Predicting Meaningful Employment for Refugees: The Influence of Personal Characteristics and Developmental Factors on Employment Status and Hourly Wages

Refugee demographic and developmental variables were evaluated as predictors of employment outcomes following a six-month non-governmental organization (NGO) directed resettlement period. The sample consisted of 85 refugee adults (18 to 54 years) who were resettling in a medium sized urban setting in the western United States. Demographics included sex, age, education level, and English proficiency. Developmental factors included number of years spent as a refugee. Results suggested that for each year spent as a refugee there was a corresponding decrease in the ability to secure meaningful employment. Implications for vocational interventions with refugees are discussed within the framework of Social Cognitive Career Theory.     

Online student evaluation improves Course Experience Questionnaire results in a physiotherapy program

This paper reports the use of an online student evaluation system, Course Experience on the Web (CEW), in a physiotherapy program to improve their Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) results. CEW comprises a course survey instrument modelled on the CEQ and a tailored unit survey instrument. Closure of the feedback loop is integral in the CEW system. Analysis of the data shows that the students’ evaluation in their final year of the program is closely correlated with their CEQ results. Increases in the CEQ scores from 2001–04 included an increase in the Good Teaching Scale (27.5), Generic Skills Scale (10.3) and Overall Satisfaction Index (29.3). By using CEW, academics at the School of Physiotherapy were able to determine students’ perceptions during the course, make changes to teaching and learning, where appropriate, in a timely manner and, as a result, the CEQ scores were improved markedly.     

‘I’m not here to learn how to mark someone else’s stuff’: an investigation of an online peer-to-peer review workshop tool

In this article, we explore the intersecting concepts of fairness, trust and temporality in relation to the implementation of an online peer-to-peer review Moodle Workshop tool at a Sydney metropolitan university. Drawing on qualitative interviews with unit convenors and online surveys of students using the Workshop tool, we seek to highlight a complex array of attitudes, both varied and contested, towards online peer assessment. In particular, we seek to untangle convenors’ positive appraisal of the Workshop tool as a method of encouraging ‘meta-cognitive’ skills, and student perceptions relating to the redistribution of staff marking workload vis-à-vis the peer review tool as ‘unfair’, ‘time-consuming’ and ‘unprofessional’. While the Workshop tool represents an innovative approach to the development of students’ meta-cognitive attributes, the competitive atmosphere that circulates, and is quietly encouraged, within the tertiary education sector limits the true collaborative pedagogical potential and capacities approach built into peer-to-peer review initiatives like the Workshop tool.     

Information Technology in Dutch Education

Abstract

This edited version of a longer paper by Leon Henkens supplements the article ‘Teacher Training in the Netherlands’ also published in this issue of EMI. The author looks in particular at the second cluster of measures to be implemented under the Dutch Government's ‘Informatics Stimulation Plan’ (INSP) which identify the target groups for training in IT. Attention is focused on children currently at school and unemployed school leavers. The account given reflects some of the initiatives jointly undertaken by the governmental authorities and the private sector in the execution of the objectives of the INSP.