Development,Evaluation and Use of a Student Experience Survey in Undergraduate Science Laboratories: The Advancing Science by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory Student Laboratory Learning Experience Survey

Student experience surveys have become increasingly popular to probe various aspects of processes and outcomes in higher education, such as measuring student perceptions of the learning environment and identifying aspects that could be improved. This paper reports on a particular survey for evaluating individual experiments that has been developed over some 15 years as part of a large national Australian study pertaining to the area of undergraduate laboratories—Advancing Science by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory. This paper reports on the development of the survey instrument and the evaluation of the survey using student responses to experiments from different institutions in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. A total of 3153 student responses have been analysed using factor analysis. Three factors, motivation, assessment and resources, have been identified as contributing to improved student attitudes to laboratory activities. A central focus of the survey is to provide feedback to practitioners to iteratively improve experiments. Implications for practitioners and researchers are also discussed.     

Learning science through dialogic inquiry: Is it beneficial for English-as-additional-language students?

While the effectiveness of teaching that emphasizes dialogue and inquiry has been well documented with respect to English-as-mother-tongue children, it remains an empirical question as to whether this approach is equally useful when the student body includes a substantial number of English-as-additional-language (EAL) students. Through a longitudinal study of one class in an elementary school in California, we address this question in the context of a science unit that evolved over 4 years in response to the dramatic increase of EAL students in the school. Both the quantitative and qualitative analyses carried out on the data strongly suggest that dialogic inquiry can be effective for EAL students as well as for their mainstream peers when the teacher also systematically and strategically integrates literacy with science instruction and strikes a balance between hands-on and text-mediated investigations.     

Critics’ and public perceptions of violence in television programs

The following article is one of the first fruits of a million dollars’ worth of research by some two dozen investigators that was sponsored by the Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee in an attempt to examine the possible links between the mass media and violence. The research upon which this particular publication is based was performed pursuant to Contract No. HSM 42–70–32 with the National Institute of Mental Health, Health Services and Mental Health Administration, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Dr Greenberg, associate professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University, and a frequent contributor to the Journal, was the principal investigator. Mr. Gordon, a Ph.D. candidate, was senior research assistant in the same department.     

Report on the CSEET '99 Workshop: “Establishing a Distance Education Program”

The objectives of the workshop were to examine five particular aspects relevant to software engineering distance education: how to turn existing courses into distance mode, the implications of cultural issues in establishing the program and in the delivery of material, how to ensure the quality of courses, how to ensure comparability of experience for students, and the range of delivery mechanisms which have been tried and assessed. The two-staged operation and results of the workshop are reported. Initial position statements are detailed and the analysis from five separate subgroups that addressed a case study as stage one of the process is presented. The second stage, of different subgroups addressing the four operational scenarios, is described and the feedback obtained from these groups is then presented. Finally a summary of the major work-shop findings is given, along with some overall conclusions.