Issues Confronting American Higher Education

The American system of higher education — massive, decentralized, and diverse —faces a number of critical issues in the years immediate ahead. This paper considers four of those issues — the impact of demographic change; the long-term implications for higher education of the national movement to reform secondary education; the growing interest in the character and quality of undergraduate education; and the role of universities, especially research universities, in economic development — and suggests a few of the directions American higher education may take in response to them.     

Understanding Instructor Immediacy,Credibility, and Facework Strategies Through a Qualitative Analysis of Written Instructor Feedback

Written feedback is an important but often overlooked aspect of an instructor’s training and responsibilities, even though it is central to student learning. We analyzed 3,071 written instructor comments on a single assignment from 95 sections to understand how immediacy, credibility, and facework are reflected in written feedback. In taking a heuristic approach to data analysis, we found two overarching themes: fostering goodwill and using context-specific feedback. These overlapping themes demonstrated various strategies of instructor immediacy, credibility, and facework that negotiated the instructor–student relationship in conjunction with course content and policies. Examining these themes allowed us to identify strengths and weaknesses in methods of instructor feedback that would not have been visible using traditional quantitative methods of assessment and have practical implications for the administration of our course.     

Weight factor selection in double exponential smoothing enrollment forecasts

The merits of double exponential smoothing are discussed relative to other types of pattern-based enrollment forecasting methods. The basic assumptions and formulas for its use are outlined. The difficulties associated with selecting an appropriate weight factor are discussed, and the potential effect on prediction results is illustrated. Two methods for objectively selecting the best weight factor are described and analyzed, and evidence is presented suggesting that they may be used effectively in the enrollment-forecasting process.Presented at the Twentieth Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Atlanta, April 1980.     

Adolescent physical activity levels: discrepancies with accelerometer data analysis

This study investigated the effects of epoch length and cut point selection on adolescent physical activity intensity quantification using vertical axis and vector magnitude (VM) measurement with the ActiGraph GT3X+ accelerometer. Four hundred and nine adolescents (211 males; 198 females) aged 12–16 years of age wore accelerometers during waking hours. The GT3X+ acceleration counts were reintegrated into 1, 5, 15, 30 and 60 s epoch lengths for both vertical axis and VM counts. One cut point was applied to vertical axis counts and three different cut points were applied to VM counts for each epoch length. Significant differences (P < 0.01) in mean total counts per day were observed between vertical axis and VM counts, and between epoch lengths for VM only. Differences in physical activity levels were observed between vertical and VM cut points, and between epoch lengths across all activity intensities. Our findings illustrate the magnitude of differences in physical activity outcomes that occur between axis measurement, cut points and epoch length. The magnitude of difference across epoch length must be considered in the interpretation of accelerometer data and seen as a confounding variable when comparing physical activity levels between studies.     

Research,Development and Tacit Capability in the Education System

The relevance gap between educational practice and research is often seen as a methodological problem. But communicative and social issues are also vitally important. The idea of tacit capability, from recent work in economics on research and development, characterises the knowledge which can be acquired by and attributed to an organisation as a conversational whole. (Schön's idea of reflective practice is unhelpfully monological.) I interpret and validate this idea in the light of Habermas’ account of communicative action. I use it to explore social problems in the relation between educational practice and research and suggest solutions modelled on enlightened industrial practice in Europe.