The use of weblogs in higher education settings: A review of empirical research

“Weblogs” or “blogs” are increasingly visible in higher education settings. Some scholars suggest that blogs are useful because of their reflective nature. However, as this review indicates the research regarding blogs is largely self-report data (surveys, interviews) or content analyses. This review summarizes results of this existing research on weblogs in higher education settings. Limitations of existing empirical studies are discussed and some directions for future research related to the use of blogs in higher education settings are suggested.     

How education background affects design outcome: teaching product development to mechanical engineers,industrial designers and managers

ABSTRACT

Product design and development (PDD) is a current topic of academic and industrial research. Emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as design thinking and creativity has been recently pulled together into the teaching and research on PDD. This paper looks into a multidisciplinary setting made up of three similar but independent PDD masters courses taught at three higher education institutions, having the same assessment, syllabus, assignments and outcomes. As expected, students’ projects foci are different. The outcomes of this experience were confronted with an ex-post literature review, which generated thorough guidelines that supported an innovative proposal for PDD education, to be implemented into an interdisciplinary Summer School. Significant generalisable contributions for educating modern engineers, designers and business entrepreneurs are expected, instead of just teaching methods of engineering, design and entrepreneurship at the case universities. The limitation of the used inductive reasoning concerns ‘truth’ being suggested but not assured.     

How and with what accuracy do children report self-regulated learning in contemporary EFL instructional settings?

European Journal of Psychology of Education - This study aimed to understand how children reflect about learning, report their regulation of learning activity, and develop their performance in...     

Mentors and teachers: testing the effectiveness of simultaneous roles on school performance from a basic psychological needs perspective

The mentor’s background in educational roles has been presented as a moderator of School-Based Mentoring (SBM). However, the analysis of overlapping mentoring and teaching roles has been underemphasized in the literature. The aim of this study is to test whether the combination of mentoring and teaching roles influences the mentees’ school performance, within a Portuguese SBM program. A three-stage experimental study was conducted in order to compare mentored (n = 157) and non-mentored students (n = 160) enrolled in formal basic education (5th to 8th grades). Multivariate Analyses of Covariance (MANCOVA) revealed that the combination of mentoring and teaching roles was effective in reducing the mentees’ unexcused absences and in improving their grades in Portuguese language and math as well as their Grade Point Average (GPA) compared to equivalent non-mentored students. Further analyses demonstrated that an increased satisfaction of the mentored students Basic Psychological Needs (BPN) promoted better school performance outcomes when compared with non-mentored students with an identical perception of BPN support. However, mentored students that experienced an increased satisfaction of BPN had marginally significantly worse Grade Point Average (GPA) than the mentored students that perceived less or similar BPN support within SBM. These mixed trends are discussed and recommendations are made for a more balanced support of BPN in SBM relationships and across the different relationships held between the mentees and other teachers, in order to foster an improvement of school performance.     

The impact of a Curriculum for Resilience Promotion in Deaf Children and Adolescents

Resilience is an interactive process involving internal skills that should be promoted, especially in the early stages of development. This study aims to adapt and implement two themes from the European Curriculum for Resilience Promotion – RESCUR, namely, ‘Developing Communication Skills’ and ‘Establishing and Maintaining Healthy Relationships’, for deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students. The study included 37 children and adolescents from three Portuguese regions and its impact was evaluated through the perspectives of the students, their guardians and their teachers. Each 90-minute session was implemented weekly. The sessions followed the RESCUR curriculum structure with necessary adaptations to the mindfulness activities, stories, role-play and worksheets. The mean scores increased from pre- to post-intervention assessment on all instruments, namely, KIDSCREEN-10 (children/adolescents), KIDSCREEN-10 (guardians) and CYRM-28 (teachers). The implementation of adapted curricula promoting resilience seems to be beneficial to DHH children, allowing the development of specific resilience-associated skills, and thus enhancing health, well-being and quality of life.     

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ONGOING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATORS’ PERCEIVED SKILLS RELATIVE TO RtI

Widespread adoption of Response to Intervention (RtI) requires large numbers of educators to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to implement the model with fidelity. This study examined relationships between large‐scale professional development on RtI and educators’ perceived skills. Elementary educators (n = 4,283) from 34 pilot and 27 comparison schools in a southeastern state participated. Leadership teams composed of subsets of educators from pilot schools who were responsible for leading RtI implementation participated in 13 days of training across a 3‐year period. Additionally, job‐embedded coaching was provided to pilot school instructional educators. Results from multilevel models indicated that leadership team membership related to increases in educators’ perceptions of RtI skills applied to academics (π = .05; SE = .02; t[6,726] = 2.60; p < .05) and of data display skills (π = .07; SE = .03; t[6,678] = 2.45, p < .05). Educator participation at pilot schools that received job‐embedded coaching related to increases in perceptions of RtI skills applied to academics (β = .07; SE = .02; t[6,726] = 2.77, p < .05). Implications for future research on RtI implementation and the practice of providing large‐scale professional development focused on RtI are discussed.     

Riding the Wave to Reach the Masses: Natural Events in Early Twentieth Century Portuguese Daily Press

This paper brings together science communicated in newspapers in Portugal by looking at how news on natural events were communicated in two different newspapers—the capital newspaper Diário de Notícias (Daily News) and the Diário dos A?ores (Azores Daily). In particular, we look at how the 1900 solar eclipse, a hot topic throughout Europe, was reported by the capital newspaper, and how news on seismology were conveyed in the period 1907–1910 in the newspaper published in Azores, an archipelago with a significant seismic and volcanic activity. We argue that the importance conceded to these scientific news was related to their overwhelming features, that their dissimilar presentation stemmed from their local relevance allied to their different nature, predictable in the case of eclipses, and unpredictable in the case of earthquakes, and that behind these two instances of science journalism laid an attempt by the scientific and political communities to gain the support of the general public to such an extent that these two specific instances of science journalism transcended their usual features to become successful forms of expository science.     

Country of origin and country of service delivery effects in transnational higher education: a comparison of international branch campuses from developed and developing nations

Over the last decade, international branch campuses have been established by universities from developing countries as well as developed countries. Little research has been conducted into students’ perceptions of branch campuses from different countries, or how universities from different countries compete in the increasingly competitive market. A framework incorporating the concepts of country of origin and country of service delivery is adopted to assess how potential undergraduate students in Malaysia perceive the home and international branch campuses of universities from the United Kingdom (UK) and India, which are used to represent universities from developed and developing nations. It was found that for a university from a developing nation, students perceived the image, reputation, quality and brand equity of its home campus more positively than its international branch campus. The results suggest that although all universities must devise and implement strategies that enhance the image and reputation of their international branch campuses, institutions from developing countries should seek niche markets where they do not have to compete directly with prestigious universities from developed countries.     

Heart rate and perceived muscle pain responses to a functional walking test in McArdle disease

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess a 12-min self-paced walking test in patients with McArdle disease. Twenty patients (44.7 ±11 years; 11 female) performed the walking test where walking speed, distance walked, heart rate (HR) and perceived muscle pain (Borg CR10 scale) were measured. Median (interquartile range) distance walked was 890 m (470–935). From 1 to 6 min, median walking speed decreased (from 75.0 to 71.4 m?min^–1) while muscle pain and %HR reserve increased (from 0.3 to 3.0 and 37% to 48%, respectively). From 7 to 12 min, walking speed increased to 74.2 m?min^–1, muscle pain decreased to 1.6 and %HR reserve remained between 45% and 48%. To make relative comparisons, HR and muscle pain were divided by walking speed and expressed as ratios. These ratios rose significantly between 1 and 6 min (HR:walking speed P = .001 and pain:walking speed P < .001) and similarly decreased between 6 and 11 min (P = .002 and P = .001, respectively). Peak ratios of HR:walking speed and pain:walking speed were inversely correlated to distance walked: r_s (HR) = ?.82 (P < .0001) and r_s (pain) = ?.55 (P = .012). Largest peak ratios were found in patients who walked < 650 m. A 12-min walking test can be used to assess exercise capacity and detect the second wind in McArdle disease.