Determinants of Charitable Giving of Business School Alumni

This study investigated the propensity of Business School alumni to donate cash to the alma mater. A logit regression model was fitted to the survey response data from the 1955/56–1990/91 alumni of a large, Carnegie-classified, Doctoral University I public higher educational institution. The marginal probability of giving was found to be significantly related to factors such as time since graduation, major area of degree, willingness to recommend the university to others, household attributes and family ties to the alma mater, the number of other voluntary donors known, and the availability of matching gift accounts where alumni are employed. The logit estimates can be used to predict the likelihood of giving and for selecting fund-raising prospects more efficiently. Potentially rich future research directions are explored.     

Adult education and the quality of life

The purpose of this study is to investigate the complementary role of adult education in influencing people's objective and subjective quality of life. The analytical strategy used to achieve this end is to estimate parameters in a path model which includes both objective indicators such as occupational status and earned income, and subjective indicators such as job satisfaction and perceived personal wellbeing. The investigation builds on Swedish data and employs the LISREL method in the fitting of the model to the data. The results indicate that adult education positively influences objective indicators of the quality of life. Even though adult education is found torelate to measures of perceived personal wellbeing, the hypothesis that it alsoinfluences the way men assess their life situation and evaluate their subjective quality of life cannot be confirmed.

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Zusammenfassung Zweck dieser Studie ist es, die ergänzende Rolle der Erwachsenenbildung in der Beeinflussung der objektiven und subjektiven Lebensqualität des Menschen zu erforschen. Die analytische Strategie, die zur Erreichung dieses Ziels angewandt wird, besteht darin, Parameter für ein Wegmodell zu finden, das sowohl objektive Indikatoren wie beruflicher Status und Gehalt beinhaltet, als auch subjektive Indikatoren wie Zufriedenheit im Beruf und empfundenes persönliches Wohlbefinden. Die Untersuchung beruht auf schwedischen Daten und wendet die LISREL-Methode an, um das Modell mit diesen Daten in Einklang zu bringen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, daß Erwachsenenbildung die objektiven Indikatoren der Lebensqualität positiv beeinflußt. Obwohl man herausfand, daß Erwachsenenbildung zum Maß des empfundenen persönlichen Wohlbefindens inBeziehung steht, läßt sich nicht die Hypothese bestätigen, daß sie auch daraufEinfluß nimmt, wie die Menschen ihre eigene Lebenssituation einschätzen und ihre subjektive Lebensqualität beurteilen.

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Résumé L'objectif de la présente étude est d'examiner le rôle complémentaire de l'éducation des adultes dans l'action qu'elle exerce sur la qualité de vie objective et subjective des populations. La méthode d'analyse employée à cette fin consiste à évaluer les paramètres d'un modèle expérimental qui inclut aussi bien des indicateurs objectifs, tels que la situation professionnelle et le salaire, que des indicateurs subjectifs, tels que la satisfaction professionnelle et le sentiment de bien-être perçu par les individus. Cette recherche s'appuie sur des données suédoises et utilise la méthode LISREL pour adapter ce modèle aux données recueillies. Les résultats obtenus indiquent que l'éducation des adultes influe de façon positive sur les indicateurs objectifs de la qualité de la vie. Bien que l'on juge que l'éducation des adultesa un rapport avec les mesures relatives au bien-être perçu par les personnes, on ne peut vérifier l'hypothèse selon laquelle elleinfluence également la manière dont les gens évaluent leurs conditions de vie et leur qualité de vie subjective.

     

Software Engineering Design Principles Applied to Instructional Design: What can we Learn from our Sister Discipline?

The failure of many instructional design initiatives is often attributed to poor instructional design. Current instructional design models do not provide much insight into design processes for creating e-learning instructional solutions. Given the similarities between the fields of instructional design and software engineering, instructional designers could employ the ideas and techniques employed in software engineering to improve their design solutions. Software engineering development and project management methodologies can be employed to develop effective e-learning solutions. Furthermore, software engineering design principles used to develop high-quality software can be applied to planning and enhancing instruction. Fundamental software design concepts, such as abstraction, modularity, reusability, compatibility, extensibility, scalability, and maintainability are all important factors that can potentially lead to the development of high quality instructional solutions. This paper explores the possibility to integrate software engineering design principles into instructional design for e-learning solutions, which not only augment the generic instructional design approach with the best practices from the field of software engineering, but also make the development process more productive and efficient. Finally, this paper illustrates how all of the software engineering design principles are interrelated and can be realized in practice to enhance the quality of instruction.     

A time allocation study of university faculty

Many previous time allocation studies treat work as a single activity and examine trade-offs between work and other activities. This paper investigates the at-work allocation of time among teaching, research, grant writing and service by science and engineering faculty at top US research universities. We focus on the relationship between tenure (and promotion) and time allocation, and we find that tenure and promotion do affect the allocation of time. The specific trade-offs are related to particular career paths. For example, full professors spend increasing time on service at the expense of teaching and research while longer-term associate professors who have not been promoted to full professor spend significantly more time teaching at the expense of research time. Finally, our results suggest that women, on average, allocate more hours to university service and less time to research than do men.     

Study abroad as a collaborative endeavor

Gary Rhodes, Albert Biscarra, Lisa Loberg, and Katie Roller suggest that the next steps to improve study‐abroad programs are to increase the diversity of student participants and partner with departments across the academic and student affairs spectrum.     

Towards a systemic theory of gifted education

In this target article, we argue that current approaches to gifted education are based on the erroneous view that to understand the development of exceptionality we need to understand firstly the components of giftedness, including cognitive such as intelligence and non-cognitive factors such as motivation. In contrast, systemic approaches to understanding exceptionality focuses on the interactions of these components where it is important to firstly understand the system that leads to exceptionality before it is possible to understand its components. After analyzing the weaknesses of current approaches to gifted education we then present three central arguments for the need for a paradigm shift. This is followed by an introduction of constructs of a systemic approach of gifted education. Using the Actiotope Model of Giftedness to understand the development of exceptionality, this article describes the basic principles of a gifted education that is based on this systemic approach.