Combining Economic and Conjoint Analysis to Determine Optimal Academic Services

In today's era of global competition, organizations must manage their functions and activities in a manner such that they are responsive to customers' needs and can provide excellence in service to the customer while also being efficient and cost conscious. These issues are extremely common in corporate organizations, but such concerns are equally relevant in service industries, including institutions of higher education. This study is conducted at a private, undergraduate institution of higher education. We utilize focus group evaluation and conjoint analysis combined with economic analysis in the form of a newly designed preferred utility economic cost diagram to pick the ideal services that should be provided to enrolled students at the institution. The package of ideal services accounts for preferred utility expressed by students and a new methodology (preferred utility function) to balance these against financial considerations to optimize services and financial gains for a college adult education program. This combination of focus groups and mathematical techniques can be easily employed by educational institutes.     

Modeling the student in intelligent tutoring sytems: The promise of a new psychometrics

This paper reviews a number of relatively new and promising psychometric approaches to the problem of modeling student achievement (the student model) within intelligent tutoring systems (ITS). A shared characteristic of most ITSs is their need to estimate a model of the student's understanding of the domain, and use this model to modify and adapt subsequent instructional content and sequence. Sound cognitive diagnosis and the need to advance ITS technology require the development of student models that are integrated with cognitive theory and instructional science. A number of cognitively oriented psychometric approaches — including latent-trait models, statistical pattern recognition methods, and causal probabilistic networks — are described and discussed within the current ITS framework. As measurement-based student models are refined, we anticipate their compatibility with future generations of intelligent tutoring systems.     

A First Course in Mind, Brain, and Education

ABSTRACT— We describe what may well be the first course devoted explicitly to the topic of Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE). In the course, students examine four central topics (literacy, numeracy, emotion/motivation, and conceptual change) through the perspectives of psychology, neuroscience, genetics, and education. We describe the pedagogical tools we use to develop the skills critical for synthesizing information across the disciplines associated with MBE.     

Using peer and self-assessment to develop modelling skills with students aged 11 to 16: A socio-constructive view

Eight Welsh secondary schools participated in an action research project which developed approaches to teaching and assessing mathematical thinking skills involved in practical modelling situations. The development of the metacognitive and strategic skills necessary for successful modelling is discussed from a socio-constructivist perspective as a process of acculturation as well as cognitive construction. Learning to model involves socialization into the consensual realities of a wider mathematical culture and the teacher plays a pivotal role in the generation of this consensus through the legitimization of linguistically expressed subjectivities. Assessment is an integral part of this process. Participation in peer and self-assessment was found to involve the student in a recursive, self-referential learning process which supports the explicit development of metacognitive skills.     

Measurement Problems

History teaches the continuity of science; the developments of tomorrow have their genesis in the problems of today. Thus any attempt to look forward is well begun with an examination of unsettled questions. Since a clearer idea of where we are going smoothes the path into the unknown future, a periodic review of such questions is prudent. The present day, lying near the juncture of the centuries, is well suited for such a review. This article reports 16 unsolved problems in educational measurement and points toward what seem to be promising avenues of solution.     

Faculty dynamation: Guided empowerment

Dynamation is the integrative process whereby the sum total of all learning, knowledge, experiences, and feelings are brought to bear on productive, creative action and problem solving. In this paper, we describe some of the benefits of dynamation, outline a general approach to it-including the importance of friendship (the core of the empowerment process)- and explain several key incentives that will encourage faculty, through dynamation, to engage in growth activities. Throughout the article we discuss ten techniques developers can use. Our focus is on informal facilitator-enhanced (guided) empowerment. That is, we look at growth that is likely to result when developers work with faculty with the goal of growth, change, and development.Richard L. Weaver II is a professor in the Department of Interpersonal and Public Communication at Bowling Green State University. Darrell Mullins is an assistant professor in the Communication Department at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. Howard W. Cotrell is an associate professor in the Instructional Media Center at Bowling Green State University. Thomas A. Michel is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Business at Fordham University, Bronx, New York.     

Two studies of low income parents' involvement in schooling

An interview and an intervention study are reported. Interview findings extend research on the positive relationship of parent involvement to school success. That is, although most of the low income families reported low-moderate participation, a postive relationship was found between parent involvement and school adjustment as early as kindergarten. With respect to negative valuing and barrier interpretations of low participation, the data support the latter; all but a few parents reported positive attitudes toward school involvement, while the majority indicated significant barriers. In comparing Latino and non-Latino groups, the former reported more barriers. Within the Latino group, parents whose children had made a good school adjustment indicated the most participation. Non-English proficient parents reported more barriers than those proficient in English but comparable degrees of involvement. In the intervention study, a simple strategy resulted in more treatment than control parents attending a school event. Differences in attendance were related to ethnicity and language.This work was carried out in conjunction with a dropout prevention demonstration project conducted as a collaborative effort of the School Mental Health unit (Janelle Munn, Director) and Dropout Prevention unit (Pete Martinez, Director) of the Los Angeles Unified School District and the School Mental Health Project at UCLA (Howard Adelman and Linda Taylor, Co-directors). Partial support for the project came from the U.S. Department of Education. The authors, of course, assume full responsibility for the contents, but we want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of participating schools and project staff (especially Mary Beth DiCecco and Alison McAlpine). And although she declined author credit, this work could not have been accomplished with the many contributions of Linda Taylor, the project director. We would also like to thank Regina DeWitter, Teresa Gonzales, Kathy Eides and the many other UCLA students who assisted in various phases of the research.     

Effects of group rearing on the control exerted by an imprinting stimulus

Prior research suggests that group rearing may attenuate a young bird’s tendency to approach and follow an imprinting stimulus. The present work examined the effect of group rearing on a different measure of attachment, suppression by the imprinting stimulus of distress calling induced by abrupt reductions in group size. In Experiment 1, ducklings were reared in groups of 12 or 3 over Days 1–6 posthatch, and each group received a total of 3.5 h of exposure to an imprinting stimulus. Subsequent tests revealed that, when the groups of ducklings were separated into smaller subgroups: (1) the fewer the ducklings in a subgroup, the more distress calls emitted; (2) a given number of birds separated from a larger group emitted more distress calls than an equal number from a smaller group; and (3) regardless of the subgroup size, fewer distress calls occurred when the imprinting stimulus was present than when it was absent. A second experiment revealed that when a group of 12 birds was first confronted with an imprinting stimulus on Day 6 posthatch, they reacted with an increase in distress calling and corner huddling (an aversive reaction). After several hours of exposure to the stimulus, however, its presence exerted a powerful suppressive effect on distress calling. It is concluded that the social bonds between the members of a brood do not preclude the formation of a social attachment to an imprinting stimulus subsequently encountered.     

Acquisition of behavioral control by the auditory features of an imprinting object

Presentations of a visible moving object immediately suppressed ongoing distress vocalization in newly hatched ducklings, but presentations of only the auditory features of the object initially had no effect. However, as the ducklings received more and more exposure to the visible moving object, the object’s auditory features gradually acquired the ability to suppress distress calls themselves. These auditory features failed to develop suppressive properties in ducklings which received prolonged exposure to those features but never saw the object in motion. The gradual acquisition of behavioral control by the auditory features of a moving object is taken to represent the essence of the imprinting process.