Reflectors as online extraverts?

Increasingly, online learning is perceived as an effective method of instruction. Much recent educational research has focused on examining the purposes and situations for which online education is best suited. In this paper, students enrolled in two online courses are compared with their peers enrolled in equivalent classroom‐based courses to investigate aspects of the relationship between learning style and mode of delivery. Student satisfaction measures are taken from participants in both modes of delivery and compared with student learning style. Feedback from the ‘Reflector’ learning style demonstrates higher satisfaction levels with the online mode of delivery compared with their matched counterparts following equivalent classroom‐based courses. Therefore, whilst ‘Reflectors’ might be regarded as Introverts in the traditional classroom setting, the additional time for reflection offered by online delivery makes this group more likely to contribute to online discussion, report higher satisfaction levels and generally behave more like online Extraverts.     

美国《高等教育法》的历史演变分析

美国自1965年颁布<高等教育法>以来,历经多次重大修改,各具特色.修改总趋势为,从确立联邦政府的教育责任,到完善联邦政府的教育投资.但是,后来的发展在一定程度上也背离了资助贫困,维护高等教育机会公平的立法宗旨.     

Assessment,Grade Level and Learning

Researchers have identified assessment as a very crucial influence on the learning strategies adopted by students. The present study carried out on Secondary 2, Secondary 4, and Junior College 2/Pre-University 3 students shows that the Singapore students did not favour the Surface Approach in their learning of English and Mathematics. The nature of the discipline and the cognitive demands of the examinations carried considerable importance for students in their choice of learning strategies. Despite the heavy emphasis on excelling in examinations, students did not rely solely on surface and achieving strategies to attain their goals.     

Influence of improved teaching practices on student satisfaction ratings for two undergraduate units at an Australian university

To track the quality of instruction delivered at the University of Western Australia, the university surveys all units using its Students’ Unit Reflective Feedback (SURF) metrics, and faculties use these metrics to benchmark student satisfaction. Consequently, teaching staff are actively encouraged to adopt teaching practices that will increase the average levels of these metrics. Using a ‘before-after’ approach, we compared these metrics before and after the implementation of improved teaching practices that addressed specific weaknesses identified through student responses for two undergraduate units. Despite the implementation of improved teaching practices, SURF scores did not increase significantly for the two units assessed, due possibly to the components of the academic programme covered by the SURF questions, the field-based nature of the units, and the difficulty in measuring an increase in the SURF scores of units which already score highly. This poor sensitivity of the SURF metrics to the implementation of improved teaching practices could have implications for their use for performance assessment by the university.     

“Montrose” child life protection unit: A treatment and assessment model in child abuse intervention

In New South Wales, Australia, the Department of Youth and Community Services is empowered by statute to deal with cases of child abuse and neglect. Its child protection services include the Montrose Child Life Protection Unit which is designed to support and complement the work of both the Intake Service, Field Service and most importantly the work of child protective facilities in the community. The service has intake crisis counselling and call out resources; maintains a central register; provides a facility for crisis residential care for children and families, diagnostic assessment, and a day programme. The emphasis in service delivery in New South Wales in the area of child protection is on multidisciplinary intervention. The Department of Youth and Community Services is involved in promoting interagency cooperation and co-ordination. Over and above a philosophy that underlies service delivery is the Montrose Unit's involvement in sensitising the community to the difficult and often demanding role of parenting. Montrose represents an attempt to create an environment where parenting myths can be examined from a reality base and strategies implemented for reeducation.     

领导人才品评价的AHP模型

“品德”是领导人才选拔与测评中的一个重要因素,选用领导人才,一贯坚持“德才兼备”的标准,坚持“任人唯贤”的原则。在当前变革与转轨时期,德更是被放到了前所未有的地位,因此,对领导人才品德的研究具有重要的理论和现实意义。本文试用AHP法来建立领导人才品德的评价模型。     

Multiple‐Choice Tests and Student Understanding: What Is the Connection?

Instructors can use both “multiple‐choice” (MC) and “constructed response” (CR) questions (such as short answer, essay, or problem‐solving questions) to evaluate student understanding of course materials and principles. This article begins by discussing the advantages and concerns of using these alternate test formats and reviews the studies conducted to test the hypothesis (or perhaps better described as the hope) that MC tests, by themselves, perform an adequate job of evaluating student understanding of course materials. Despite research from educational psychology demonstrating the potential for MC tests to measure the same levels of student mastery as CR tests, recent studies in specific educational domains find imperfect relationships between these two performance measures. We suggest that a significant confound in prior experiments has been the treatment of MC questions as homogeneous entities when in fact MC questions may test widely varying levels of student understanding. The primary contribution of the article is a modified research model for CR/MC research based on knowledge‐level analyses of MC test banks and CR question sets from basic computer language programming. The analyses are based on an operationalization of Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Goals for the domain, which is used to develop a skills‐focused taxonomy of MC questions. However, we propose that their analyses readily generalize to similar teaching domains of interest to decision sciences educators such as modeling and simulation programming.     

美国“临床实践型教师教育”的教育实习模式探析

教师是一个类似于医学、护理或临床心理学的临床实践专业。为达成培养高效教师的终极目标,美国"临床实践型教师教育"聚焦实践性教育学环节,对教育实习的目标与内容、实习基地学校和指导教师的资格认证均作出了明确规定。为确保教育实习的成效,"临床实践型教师教育"强调相关主体应建立起支持性合作伙伴关系,并尝试搭建全国性的信息网络平台,从而形成具有整体性、连贯性的教育实习体系,以培养高效教师,满足教育需求。     

Gender differences in performance in mathematics at the end of lower secondary school in Italy

The paper deals with the investigation of gender differences in performances in mathematics for Italian students at the end of lower secondary school. The study is based on a new large-scale assessment test developed and administered by the National Evaluation Institute for the School System. Given the evidence in the literature which favors males, performances of female and male students are compared using different approaches. Scores proposed by educational experts based on item subgroups were considered, while a model-based approach was used within item response theory. The results revealed a significant advantage to males in overall performance, while no meaningful differences were observed with respect to item domain and type. An interpretable item map was developed crossing expert opinions with IRT abilities, and plausible proficiency levels were defined. According to the map-based student classification, a relatively lower percentage of females fell into the highest proficiency groups with respect to males.