The 'Self-service' Student: Building Enterprise-wide Systems into Universities 1

This article investigates the take-up by universities of enterprise-wide computer systems and the development of a new module for the management and administration of students. Having its origins in Electronic Commerce, the system assumes the existence of a certain kind of user, one with particular roles and responsibilities--Aa self-service user. The notion of 'self-service' is deployed as an integral part of the system rollout where students are to view, input and modify administrative and financial information on themselves and their courses. Drawing from the sociology of science and technology, and material from a 3-year ethnographic study, we describe the system's implementation in a British university. While accepting of the need for an ERP system the campus community reject self-service. However, as we will show, because Campus Management is a 'global product' unwanted functionality can be difficult to resist outright and this can have important implications for the autonomy of the university and the reshaping of fundamental principles and relationships.     

PhD student satisfaction with course experience and supervision in two Australian Research-intensive Universities

Over the past decade, Australian universities have experienced a dramatic expansion in PhD enrolments and in the proportion of female PhD candidates. This article assesses how well two major research-intensive universities have coped with these changes, looking particularly at student course experience. Of particular concern are relatively low satisfaction ratings given by PhD students to their overall course experience, which appeared to stem largely from dissatisfaction with supervision. Females were decidedly more dissatisfied than males with both course experience and supervision. In turn, dissatisfaction with supervision by both male and female students appears to have stemmed from various factors, but particularly important were lack of easy access by students to supervisors because of high workloads, and weaknesses in supervision practice. Many younger PhD students had distinctively negative attitudes towards universities and academic careers at a time of declining government funding per student unit.     

Supporting mature-aged students from a low socioeconomic background

The aim of the current study was to examine mature-aged student perceptions of university support services and barriers to study. Using a mixed methods approach, interviews and focus groups were conducted with mature-aged students to identify barriers to study, knowledge and use of current student support services, and suggestions to improve upon these services. From these data and an audit of university support services, an online survey was created to examine study barriers and patterns of support service use, as well as, perceptions of proposed support services not currently offered by the university within a larger sample of mature-aged students. Analysis of survey data indicated distinct patterns of barriers and support service use according to socioeconomic status as well as other demographic factors such as, age and enrolment status. Study findings are discussed in terms of generating support services for the retention of mature-aged students of low socioeconomic status and for the retention of mature-aged students in general.     

Rajabhat and traditional universities: institutional differences in Thai students’ perceptions of English

This research explores the perceptions students at three traditional university campuses and four Rajabhat university campuses in Central-Western Thailand have of English. The students were surveyed on (1) their backgrounds, (2) their thoughts about English in general, (3) their thoughts about their own ability in English, and (4) their thoughts about their current English teachers. The researchers found that traditional university students had better backgrounds in English. Additionally, most students at both types of institutions thought positively about English and their teachers, but didn’t think so positively about their own English ability. However, the differences in students’ responses were small and therefore any implications from the institutional differences in students’ perceptions are limited.     

Mentoring College Students: A Critical Review of the Literature Between 1990 and 2007

In response to the mounting national support provided to mentoring programs and initiatives in higher education, the present article updates a review article written by Jacobi (Rev Educ Res 61(4):505–532, 1991). The article revisits the mentoring literature in an attempt to re-frame and update the definition and characteristics of mentoring provided by Jacobi. It also synthesizes and critically analyzes empirical literature specific to mentoring college students published between 1990 and 2007. Finally, the article presents broad theoretical perspectives of mentoring from the business, psychology and education literature in preface to a proposed theoretical framework specific to mentoring college students. The article concludes with specific recommendations to advance the mentoring literature.

From clothing to skin: Identity work of student teachers in culminatingfield experiences

What constitutes a good teacher is construed as one who knows content, pedagogy, and student cognitive and emotional development sufficiently. Such role discourse pervades talk about effective teaching among policymakers, the lay public, and to some degree, institutions of teacher education that abide by NCATE-like formulations of program and candidate evaluation. Student teaching is a critical period for identity development of beginning teachers, yet it often lacks the space to work through this process with their peers. We engaged a semester length phenomenological narrative study of ten student teachers in an onsite student teaching seminar. Participants’ stories revealed that a more complete sense of self arose through conflicts encountered and the disjuncture of perceptions and realities of beginning to teach. Based on our analysis of the data, we argue that field-based, reflexive, and situational discourse space has merit as part of the larger teacher education curriculum.     

Building a Culture of Engagement through Participatory Feedback Processes

In response to school environments in which teachers and students feel disconnected from the learning process, we developed a three-part curriculum feedback system with the goal of creating a school-wide culture of engagement through participatory feedback processes. Here we describe the barriers to participation and ownership that are addressed by our curriculum feedback process, provide a rationale for each component of the multi-prong feedback process, and illustrate how each part of the feedback system was implemented in our pilot schools. We argue that addressing feedback regularly, optimizing the process to be user-friendly, and demonstrating appreciation for positive and constructive feedback can help any curriculum supervisor foster a school-wide culture of engagement among teachers and students.     

A latent-class discrete-choice model of demand for economics electives: a case study on the challenge to increase enrollment

Increasing enrollment in undergraduate and graduate economics courses that focus on the natural world (natural resource, environmental, energy, and mineral economics) is important for preparing a work force capable of addressing complex environmental issues. This is especially challenging for smaller universities that want to offer diverse electives in economics. This study seeks to obtain information on the effects of course attributes and student characteristics on preferences for and probabilities to enroll in economics courses offered at Michigan Technological University. A discrete-choice experiment is used to elicit 723 students’ stated preferences for eight different course attributes. A latent-class model is used to probabilistically group students into different preference classes. The cost-effective methods demonstrated in this study can be applied to any courses in any fields to inform course-level marketing efforts aimed at bolstering enrollment while addressing administrative budget constraints.     

Establishing Scientific Discourse in Classroom Interaction Teacher Students’ Orientation to Mundane Versus Technical Talk in the School Subject Norwegian

This article reports a case study on classroom interaction in teacher education in Norway. It addresses how teacher students in the school subject Norwegian constitute scientific talk in a student-led discussion. First, the analysis reveals tension in the classroom conversation between mundane talk—that is, where students make claims with reference to their personal epistemic domain—and scientific talk—that is, where students make claims with reference to a shared scientific epistemic domain. Then, the analysis identifies specific interactional resources (reproach, embedded correction, formulation, and recontextualization) that the students use to regulate and bridge the 2 levels of discourse. Finally, the article provides insights into how scientific discourse is collaboratively established through conversational turns and considers how teacher education might use these findings for communication-skill training.     

The construction and validation of a usability evaluation survey for mobile learning environments

The advent of mobile technologies in learning context, has been increased the requirements for developing appropriate usability model to align with mobile learning applications. Even though mobile learning has been studied from different aspects of pedagogy environment and technology acceptance, there is little scientific and published research on usability of mobile learning applications. To fill up the gap, in this study, a usability evaluation model with the inclusion of timeliness is developed to assess the usability of mobile learning applications. Timeliness or response time as an important feature in mobile learning, which influences learning satisfaction, can be considered to evaluate the peers and instructors’ timely response. The main objective of this study is to construct and validate a usability evaluation survey for mobile learning environments. This study employed a two round Delphi method to empirically verify the usability questionnaire by obtaining a consensus from fourteen experts regarding the questionnaire items. Results indicate that over 88% of experts have consented on all usability items represented in the usability questionnaire. The usability evaluation survey for mobile learning applications can help to improve user satisfaction and reductions in training costs. The decrease in costs attracts many researchers, interface designers and project managers to employ the usability evaluation when designing the interfaces for mobile learning applications.