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"Students"

An active/cooperative, introductory engineering design course is planned, implemented, assessed, and evaluated using the project based learning approach to allow freshman level students to gain professional hands-on engineering design experience. The course project exposes the students to important contemporary issues, and excites their interest to address them in a creative way. The students are guided to discover by themselves how and why engineering approaches work, rather than simply providing a recipe for a solution. The open-ended design process allows the students to discover underlying complex engineering and scientific principles, and provide motivation for further study and engagement. The course was implemented for the first time in fall 2009. The students were asked to design a small wind turbine suitable for home use for energy saving purposes. Direct and indirect assessment tools indicated high level of achievement of course learning outcomes together with a high level of student satisfaction. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.

In E-learning Theory and Practice the authors set out different perspectives on e-learning. The book deals with the social implications of e-learning, its transformative effects, and the social and technical interplay that supports and directs e-learning. The authors present new perspectives on the subject by: Exploring the way teaching and learning are changing with the presence of the Internet and participatory media; Providing a theoretical grounding in new learning practices from education, communication and information science; Addressing e-learning in terms of existing learning theories, emerging online learning theories, new literacies, social networks, social worlds, community and virtual communities, and online resources; Emphasizing the impact of everyday electronic practices on learning, literacy and the classroom, locally and globally. This book is for everyone involved in e-learning. Teachers and educators will gain an understanding of new learning practices, and learners will gain a sense of their new role as active participants in classroom and lifelong learning. Graduate students and researchers will gain insight into the direction of research in this new and exciting area of education and the Internet. © Caroline Haythornthwaite and Richard Andrews 2011.

Application-oriented undergraduate colleges are usually newly-built local academies, whose central task is to make contributions to the local economy and social development. Work placement is an indispensable process for application-oriented undergraduate colleges basing themselves on applying talents training. In this paper, the author expounds and analyzes the difficulties and problems in enterprises, colleges and students during the process of work placements. Countermeasures and suggestions are given from such three perspectives as of the nation, enterprises and colleges. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Course assessment is an important process of teaching. Traditionally the principal mode of assessment is through examinations, in which memory of facts is emphasized. Such a method does not encourage the development of practical capability of the students, or of their originality. A study of assessment reform is therefore significant. This thesis presents drawbacks of the traditional evaluation methods, particularly those still applied in high educational institutions. The study made in this thesis is based on the curriculum of the Management of Construction Projects, explores the approaches to course assessment. It also evaluates the validity of the assessing methods, and offers suggestions and improvements accordingly. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Purpose - Curriculum development in higher education must be continuously evaluated in this dynamic business environment, where business needs change day-to-day. The literature on the application of quality function deployment (QFD) to curriculum design is increasing, with student opinion representing the sole voice of the customer. The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative approach to QFD curriculum design by using a survey of employers, not students, to represent the voice of the customer. Design/methodology/approach - This paper applies the widely used quality management process of QFD to the curriculum development process of a major international business program. Findings - The findings illustrate the application of QFD's house of quality in international business curriculum development and best practices benchmarking. Practical implications - The results of this study are useful to any university to revise or design new academic programs. It presents a methodology to design curriculum based on the voice of the real customer: industry, without forgetting about the expertise of academicians. Originality/value - This study is intended to be one of the first in defining the customer as the industry, instead of just students or academic experts. The combination of all stakeholders in the curriculum design of international business will help universities make better decisions regarding international business programs. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Given the ambitious goals for and interest in integrating students’ experiences in both educational and practice settings, it is helpful to have some clear bases from which to proceed in planning, enacting and evaluating these educational provisions. It is necessary, therefore, to understand the kinds of educational purposes to be achieved, and means by which those purposes can likely be realised. Accordingly, this chapter first identifies the forms and kinds of knowledge required to be developed for effective professional practice, which then become the key educational purposes for integrating these experiences. They comprise the canonical conceptual, procedural and dispositional knowledge of the occupation and the particular situational requirements of that occupational knowledge for the circumstances where it is enacted. Following this, the likely contributions of experiences in academic and practice settings are discussed in terms of how they separately and, when integrated, together can best secure the kinds and forms of knowledge required to be learnt. That is, the chapter identifies how best the fit between the experiences provided and their integration can realise both the canonical and situational knowledge required for effective professional practice. Hence, the consideration of these integrations goes beyond what is provided or afforded by the two settings and needs to include how novice and experienced practitioners come to draw upon and reconcile both sets of contributions. In doing so, the consideration of integrations extends beyond what is enacted as experiences for students and includes their epistemological development as agentic learners. Consequently, it will not be sufficient to consider only the development of appropriate curriculum and pedagogies to integrate experiences. Rather, it will be also necessary to account for the development of agentic personal epistemologies. © 2011, Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

This chapter reports on an exploratory study investigating the views of dyslexic university students and their learning support staff (N=33) in relation to dyslexia support provision. The research design used an innovative blend of Q methodology, a technique to examine human subjectivity, and socio-cultural theory to model subjectivity and activity in relation to the support provided. Four different viewpoints on the issues were interpreted. The study considers the findings in relation to the potential implications for policy and practice, and suggests how the views of students, educators and other stakeholders could be used to inform and improve the future development of learning support provision at a range of levels. The methodology, findings and recommendations will be of interest and relevance to front-line educators, researchers, strategists and policy-makers. © 2012, IGI Global.

Background: The pharmacy internship introduces students to pharmacy practice. An understanding of learning processes in the internship is vital for educators in order to develop activities that support learning. Aim: The aim was to analyse students'learning activities in a Swedish pharmacy internship from both students'and tutors'perspectives. Method: Interviews with pharmacy internship students (n=17) and pharmacist tutors (n=18) were performed, followed by a qualitative analysis. Results: The results showed that learning activities ranged from formal, organized activities to informal learning by participating in the professional community. There was a perceived lack of integration between formal and informal activities. Tutors and students acknowledged the influence of the context for learning and the importance of tutors for supporting learning. Conclusion: Both formal and informal learning activities have to be accepted and made explicit. Integrating formal and informal learning activities, using the full continuum of possible learning activities, can enhance learning. © 2011 FIP.

Over recent decades, many western nations have stepped up their efforts to increase secondary school completion rates while maintaining high standards. How systems have approached this, and how successful they are, varies. One of the key differences is in the range of programs that are offered and the different pathways to completion. In some systems there is a menu of separate certificates and qualifications, each tied to a different strand of learning, and each representing a different pathway. In other systems there is a single certificate or qualification, but with structured options producing academic, general, and vocational tracks that work as pathways to different post-school options. This chapter compares some of the different pathways to completion of upper secondary qualifications offered by different countries. What are the main qualifications and pathways? How do they work? For whom do they work? Are they of equal value? Answers to these questions require an evaluation of the various options nations offer students to complete secondary school qualifications. The evaluation needs to consider criteria such as content, rigor and graduation requirements as well as how effectively the different options work to reduce dropout rates and deliver real benefits to those who participate. There is little use providing alternatives to deal with pupil diversity if the alternatives simply function to promote stratification by working as sources of relegation and offering only weak returns. For this reason, it is important to consider the extent to which different pathways are inclusive (who gets included) and promote equivalent standards of learning and outcomes. The discussion begins by comparing school-based pathways across countries, and then moves on to look in more detail first at academic pathways, then at alternatives such as vocational education. Finally, the discussion turns to alternative pathways to completion specifically available to dropouts. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

This paper presents a number of initiatives that engage with graduates to facilitate the improvement of the employability skills and attributes of current students in the Faculty of Computing at London Metropolitan University. A comprehensive evaluative review has been carried out which has demonstrated that these initiatives are effective ways to keep in touch with, and utilise, graduates, and to increase student awareness of employability, to develop 'professional skills' and to fill the gap between industry and academic study. Finally, future work has also been proposed.