Reference Education: Lessons from Our Students

Students reflecting on their time as students in a school of information provide advice and commentary for their faculty. By revealing their challenges as well as their successes, educators can themselves reflect on the impact of their teaching and the potential it has to assist students on their career paths.     

Teaching Software Designing Skills

Research has revealed a significant gap between the thinking patterns and software design habits of students or recent computer science university graduates and those of expert software developers.There may be several causes for this gap, one of which is undoubtedly the fact that throughout their studies students are mostly asked to write software programs of relatively lim-ited scope, and are not usually required to work as part of a team constructing a complex program.In the present paper we will describe a study unit intended to be taught as part of a high school computer science curriculum, which emphasizes the software system aspects. In a study that accompanied the development and actual teaching of the unit, we checked, among other things, whether the students acquired skills for developing a complex software system.     

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.     

Students’ Socioscientific Reasoning and Decision-making on Energy-related Issues—Development of a measurement instrument

The concept of energy is one key component of science education curricula worldwide. While it is still being taught in many science classrooms from a mainly conceptual knowledge perspective, the need to frame the concept of energy as a socioscientific issue and implement it in the context of citizenship education and education for sustainable development, is getting more and more explicit. As we will be faced with limited fossil fuels and the consequences of global climate change in the future, students have to be supported in becoming literate citizens who are able to reach informed energy-related decisions. In this article, we focus on students’ reasoning and decision-making processes about socioscientific energy-related issues. In more detail, we developed a paper-and-pencil measurement instrument to assess secondary school students’ competencies in this domain. The functioning of the measurement instrument was analysed with a sample of 850 students from grades 6, 8, 10 and 12 using item response theory. Findings show that the measurement instrument functions in terms of reliability and validity. Concerning student ability, elaborate reasoning and decision-making was characterised by the use of trade-offs and the ability to weigh arguments and to reflect on the structure of reasoning and decision-making processes. The developed measurement instrument provides a complement for existing test instruments on conceptual knowledge about the concept of energy. It aims to contribute to a change in teaching about energy, especially in physics education in the sense of education for sustainable development.     

k次斜幂等矩阵及其性质

通过与k次幂等矩阵相比较,引入k次斜幂等矩阵的概念,探讨其相关性质,包括基本性质和秩的性质.     

边疆少数民族地区农村信用社如何提高其竞争力——基于农村信用社与其它银行博弈的角度

本文突破了传统的从农信社自身的静态角度研究的模式,从金融博弈的角度,从边疆少数民族地区农信社与其他银行的博弈入手,通过动态的竞争机制对农村正规金融机构进行了研究。研究发现,只有发挥规模经济效应,提高市场占有率,才是农村信用社增强其竞争力的最佳策略。为此,本文提出增设网点、实施积极的营销贷款方式、扩资增股、借助资本市场、大力发展跨境业务等建议,以增强农村信用社在边疆少数民族地区的竞争力。     

关于评价税收征收度质效模式的探究

现行的税收征管质效评价体系存在指标覆盖面窄、部分指标设定不合理等问题,而借助税务信息化技术建立以税收征收度为核心的评价体系,通过税收收入实际与潜力差额的母系指标以及涉及征管、货劳科室的相关子系指标,反映税收征管努力程度,进而衡量税务机关与税务人员的工作绩效,是一种简便易行的方案。     

浅析江苏自学考试“助学二学历”教育之创新

新形势下"助学二学历"教育作为江苏自学考试一种新的办学形式,是在秉承传统的自学考试制度基础上的大胆创新。在普通高校在校生中有序开展自学考试第二学历教育,对高校教育教学与管理提出了新的要求。作为高校教学管理者应与时俱进,在工作实践中认真分析研究并把握其改革的精髓,推进自考事业健康顺利发展。     

An Analysis of Some New Statistical Methods for Selecting Test Items

In this study, the relationship between student affective performance and classroom physical environment, social climate, and management style were investigated in a sample of classes in Hong Kong primary schools. The results of Pearson and canonical correlation analyses indicated that among the measures of classroom environment, perceived quality of physical environment and class master's expert power, personal power, and coercive power were the strongest predictors of affective performance. This finding supports the importance of class master's management style in the classroom environment. Students' attitudes toward school and teachers appeared to be most sensitive to variation in the classroom environment, and self-concept was the least sensitive among the seven student affective measures. Students' self-efficacy of learning and intention to drop out were moderately sensitive to classroom environment. Profiles of effective and ineffective classroom environments were also mapped. In effective classrooms, class masters care for students, pay attention to teaching, do not use force or punishment but do create a good classroom climate with their professional knowledge, personal morality, and personality. Physical environment and psychological environment are both important; a good classroom environment is highly correlated with student affective performance.     

School grades,school context and university degree performance: evidence from an elite Scottish institution

This paper investigates degree classification outcomes for students with SQA Higher qualifications at an elite Scottish university. Students are characterised according to a new indicator based on their secondary school’s academic performance relative to the national (Scottish) average. The results show that our school context indicator provides valuable information for interpreting school qualifications with respect to a student’s potential to benefit from their university studies. If school context is ignored, raw school grades alone may be an incomplete measure of academic ability and the probability of success at university.