Quality Indicators of Online Programs

The continued growth of online programs in higher education has resulted in concerns about how institutions monitor the quality of their online programs. These concerns indicate a need for a process by which online programs may be evaluated and compared. They provided the impetus for this study, the goals of which were to identify quality indicators specific to community college online programs and to determine stakeholders' perceived importance of those indicators.

Categories of indicators were identified through a literature review, and these items were used to guide the development of a Delphi study to identify potential indicators. The results of the Delphi study were then used to create a three-part Stakeholder Survey designed to collect input on perceived levels of importance for each potential indicator using the magnitude estimation technique. The Stakeholder Survey was also used to validate the results of the Delphi. To refine the results of the Delphi study and Stakeholder Survey, a final survey was distributed to a group of distance learning experts, identified through their scholarly research and professional activity. The participants were asked to review the earlier results and classify each item as a factor, indicator, or other according to definitions provided.

The three research stages produced a set of potential data sources that a community college may want to pursue when assessing the effectiveness of its online programs and services. Each of the potential sources of data will be reviewed with a goal towards identifying specific indicators that may be used in developing future instruments.     

Discursive strategies and learning of the school language: an ethnographic study in a classroom with high ethnic and linguistic diversity / Estrategias discursivas y aprendizaje de la lengua escolar: un estudio etnográfico en un aula de alta diversidad étnica y lingüística

Abstract

Research on the dialogic and intersubjective nature of children’s learning has emphasised the study of educational discourse and the semiotic mechanisms involved in understanding the students’ constructive activity. These studies have been carried out in classrooms where there was continuity between the language of instruction and the students’ first language. However, the number of classrooms in which students have an initial language which is not the language of instruction is increasing. This article analyses the educational discourse in a multilingual classroom when the teacher interacts with seven students in a teaching unit about language. The study uses interactional ethnography. The results show the use of teacher inquiry into the students’ beliefs about the task and the semiotic procedures used to construct a shared intersubjective framework. The discussion emphasises the similarity of some of these procedures with those used in the family in the initial stages of language acquisition, as well as the variations which the teacher uses of the social and specific framework of reference.     

Using machine-learning and visualisation to facilitate learner interpretation of source material

This paper describes an approach for supporting inquiry learning from source materials, realised and tested through a tool-kit. The approach is optimised for tasks that require a student to make interpretations across sets of resources, where opinions and justifications may be hard to articulate. We adopt a dialogue-based approach to learning whereby the student creates an external representation to reflect their current understanding of the task. This in turn prompts immediate feedback, designed to help the learner to see patterns or irregularities in their current perspective. Through the on-going feedback, the student is encouraged to make incremental changes to achieve a coherent outcome. In this approach, learners are encouraged to generate meaningful responses for themselves, rather than relying on feedback which explicitly provides an answer. This is aimed at prompting deeper processing and understanding of source materials in the context of the given learning goal.     

Personal inquiry learning trajectories in geography: technological support across contexts

Student engagement in the design and implementation of inquiries is an effective way for them to learn about the inquiry process and the domain being studied. However, inquiry learning in geography can be challenging for teachers and students due to the complexity of scientific inquiry and the diversity of pupils' and teachers' knowledge and abilities. To address this, the Personal Inquiry project has designed a tool kit that includes nQuire, a Web-based tool to support students through the inquiry process. Here, we identify when, across five lessons comprising an inquiry into microclimates, nQuire was used by a teacher and a case study group of her 12 to 13-year-old students, and the ways in which they adopted nQuire as a tool to facilitate the creation of a coherent and cumulative inquiry learning experience over time. We found that students' use of nQuire supported them in capturing and representing their evolving understanding of inquiry, in defining and supporting their progression through the process of inquiry and in resourcing their cognitive engagement in data interpretation and representation. nQuire supported the students in accumulating and integrating new understandings across contexts and over time. In this way, nQuire successfully resourced and supported the students' learning journeys or trajectories. We conclude that nQuire can be an effective tool for supporting teachers' and students' understanding of the nature of inquiry and how to design and implement inquiries of their own.     

Letting experience in at the front door and bringing theory through the back: Exploring the Pedagogical Possibilities of Situated Self-Narration in Teacher Education

As a means of exploring what ‘learning through experience’ in teacher education might look like, situated self-narration is both conceptualized and performed here as the discursive practice through which already familiar and remembered experience may re-presented and re-organized from a forward-looking vantage point. Drawing on poststructuralist views of language and subjectivity and framed by a “pedagogy of possibility” (Simon, 1992 Simon, R. 1992. Teaching against the grain: Texts for a pedagogy of possibility, Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Group.  [Google Scholar]), situated self-narration involves three main discursive strategies: interruption, interrogation and interpretation. By way of illustration, I use memory to interrupt my relationship to the dominant narrative of ‘English Teacher as avid reader’ and interrogate my everyday experiences of being a girl as mediated by popular culture, in both cases, drawing on a poststructuralist understanding of identity as an evolving constellation of discursive practices and foregrounding the distinctive qualities of one’s experiences as a possible source of agency. I consider the pedagogical possibilities of such identity work in the context of English teacher education, specifically in terms of teaching theory through the back door (Luke, 1993). I engage what it means to say that the way we “word the world” matters (St. Pierre, 2000 St. Pierre, E. 2000. Poststructural feminism in education: An overview. Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(5): 477–515. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) through my own interpreted experience as an evolving yet situated subjectivity; a consciousness-that-teaches.     

在“有机化学实验”课程中开展“实验探究”教学的理论与实践

"实验探究"教学是类似于真实科学研究过程的一种教学模式.在有机化学实验课程中开展实验探究的理念包括教学过程的研究性、实验的设计性和学生的主体性,教学过程包括提出问题、实验设计、实验操作、获得结论等环节.实验探究教学改变了有机化学实验教学的传统模式,提高了学生研究和解决问题的能力,增强了学生的科研意识.     

香港科学教材中探究活动的特点分析

科学课程强调科学探究,探究活动作为科学探究的载体,它的设计的好坏将直接影响科学探究的程度和科学教育的效果。香港初中科学教材的探究活动颇具特色,文章从心理学、教学目标和学生的发展特点等方面对其中的特点进行分析,为我国科学教材的编写和修改提供借鉴。     

科学探究能力的多元化评价——以美国康涅狄格州的科学探究能力评价为例

在美国康涅狄格州公立高中的统测中,科学探究能力评价作为单项进行,它以学生喜闻乐见的当地资源为探究题材,采用独立与合作探究相结合、自评与他评相结合的多元化方式,有利于激发学生的探究兴趣和潜能,展现学生的真实探究能力.     

让教育研究走向生活体验

传统的教育研究由于远离了个体的生活体验而丧失了生活意义。本文认为,当代教育研究应该注重生活体验,走向生活体验。也就是说,教育研究是在真实教育情境中以个体的生活体验为基础进行的研究;教育研究是研究者作为主体积极参与的一种价值负载活动;在教育研究者与研究对象之间应该建立一种平等互动的关系。因此,当代教育研究应该注重叙事研究,关注教师的个体体验和个体实践知识,在教育理论工作者与教育实践工作者之间开展广泛的合作与对话。     

探究式教学法在政治课教学中的应用

教师对探究式教学法的认知程度,是有效运用探究式教学法的思想基础;创设质疑情境,是学生进行探究式学习的客观环境;培养学生良好的思想品质和思维习惯,是成功进行探究式教学的关键.