Predicting Employee Turnover from Friendship Networks

Employees (n=40) at a fast-food restaurant were surveyed about characteristics of their position and their level of satisfaction. Employees were then asked to report with whom they regularly communicated inside and outside the workplace and to indicate how close they were to employees with whom they were linked. Employee turnover was measured after three months had elapsed. A goal of the research was to replicate a model of employee turnover that predicts employees more central in their social network to be less likely to leave, and to test a social support explanation of the centrality model. The results indicated that employees who reported a greater number of out-degree links with friends were less likely to leave. The number of in-degree links with friends did not significantly predict turnover, and neither did network links with peers. Friendship prestige, measured by the number of in-degree links, was strongly correlated with relational closeness and amount of time spent with employees outside the workplace.     

Effects of integrating mobile technology-assisted peer assessment into flipped learning on students’ dance skills and self-efficacy

ABSTRACT

Dance courses aim to not only intensify learners’ dance skills, but also cultivate their personal dancing features, self-confidence, self-reflection ability, creative power, appreciation ability, to name just a few, in order to attain much higher level artistic performance. In the present study, an approach which integrates mobile peer assessment into flipped learning is proposed. Moreover, a 9-week experiment was conducted to explore the effects of the approach on students’ dance skills, self-efficacy, and learning satisfaction. The results indicated that the students learning with the integrated mobile peer assessment and flipped learning approach had better dance skills than those learning with the conventional flipped learning approach and traditional instruction. In terms of self-efficacy, the students learning with the conventional flipped learning approach outperformed those learning with the proposed approach and traditional instruction. In terms of learning satisfaction, the conventional flipped learning approach outperformed the traditional instruction. Discussion and suggestions are provided accordingly. It is suggested that teachers who want to incorporate flipped learning into dance courses may decide whether to combine peer assessment according to the teaching objectives.     

Widening Our Global View: The Development of Career Counseling Services for International Students

The increased number of international students in United States universities and colleges have created the need for the development of services that appropriately reflect their needs and characteristics. The Career Center at the University of Missouri, Columbia reacted to this phenomenon by developing career services exclusively for international students. Career services are provided as individual services and online services, and consist of information on graduate schools and entrance examination practices, information on available employment opportunities and work permit policies, career assessments, and information about specific skills for obtaining a job in the United States. Several marketing strategies were used to ensure international students' use of services. Important points in developing career services for international students are presented.     

Factors Affecting Teachers’ Adoption of Technology in Classrooms: Does School Size Matter?

Researchers in educational technology have searched for factors to explain teachers’ acceptance and resistance to using technology for instruction. Among the many identified factors, however, organizational and school factors have not yet been explored and discussed. This study investigates the effects of school size on science and mathematics teachers’ adoption of technology in classrooms. Using national survey data collected from 940 science and mathematics teachers at junior high schools in Taiwan, we employed factor analyses, log-linear analyses, and three-way ANOVA techniques to examine interactions among school factors and teacher factors. Results obtained from the log-linear analyses suggested that both the interactions of school region with school size and school size with technology users were needed to explain teachers’ use of educational technology in classrooms. It appears that teachers at small schools were more likely to use technology for instructional purposes. Additionally, results of the study revealed that teachers at small schools tended to have positive attitudes toward technology use and that among users of educational technology in southern Taiwan, teachers at small schools designed and used significantly more instructional activities with technology. This study suggests that small schools provide a better environment for science and mathematics teachers to implement educational technology in instruction.     

Expert and preservice secondary teachers’ competencies for noticing student thinking about modelling

Educational Studies in Mathematics - This study examined how expert and novice (preservice) teachers solved mathematical modelling tasks as well as how they noticed written artifacts of student...     

Augmenting the effect of virtual labs with "teacher demonstration" and "student critique" instructional designs to scaffold the development of scientific literacy

Instructional Science - Virtual labs provide space for students to iteratively test, observe, and revise their understanding so as to improve their scientific literacy. However, one of the...     

Effects of online strategies on students’ learning performance,self-efficacy,self-regulation and critical thinking in university online courses

Educational technology research and development - Fostering students’ abilities to deal with practical problems is an important objective of professional training. To enable students to have...     

Developing and validating technological pedagogical content knowledge‐practical (TPACK‐practical) through the Delphi survey technique

Technological pedagogical content knowledge TPACK refers to the knowledge set that teachers currently use to further improve the quality of their teaching and assist their students in learning. Several TPACK models have been proposed, either for discussing TPACK's possible composition or its practical applications. Considering that teachers' practical experiences should also be critical to the development of those teachers' knowledge, this study invited a research panel (six researchers) and an expert panel (54 science‐related educators) to propose and validate the framework of TPACK‐practical. After two rounds of anonymous communications that followed Delphi survey techniques, a total of eight dimensions of TPACK‐practical and corresponding indicators were identified and rated as having high levels of importance. Among these knowledge dimensions, the knowledge of direct information and communication technology uses for enhancing teachers' professionalism and students' conceptual comprehension was rated with a high level of importance. Also, disciplinary differences were found to exist between the different groups of experts. Biology teachers showed significantly higher ratings across all knowledge dimensions, whereas physics teachers' ratings were comparatively low. Such findings suggest that the structure and content of subject matter shapes not only the way they teach with technology but also the thinking logics they build longitudinally from their learning experiences.