Intention to Transfer: How Do Autonomous Professionals Become Motivated to Use New Ideas?

Although performance technologists recognize the importance of transfer, there are few studies of this complex process from the perspective of the individual, autonomous professional. For these trainees, intention to apply an idea is a vital part of transfer. Thus we asked: How do autonomous professionals learning from a training program form their intentions to apply? Over eight years we collected and analyzed 180 stories of application from 73 physicians attending a faculty development fellowship. In the majority of stories, Fellows said they formed their intentions to transfer during training sessions. Of those Fellows, most said they formed intentions toward a general target while listening to explanations. To form their intentions, Fellows weighed their experiences in training against job requirements, task experiences, self‐evaluations, and goals and values. As Fellows decided to use an idea, they considered its credibility, practicality and need. Based on our analyses of the stories, we present a model for the intention to transfer and discuss its implications for practice and research.     

Would you adopt Second Life as a training and development tool?

A survey of perceptions of Second Life as a training and development tool indicates that its use is still in the early stages of the adoption curve. Moreover, professionals who are familiar with it do not typically express the same enthusiasm for it as media reports seem to indicate.     

Effects of Short-Term Training On Residence Hall Assistants

Inasmuch as undergraduate residence hall assistants are being called upon more frequently to counsel students in social-personal problems and little training specific to this function has been given in the past, there is a need to develop an effective but brief training program leading to increased counseling effectiveness. Six hours of specialized training which focused on counselor accurate empathy enabled eight randomly chosen undergraduate resident assistants to increase their levels of accurate empathy significantly higher than a matched control group which received no training. In addition, the experimental Ss also demonstrated somewhat higher levels of counselor warmth.     

Undergraduate project work: can directed tutor support enhance skills development?

Students' perceptions of their skills development and the overall value of their undergraduate project work were evaluated using data derived from questionnaires. Thirty‐nine students completing their second year of study (i.e. prior to the commencement of project work) and 42 students completing their third‐year project work took part. Thirteen tutors also completed questionnaires. They were asked to give their perceptions as to what skills project students developed and what attributes of project work enhanced both students' personal development and students' assessment grades. Results showed a shift in students' perceptions of the types of skills reinforced, developed and assessed within project work during the course of their third‐year project. Their perceived views did not fully coincide with tutors' perceptions of student skills development, although evaluation of both the assessment and personal importance of particular aspects of project work showed some interesting relationships between students and tutors. The diversity of opinion shown in these results may be due to lack of clarification of assessment criteria rather than a ‘hidden curriculum’. For example, the distinction between presentation of work and scientific writing may not be clear from an initial reading of the criteria. The outcomes of this study, with particular reference to the relationship between scientific writing and thinking, have implications regarding tutor and student discussion, the development of marking criteria and the use of plenary project support sessions.     

Balancing Faculty and Student Preferences in the Assignment of Students to Groups

This article describes a practical methodology for assigning students to groups where the goal is to create diversity within the groups while taking into consideration the preferences of the students. A motivating application of this work is the assignment of students to first‐year seminars. In this common scenario, students select and rank a small subset of seminars from the list of those available. The academic institution then attempts to assign students to a seminar on their list, while maintaining course capacities. Faculty are interested in having seminars that are balanced with regards to gender and the number of international students, while students are interested in being assigned to one of their higher ranked seminars. In this article, we develop a simple multi‐objective convex quadratic program that can determine assignments that are well balanced and satisfy the highest preferences of the students. The advantage of our approach is that the model can be submitted directly to a standard optimization software package, eliminating the need for a specialized algorithm.     

Cell Phones in the Classroom: Teachers’ Perspectives of Inclusion,Benefits, and Barriers

Historically viewed as a disruption by teachers, cell phones have been banned from 69% of classrooms (Common Sense Media, 2009). The increased ubiquity and instructional features of cell phones have prompted some teachers to re-evaluate the ban and consider the benefits associated with allowing cell phones in the classroom. This study surveyed 79 teachers to determine their perceptions of using cell phones for classroom instruction. Findings indicated that the majority (69%) of teachers support the use of cell phones in the classroom and were presently using them for school-related work. Teachers identified student engagement and motivation as the primary benefits; barriers included lack of access and class disruption.     

You don’t always get what you pay for: User experiences of engaging with contract cheating sites

Abstract

Contract cheating sites advertise that they provide high quality, undetectable, bespoke work delivered in a timely manner to students purchasing their assignments. This paper tests contract cheating sites’ promises about the products they sell. We built on previous reported research examining contract cheating sites’ persuasive features which were mapped into three major dimensions. In this study, we explore how those dimensions are realised in practice. By purchasing 54 assignments from 18 different contract cheating sites across a range of disciplines, we found contract cheating sites’ promises flawed. Many sites do not deliver assignments on time, or at all; they provide variable quality assignments (including fail grade work), and do not necessarily respond rapidly to user queries. When markers graded work, 52% of cheated tasks failed to meet the university pass standard. Furthermore, many contract cheating sites retain the right to share personal details with third parties under their privacy clauses and require levels of personal identification that leave users vulnerable. Students need to be aware that contract cheating sites’ slick advertising is not necessarily borne out in reality. Universities can draw on this study’s findings for student awareness and deterrence campaigns pointing out the risks of using contract cheating sites.     

Why educate “little scientists?” Examining the potential of practice‐based scientific literacy

In recent years, a number of curriculum reform projects have championed the notion of having students do science in ways that move beyond hands‐on work with authentic materials and methods, or developing a conceptual grasp of current theories. These reformers have argued that students should come to an understanding of science through doing the discipline and taking a high degree of agency over investigations from start to finish. This stance has occasionally been mocked by its critics as an attempt to create “little scientists”—a mission, it is implied, that is either romantic or without purpose. Here, we make the strong case for a practice‐based scientific literacy, arguing through three related empirical studies that taking the notion of “little scientists” seriously might be more productive in achieving current standards for scientific literacy than continuing to refine ideas and techniques based on the coverage of conceptual content. Study 1 is a classroom case study that illustrates how project‐based instruction can be carried out when teachers develop guidance and support strategies to bootstrap students' participation in forms of inquiry they are still in the process of mastering. Study 2 shows how sustained on‐line work with volunteer scientists appears to influence students' success in formulating credible scientific arguments in written project reports following an authentic genre. Study 3, using data from three suburban high school classes, suggests that involving students in the formulation of research questions and data analysis strategies results in better spontaneous use of empirical data collection and analysis strategies on a transfer task. The study also suggests that failing to involve students in the formulation of research can result in a loss of agency. The implications of these findings for future research and practice are discussed. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 234–266, 2004