The CLEP General Examination validation program at the University of Illinois from 1970 to 1972

The present article reports a validation program at a large midwestern university using the CLEP General Examinations for Social Sciences and History, Humanities, and Natural Sciences. It outlines the various meetings and discussions that took place among the representatives of the various colleges in discussing the implications of the validation studies. It details the decision-making process followed in determining the cutoff scores and the amount of credit to be granted in satisfying the four general educational requirements at the University. It also documents some of the problems encountered in arriving at a final set of cutoff scores.     

Effect on Primary Level Students of Inservice Teacher Education in an Informal Science Setting

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Weighty Perceptions: A Study of the Attitudes and Beliefs of Preservice Teacher Education Students Regarding Diversity and Urban Education

Twenty-first century predictions forecast highly diverse, urban students and predominantly white, monolingual, interculturally limited teachers as the makeup of the new millennium's schools. To avoid a cultural crash, today's potential teaching force must be prepared for tomorrow's students by teacher educators in colleges and universities. Helping future teachers understand what they believe about education in general and, specifically, culturally diverse populations of students can provide an important key for that preparation. This article describes one college of education's efforts to make implicit beliefs explicit through survey data, its application of data to programs, and its plans for continuing research.     

Enhancing the early student experience

This paper is concerned with identifying how the early student experience can be enhanced in order to improve levels of student retention and achievement. The early student experience is the focus of this project as the literature has consistently declared the first year to be the most critical in shaping persistence decisions. Programme managers of courses with high and low retention rates have been interviewed to identify activities that appear to be associated with good retention rates. The results show that there are similarities in the way programmes with high retention are run, with these features not being prevalent on programmes with low retention. Recommendations of activities that appear likely to enhance the early student experience are provided.     

Shorter notices

Thomas, Mike and Thomas, Sally (1981) On Our Own TWO Feet, Books 6 to 8 (Settling In, Safe and Secure, Around and About). Horton, M. (1980) The Second Reading and Writing Book. A Handbook for Teachers and Parents to Use with Children. Edwards Reading Test (1980) Heinemann Educational Books.     

Investigating the relationships between informal learning and player involvement in digital games

In the last few years, digital games have become increasingly popular with both ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’ audiences. At the same time, it has been argued that games can be powerful learning environments, since they are seen to encourage active and critical learning through participation in affinity groups and semiotic domains but there is a need for further empirical evidence to explore how this participation occurs and how prevalent it actually is. In addition the effectiveness of games within education indicates mixed results, though it has been suggested that this may indicate that learning through immersive worlds involves a more complex understanding of learning, one that is not so easy to tie to specified learning outcomes. It would seem the area would benefit from research that seeks to develop our understanding of how player involvement and learning come together in this context. This paper presents the preliminary results of a survey carried out in order to explore these issues. The initial findings suggest that how a player identifies as a gamer relates to what they think they gain from their gaming experiences with respect to learning.