Building student belonging and engagement: insights into higher education students’ experiences of participating and learning together

Student belonging and engagement has received increased attention in the context of an expanding and more diverse higher education student population. Student retention is regarded as a priority with many universities augmenting their retention strategies to instil a sense of belonging. This article provides insights into first year Business Management students’ experiences of starting their degrees and retention interventions at a university in the South of England. It is based on findings from an ongoing study that applied Wenger's social theory of learning and adopted an appreciative inquiry approach to focus group interviewing to investigate students’ perceptions. Students developed a sense of belonging, constructed learner identities, made sense of their learning and gained confidence, but also experienced instances of tension and frustration that raise questions about the extent to which sociality practices within evolving communities of practice can address diverse engagement and identity development needs and mitigate disengagement.     

湖北高等教育摭谈

湖北地处我国中部，是我国的高等教育大省，在全国具有广泛的影响和重要性。在东部跨越式发展和西部大开发的形势下，如何利用承东启西的地理优势促进湖北高等教育的繁荣，最主要的是要结合本区域的特色。本文通过分析湖北高等教育的特点，总结高等教育发展中的经验和发展趋势，旨在能为其他区域高等教育的发展起到一定的借鉴作用。     

积极老龄化视域下的老年教育:理念融合与使命创新

当前,老龄化已然成为全球面临的共同挑战,老年教育在应对老龄化社会进程中,应发挥其特有的角色与使命。积极老龄化的理念由世界卫生组织提出,经联合国以及欧盟的不断推进,当前已经形成具有一定实践意义的政策框架与指标体系,得到了国际社会的广泛认同。作为终身学习体系组成部分的老年教育,能够为实现积极老龄化所倡导的“独立健康生活”“就业”以及“社会参与”等政策支柱发挥重要的促进作用。与发达国家相比,我国对老年教育的认知与实践仍有很大的提升空间。在未来,我国应当树立“健康即是回报”的老年教育观念,增加对老年教育的社会支持,通过教育增强老年群体的健康知识学习与社会参与,进而促进积极老龄化的实现。     

新农村建设视野下的乡镇政府回应

乡镇政府及其工作人员能否对乡村社会和广大农民的需求作出积极、敏感、负责任的回应,直接关系到新农村建设的成效。提升乡镇政府回应能力的路径主要有合理划分各级政府的事权;把握好回应指向;转变乡镇政府职能;建立健全乡镇政府回应机制和注重对乡镇政府回应进行科学的绩效评估等。     

"五·四"制与"六·三"制之争及其启示

“五.四”制与“六.三”制争议的焦点,是在既定的义务教育阶段总的修业年限为九年的前提下,关于小学和初中修业年限如何划分的问题。尽管修业年限的划分是学制改革的一个重要方面,但学制改革是一项系统工程,需要认真研究学校教育的性质、目标、任务等一系列根本问题。     

一种用于大规模动态异构信息集成的多代理结构

为了在集成大量异构自治信息资源时实现高效率互操作性,设计了一种基于智能体(agent)的多代理结构.用一组代理智能体以peer-to-peer(P2P)方式为其他非代理智能体提供代理服务,从而提高系统的可扩展性与健壮性.代理服务使用本体技术来实现系统互操作性.与其他多代理结构不同的是,除了领域内本体,还引入了一个领域间本体来表达各个领域内本体中公共概念的联系.因此,代理可以根据领域间本体的信息,将查询请求仅发往相关的代理,减少了网络通信量,更好地发挥多代理体系结构的优势.实验结果表明,系统实现互操作性的效率相对于现有的系统有明显的提高.     

论公司司法解散之审慎适用

为保护中小股东利益,打破公司僵局,新《公司法》明确规定了公司司法解散制度。但司法解散是一把双刃剑,特别是在我国公司司法解散制度并不完善的情况下,适用它需要更大的成本。因此对于公司解散之诉,司法者考量的不应仅仅是公司自治,而更需要对现实情况予以效率和公平的权衡,在用尽司法解散的替代制度之后,审慎适用公司司法解散。     

Creating a distinctive business career outcome programme

This article describes how a small private business school, accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, reengineered its career services programme to become a premier programme in the United States. Drawing on theory of involvement, the research gives business schools a strategy to improve business career placement through capital support, student engagement, corporate engagement, alumni engagement, faculty engagement and continuous improvement initiatives. Further, two major outcome categories (i.e. supportive outcomes and end outcomes) are identified and various measures are discussed. Supportive outcomes indicate growth in the number of on-campus business recruiting career events, high internship evaluations by internship supervisors and significant increase in students’ satisfaction with career services. End outcomes provide strong evidence for placement rate success with a 98% career placement rate for the past four years, significant increase on mean starting salaries of graduates across the years following the implementation of the strategic changes, improved quality of positions attained by graduates, and professional success of alumni in their positions. The impact of strategic changes on school ranking, enrolment and donor support are also discussed. The research proposes a model of student career success and identifies various elements influencing the success of such programmes.     

Students’ educational use of Facebook groups

The aim of the article is to explore educational use of student-managed Facebook groups in upper secondary education (in Denmark). Much research on educational potentials of Facebook has studied groups managed by teachers. However, there is a lack of in-depth research on Facebook groups managed by students and without participation from teachers. As this study shows, students’ use of student-managed groups differs from their use of teacher-managed tools such as learning management systems (LMSs). The article presents an empirical study based partly on a content analysis of 3139 posts and 15,018 replies within five Facebook groups, and partly on a questionnaire answered by 1463 students and 148 teachers. The results of the study show that whereas LMSs were seen by students primarily as institutional systems of the teacher, Facebook groups have an educational potential to be used by students for peer-to-peer learning.