Engaging students in learning: findings from a study of project-led education

This paper reports on findings from a three-year study of project-based learning implemented in the first year of the Industrial Engineering and Management programme, at the University of Minho, Portugal. This particular model was inspired on project-led education (PLE), following Powell and Weenk's [2003. Project-Led Engineering Education. Utrecht: Lemma] work. It aims to analyse students’ perceptions of PLE as a learning device and its implications for faculty and students’ role in teaching and learning. Data collection took place in two phases through individual surveys and focus groups to students. Findings suggest the importance of PLE as a device to enhance meaningful learning and provide evidence from students that it helps to increase their engagement in learning. Implications of PLE for faculty and students role in teaching and learning will be discussed in the paper.     

Perceptions of Barriers to the Evaluation of Workplace Learning Programs

The need to evaluate training programs is indisputable. Measurement can serve a range of purposes, from informing improvements to shaping existing and future courses, to determining the return on training investments. Yet research suggests that evaluation, when accomplished, is most often used to solicit participant reactions. This study examined barriers faced by learning and performance professionals when they attempt to conduct evaluation in their organizations. Lack of access to data in the workplace and reporting data in meaningful and actionable ways are two of the most prominent barriers identified by practitioners. Recommendations for addressing key barriers in the workplace are presented.     

Gullible's Travels

Federal legislation has increased the participation of students with disabilities in higher education, but they are less likely to attain a postsecondary degree than students without disabilities. In this paper, I discuss reasons for academic failure and illustrate ten strategies that instructors can implement to increase the academic success of students with disabilities. The ten strategies are an accessible syllabus, study objectives, study guides, frequent tests, remedial activities, guided notes, response cards, peer tutoring, fluency building, and feedback.     

The Students' Faculties

In this paper, we question how we might disrupt positivist research paradigms that preclude students from engaging and experiencing ownership in the research process. We question what we, as professors, could do to facilitate the transition from traditional research reporting to a disposition of inquiry that allows for ambiguity and discovery in the research process.

Evidence presented was gathered over the course of a two-year qualitative research project completed in a capstone education course. Like most capstone courses, we required a summative research paper, but student work suggested they had minimal interest or enthusiasm for the project. However, by redirecting our students' research interest from traditional research reporting to the generation of authentic research questions drawn from their student teaching experience, a solution emerged. The students' questions provided the basis for the ensuing qualitative inquiry project that afforded them a new and authentic type of inquiry.

This paper describes the process our students engaged in to complete this qualitative inquiry, including the identification of the research question and analysis of field notes and documents. It concludes by sharing samples of the students' research questions and findings that illustrate the authentic inquiry and ownership they experienced as a result of the project.     

General Communications

Joseph C. Goulden's Monopoly (Pocket Books 77135, 95¢)

Bryce Rucker's The First Freedom (University of Southern Illinois Press, $2.85)

John Phelan's Communications Control (Sheed & Ward, $3.45)

David Manning White's edited collection Pop Culture in America (Quadrangle Books, $5.95/2.45)

Marshall Fishwick and Ray B. Browne's edited Icons of Popular Culture (Bowling Green University Popular Press, $1.00)

Don Fabun's Three Roads to Awareness (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Glencoe Press, $5.95/4.95)     

film history

Kevin Brownlow The War, the West and the Wilderness (New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1979 – $27.50, hardcover).

Marshall Deutelbaum, "Image" on the Art and Evolution of the Film (New York: Dover Publications, 1979 – $8.95 in paper).

American Theatres of Today, Volumes I and II, by R.W. Sexton and B.F. Betts (New Yorks Architectural Book Publishing Inc., 1927 and 1930 – reprinted at $35.00 in one volume, 360 pages, hardcover).

Picture Palace Architecture in Australia by Ross Thorne (South Melbourne: Sun Books, 1976 – $9.95 in paper from Vestal).

Temples of Illusion by Roger Brett($14.95, paper).

Carol Herselle Krinsky Rockefeller Center (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978 – $17.50 hardcover/ $9.95 paper)

Richard Taylor Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (London: Croom Helm/ New York: Barnes & Nonle, 1979—$25.00)

William Kittredge and Steren M. Krauzer, eds. Stories into Film (New York: Harper & RowP2olophon Books, 1979—price not given, paper)

Richard Dyer Stars (London: British Film Institute, 1979—E2.25, or about $5.00, paper)     

Film History

John W. Landon BEYOND THE MIGHTY WURLITZER: THE HISTORY OF THE THEATRE PIPE ORGAN (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,,1983—$29.95).

Susannah Harris Stone THE OAKLAND PARAMOUNT (Berkeley California: Lancaster-Miller Publishers, 1981—$11.95).

John Fell FILM BEFORE GRIFFTTH (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1984—$24.50/$10.95).

Herbert Marshall MASTERS OF THE SOVIET CINEMA: CRIPPLED CREATIVE BIOGRAPHIES (London: Routledge 8 Kegan Paul, 1983—$29.95).

John Kobal and V.A. Wilson FOYER PLEASURE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF CINEMA LOBBY CARDS (New York: Deliliah Books, 1983—$12.95).

Don Graham COWBOYS AND CADILLACS: HOW HOLLYWOOD LOOKS AT TEXAS (Texas Monthly Press, P.O. Box 1569, Austin, Texas 78767—$10.95).     

Annual Review of Work in Newspaper and Periodical History

Dynamics of the Pictured Page: representing the nation in the ‘Illustrated London News’, 1842–1852 Peter W. Sinnema, 1998 Aldershot, UK, Ashgate pp.231

American Photojournalism Comes of Age Michael L. Carlebach, 1998 Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution Press pp.224

Media Technology and Society. A history: from the telegraph to the Internet Brian Winston, 1998 London, Routledge pp. xiv, 374

On Television and Journalism Pierre Bourdieu, 1998 Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, trans. London, Pluto Press pp.97

A Journalism Reader Michael Bromley and Tom O'Malley, eds, 1997 London and New York, Routledge pp. xix, 394

Ulster Loyalism and the British Media Alan F. Parkinson, 1998 Dublin, Four Courts Press pp. 184

William Randolph Hearst: the early years 1863–1910 Ben Proctor, 1998 New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press pp. xiv + 345

Health and British Magazines in the Nineteenth Century E.M. Palmegiano, 1998 Maryland, Scarecrow Press pp. 296

The War Correspondents: the Crimean War Andrew Lambert and Stephen Badsey, 1994 Stroud, UK, Sutton Publishing pp. 335 including index

News from the Front: war correspondents on the Western Front, 1914–18 Martin J. Farrar, 1998 Stroud, UK, Sutton Publishing pp. 238 including index