in chemistry education has shown an increasing interest in the facilitation of conceptual change in student understanding of chemical concepts. Most of the studies have tried to show the difference in student performance on algorithmic and conceptual problems. The objective of this study is to go beyond and design a teaching strategy based on two teaching experiments that could facilitate students' conceptual understanding of electrochemistry. The study is based on two sections (control, n = 29; experimental, n = 28) of 10th grade high school students at a public school in Venezuela. Experimental group participated in two teaching experiments designed to generate situations/experiences in which students are forced to grapple with alternative responses leading to cognitive conflicts/contradictions. Results obtained show that learning electrochemistry involves both algorithmic and conceptual problems. On Posttest 1, 93% of the experimental group students responded correctly, in contrast to 39% of the control group. On Posttest 2, 39% of the experimental group responded correctly, in contrast to 0% of the Control group. The difference in performance on both posttests is statistically significant (p < 0.001). It is concluded that the teaching experiments facilitated students' understanding (progressive transitions) of electrochemistry.     

The development of source evaluation skills during adolescence: exploring different levels of source processing and their relationships (El desarrollo de las habilidades de evaluación de las fuentes durante la adolescencia: una exploración de los distintos niveles de procesamiento de las fuentes y sus relaciones)

Abstract

This study examines the development of source evaluation skills in four groups of students from 10 to 19 years of age. We designed a set of tasks based on a distinction between three components of source evaluation: the identification of source parameters; the evaluation of source features such as the source’s competence or benevolence under explicit instructions; and the use of source features in assessing a document’s relevance with respect to a given task. This inventory was administered to 245 teenagers in grades 5, 7 and 9 and to undergraduate students. All types of source evaluation skills developed throughout adolescence, with some of them remaining suboptimal for older readers. Furthermore, we found weak relationships between students’ identification of source parameters and their use of source features in the absence of any specific prompt. Finally, source evaluation tasks were weakly related to teenagers’ word reading skills. Taken together, these results document teenagers’ acquisition of source evaluation skills and warrant a distinction between readers’ ability to comprehend source features and to use these features when assessing information quality.     

AIDA: a methodology independent support tool for educational software authoring

Many authoring tools have been proposed in an attempt to find more effective ways to face the challenge of developing educational software. However, most of them are reported to be restrictive, since they are strongly connected to a specific educational software development methodology. The AIDA (Ambiente Integrado para o Desenvolvimento de Aplicações educacionais) authoring environment was developed at the University of Coimbra having as its main objectives the support of most of the activities involved in authoring and making educational software development easier. The AIDA system is based on a design module, i.e. a prototyping tool allowing the creation of Windows-based software, including multimedia features. The system assists evaluation activities and it caters also for support on translation and cultural adaptation, as well as on the reutilization of educational materials. The use of the AIDA environment is illustrated by three small examples using different development methodologies.     

Students’ conscious unknowns about artefacts and natural objects

This study attempts to characterise what 7th- and 12th-grade students believe they do not know about artefacts and natural objects, as well as the dependence of what is unknown on a knowledge of these objects. The students were asked to make explicit through questioning what they did not know about a sample of objects. The unknowns generated were categorised according to a scheme based on lexical semantics theory. Two of the categories focused specifically on imprecise unknowns expressed through What is X? questions, and on unknowns concerning functions. The results showed, firstly, that a lower grade level and lower knowledge of a certain class of objects was associated with more imprecise unknowns. Secondly, unknowns about the functions of artefacts were significantly more frequent than unknowns about the functions of natural objects at any of the grade levels. Overall, the results were consistent with the hypothesis of a correspondence between knowledge and unknowns.     

Is accreditation ‘on the right track’? The views of Portuguese academics

In many countries, quality assurance systems rely on study programme accreditation. As with all quality assurance mechanisms, accreditation should also be continuously improved in order to maintain its relevance as a promoter of study programme quality. A way to move accreditation forward is by taking into account academics’ views, interests and needs about the process, since their support for it is paramount for its success and effectiveness. This paper analyses Portuguese academics’ knowledge and views on accreditation with the aim of understanding if the process is being supported and is on the right route for being effective. It is based on the analysis of 1484 academics’ answers to a questionnaire distributed in 16 higher education institutions. This analysis reveals a moderately positive attitude of academics towards accreditation, reflected in an only moderate knowledge of the process as well as in a mild agreement with its characteristics and implementation features. This suggests that there is room for improvement to bring this quality assurance mechanism closer to academics’ expectations and needs and therefore to improve accreditation’s effectiveness.