Designing for interaction,thinking and academic achievement in a Tanzanian undergraduate chemistry course

Virtual learning environments are used in higher education around the world to promote student learning. However, in many countries it has not yielded the expected effect on student interaction and learning. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the use of certain pedagogical approaches would promote student interaction, higher-order thinking and achievement. 102 undergraduate students taking an introductory chemistry course at a Tanzanian university participated in the study, and were randomly assigned to three groups. Each group first studied one topic using the control design (non-interactive learning, NIL) to establish a baseline. Then each group studied three further topics using different pedagogical approaches (NIL), discussion forums (medium interactive learning) and podcasts (highly interactive learning). Data included interviews, subject tests, and the content of online discussion forums. All qualitative data were coded, and repeated-measures ANOVA was used to analyze within design and between design effects; student interaction patterns were analyzed using social network analysis. Results show that social interaction, academic achievement and thinking improved progressively over the three topics (iterations) in each design. The changes in instructor pedagogical strategies and the actions of students to bring what they had learned from podcasts to the learning community contributed to the marked improvement. We conclude that effective use of discussion forums in higher education in Tanzania can produce important learning effects (interaction, thinking, and enhanced academic achievement) and is a low-bandwidth strategy, but coupling podcasts with discussion forums may be a powerful way to enhance the effects.     

Writing reviews: perspectives from the editors of Educational Studies in Mathematics

Educational Studies in Mathematics -     

The use of speech feedback by normal and disabled readers in computer-based reading practice

Disabled readers and normal beginning readers were compared on requesting help in the form of speech feedback during computer-based word reading. It was also examined whether it is best to give feedback on all words or to allow the disabled readers to choose. Normal beginning readers and reading-age matched pupils with reading problems engaged in reading practice with speech feedback on call for both difficult and easy words. A set of both difficult and easy sums was completed as a control task. Another group of reading-disabled pupils who were also matched on reading level practiced the reading of words with unsolicited speech feedback. In the first two groups the selectivity in requesting help in both the reading and arithmetic task was assessed. All subjects were tested on the reading of both practiced and nonpracticed words. The results indicate that both disabled readers and beginners were very sensitive to sum difficulty but not to word difficulty, though in the present study the students were more selective than in a previous study. The inclusion of more easy words might account for this finding. The beginners requested help only during the first sessions of reading practice, whereas the disabled readers remained dependent on the speech feedback. The reading-disabled pupils did not learn less when the computer unsolicitedly delivered the spoken form of all words than when they were allowed to choose. It is discussed how profits from the different speech feedback procedures by disabled readers might be related to word decoding skill and metacognitive monitoring.     

Do dyslexics misread a ROWS for a ROSE?

Insufficient knowledge of the subtle relations between words’ spellings and their phonology is widely held to be the primary limitation in developmental dyslexia. In the present study the influence of phonology on a semantic-based reading task was compared for groups of readers with and without dyslexia. As many studies have shown, skilled readers make phonology-based false-positive errors to homophones and pseudohomophones in the semantic categorization task. The basic finding was extended to children, teens, and adults with dyslexia from familial and clinically-referred samples. Dyslexics showed the same overall pattern of phonology errors and the results were consistent across dyslexia samples, across age groups, and across experimental conditions using word and nonword homophone foils. The dyslexic groups differed from chronological-age matched controls by having elevated false-positive homophone error rates overall, and weaker effects of baseword frequency. Children with dyslexia also made more false-positive errors to spelling control foils. These findings suggest that individuals with dyslexia make use of phonology when making semantic decisions both to word homophone and non-word pseudohomophone foils and that dyslexics lack adequate knowledge of actual word spellings, compared to chronological-age and reading-level matched control participants.     

Twenty Years of University Report Cards

Over 20 years ago, the first university rankings entered public attention in the United States. Since then, there have been numerous other efforts to rank or rate universities or university departments. University report cards have become both popular with the public and increasingly important for academic institutions. A detailed examination of 10 report cards from around the world, which evaluate and focus on either undergraduate choice or overall standing, finds that the various schemes share broad principles and approaches but differ considerably in details. Many of these variations are attributable to differences in aims, higher education systems and cultures, and the availability and reliability of data.     

Editorial

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance -     

Researching race/ethnicity and educational inequality in the Netherlands: A critical review of the research literature between 1980 and 2008

This article describes and critically analyzes how educational sociologists in the Netherlands have studied the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality between 1980 and 2008. Five major research traditions are identified: (1) political arithmetic; (2) racism and ethnic discrimination; (3) school characteristics; (4) school choice; and (5) family background. The development of particular research traditions is explained by pointing to more general developments in terms of social policy and intellectual climate in the Netherlands. This study builds on a similar, recently published literature review that focuses on the UK context by critically comparing the development and findings from these different bodies of research literature. The conclusions suggest that the Netherlands, like England, developed strong research traditions in this area of research since the 1980s and that both countries can learn from each other and advance future research in this area by developing more comprehensive research agendas. More generally, this review illustrates the usefulness of conducting nationally comparative literature reviews in assessing the development of particular bodies of research and in bringing together knowledge produced in different national settings.