Search Results for
"learning"

Interdisciplinary education has become increasingly prominent as a core instrument to prepare the next generation workforce. Yet, little is known about the impacts of long-term degree-oriented interdisciplinary education on post-graduation outcomes. This paper aims to investigate the influence of long-term degree-oriented interdisciplinary education on graduates’ post-graduation plan choices and labour market outcomes using unique administrative micro-data and career-tracking data from a comprehensive research university. Our results indicate that higher levels of engagement in interdisciplinary learning increase the probability of pursuing future study and employment in a field that differs from a graduate’s college degree, and are also associated with a higher probability to enter the workforce. Yet, this positive association between interdisciplinary learning and the probability of entering the workforce is specific to graduates from traditional disciplinary programmes. Additionally, our findings suggest that the impact of long-term degree-oriented interdisciplinary education on early labour market outcomes is overall beneficial but varies across degree fields. The findings of our study provided partial evidence in support of the influence of long-term degree-oriented interdisciplinary education on post-graduation plan choices and early labour market outcomes. We suggest that given resource constraints, higher education institutions could consider relaxing module choice restrictions in traditional disciplinary programmes to promote interdisciplinary education. However, it is important to note that higher education institutions should carefully consider the potential trade-off between the breadth of interdisciplinary content and the depth of specialist content, in order to strike a balance. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Most corporate projects suffer from the problem of scope creep, despite of the methodologies available to cope with this issue. Organisations have utilised computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) approaches to enhance employees’ project management (PM) training. Most prior studies on CSCL and PM focus on the application of CSCL for PM training in the contexts of educational institutions. It is thus uncertain that their findings are applicable to the real-world PM situations. Additionally, those studies did not specifically investigate the effects of key PM-related CSCL features on PM learning. Therefore, this study identifies and empirically investigate the effects of the key CSCL features, namely goal orientation, individual accountability, and structured interaction, on the level of scope completeness and the effectiveness of stakeholder management (SHM) in a context in which an online case-based collaborative learning system was implemented for PM learning purposes. Data collected from 264 PM professionals were analyzed using the method of partial least squares to examine the proposed research model. The results show that all the three key CSCL features have a significant direct/indirect influence on the level of scope completeness and the SHM effectiveness. Implications for theory and practice, research limitations, and future research directions are discussed correspondingly. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Education informatization is an inevitable change in using information technology for education development in the education field in the information age. This study firstly takes Guilin college teachers as the research object, based on the ADDIE model and optimized BP neural network algorithm, and tries to understand the current situation of using informationized teaching resources of basic modeling course college teachers. Secondly, by analyzing the data collected from students' evaluation of the ability to use informationized teaching resources of drawing design teachers in the basic modeling course, we found that there are still some problems in the informationized teaching of basic modeling courses in colleges and universities, and we explore these problems in depth. The analysis shows that 80.9% of teachers will use teaching equipment when teaching and 92.72% of teachers will use teaching tools. The students rated the teachers' ability to use informatization teaching resources highly, and about 50% thought that teachers could use them. College teachers need to establish an awareness of lifelong learning and take the initiative to adapt to the needs of information-based teaching. © 2023 Yingying Huang, published by Sciendo.

Is it possible to measure how critical soft skills like leadership or teamwork are from the viewpoint of graduate studies offerings? This paper provides a conceptual and methodological framework that introduces the concept of a bipartite network as a practical way to estimate the importance of soft skills as socio-emotional abilities trained in graduate studies. We examined 230 graduate programs offered by 49 higher education institutions in Colombia to estimate the empirical importance of soft skills from the viewpoint of graduate studies offerings. The results show that: (a) graduate programs in Colombia share 31 soft skills in their intended learning outcomes; (b) the centrality of these skills varies as a function of the graduate pro- gram, although this variation was not statistically significant; and (c) while most central soft skills tend to be those related to creativity (i.e. creation or generation of ideas or projects), leadership (to lead or teamwork), and analytical orientation (e.g. evaluating situations and solving problems), less central were those related to empathy (i.e. understanding others and acknowledgment of others), ethical thinking, and critical thinking, posing the question if too much emphasis on most visible skills might imply an unbalance in the opportunities to enhancing other soft skills such as ethical thinking. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In construction technology education (CTE), construction site tours play an essential role for undergraduate students to obtain familiarity with construction environments, combine content knowledge with practice, and develop their competencies to embrace construction innovations before entering the industry. Implementing real construction site visits for education purposes faces challenges in getting access to proper construction sites and ensuring the safety of visiting students. This study combined the application of Project-based learning (PBL), game-based learning (GBL), and deeper learning theories to develop TheProjectLive ePlatform for students to experience virtual site tours. In this platform, 360-degree panoramas were utilized to present the approximate complexity of construction sites and provide an immersive learning environment. The study evaluated the effects of the proposed virtual site tour approach through two years of implementation in a tertiary course: Introductory Construction Technology and Materials. The students' knowledge acquisition and learning experience when applying the ePlatform were well measured through in-class quizzes and questionnaire surveys, respectively. Based on the descriptive and statistical sources of evidence, the developed ePlatform for conducting the virtual construction site tour demonstrated its potential to effectively improve students' transferable knowledge acquisition. The results of two in-class quizzes designed to assess students' comprehension of content knowledge and their competency to solve practical problems showed that the average scores of students who experienced the virtual site tour were higher than students who learned via lecture notes. Specifically, the average scores of the former were 13.3% and 17.8% higher than the latter in the two quizzes, respectively. According to students' feedback, this case study research also provided suggestions to further improve the proposed virtual site tour approach in tertiary CTE, emphasizing the importance of clear content presentation as well as indicating the benefits of perceived helpfulness and well-designed game elements. © 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.

The aim of the present study was to contribute knowledge about how adult L2 learners perceived their possibilities to use and develop the target language (Swedish) when formal language teaching was combined with placements. Situated in the context of Swedish for Immigrants (SFI), the study drew inspiration from action research and ethnographic methodology. A thematic analysis was conducted underpinned by the systemic-functional linguistic concepts of field, tenor and mode. The findings showed that the students highly valued interaction with L1 Swedish speakers outside of the classroom. Several of the students described rich opportunities to interact socially, which, however, also entailed anxiety about their status as L2 speakers. A few of the students reported accessing field-specific language and literacy practices that aligned with their current career goals. However, students with placements relating to kitchen, garage and warehouse work voiced feeling isolated and having little opportunity for social interaction. While students in the first of two course instances found it difficult to discuss and exemplify language they had learnt, a vocabulary assignment developed for the second course instance facilitated discussions about placement-related words and expressions. Implications for teaching are discussed, including using authentic examples of workplace discourse as preparation for placement visits. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Science educators incorporate collaborative engagement in model-based argumentation to meet curricular goals and build students’ capacity for scientific epistemic and social practices. During collaboration, groups encounter various challenges (e.g., lack of task understanding) and engage in social regulation to overcome them. However, little is known about whether and how various contextual factors (e.g., teacher presence, classroom climate, or academic discipline) can influence the nature of students’ collaboration and social regulation. The purpose of our qualitative case study was to examine how one such contextual factor, teacher presence, related to high school students’ discourse interactions and social regulation of learning during a collaborative model-based scientific argumentation task. In one classroom, the teacher was continuously present during groups’ discussions. In the other classroom, the teacher was intermittently present. We found that groups with a continuously present teacher had high on-task engagement that was teacher-led, with the students relying on the teacher for regulation. Groups with intermittent teacher presence had more off-task interactions but also engaged in more dialogic argumentation discourse with each other, initiating and enacting more modes of social regulation of learning than the other groups. These findings suggest that teachers must thoughtfully manage their presence and absence to instruct, model, scaffold, and fade their support for both scientific argumentation and the social regulation skills necessary to productively enact that argumentation, intentionally varying emphasis on one or the other. These findings highlight the importance of future research on teacher presence and other contextual factors that can affect how students collaborate and learn. © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

In the light of urgent global sustainability challenges, vocational education is searching for new approaches that are more just and future proof. At least a part of the answer seems to lie in so-called collaborative learning arrangements where students together with societal actors explore sustainability-related challenges. The amount of this kind of arrangements in which vocational education participates increases. Empirical studies on what actually goes on in the collaborative arrangements are rather scarce. This study addresses the theory-practice gap by applying a participatory design. The study unveils that deeply seated educational and socio-cultural routines like the student as learner, alienation from issues, a bias towards cognitive knowing and ‘solving’ problems seem to limit the possibilities for more genuine collaboration to emerge. The study also found that by intervening with creative and reflexive methods, space for transformative learning can unfold that allows engagement with existential questions like ‘what is it what I really got to do here?’. The opening up of these spaces was accompanied by longings to go beyond the rosy narratives of collaborative learning arrangements and to have more attention for the persistent embeddedness of educational routines in the societal issues around us. Vocational education as society. What happens if we progress towards vocational education for sustainable futures with more modesty and introspection?. © 2023 HAN University of Applied Science. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

We conduct a systematic literature review of the academic literature on activities organised by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with the aim of improving skills associated with employability and facilitating labour market outcomes. The search resulted in 87 papers followed by an iterative evaluation of their relevance. Papers in the corpus were analysed using an evaluation research framework and classified in terms of the activities, outputs, and outcomes. The reviewed literature is centred on one of three stakeholders: HEIs, students or employers. It suggests all stakeholders value employability activities for similar reasons. Generally, they are seen as a vital part of HEI education programmes, facilitating the development of diverse skills that are desirable in the labour market as well as de-risking labour market entry for students and appointments for employers by alleviating information asymmetries. The evidence base is dominated by small-scale case studies and evaluations that are not sufficiently robust to infer about causal impacts of employability activities on students’ development and labour market outcomes. Moreover, the corpus is skewed towards studies of Work-Related learning. We set out avenues for future research and argue for a comprehensive evidence base encompassing diverse forms of employability activities, such as larger scale ‘embedded employability’ activities; a more contextual understanding of employability as an interplay between individual and a particular labour market and education system; and a more robust evidence base tracking students from education into the labour market, allowing for selection effects and identifying heterogeneity of impacts across different activities and demographics. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This article argues that current Supply Chain Management (SCM) education and training is inadequate to meet the human capital needs of industry. To bridge this gap, we propose the development and deployment of SCM educational programs that provide learning opportunities earlier in students’ educational journeys. We argue that such programs should be based on self-directed learning of SCM knowledge, business concepts/skills, and their real-life application with help from industry partners. We present a case study of a four-way partnership SCM educational program for high schoolers, which utilizes a project-based learning method. Survey data and focus group discussion revealed positive developmental learning outcomes, the program's uniqueness, and challenges such as lack of awareness, expertise, and industry partners. We evaluate the efficacy of this four-way partnership among industry, government agencies, universities, and high schools and discuss the importance of “champions” for each partner. Our findings offer a scalable educational model that leverages multi-stakeholder engagement to address the SCM talent and educational conceptual gap. © 2023 The Authors. Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Decision Sciences Institute.