Summary of an Extended Comparative Analysis on European Private Higher Education1

In November 2005, UNESCO‐CEPES organized a conference on Private Higher Education in Europe and Quality Assurance and Accreditation from the Perspective of the Bologna Process Objectives. Thirteen country reports and a comparative analysis study were commissioned for this specific initiative. The countries included in the project were: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the Ukraine. This article provides a brief summary of several main points of the comparative analysis study. The data referred to in this summary is taken solely from the sources cited in the full text study.     

What if best practice is too expensive? Feedback on oral presentations and efficient use of resources

We evaluate feedback methods for oral presentations used in training non-quantitative research skills (literature review and various associated tasks). Training is provided through a credit-bearing module taught to MSc students of banking, economics and finance in the UK. Monitoring oral presentations and providing ‘best practice’ feedback is very resource-intensive. Do we withdraw oral presentations from the module, because best feedback practice is prohibitively expensive in a world of limited resources, or choose a second-best alternative? To what extent might the latter compromise intended learning outcomes? We used the same provision of video feedback for all students but used two verbal feedback regimes. For one regime, we decreased the amount of verbal feedback and increased the number of presentations. The impact was measured by academic outcome, rating scales and questionnaire. Overall satisfaction with the module was very high for both feedback regimes, and there were no statistically significant differences between regimes, suggesting that less resource-intensive methods need not compromise learning outcomes.     

Compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction among Colorado child protection workers

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to understand better the risk of compassion fatigue (the trauma suffered by the helping professional) and burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced sense of personal accomplishment), and the potential for compassion satisfaction (the fulfillment from helping others and positive collegial relationships) among Colorado county child protection staff using the Compassion Satisfaction/Fatigue Self-Test [Figley, C. R., & Stamm, B. H. (1996). Psychometric review of Compassion Fatigue Self-Test. In B. H. Stamm (Ed.), Measurement of stress, trauma, and adaptation (pp. 127-130). Lutherville, MD: Sidran Press]. An additional goal was to test the relationship of these three constructs to each other. METHOD: A self-report instrument developed by Stamm and Figley was used to measure the risk of compassion fatigue and burnout and the potential for compassion satisfaction among 363 child protection staff participating in a secondary trauma training seminar. RESULTS: Participants were significantly more likely to have high risk of compassion fatigue, extremely low risk of burnout, and good potential for compassion satisfaction. Participants with high compassion satisfaction had lower levels of compassion fatigue (p=.000; mean=35.73 high compassion satisfaction group, mean=43.56 low group) and lower levels of burnout (p=.000; mean=32.99 high compassion satisfaction group, mean=41.69 low group). CONCLUSION: Approximately 50% of Colorado county child protection staff suffered from "high" or "very high" levels of compassion fatigue. The risk of burnout was considerably lower. More than 70% of staff expressed a "high" or "good" potential for compassion satisfaction. We believe compassion satisfaction may help mitigate the effects of burnout.