Case-based learning in virtual groups – collaborative problem solving activities and learning outcomes in a virtual professional training course

This article analyzes the collaborative problem solving activities and learning outcomes of five groups that worked on two different complex cases in a virtual professional training course. In this asynchronous virtual learning environment, all knowledge management content was delivered virtually and collaboration took place through forums. To measure the effects of the problem solving activities, learners' contributions were analyzed with respect to four different problem solving activities: Two content-specific problem solving activities, namely gathering information and developing a solution, and two coordination-specific problem solving activities, namely planning the common approach and steering the interaction process. Results indicated that the learning process was dominated by two central activities: developing a solution and steering the interaction process. Furthermore, the results indicated that the groups with the more complex case used more overall problem solving activities than the groups with the less complex case. There was also a greater range of learning outcomes for learners with the more complex case than for learners with the less complex case. Finally, the number of overall problem solving activities for most of the successful groups was higher than for the less successful groups. Additionally, the more successful groups used more coordination-specific activities than content-specific activities during the problem solving process.     

Cosmopolitans or Locals: Who Will Lead the Next Generation of Community Colleges?

The impact of cosmopolitan and local latent social roles on different professional occupations and organizational behavior has been studied since Gouldner’s seminal study was published in 1957. This study was conducted to understand the relationship between the latent social role of the public community college chief academic officer and his or her intent to pursue a community college presidency.     

The Split-Ballot Multitrait-Multimethod Approach: Implementation and Problems

Saris, Satorra, and Coenders (2004) proposed a new approach to estimate the quality of survey questions, combining the advantages of 2 existing approaches: the multitrait–multimethod (MTMM) and the split-ballot (SB) ones. Implemented in practice, this new approach led to frequent problems of nonconvergence and improper solutions. This article uses Monte Carlo simulations to understand why the SB-MTMM is working well in some cases but not in others. The number of SB groups is a crucial element: The 3-group design is performing better. However, the 2-group design can also perform well: The analyses suggest that the interaction between the absolute values of the correlations between the traits and the relative values of the different correlations between traits plays an important role.     

Considering the first year: reflection as a means to address beginning teachers’ concerns

With the increasing concern about the high attrition rate among beginning teachers, it is essential that we come to a better understanding of why teachers leave the profession. This study explored differences between leavers and stayers in terms of the process of their resilience responses. Major psychological factors such as value, self-efficacy, beliefs and emotions were foregrounded to understand how leavers and stayers are similar or different in negotiating and interpreting external environments. This study employed semi-structured interviews for seven leavers and seven stayers who had teaching experiences of less than five years. The findings of this study showed that both leavers and stayers had intrinsic interests in working as a teacher. Also, both groups identified similar challenges of working as a teacher, such as classroom management and effective delivery of lessons. However, leavers showed weaker self-efficacy beliefs than stayers, who tended to get more support and help from school administrators. In addition, leavers held beliefs that imposed heavy burdens on themselves, which may have created stress and emotional burnout. Unlike leavers, stayers often reported their strategies to prevent them from being burned out by setting boundaries establishing relationship with students. Given the high attrition rate of beginning teachers, the current study provides meaningful insight about challenges beginning teachers’ face, their needs and better ways to prepare and train them.     

'In Most Classes You Sit Around Very Quietly at a Table and get Lectured at…': Debates,assessment and student learning

This paper details a collaborative action research enquiry undertaken while both authors worked at the University of Glasgow. It explores the use of class debates as a teaching method in an International Management Honours course as the framing context for developing students' capacity to assess their own and each other's learning through the debates. In addition, issues of assessment for grading purposes are signalled and explored with the students. The collaborating partners in the study were a Management Studies lecturer and a Higher Education Studies lecturer, who worked together on the framework for the debates, reflected on the unfolding process together, and collected and analysed evidence. This case suggests that the debates enabled students to develop a critical view of the topics under discussion and to acquire a number of 'transferable skills', for example, team work. On peer grading, students were ambivalent. While self-and peer assessment appears to work well for formative purposes, summative peer assessment may not be welcomed by students.     

Promoting inclusivity in Western Australian schools

This paper discusses an inclusion initiative and action research project involving the special schools and services of an education administration (Local Education Authority) in the UK. The project is concerned with the classroom contexts and dynamics that create difficulty. It is not intended to produce incremental change along a developmental path, but rather to stimulate transformation of thinking within the schools. The focus is on pupils who provide the greatest challenge to the routine confidence and competence of teachers. The local education administration aims to avoid placement of these pupils out of the locality in specialist provision elsewhere in the country by developing appropriate curricula, pedagogy and support locally. The part of the project reported here makes use of Intensive Interaction, an interactive approach that emphasizes the quality of teacher-learner interaction, as a vehicle for reviewing and transforming practice. The emphasis is on intuitive teaching combined with critical reflection and collaborative problem-solving, rather than on the notion of specialist ‘experts’. The planning, action and developments of the initial year of the project are reported and themes related to the challenge of inclusion are discussed.     

Preschoolers Flexibly Shift Between Speakers' Perspectives During Real-Time Language Comprehension

In communicative situations, preschoolers use shared knowledge, or “common ground,” to guide their interpretation of a speaker's referential intent. Using eye-tracking measures, this study investigated the time course of 4-year-olds’ (n = 95) use of two different speakers’ perspectives and assessed how individual differences in this ability related to individual differences in executive function and representational skills. Gaze measures indicated partner-specific common ground guided children's interpretation from the earliest moments of language processing. Nonegocentric online processing was positively correlated with performance on a Level 2 visual perspective-taking task. These results demonstrate that preschoolers readily use the perspectives of multiple partners to guide language comprehension and that more advanced representational skills are associated with the rapid integration of common ground information.     

Social inequalities in body weight and physical activity: exploring the role of fitness centers

Fitness centers are a viable option for physical activity, particularly in climates with significant weather variation. Due to variation in economic and social expressions ofexclusivity, fitness centers may have some relation to social inequalities in physical inactivity and related health outcomes; thus, our objective was to explore this relation. Using publicly available data and guided by Bourdieu's theory of habitus, we classified fitness centers in Calgary, Canada, on three dimensions of exclusivity (economic, social, and appearance). We found that, although some highly exclusive centers exist, most demonstrated low exclusivity based on our dimensions. An overall contribution of centers to inequalities appears to be limited; however, caution is warranted in light of cutbacks to municipal budgets that can have an impact on publicly funded facilities.