Reasons and motivations for the option of an engineering career in Portugal

Towards the end of their secondary education, students face significant pressures in their decision about their career plan. These pressures are internal and external, personal and social, individual and from the reference group. This paper aims at understanding the reasons driving engineering students’ choices, their perceived needs and aspirations. Moreover, it discusses how, in that process, students are constrained by family and friends and are conditioned by factors such as their socioeconomic and cultural background, employability prospects and gender. The construction of a career map/plan and the reasons and motivations for the option of an engineering career are reviewed, based on the qualitative analysis of students’ discourses. The data indicate the relevance of several criteria such as social status, intelligence, gender, competences, values and interests in the construction of career aspirations. All these levels are highly influenced by self-esteem, which is closely related to the social value of training options and career paths.     

Development of the social network b-learning in the University of Alicante

This work describes the genesis, articulation and consolidation from 2007 of a social network of b-learning （blended learning） in the UA （University of Alicante） （Spain）, with the institutional backing of the Office of the Vice President for Education Technology and Innovation, and the momentum and advice of professor Angel Fidalgo （UNESCO （United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization） chair for University of Management and Policy）. The social network currently has more than 25 teachers, working on different work linkages with the university, implementing or intending to apply the teaching methodologyb-learning during the course 2007-2008 in a variety of courses and degrees. To do so, several resource centers （blogs, wikis, Wimba Create （before CourseGenie）, etc.）, and digital platforms （Virtual Campus of the UA, Moodle, etc.） are used.     

Team Research at the Biology–Mathematics Interface: Project Management Perspectives

The success of interdisciplinary research teams depends largely upon skills related to team performance. We evaluated student and team performance for undergraduate biology and mathematics students who participated in summer research projects conducted in off-campus laboratories. The student teams were composed of a student with a mathematics background and an experimentally oriented biology student. The team mentors typically ranked the students'' performance very good to excellent over a range of attributes that included creativity and ability to conduct independent research. However, the research teams experienced problems meeting prespecified deadlines due to poor time and project management skills. Because time and project management skills can be readily taught and moreover typically reflect good research practices, simple modifications should be made to undergraduate curricula so that the promise of initiatives, such as MATH-BIO 2010, can be implemented.     

Using concept maps to assess student learning in the science classroom: Must different methods compete?

This yearlong study was implemented in seventh-grade life science classes with the students' regular teacher serving as teacher/researcher. In the study, a method of scoring concept maps was developed to assess knowledge and comprehension levels of science achievement. By linking scoring of concept maps to instructional objectives, scores were based upon the correctness of propositions. High correlations between the concept map scores and unit multiple choice tests provided strong evidence of the content validity of the map scores. Similarly, correlations between map scores and state criterion-referenced and national norm-referenced standardized tests were indicators of high concurrent validity. The approach to concept map scoring in the study represents a distinct departure from traditional methods that focus on characteristics such as hierarchy and branching. A large body of research has demonstrated the utility of such methods in the assessment of higher-level learning outcomes. The results of the study suggest that a concept map might be used in assessing declarative and procedural knowledge, both of which have a place in the science classroom. One important implication of these results is that science curriculum and its corresponding assessment need not be dichotomized into knowledge/comprehension versus higher-order outcomes. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 1103–1127, 1998.