Team-based Course Design: Increasing Resource Utilization and Collaboration Across Campus

ABSTRACT

Community colleges continue to face accountability pressures without an increase in funding, requiring creativity to meet their goals. Collaborating across departments can maximize communication and minimize waste. Team-based course design is one way to encourage interdepartmental work. Within this article, a diverse team—composed of individuals representing not only faculty, but also staff and administrators from the library, student tutoring services, and distance education departments— explains best practices based on their experience with team-based course design.     

A social realist perspective on student learning in higher education: the morphogenesis of agency

Contemporary critiques of student learning research call for new theoretical and methodological approaches. This article proposes a social realist approach to this research, using the morphogenetic theory of sociologist Margaret Archer. The applicability of this approach is demonstrated by reference to an empirical study of engineering students at a South African university, using narrative analysis. In the article itself, two narratives are given in some detail, illustrating the key outlines of the analysis. Students’ emerging personal identities are shown to be highly dependent on their social backgrounds, yet when in the university the possibilities for the morphogenesis of student agency are very constrained. A critical interrogation of these findings proposes that a true higher education should facilitate the development of an enlarged sense of agency for students.     

School funding formulae: designed to create a learning society?

The right to education depends upon a willingness to finance education fairly. Addressing the difference in educational achievement between learners of different backgrounds is a key aspect of fairness. Framed by contemporary neoliberal policies around marketisation and competitiveness, this paper examines fairness in the education finance policy (EFP) of three jurisdictions in England, Israel and Oklahoma. Using a comparative analysis of school funding formulae and an international survey on the perceptions of local policy actors, the de jure and the de facto EFPs are examined. Our findings reveal de jure policies attempting to address fairness through integrating different student background characteristics. However, variability is evident in the extent to which the de facto policies align with an aspiration for fairness. This is linked to the marketisation of education in each jurisdiction. We conclude that weightings of students’ background characteristics can only be one feature in policy interventions orientated towards bringing about social equity.     

Reconfiguring and realigning the assessment feedback processes for an undergraduate criminology degree

A reconfigured and realigned system of assessment feedback was implemented with undergraduates taking criminology modules at Swansea University. The reformulated system integrated explicit engagement with assessment criteria in feedback given on an electronic template form with the use of a statement bank and the offer of follow‐up, feedback consolidation meetings with the tutor. Student module evaluation feedback questionnaires demonstrated a positive qualitative impact upon students' ratings of their awareness and understanding of module learning outcomes, assessment criteria and required levels of learning; moving the focus of assessment feedback from teaching to (higher‐order) learning. Substantive qualitative impact has also been evidenced by departmental adoption of the reconfigured assessment process as standard. Quantitative impact was evidenced in the form of improvements in assessment performance within‐modules and within students from 2004–2005 to 2005–2006. The educational implications of the study findings are discussed.     

Dewey in His Skivvies: The Trouble with Reconstruction

In this essay, Robbie McClintock argues that educational theorists have inflated John Dewey's deserved reputation beyond what the quality of his work can sustain. He briefly recounts how Dewey developed a program for reconstruction in philosophy, education, and social life with the aim of overcoming chronic dislocations in social life. McClintock sees two parts to Dewey's reconstruction: a negative program, in which Dewey rejects the metaphysical heritage that had induced these social dislocations; and a positive program, in which he advances scientifically grounded instrumentalities for a more humane conduct of life. McClintock hypothesizes that Dewey's negative reconstruction, based on facile historical reasoning, dismissed historical resources that could have strengthened his positive program to develop a naturalistic humanism, one more instrumental in the art of living. To explain his hypothesis, McClintock selectively shows how, in numerous works, Dewey rejected prior thinking unnecessarily as a means to advance his ideas, focusing in particular on Dewey's dismissive assessment of Immanuel Kant's and G. W. F. Hegel's work. McClintock criticizes Dewey's historical views to encourage present‐day educational thinkers to avoid emulating them and to make full, creative use of the philosophical tradition instead. He closes the essay by suggesting how historical reason can anticipate future possibilities and thus inform present action, and by calling on all to use it in humanizing the lifeworld we share.     

Students' Metacognitive Development in an Innovative Second Year Chemical Engineering Course

In this paper the metacognitive development of students in a second year chemical engineering course (which had such development as an explicit aim) is investigated. Journal data from the class were analysed and a framework comprising four different areas of metacognitive development was arrived at. Within each area, key shifts in approach were identified. The first area (category 1) concerns students' knowledge and awareness (conceptions) of learning, and the important development in this area was from a focus on solving problems towards a stronger valuing of conceptual understanding. The second and third areas deal with aspects of control. The second area (category 2a) is that of organising one's learning, and here students were seen to develop from an uninformed focus on discipline and time management, towards a more metacognitively informed use of resources. The third area (category 2b) is monitoring of learning, with the key shift here from naïvely accepting outside judgements, to using them strategically for purposes of self-assessment. The fourth area (category 3) involves students' sense of a purpose for learning beyond the subject. Important developments here were both in terms of a career goal, as well as personal growth. Data from interviews with five students largely confirmed the validity of these categories, as well as illustrating that different students showed development in different areas.     

From behaviourism to cognitive behaviourism to cognitive development: Steps in the evolution of instructional design

The recent history of instructional technology is traced, starting with the work of Skinner, moving on to the task analytic approach of Gagné, and following through to contemporary efforts associated with the cognitive revolution. It is suggested that an understanding of the process of cognitive development may enable us to build on and improve earlier approaches, by adapting them more directly to students' current levels of cognitive development, and by ensuring that we do not overtax their information processing capabilities. To illustrate and support this claim, a number of recent instructional studies are cited, some of which have utilized classic developmental tasks, and some of which have utilized conventional classroom material.Presented at the conference for Educational Technology in the 80's Caracas, Venezuela, June 14–18, 1982.     

Educational paradigms and engineering educators in South Africa

In this response to Waghid (2000) the authorsquestion the validity of conclusions reachedfrom an examination of the proceedings of anengineering education conference in SouthAfrica. The authors argue that these papersdo not represent the views of engineeringeducators in general. Furthermore they querythe way in which Waghid uses reference toteaching methods in these papers to deduce thetheoretical perspective of the presenters. Itis suggested that the views of the educatorsinvolved in this conference and others like itin South Africa, can be characterised asfalling within a broad interpretivist(constructivist) perspective. Finally, theauthors agree that an engagement with acritical perspective would contributesignificantly to the transformation of theculture of engineering education in SouthAfrica.