A peer-assisted teaching scheme to improve units with critically low student satisfaction: opportunities and challenges

This paper outlines a peer-assisted teaching scheme (PATS) which was piloted in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Australia to address the low student satisfaction with the quality of information and communication technology units. Positive results from the pilot scheme led to a trial of the scheme in other disciplines. The trial was supported by an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Teaching Fellowship grant. Specifically, this fellowship was designed to (a) improve the quality of student satisfaction within identified units and (b) build leadership capacity using currently recognised outstanding teachers. PATS builds on the current research that highlights the benefits of peer-assisted learning programmes and draws on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and Lave's situated learning literature but applies it to academic teaching staff. Data are collected via unit evaluation instruments and focus group sessions. The effectiveness of the scheme is measured via changes in unit evaluation ratings and a thematic analysis of the focus group data. Results show an overall improvement in student satisfaction of the quality of units and highlight both the opportunities and challenges PATS provides academics for teaching improvement.     

Reexamining the Link Between Cultivation Factors and Viewer Involvement: Investigating Viewing Amount as a Catalyst for the Transportation Process

In an effort to expand on prior cultivation research involving narrative processing (Bilandzic &; Busselle, 2008 Bilandzic , H. , &; Busselle , R. W. ( 2008 ). Transportation and transportability in the cultivation of genre-consistent attitudes and estimates . Journal of Communication , 58 ( 3 ), 508 – 529 . doi: 10.1111/j.1460–2466.2008.00397.x [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), this study examined the interrelationships between viewing amount and the transportation process. Results showed that transportation mediated the relationship between genre-specific television viewing and perceived realism, while overall television viewing directly predicted reduced counterarguing. In addition, structural equation modeling was employed to test a combined cultivation-transportation model leading to changes in viewer excessive drinking perceptions. Findings indicated that genre-specific television viewing indirectly influenced beliefs through increased transportation. Conversely, a significant, direct path was found between overall viewing and excessive drinking beliefs, supporting the original cultivation perspective.     

Nikola V. Mikhov (1877–1962): A Study of His Bibliographic Contribution

Nikola V. Mikhov (1877–1962) set the standard for modern bibliographers in Bulgaria. He compiled major bibliographies of Bulgarica, or foreign works on Bulgaria, concentrating on the history and economics of Bulgaria and Turkey before 1878, the year Bulgaria gained autonomy from the Ottomans. Mikhov combed the collections of important Western European libraries in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and other countries to examine works for inclusion in his bibliographies. Using both published and archival sources, the author surveys his life, his bibliographic method, and his more important bibliographies.     

Bibliographies of East European Newspapers at the Library of Congress

This article traces the development of recent bibliographies of East European newspapers held by the Library of Congress. Since 2006 the European Division of the Library of Congress has placed ten newspaper bibliographies onto its website for the following countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Hungary 1956, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Russia, and Serbia, as well as a mixed newspaper/journal bibliography of the Soviet independent press, 1985–1992. The author covers topics such as the need for such bibliographies, their collection development benefits, the difficulty in maintaining their currency, and their popularity based on website statistics.     

Competition,conduct, and ratings in local television news: Applying the industrial organization model

This study explores how competition and competition intensity affect the amount of time devoted to local television news and the number of employees assigned to news activities. It also studies how the amount of time devoted to news and staff size affect newscast ratings. The author concludes that competition and its intensity did affect the amount of news presented locally and newscast ratings in the market examined.     

A comparison of scholarly productivity among current professors who obtained terminal degrees

ABSTRACT

Although scholarship is important in higher education and faculty productivity expectations are continually increasing, we still do not understand the holistic view of faculty productivity. This study takes a different viewpoint on faculty productivity examining differences by university classification and by discipline. Most importantly, we sought to obtain the effects of the delivery mode of terminal degree on later faculty productivity. The mode of terminal degree via Internet delivery looks attractive to students, but this study found that this has implications for future research productivity. These three elements illustrate a different scope that has important implications for administrative leaders looking to hire future faculty as well as students thinking about becoming a future faculty member. To capture this view, 600 faculty members from 59 American universities were surveyed. From this survey, five different variables emerged to create an overall faculty scholarly productivity factor. This factor was then compared against university classification, discipline, and mode of terminal degree. Results showed surprising significant differences between university classifications and disciplines as compared to scholarly productivity. One of the most noteworthy findings was that there is a significant difference in faculty productivity based on the mode of terminal degree. Furthermore, no difference in later faculty scholarly productivity exists between that of a hybridized, online degree and a purely online degree. Again, these results indicate significant finds which have a high influence on faculty scholarly productivity, which holds important implications for the future of the university.     

Culturally Diverse Undergraduate Researchers’ Academic Outcomes and Perceptions of Their Research Mentoring Relationships

Few studies have empirically investigated the specific factors in mentoring relationships between undergraduate researchers (mentees) and their mentors in the biological and life sciences that account for mentees’ positive academic and career outcomes. Using archival evaluation data from more than 400 mentees gathered over a multi-year period (2005–2011) from several undergraduate biology research programs at a large, Midwestern research university, we validated existing evaluation measures of the mentored research experience and the mentor–mentee relationship. We used a subset of data from mentees (77% underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities) to test a hypothesized social cognitive career theory model of associations between mentees’ academic outcomes and perceptions of their research mentoring relationships. Results from path analysis indicate that perceived mentor effectiveness indirectly predicted post-baccalaureate outcomes via research self-efficacy beliefs. Findings are discussed with implications for developing new and refining existing tools to measure this impact, programmatic interventions to increase the success of culturally diverse research mentees and future directions for research.     

The (mis)use of SATs to examine gender and achievement at Key Stage 2

ABSTRACT

This article discusses some of the issues raised in the early stages of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) study. ¹ 1 Gender and Learning: A Study of Underachievement in Junior Schools, Economic and Social Research Council R000237346. Project directors: Harry Daniels, Valerie Hey, Diana Leonard and Marjorie Smith. The first phase of the project involved an analysis of end of Key Stage 2 (children aged 10–11) Standard Assessment Test (SAT) data within a Midlands and a London local education authority (LEA(M) and LEA(L) respectively). The LEAs were identified according to the quality and accessibility of the data and their socio‐economic and socio‐cultural diversity. The analysis was used as an instrument for selecting schools in each LEA that displayed specific but con‐ sistent patterns of high, low and average achievement which were cross cut by large differences between boys' and girls' achievement in all three SAT subjects (English, maths and science). On one level, this article discusses the difficulties we encountered in identifying schools with consistent patterns of gendered achievement as well as signposting the ‘political’ significance of these difficulties for present and future edu‐ cation policies. On another level, it is a vehicle for the development of the theoretical lenses of learner identity and post‐Vygotskian analysis that have shaped our under‐ standing of gendered achievement which we use to ‘speak’ to and influence the development of the test procedures highlighted in this article.

     

Aretaic pedagogy: how we can transform the aesthetics of good teaching

Abstract

The article aims to introduce the epistemology of aretaic pedagogy as a refreshing paradigm of good teaching, situating at its centrality, instead of a knowledge-based perspective, a virtue-based approach to education. Its origins are in Aristotelian virtue ethics, which premise the acquisition of intellectual and ethical virtues as the highest good of the good life. Aretaic pedagogy is therefore constructed on the basis of the theory of virtue development and deliberates teaching as an ethical, virtue-driven practice. Its epistemological framework depends largely on three components: the notion of teaching as a practice, the embodiment of internal goods in teaching/learning and the harnessing of students’ private knowledge. Dialogue, beauty and play are proposed as the main internal goods within the students’ learning, which can act as key sources of their practice of virtues. As concerns a teacher’s pedagogical presence, it is argued from a dual professional prospect: the technological and the ethical. Therefore, a teacher is called to exercise a nexus of epistemic, technical, poetic and ethical virtues.     

Interactive Effects of Prior Knowledge and Material Format on Cooperative Teaching

The purpose of the experiment was to determine the separate and combined effects of varied learning materials (knowledge maps or texts) and teaching props (overview maps or outlines) on the learning of 2 different sets of material within the context of cooperative teaching. The participants were assigned to 1 of 4 cooperative teaching groups that used knowledge maps or texts as study materials, teaching props, or both. Each dyad studied material on probability theory (PT) and on the autonomic nervous system (ANS). One participant was responsible for teaching 1 set of material and was the learner for the other set of material. The teachers significantly outperformed the learners on measures of recall that included content and organization. The effects of format of the study materials or communication props depended on the prior knowledge of the participants. Format of the materials affected scores on organization for the PT passage but affected the content of the recall of the ANS passage. The results of the experiment delineated some of the conditions under which knowledge maps and texts are effective as learning or teaching tools.