The Software Factory: An Undergraduate Computer Science Curriculum

Industry often complains that current academic curricula fail to address the practical issues of real software development. This paper outlines a proposal for an innovative core curriculum for a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. The proposed core curriculum contains elements of traditional computer science programs combined with software engineering via a team-oriented, hands-on approach to large-scale software development. In addition to traditional lecture/ project/exam courses, students are required to take an eight-semester sequence of ‘Software Factory’ courses. Software Factory courses put the students' newly acquired skills to work in a real software organization staffed and managed by all students in the program. Students from all courses in the Software Factory sequence meet simultaneously to fulfill their roles in the software organization. We expect that the students will be better prepared software engineering practitioners after completing a curriculum that combines traditional courses with practical Software Factory experience.     

Dissection versus Prosection: A Comparative Assessment of the Course Experiences,Approaches to Learning,and Academic Performance of Non-medical Undergraduate Students in Human Anatomy

Many institutions rely upon prosection-based laboratories as more resource-efficient and time-effective alternatives to traditional cadaver dissection for human anatomy education. To facilitate growing enrollment numbers despite resource limitations, the University of Guelph (a non-medical institution) introduced a modified “stepwise” prosection-based laboratory cohort to supplement a dissection-based course. In this design, all students attended the same lectures, but those in the dissection-based cohort learned by performing regional dissections and students in the prosection-based cohort studied from those dissections. Prosection students thereby witnessed a “slow reveal” of structures throughout the course. This study compared the perceived course experiences, student approaches to learning, and academic performance between the two groups. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to isolate the effect of the laboratory environment on student approaches to learning and academic performance from demographic and situational covariates. Both groups reported positive course experience ratings and high average final grades that were not statistically dissimilar (P > 0.05), increased reliance on deep approaches to learning (P = 0.002), and decreased reliance on surface approaches to learning (P = 0.023). When controlling for covariates, participation in dissection had small but statistically significant positive associations with deep approaches to learning (P = 0.043), performance on laboratory oral assessments (P < 0.001), and average final grades (P = 0.039). Ultimately, both designs promoted meaningful learning and desirable performance outcomes, indicating that both dissection and stepwise prosection have the potential to facilitate high quality human anatomy instruction.     

Conceptualizing the Classroom of Target Students: A Qualitative Investigation of Panelists' Experiences during Standard Setting

Increasingly, research has focused on the cognitive processes associated with various standard-setting activities. This qualitative study involved an examination of 16 third-grade reading teachers' experiences with the cognitive task of conceptualizing an entire classroom of hypothetical target students when the single-passage bookmark method or the yes/no method was used during a one-day mock panel meeting. Data were collected using in-depth focus group interviews with eight participants from each of the panel meetings, and a whole-text analysis revealed three categories. Most participants experienced difficulty in attempting to conceive of an entire classroom of target students. Most of them were ultimately unable to do so and made use of alternative cognitive strategies. More fundamental issues also contributed to the difficulties experienced in attempting to complete the required cognitive task. Implications of the findings for standard setting and for further research are also discussed.     

Changing from a special school to an inclusion service

Members of the Somerset Inclusion Project and Gary Thomas (professor and reader in education at the University of the West of England, Bristol) discuss the need for schools to become more inclusive in response to the Government's recent Green Paper (DfEE, 1997), which emphasises that special schools need to work in different ways and to provide services to local mainstream schools. The notion that inclusion is right and segregation is wrong led the staff to convert the Princess Margaret School (PMS) in Taunton, Somerset to an inclusion service.     

Democratic Values Education Revisited—Moral Realism or Pragmatism?

In an article discussing the means by which democratic values education is to be inculcated, Tapio Puolimatka argued that 'it is possible to educate in democratic values in ways that foster the development of the rational and moral autonomy of children only within the moral realist context'. Examining in detail Puolimatka's defence of moral realism, we will offer a Rortyan response to moral realism as well as a pragmatist account of democratic values education.