Building Multicultural Awareness in University Students Using Synchronous Technology

To explore the potential for building multicultural awareness in university students using synchronous technology, faculty members from an American regional state university and a Chinese regional university collaborated to find appropriate ways to integrate synchronous technology (e.g., Adobe Connect) into a teacher education program in the American university and in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) program in China. The paper reports the collaborative efforts during the spring 2016 semester using Adobe Connect to enrich student learning at both sites. This report includes the project overview, project implementation, its evaluation framework, and initial findings.     

Environmental education in a ‘green classroom’

The ‘Green Classroom’ in the Botanical Garden of Ulm is an experiential learning forum outside school. Its educational concept is based on experimental learning and is geared towards expanding biological knowledge and developing positive attitudes towards small animals such as invertebrates and insects. The attitudes of 68 school students towards small animals, before and after they visited the ‘Green Classroom’, were assessed and the answers they gave in their questionnaires were compared with those of 60 students froma control group that was not yet exposed to this learning environment. Although the students spent only one morning in the ‘Green Classroom’, some of their attitudes towards small animals improved after their visit. These studies underscore the necessity for direct observation and familiarization of the environment including small animals such as invertebrates and insects for appreciating issues related to biodiversity and conservation.     

The influence of active participation and organisation in environmental protection activities on the environmental behaviour of pupils: study of a teaching technique

Until now, many efforts in the area of environmental education, intended to instill consciously responsible behaviour into the general public in Germany, have failed. Several of the available intervention studies aimed at improving environmental behaviour of pupils with classroom tuition were able to show positive results, but there were often shortcomings in the design of these studies. First, this article presents some of these and deduces improvements and extensions for the design of the following intervention study. The described study investigated whether the active involvement and organisation in environmental activities influences the environmental behaviour of pupils. Active participation and organisation means a protection activity, designed and carried out by pupils, with help from their teacher. The results of this quantitative investigation show that the method of participation and organisation is successful and very promising. Improvements in reported and observed actual behaviour can be proved after the intervention. However, the changes are bound to the behaviour that was thematised in the teaching. The environmental perception of the pupils did not improve. Gender and the environmental perception of the pupils had no effect on the changes.     

Attrition in the liberal arts college of a major metropolitan university

A variety of data was collected about students in the liberal arts college of a major metropolitan university. Random samples of 120 students were selected from each of two groups: stayers and leavers. The data include only those variables that would be known to administrators at the time an admissions decision is to be made. These data were then subjected to a stepwise linear discriminant analysis. Significant results are found for discriminating between the two groups, and nine variables are found to contribute to the discrimination.