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"Students"

This paper aims to demonstrate the benefits of introducing the typical course grading process to a work-integrated learning course in exercise science in order to motivate students to produce their best efforts in assessment tasks relevant to their future employability. The course had incorporated a non-graded pass/fail system of assessment since it was first offered but changed to a typical university grading process in 2011. At the completion of the course a two-page questionnaire was administered to all students to determine their opinions of changing from a non-graded to a graded form of assessment. Additionally, seven students volunteered for a 20 minute individual interview to examine how the grading of the course affected a number of factors related to their learning in the course. The results of the study indicated that students supported the change from a non-graded to a graded system of assessment. Minimal negative concerns were reported by students The findings suggest that students prefer the use of a graded system of assessment in a work-integrated learning course in exercise science They perceived that grading of the course increased their motivation to submit high quality responses for all assessment items and provided them with an opportunity to improve their grade point average (GPA), for entry into post-graduate programs, as well as rewarding them for their efforts towards academic excellence and preparing them for their future careers. (Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education, 2013, 14(4), 223-232.

Although much attention has been given to the learning experiences of international students studying overseas much less focus has been given to the internship experiences of these students. This is in spite of the fact that international students have a high demand for obtaining work experience while studying overseas. This paper reports on preliminary and exploratory investigations issues facing international students, all from Asia and the South Pacific, in obtaining work experiences while studying an undergraduate tourism and hospitality degree in Australia. © 2013 The Authors.

Nothing is more important than education. And today more than ever, education is not just an issue for children. We must be concerned about people of all ages and backgrounds, citizens and newcomers, those who are literate and those who are not. The future of America depends on it. (Barbara Bush, BusinessWeek, 1989) Our nation is at an educational crossroads. Education must prove that it is equal to the challenges of technology and the information age. The success of our economy and indeed, the survival of our democracy have become more dependent than ever before on each individual’s ability to master increasingly complex knowledge and skills. (Educational Testing Service, 1989) We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods, we cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. (Emerson, 1844) In March and April 1990, the main television channels in the Uni ted States of America broadcast nightly a series of advertisements exhorting the business community to become much more closely involved with its local schools and colleges. Much of the rhetoric used in this campaign is similar to that used in ministerial statements and Training Agency, TUC and CBI reports published in Britain. The message, for both Britain and America, is seemingly clear — for both nations to compete effectively in world markets, educational goals must be based on the needs of business, and, in turn, business must contribute to and be actively involved in education. This chapter examines that message in its American context and considers some of the initiatives it has spawned. In addition, this chapter will also compare those initiatives to their current counterparts in Britain. © Peter Raggatt and Lorna Unwin 1991. All rights reserved.

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This chapter informs readers on ways to integrate social media into the college classroom. Preexisting and relevant research is reviewed including suggested practices, efficacy of use, and data supporting the teaching methods described. Data from an original study is also presented, which assessed students' perspectives on integrating social media into the higher education classroom. The authors of this chapter also provide suggestions on how to transform research into actual classroom practices based on theory including informal and incidental theory, relational mentoring, and situation learning theory. © 2013, IGI Global.

The competence-based formation model has oriented educational policies in different countries during the last decades. From this model, the socio-formative approach has its basis and works as a referent in Latin America to orient the formation and competence assessment. The socio-formative approach uses the methodology of the formative projects by means of an articulated set of pedagogical strategies that are used along the time to solve the problems of the context. This paper presents a model for competences development and assessment using formative projects as part of a technological architecture to personalize the students' educational experience through a virtual learning environment. The model is structured considering the pedagogical guidelines of the University Corporation CIFE, in Mexico. Finally, a case study is presented to validate the proposed model with formation methodology in a virtual course in the CIFE. © 2013 IEEE.

This paper describes the current influence of the remote laboratory on practical learning aspects of secondary sector of education. The key challenges faced by the teaching of science include insufficient hands-on laboratory usage in classrooms. The main objective of the paper is to present learning approach of adaptation and usage of remote experiments of WebLab-Deusto in curriculum of secondary school. The activity was organized in collaboration with secondary school teachers of P. Andrés Urdaneta School. Educators can benefit from different teaching methods (collaborative, inquiry-, and project-based learning) integrated in WebLab-Deusto. The teaching of Ohm's Law in Physics curriculum of secondary school was one of the topics executed during this research. The remote laboratory assignment for students was developed on Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR) Open Lab Platform. The existing remote laboratories are more or less copies of hands-on ones. VISIR is a remote laboratory created by Blekinge Institute of technology (BTH) for designing, wiring and measurement of electric circuits. This main feature of VISIR allows one building a scenario of performing basic DC and low frequency AC circuits experiments related to Ohm's and Kirchhoff's laws. Moreover, the students will become familiar with instruments, components, manuals, data sheets, circuit wiring, and other laboratory work. In the paper the main principle of VISIR will be presented; the remote experiments executed by students will be shown. Finally, the result of integrating of remote experiments for study in Urdaneta School will be discussed. © 2013 IEEE.

In India, unlike the Western world, the universities have several engineering institutes affiliated to them that are geographically spread across large provinces. Gujarat Technological University (GTU) is one such example, that caters to the technical education needs of the state of Gujarat (size of Arizona) with a population of 65 million. More than one hundred such institutes offering undergraduate and graduate programs and about same number of 'Polytechnics' offering engineering diploma programs are affiliated to GTU. Around 100 thousand students take admissions every year in the 55 different technology programs being offered. Since examination and certification is the main responsibility of the University, it becomes necessary to conduct centrally administered end-of-the-term examinations every semester. This necessitates the curriculum for each program to be same in all the institutes. Hence, curriculum design became a centralized task to address the needs of today's globalized industry and also fulfill the aspirations and capabilities of the students, belonging to different strata of the society. Since curriculum designers and implementers are not the same in this experiment, a need-based curriculum model became imperative to be developed that could convey clearly and uniformly the intentions of the designers in letter and spirit to all curriculum implementers and stakeholders. In this backdrop, NITTTR Bhopal one of the four premium institutes established by the Government of India for quality improvement of the technical education, was assigned the task by GTU in 2012 to completely re-design the curriculum of twenty five engineering diploma programs to produce 'work ready' personnel. The authors were the core members of the core team who undertook this task. This paper highlights the challenges and opportunities faced by the engineering education system due to fast changes taking place in society, industry and education, for which an innovative outcome-based curriculum model was evolved to address these challenges and harness the opportunities. This paper discusses the various facets of the philosophy, approach and structure of this curriculum model evolved for this purpose. It also briefly describes the planning, designing, implementation and evaluation of the curriculum development process, as well as some of the strategies adapted in this innovative curriculum model. © 2013 IEEE.

Accounts and analyses of vocational educators' practice, provided through the contributions to this special issue, illustrate how centrally-generated and prescriptive policies and practices and those teachers' reactions to them have come to characterise contemporary vocational education. The application of often centralised institutional architectures, their measures and procedures, along with the quest for measurable outcomes, commonly appear to deny the diversity of interests, intents and capacities of those who engage with these provisions as students, apprentices and teachers. These centralised kinds of provisions then can generate tensions between those who seek to enact educational experiences (that is, teachers) and those who have devised the policies and practices that act as 'practice architectures' that both enable and constrain vocational educators' work. Rather than addressing the key global problem of the standing of vocational education, and its teachers and students, these centralised measures often seem to contribute to, reproduce, and sustain the low standing of vocational education and focus on securing institutional goals. In turn, this low standing beggars vocational education by limiting the capacity to engage teachers, students and industries, thereby undercutting its ability to fulfil its potential. The articles in this special issue reinforce the need for a mature vocational education system where teachers have the capacities and are granted the legitimacy to practice in ways that meet local needs and adapt to local circumstances in which they teach and their students learn. Instead of being pre-occupied with exercising the architecture of control and compliance, those in government and in industry might best direct effort to granting greater autonomy to vocational educators and by taking action to redress the poor societal sentiment towards vocational education through championing its worth and contributions. © eContent Management Pty Ltd.

At a time when education is considered crucial to a country’s economic success, recent UK governments have insisted their reforms are the only way to make England’s system world class. Yet pupils are tested rather than educated, teachers bullied rather than trusted and parents cast as winners or losers in a gamble for school places. Education under siege considers the English education system as it is and as it might be. In a highly accessible style, Peter Mortimore, an author with wide experience of the education sector, both in the UK and abroad, identifies the current system’s strengths and weaknesses. He concludes that England has some of the best teachers in the world but one of the most muddled systems. Challenging the government’s view that there is no alternative, he proposes radical changes to help all schools become good schools. They include a system of schools receiving a fair balance of pupils who learn easily and those who do not, ensuring a more even spread of effective teachers, as well as banning league tables, outlawing selection, opening up faith schools and integrating private schools into the state system. In the final chapter, he asks readers who share his concerns to demand that the politicians alter course. The book will appeal to parents, education students and teachers, as well as everyone interested in the future education of our children. © Policy Press 2013.