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Providing graduates with a set of skills and attributes relevant to their future employment remains a key topic in both higher education policy and research. This paper reports findings from a pilot study of human resource management (HRM) students' perceptions of the graduate work experience. Specifically, it focuses on how these perceptions are shaped, driven by a concern for the uncertainty – and even fear – expressed by the study's participants in relation to their future workplace experiences. The influences of three key factors in shaping participants' expectations are discussed: the graduate recruitment experience, previous work experiences and ‘graduate work folklore’ from the stories of family and friends. With these influences not always providing students with a realistic picture of their future work experience, we conclude that educators need to improve the opportunities for practical experience and industry knowledge through work placements, stronger links with industry and increased exposure to the practicalities of work within the curriculum. © 2011, © 2011 SAGE Publications.

The advanced learning internet technologies indicated a need for methodologies, tools and pedagogies that support the introduction of synchronous e-learning applications and especially Interactive Videoconferencing (IVC) into the whole learning environment. This new book presents the theoretical background and the methodology that have been developed, to implement a pedagogical model for IVC instruction. The proposed pedagogical model constitutes the results experienced from an IVC project in the University of Crete during the last seven years, under the title 'ODUSSEAS', which took place between eight hundred students and thirty teachers in eighteen elementary schools in Greece and Cyprus. © 2010 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Field practical training is a requirement for all students who enrol in any program in the Botswana College of Agriculture, as it has been discovered that, experiential learning complements theoretical classroom teaching. The effectiveness of Field Practical Training (FPT) for competence acquisition among students was examined through a descriptive survey. A simple random sampling technique was used to select 71 students out of those that participated in FPT in 2008 and data on their personal characteristics and their perceived competence of agricultural tasks before and after FPT were collected with a structured questionnaire and analysed using frequency counts percentages and t-test statistics. Results showed that a majority of the respondents were males, between the ages of 20 to 24 years and were pre-service students. The level of competence among students changed from not competent to competent in 31 out of the 47 tasks. students also reported that they were competent before undergoing the FPT programme in 12 tasks and the rating was retained as well after FPT. On the other hand, students reported that they were not competent before and even after undergoing the FPT programme in four of the agricultural practical skills examined. The results of paired t-test showing comparison before and after FPT among students showed that, significant differences were found among 32 tasks with students having higher competence mean score after the FPT training than the score before the training. The study recommends that, established farms should be used for the programme and students should be posted to farms that will enhance their skill development for the area of the academic programme specialisation. © 2011 Academic Journals.

Background: The ability to place sutures is an essential skill in dentistry. In our institution, the introduction of a video teaching aid and a checklist-based assessment has improved the standardisation of teaching as well as the transparency and objectivity of the assessment of suture skills. The aim of this study was to determine whether this skill once acquired is retained in the short term.Materials and methods: The same cohort of 67 fourth-year students performed the same assessment at two different time points 2 months apart. The first was a formative assessment and the second was a summative assessment. Feedback was collected on both occasions.Results: On the first sitting of the assessment, 93% of the students were successful compared with 79% on the second occasion. Student feedback was similar on both occasions with 77% and 75% reporting that they thought it was an easy exam. On the first occasion, 27% thought that it was a stressful examination compared with 43% on the second occasion, which may have affected their performance.Conclusions: These findings suggest that regular reinforcement is required to avoid deterioration of suturing skills even in the short term. This might involve exposing the students to surgery earlier in the course and introducing regular formative assessments which the students appear to associate with less stress. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons A/S.

Aims and objectives: This paper presents findings from a small piece of interpretive research into the lived experience of trained nurses who fulfilled the role of workplace mentors for Foundation degree students. The interprofessional landscape of workplace learning is also examined. Background: The participants were all employed in acute care settings in a large UK National Health Service hospital and provided mentorship to Healthcare Assistants studying the adult pathway of a Foundation degree in Health and Social Care; in preparation for the role of the Assistant Practitioner. Design: A purposive sample of eight workplace mentors (who had supported at least one Foundation degree student) were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. Method: All interviews were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to uncover the lived experience of workplace mentors and 10 major themes were generated from the data. Results: The findings suggest that the mentorship of work-based learners presents mentors with a range of challenges that are quite different from pre-registration students given the situatedness of the learner in their clinical team. Conclusion: While the mentorship of work-based learners in busy clinical environments is challenging, the relationship between mentor and mentee appears to have greater equality due to the situatedness of the student in the clinical team. As a result workplace mentors seem to benefit from a relationship lacking in the hierarchical features that characterise traditional mentoring. Awareness of the unique experience of work-based learners and mentors needs to be raised, particularly where students are seeking to complete their Foundation degree to emerge as Assistant Practitioners. Relevance to clinical practice: Trained nurses undertaking the role of workplace mentor in support of Foundation degree students, do so to provide coaching that (in a developmental relationship), places them in the vanguard of an emerging professional group; the Assistant Practitioner. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

In this case study a novel educational programme for students in preparatory vocational education was studied. The research questions were: (1) Which teaching/learning processes occur in a simulated workplace using the concept of a knowledge-rich workplace? (2) What is the role of models and modelling in the teaching/learning processes? The curriculum project consisted of design and construction tasks. The students were collaboratively involved in the process of designing a tricycle for a real customer. This real-life activity creates opportunities for students to develop and use models, which can be used in more than in one context. The case study explored how the teachers deal with the students' explicit and implicit need for knowledge and skills. The main findings are that teachers more often provide this knowledge, rather than guide the students in reconstructing it, and towards the end of the project, knowledge tended to remain situated. 2011 British Educational Research Association.

This article focuses on which aspects of the learning environment, aimed at fostering career learning, correspond with the development of career competencies among students (aged 12-19. years) enrolled in prevocational and secondary vocational education in The Netherlands. Aspects of the learning environment that are taken into account here are the following: career orientation and guidance methods used, instruments implemented, and the degree to which the curriculum is practice-based and dialogical. In the study, three career competencies are identified: career reflection (reflective behaviour), career forming (proactive behaviour), and networking (interactive behaviour). To research the relationship between the learning environment and the presence of career competencies, a study was done among 3499 students and 166 teachers in 226 classes in 34 schools. The results show that career guidance in school, in which a dialogue takes place with the student about concrete experiences and which is focused on the future, contributes most to the presence of career competencies among students. Without this dialogue, career guidance methods and instruments barely contribute to the acquisition of career competencies. © 2010 Elsevier Inc.

Background: General practitioners need the skills to perform a core set of procedures. The increase in community based medical education gives GPs more opportunity and responsibility to facilitate medical students and junior doctors' acquisition of these core skills. Objective: This article summarises how procedural skills are learned and describes a practical framework for constructing a supportive learning environment that is safe for patients and learners. Discussion: Procedural skills are learned in stages starting with a 'big picture' concept of the skill and its place in clinical care. Next the skill becomes fixed through deliberate practice with specific, constructive feedback based on observation. Autonomous practice is reached after further practice and exposure to increased complexity. General practitioners can facilitate skill development by using a staged learning cycle, building on their learner's prior knowledge and skill.

This book defines over 3,000 terms from the field of education to assist those charged with teaching students to become global citizens in a rapidly changing, technological society. John W. Collins and Nancy Patricia O'Brien, coeditors of the first edition of The Greenwood Dictionary of Education published in 2003, have acknowledged and addressed these shifts. This revised second edition supplements the extensive content of the first through greater focus on subjects such as neurosciences in educational behavior, gaming strategies as a learning technique, social networking, and distance education. Terms have been revised, where necessary, to represent changes in educational practice and theory. The Dictionary's focus is on current and evolving terminology specific to the broad field of education, although terms from closely related fields used in the context of education are also included. Encompassing the history of education as well as its future trends, the updated second edition will aid in the understanding and use of terms as they apply to contemporary educational research, practice, and theory. © 2011 by John W. Collins III and Nancy Patricia O’Brien. All rights reserved.

My starting point is a wish to provide a quality experience that facilitates students’ mastery of the skills they, employers and educationalists desire. An essential part of confirming the quality potentially afforded by the world of learning is clarity of definition. I argue that central measurement and control of quality is neither effective nor necessary. As Harvey (2005) reveals in his history and critique of quality evaluation in higher education, the moves towards standards, benchmarking, codes of practices and qualification frameworks may have distanced us from, rather than returned us to, “an integrated process of mutual trust that prioritizes improvement in learning” (2005, p. 274). According to Harvey, current quality assurance processes point to a future for learning, which is “not a real engagement with learning, but the advent of more complex evaluation procedures: in that setting it is unlikely that the quality in student experience will improve” (2005, p. 274). This rush for transparency has meant that the prize, the “what-for” of quality, has been lost to its own image. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011.