Is Education Getting Lost in University Mergers?

Mergers are common phenomena in higher education institutions. Improving educational quality is typically one of the stated goals of university mergers. Yet, little information exists about how merging institutions approach this goal. This paper presents results from a study of planning documents created prior to four mergers in the Finnish higher education system. These documents show that there was little concrete attention given to the educational issues related to the mergers. Most attention was placed on administrative issues and issues related to research. When educational issues were mentioned, it was almost always in the form of vague goals with few details provided about how the goals were to be reached. We conclude that this lack of attention to the educational aspect of mergers is a significant weakness of the planning process in these mergers.

     

The legislative requirements for measuring quality in transnational education: Understanding divergence while maintaining standards

Australian universities have been actively engaged in transnational education since the 1990s. The challenges of assuring quality have seen a changing regulatory framework increasingly designed to ensure equivalence of standards wherever a course of study is offered and however it is delivered. Transnational Higher Education has grown significantly and the issues that flow from operating across jurisdictions, cultures and contexts have been addressed primarily by institutions themselves in complying with regulation. This article identifies how the Australian quality agency TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency) has revised its Standards Framework to support divergence appropriate to local culture and context, while assuring quality provision across the student life cycle. It concludes that the maturity of the quality agency may not yet reflect the provision of transnational education in practice. The article identifies a need for significant further research so that theory and practice can reflect opportunities to better serve students in a mature quality environment.     

Computerised screening for visual stress in reading

Visual stress is the experience of unpleasant visual symptoms when engaged in reading and some other visual tasks. There is currently no objective diagnostic test for this condition, which affects a substantial proportion of the population and which can disrupt development of reading skills. The reliability of subjective reports of symptoms has been questioned, especially where children are concerned. Diagnosis by positive response to the preferred treatment method, either the sustained voluntary use of a coloured overlay or immediate improvement in reading rate when using an overlay, is usually regarded as the best option. Recent research has reported that children who are significantly impaired by a visually stressful pattern during reading‐like visual search are more likely to show significant improvement in reading speed when using an overlay. This study was designed to evaluate a prototype computerised visual stress screener that incorporated visual search. The results confirmed that primary and secondary school children who were classified by the screener as having high susceptibility to visual stress had larger percent increases in reading rate with an overlay compared with those with low visual stress. The results also indicated that subjective reports of symptoms may not always be diagnostically effective with younger populations. It was concluded that screening for visual stress in reading using a computerised visual search task is an educationally promising development.     

Teachers' thinking elicited from interactive multimedia professional development courseware

This paper reports data obtained on practicing teachers' thinking as they interacted with a professional development interactive multimedia (IMM) courseware package. The data were obtained from 11 participating teachers via stimulated-recall interviews. Two types of thinking are detailed and discussed. The first type is those mediating processes engaged in by teachers during study sessions that related to the academic and professional content of the IMM package. The second type is those evaluative thoughts reported by teachers that related to instructional design aspects of the IMM courseware. The latter data were used to develop a classification system that provides a conceptualization of the major components, as perceived by the participating teachers, that relate to instructional design. He has been involved in teaching mathematics education courses at a distance via printed text to inservice teachers and through interactive multimedia (IMM) courseware to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teacher education students in their home communities. His current research interests focus on tertiary students' thinking while studying from IMM materials and their usage patterns of IMM courseware. He also supervises post graduate students in the area of teaching problem solving in upper primary and lower secondary school. Her fields of teaching and research interests concern the cultural contextualization of instructional design of interactive multimedia (IMM) and the World Wide Web (WWW). Other research interests focus on the mental models, thinking processes, and teaching-learning strategies used by teachers and learners when interacting with electronic databases, IMM, and the WWW. His areas of expertise are special education and distance education. His current research interests with respect to interactive multimedia (IMM) focus on tertiary students' thinking while studying with IMM materials and their usage patterns of IMM courseware. He is also involved in a number of school curriculum and systemic evaluations.     

Education Alone is not the Answer: The Specter of Right-Wing Authoritarianism for Criminal Justice Majors at Three Institutions

There have been a number of studies of right-wing authoritarian (RWA) attitudes among criminal justice majors and nonmajors. The prevailing supposition is that the attainment of higher levels of education reduces the negative traits associated with authoritarianism. A major assumption is that such improvements will occur regardless of the type of academic environment where the student is enrolled. This study examines whether educational attainment has the same impact on authoritarianism for criminal justice majors at a military academy, predominantly Caucasian rural teaching college, and a historically black college (HBCU). The results indicate RWA was highest for majors attending the military college. Moreover, unlike the findings for the teaching college and HBCU, RWA scores did not significantly decrease for seniors at the military college. This paper discusses whether differences in the organizational environment across the academic institutions explain the results.     

Assessment leaders’ perspectives of institutional cultures of assessment: a Delphi study

Institutional cultures of assessment are praised as beneficial to student learning. Yet, extant studies have not explored the theoretical foundations and pragmatic approaches to shaping cultures of assessment. The researchers used the Delphi method to explore 10 higher education assessment leaders’ attitudes and theoretical perspectives regarding cultures of assessment. These expert assessment leaders were iteratively surveyed until a reasonable threshold of consensus was reached. Study participants viewed buy-in as a necessary component of a positive campus culture of assessment, and advice on reshaping negative cultures was offered. Assessment leaders’ guiding theoretical frameworks were implied and loosely defined with metaphors. Finally, advice is offered for improving cultures of assessment by symbolically connecting assessment to student learning through dialogue.