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"Students"

The Summer Design Office (SDO) is cooperation between Bedriftsforbundet, Innovation Norway, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) which was initiated in 2006. The aim of the office is to increase the use of design as a competitive advantage within Norwegian Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The means of achieving this goal is by using design students to develop a conceptual design for the participating businesses. [14] A study has been conducted which attempts to answer the following questions: • What is possible to learn by work, according to the pedagogical literature? • Is the potential for learning utilized in the SDO? • Are there changes that could improve students' learning within the SDO? This study contains a literature study of learning by work and an analysis of the SDO in relation to this, with a subsequent discussion. In addition, a survey among the students has been used in this work. The following paper has a short description of the SDO, a review of important literature, a discussion against these theories, and results from the survey with suggestions for improvements. Finally, areas that have the potential for further exploration within this specific topic and the literature in general are highlighted.

Communication skills, other than specialized technology competency is a competency valued by employers. Universities are accountable in providing adequate communication skills for graduates to prepare them to face the challenging and changing industry. This study investigates the communication skills (oral and written) of interns from a private engineering and technology focused university in Malaysia. For a more comprehensive perspective, two sets of questionnaires are used to gather data from the interns and their respective industrial supervisors. Overall, the findings indicate that the interns possess high communicative abilities both in oral and written. Although the mean scores suggest that the interns had rated their communicative abilities higher than their industrial supervisors, t-test results show no significant difference between the two groups of respondents. Interestingly, no significant difference is found between interns from different academic programmes. The findings of this study indicate that the university may have prepared and groomed its students adequately to meet the needs of the current industries. Explanations for the findings are discussed in relation to the university's intake requirements, course syllabus, and university-industry collaborative initiatives. © 2010 IEEE.

Use of simulation is well established as a way of learning and assessing skills in vocational disciplines. In many institutions the use of simulation with student nurses is being tested as a way of helping them learn clinical skills, problem solving, clinical assessment and decision-making. This paper explores the value of simulation as a learning tool through the presentation of findings from an evaluative research project into the use of simulation in nursing education. The focus of this paper is how students perceive that simulations help them learn and suggests that simulation may play a part in how students perceive learning that is meaningful to them. A literature review on the use of simulation is presented together with literature related to the learning theory that underpins simulation. The methodology, data collection and findings of the evaluative study are then presented followed by a discussion of the findings. Although the original research did not set out to examine how students perceived that simulations influenced their learning, the analysis indicated that this was a significant issue for them. Conclusions are drawn about how learning theory and simulation can be brought together to enhance student learning. © 2010 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.

Workplace simulations (WPS), authentic learning environments at school, are increasingly used in vocational education. This article provides a theoretical analysis and synthesis of requirements considering learner skills, characteristics of the learning environment and the role of the teacher that influence good functioning in WPS and foster students' learning. WPS appeal to students' self-directed learning (SDL) and self-regulated learning (SRL) skills, as students are required to work and learn independently in these settings. To achieve individual learning, the environments should be adaptive to the learners' needs. Furthermore, the teachers should support learners to become competent in the domain but also guide them to become self-directed learners. To do so the interaction between the student, the teacher and the environment is of importance. The proposed model depicts the different elements and their relations. © 2010 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.

While income inequality among college graduates is well documented, inequality in occupational status remains largely unexplored. We examine whether and how occupational specificity of college majors is related to college graduates' transition into the labor market and their subsequent occupational trajectories. Analyses of NLSY79 indicate that occupationally specific degrees are beneficial at the point of entry into the labor market but have the lowest growth in occupational status over time. students earning credentials focusing on general skills, in contrast, begin in jobs with low occupational status but subsequently report the greatest growth. These findings illuminate specific ways in which educational and occupational systems interact and provide a novel approach for understanding inequality in labor market outcomes among college graduates. © 2010 Project MUSE®.

Objective: To investigate the effective, economic and viable long-term mechanism of Sichuan college students' social practice. Methods: A questionnaire was designed to investigate the students from North Sichuan Medical College and other 7 colleges in Sichuan province randomly. A secondary research of China students social practice status was combined and the results of Sichuan and other areas were compared. Results: A total of 2 200 questionnaires were issued, of which 1 920 effective ones were taken back with the recovery rate of 87.27%. The most common forms of social practice were social investigation (47.5%), public welfare labor (42.3%), novitiate/internship (38.7%); the most interesting contents of social practice were social morality education (54.79%), credit morality education (53.07%), professional skill education (51.88%), and near 80% college students thought the contents had close relationships with their major. College students hoped that the contents could combine their job-hunting, characteristics of their major, local economy, and needs of social development. The social practice department they wanted to go most was public welfare or civil service departments (43.7%), corporations (27.8%), and government bodies (19.2%). The most difficult thing was to get connected with target department, shortage of fund, empty topics, hard-to-determine practice projects (44.1%), and lack of teachers' guidance (43.6%). Degree of satisfaction from the students was moderate. Compared with other universities, social practice of Sichuan undergraduate students had broader coverage and was more closely related to students' majors with more attention on the combination with moral education and employment. Conclusion: Sichuan college students have higher expectations of social practice. However, the range and the time of actual participation are limited. The students are not very satisfied with status of social practice. The social practice of Sichuan college students should give prominence to the local features, be close to the students and serve the local place, strengthen the construction of practice bases, and establish effective systems of teacher training, funding, principle security mechanism and evaluation system. © 2010 Editorial Board of Chin J Evid-based Med.

The development of interdisciplinary approaches to environmental conservation is obviously related to interdisciplinary training in undergraduate and postgraduate conservation-oriented degree programmes. This paper therefore examines interdisciplinary training in environmental conservation, with a focus on conservation biology. The specific objectives are: (1) to analyse debates about the nature of interdisciplinarity in conservation biology; (2) to examine the status of interdisciplinary training in current academic programmes in conservation biology; and (3) to make recommendations in terms of interdisciplinary or other non-natural science content that should be prioritized for inclusion in the curriculum. The term 'interdisciplinarity' has been used in relation to conservation training to refer to (1) any social science content; (2) vocational skills training; (3) integrative or practice-based exercises, sometimes with no indication of disciplinary content; (4) the (variously defined) 'human dimensions' of conservation, and (5) interaction between different academic disciplines (usually crossing the natural science-social science divide). In terms of training, the natural sciences have remained predominant in almost all reported academic programmes, but there now appears to be more coverage of non-natural science issues than previously. However the lack of consistency in the use of terms makes it difficult to assess progress. Further debate about curriculum development in conservation would be aided greatly by recognizing the distinction between the different aspects of non-natural science training, and treating each of them in its own right. Most degree programmes in environment-related disciplines specialize to varying degrees either in the natural sciences or the social sciences, and a comprehensive programme covering both of these in depth is likely to be problematic. However, some understanding of different disciplinary perspectives is increasingly important in a career in environmental conservation, and it is argued that, as a minimum, a primarily natural science-based undergraduate programme in environmental conservation should include: (1) an introduction to social science perspectives on the environment; (2) basic training in social science methods, research design and science theory; (3) vocational skills training, to the extent that it can be built into existing curricular components; and (4) integrative problem-solving tasks that can be used in relation to any or all of the above. A similar list could be constructed for social science-based environmental degree programmes, incorporating some basic training in natural science perspectives. Postgraduate training programmes are more varied in what they aim to achieve in terms of disciplinary breadth; they can develop students' existing specialist expertise, offer supplementary training to allow students to increase the disciplinary breadth of their expertise, or focus on the issue of interdisciplinarity itself. © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2010.

This paper reports the deployment of a group of students to several SME in an Industrial Attachment Program (IAP). The students were all engineering students who have previously attended courses conducted by Cisco Networking Academy and have passed certain computer networking certifications. The participating SME were those who are doing business in furniture and garment in the area of Jawa Tengah and Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The primary goal of the IAP is to bridge the gap between students' technical ICT ability and SME' specific ICT needs. Through the IAP program, students got the opportunity to build the capacity through real time projects that integrate practical "IT essentials" skills into SME. The main students' activities were categorized into three areas, namely operational, business and technology, and strategic. These aspects were tailored according to the individual SME's needs. Each student had to prepare a work plan he/she started working at the assigned SME respectively. Before the end of the internship, each student had to produce a road map that shows the development of SME ICT utilization for 2 years to come. The complete road map was eligible to be submitted for a competition that the winner would be presented with a special prize. © 2010 IEEE.

The vocational education and training (VET) sector is a major pathway to postschool education for indigenous students, yet questions are being raised about the capacity of the VET system to provide successful outcomes for the indigenous apprentices and trainees it attracts. Within a system plagued by high cancellation rates in general, indigenous apprentices appear to do particularly badly. This paper combines data from an administrative database on apprenticeship with income data from the 2001 Census of Population and Housing to provide an analysis of attrition rates for apprenticeship training contracts in Queensland, asking: Are cancellation rates for indigenous students significantly higher than those for nonindigenous students, and, if so, what factors are responsible for this? © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

Background: Surgical trainees' operating theatre (OT) experiences significantly influence their ability to attain key professional competencies. A measure of trainees' satisfaction with this learning environment would allow recognition of characteristics of highly successful teaching venues and threats to trainee development. Our study aimed to validate the Surgical Theatre Educational Environment Measure (STEEM) and use it to explore Australasian surgical trainees' satisfaction with OT learning.Methods: In a cross-sectional study, the STEEM was distributed electronically to all 1500 Royal Australasian College of Surgeons trainees in Australia and New Zealand. Trainee satisfaction was gauged using Likert-type items, an overall satisfaction measure and content analysis of free-text comments. The STEEM's psychometric properties were evaluated using exploratory factor analysis.Results: Three hundred fifty-six responses were received. The STEEM's original subscales were not supported by the data; empirically grounded subscales were identified for further analysis. Most trainees were satisfied with their OT environment and satisfaction was higher in senior than junior trainees. Trainees' relationship with their supervisor correlated most strongly with overall satisfaction. Less positively, only half of trainees report discussing their operative role with their supervisor prior to surgery.Conclusions: The a priori STEEM subscales could not be replicated by factor analysis. We developed an empirically grounded instrument capable of identifying areas of trainee concern. The majority of trainees reported high levels of satisfaction. The revised instrument has potential to complement other sources of information to facilitate surgical supervisors' difficult task of optimizing trainees' compatibility with their OT learning environments. © 2010 The Authors. ANZ Journal of Surgery © 2010 Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.