ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Development of Vocational Maturity in University Students with Disabilities to Access, Obtain an Internship and Complete University Studies
Author: Espada-Chavarria, Rosa
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Vocational Maturity,College Students,Students with Disabilities,Internship Programs,Access to Education,Academic Persistence,Barriers,Inclusion,Academic Support Services,Tutoring,Educational Quality,Competency Based Education,Job Skills,Soft Skills,Skill Development,Employment Potential,Program Effectiveness,Foreign Countries

In recent years, there has been a considerable increase in the number of university students with disabilities in Spain, as in other countries. Access to and completion of studies in higher education has been identified as a factor that improves the educational and labor inclusion of these people. However, this group of students faces difficulties in completing their studies, as they encounter problems in carrying out their internships, which is an obligatory element of many degrees. Our quantitative research study presents the results of the Generating Professional Skills (GPS) program for the development of vocational maturity based on training itineraries, carried out by the University Unit of Attention to People with Disability. The main results show an increase in vocational maturity and position tutoring as a fundamental part of the educational inclusion process, as well as a key role of the support services for those with disabilities to experience a more inclusive and quality education, thus aligning with objective 4 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. SDG. The information collected allows us to conclude that these programs increase the vocational maturity and the knowledge and competencies of students with disabilities and, therefore, are key elements for the success in accessing and obtaining internships and for the successful completion of their studies.
Development and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Organisational Communication in Primary Schools Questionnaire
Author: De Nobile, John
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Questionnaires,Elementary Schools,Organizational Communication,School Personnel,Test Construction,Foreign Countries,Test Validity,Test Reliability,Factor Analysis

This article describes the development and subsequent testing of scales representing functions and features of school communication among staff in Australian primary schools using the Organisational Communication in Primary Schools Questionnaire (OCPSQ). The OCPSQ was developed to measure aspects of communication occurring vertically between school leadership and staff members and horizontally among staff members. Elements of classical, human relations, and cultural theories were used to guide questionnaire development. Items were developed to represent theorised communication constructs derived from previous literature. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the underlying structure of aspects of communication. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed as a validation of the OCPSQ and its constructs. An interpretable ten-factor solution, representing salient functions and features of organisational communication, was established. Scales generated by the OCPSQ were found to have high reliabilities. The scales represented supportive, directive, cultural, and democratic functions, as well as features of communication relating to openness and load.
How Long Has It Taken for the Physical Landscape to Form? Conceptions of Spanish Pre-Service Teachers
Author: Gómez-Gonçalves, Alejandro
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Preservice Teachers,Early Childhood Education,Geology,Public Colleges,College Freshmen,Misconceptions,Educational Background,Secondary Education,Physical Geography,Time,History,Knowledge Level,Foreign Countries

This paper analyses the conceptions of a group of students about geological time and its relation to physical landscape formation, focusing on the frequency and rate of a number of geological processes that have shaped our planet over time and that are involved in the formation of the current relief. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire that was administered to 199 university students from a Spanish public university. A total of 185 of them were pre-service teachers and 14 were geology students. Results demonstrated that pre-service teachers had trouble correctly answering questions about the current relief, but especially those questions related to landscapes throughout the history of Earth. Data analysis was done, taking into account pre-university students' tuition, and results showed that those who had taken a high school branch of sciences and technology obtained better results than those who had taken a humanities and social sciences branch. These latter also obtained better results than those who had taken arts as a high school branch. Furthermore, pre-service teachers had difficulties mastering mid-time magnitudes, which ended up making it difficult for them to understand how the physical landscapes were formed. Finally, from the obtained results, some curricula implications are discussed.
Impact of Contextual Predictors on Value-Added Teacher Effectiveness Estimates
Author: Aslantas, Ismail
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Context Effect,Predictor Variables,Value Added Models,Teacher Effectiveness,Academic Achievement,Mathematics Achievement,Scores,Student Characteristics,Institutional Characteristics,Secondary School Students,Grade 8,Second Language Learning,Prior Learning,Foreign Countries

It is widely believed that the teacher is one of the most important factors influencing a student's success at school. In many countries, teachers' salaries and promotion prospects are determined by their students' performance. Value-added models (VAMs) are increasingly used to measure teacher effectiveness to reward or penalize teachers. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between teacher effectiveness and student academic performance, controlling for other contextual factors, such as student and school characteristics. The data are based on 7543 Grade 8 students matched with 230 teachers from one province in Turkey. To test how much progress in student academic achievement can be attributed to a teacher, a series of regression analyses were run including contextual predictors at the student, school and teacher/classroom level. The results show that approximately half of the differences in students' math test scores can be explained by their prior attainment alone (47%). Other factors, such as teacher and school characteristics explain very little the variance in students' test scores once the prior attainment is taken into account. This suggests that teachers add little to students' later performance. The implication, therefore, is that any intervention to improve students' achievement should be introduced much earlier in their school life. However, this does not mean that teachers are not important. Teachers are key to schools and student learning, even if they are not differentially effective from each other in the local (or any) school system. Therefore, systems that attempt to differentiate &quot;effective&quot; from &quot;ineffective&quot; teachers may not be fair to some teachers.
Distance Learning Perceptions from Higher Education Students--The Case of Portugal
Author: Gonçalves, Sónia P.
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Distance Education,College Students,Student Attitudes,Foreign Countries,Electronic Learning,COVID-19,Pandemics,Technology Uses in Education,Computer Mediated Communication,Student Experience,Preferences

This research study examines the attitudes of Portuguese higher education students regarding compulsory digital and distance learning university courses during the second semester of the academic year 2019-2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The methodology was quantitative, being the undergraduate and postgraduate students surveyed to find their perceptions about distance and online education in Portugal. The findings of the study highlighted the relationship between distance and online learning. The key concern of the respondents is related to the formal and contextual dimensions of the online class regime. The values examined, taken as a whole, allow us to conclude that with this teaching regime, in terms of awareness, there is acceptance and benefit. The sense of ambiguity in which this transformation took place, as well as the climate surrounding this phase, are worth noting. The teaching and evaluation methodologies used have been embraced and show a very wide range of choices on the part of the teaching teams and the students' various interests, just as in the teaching regime of the classroom. The fact that students feel the need for face-to-face classes, however, is of great importance for practical and laboratory classes. This reality, which is a challenge to face in the future, is hard to overcome.
Improving Graduation Rate Estimates Using Regularly Updating Multi-Level Absorbing Markov Chains
Author: Boumi, Shahab
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Graduation Rate,Computation,Markov Processes,Accuracy,Statistical Bias,Sample Size,College Graduates

American universities use a procedure based on a rolling six-year graduation rate to calculate statistics regarding their students' final educational outcomes (graduating or not graduating). As an alternative to the six-year graduation rate method, many studies have applied absorbing Markov chains for estimating graduation rates. In both cases, a frequentist approach is used. For the standard six-year graduation rate method, the frequentist approach corresponds to counting the number of students who finished their program within six years and dividing by the number of students who entered that year. In the case of absorbing Markov chains, the frequentist approach is used to compute the underlying transition matrix, which is then used to estimate the graduation rate. In this paper, we apply a sensitivity analysis to compare the performance of the standard six-year graduation rate method with that of absorbing Markov chains. Through the analysis, we highlight significant limitations with regards to the estimation accuracy of both approaches when applied to small sample sizes or cohorts at a university. Additionally, we note that the Absorbing Markov chain method introduces a significant bias, which leads to an underestimation of the true graduation rate. To overcome both these challenges, we propose and evaluate the use of a regularly updating multi-level absorbing Markov chain (RUML-AMC) in which the transition matrix is updated year to year. We empirically demonstrate that the proposed RUML-AMC approach nearly eliminates estimation bias while reducing the estimation variation by more than 40%, especially for populations with small sample sizes.
Cultural Dimension in Internationalization of the Curriculum in Higher Education
Author: Sá, Maria José
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: International Education,Higher Education,COVID-19,Pandemics,Databases,Research Reports,Content Analysis,Barriers,Cultural Pluralism,Curriculum Development,Cultural Influences,College Faculty,College Students

Internationalization in higher education seems to be an unavoidable process, albeit temporarily limited by the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease of 2019) pandemic. Specifically, internationalization of the curriculum in the context of higher education is a dimension of this internationalization that is less valued in published studies. This paper, through critical reflection, sought to contribute to a deeper understanding of internationalization of the curriculum in higher education. The methodology used consisted of a bibliographic search in international databases, and the selected documents were analyzed using the content analysis technique. This analysis allowed concluding that internationalization of the curriculum in higher education is a complex process and involves several actors, with various challenges to be considered. For this process to be successful, it involves the ability to be attentive to the cultural multiplicity that will be experienced in classes where this internationalization of the curriculum exists.
Capturing Student Satisfaction: A Case Study on the National Student Survey Results to Identify the Needs of Students in STEM Related Courses for a Better Learning Experience
Author: Sofroniou, Anastasia
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Student Satisfaction,Student Needs,Student Surveys,STEM Education,Student Experience,College Seniors,Universities,Student Recruitment,Engineering Education,Mathematics Education,Computer Science Education,Teacher Effectiveness,Evaluation Criteria,Feedback (Response),Sense of Community,Course Organization,Educational Resources,Academic Support Services,Foreign Countries

The UK higher education has been one of the top destinations for international students over the last few decades, and it is beneficial to the UK local and national economy. However, recent changes of the governmental policies on the way UK universities are funded and the recession that still affects economies around the world have left many universities around the UK at financial survival risk. With relatively limited access to reduced research funds, student recruitment has a vital importance for most universities. It has been well established in the literature that academic reputation and the level of services have the most significant impact on national and international students. Thus, universities, to maintain their market share, must spend much energy and resources to improve the level of services offered to their students. The recently introduced National Student Survey (NSS) has become one of the most important metrics to assess student satisfaction that influences directly the university league tables and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), which in turn effects international and national student recruitment. It is not surprising that underpinning student satisfaction has become the major target of UK universities. Therefore, a research investigation has been carried out to identify the most influential factors that comprise to the decision of overall satisfaction for the students studying Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. On this purpose, a detailed statistical analysis was carried out on the NSS results and it was concluded that there is strong evidence, that &quot;teaching&quot; and &quot;organisation and management&quot; are the vital influential factors on the overall satisfaction of students.
Differences of Gender in Oral and Written Communication Apprehension of University Students
Author: Loureiro, Marlene
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Gender Differences,Speech Communication,Communication Skills,Writing Skills,Anxiety,Communication (Thought Transfer),College Graduates,Writing Apprehension,Tests,Individual Differences,Intellectual Disciplines,Foreign Countries

Oral and written skills are increasingly considered to be essential tools in the job market for the success of any worker, and are thus called soft skills. Nevertheless, most graduates who enter the labor market experience difficulties in the apprehension of communication, not only with regard to writing, but also in oral communication. These difficulties are also noticeable in the classroom, for instance when students need to participate by expressing their doubts when they have to present research work within the curricular units they attend, or when they have to write their answers in assessment tests. In this paper, we explore the communication skills of students from different graduate degrees (n = 345) in order to understand how they prepare for oral and written communication. We made use of the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA), validated by McCroskey, Beatty, Kearney, and Plax (1985), in order to understand students' oral communication apprehension. To understand the levels of written communication apprehension, we applied the Daly--Miller Writing Apprehension Test (DMWA). We thus analyzed the communicational skills and the communication apprehension of students from social and human sciences courses in order to understand how they prepare for oral and writing communication, and whether there were differences between genders and between different graduate courses regarding communication apprehension. The main results of this research confirm that the students experienced difficulties with and fear of communication, especially for oral communication. Furthermore, the results indicate that female students showed more significant levels of anxiety with regard to oral and written communication than male students. This exploratory study also makes it possible to distinguish areas of communication apprehension according to the different genders, and even with regard to the degree courses students belonged to.
Volunteering in the University Context: Student Perception and Participation
Author: Cívico-Ariza, Andrea
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Volunteers,College Students,Student Attitudes,Student Participation,Foreign Countries,Values,Individual Differences

In increasingly diverse cultural contexts, the intercultural perspective favors an enriching coexistence between cultures, with volunteering being an exercise that allows for a critical transformation of reality in order to achieve a more supportive and equitable society. This article aims to find out how university students conceive of volunteering, as well as their level of participation. The sample was made up of 208 students from the Pedagogy and Social Education degrees of the University of Granada during the 2019/2020 academic year. An ad hoc questionnaire was applied, which incorporated a standardised instrument (Adapted Values Test), as well as questions designed by the authors. The results underline the positive axiological perception of volunteering. The participants understand volunteering as a helping role that depends on the social, personal, and professional motivations of the students. However, this positive perception is not transformed into active participation and continuous links with voluntary organisations. The conclusions indicate that university students value volunteering as a necessary task for the social good, although their participation is low, and it is necessary to transform the pro-social awareness of university students into real participation.
An Augmented Reality-Based Mobile Application Facilitates the Learning about the Spinal Cord
Author: Fernandes, Jacks
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Health Education,Computer Simulation,Telecommunications,Handheld Devices,Human Body,Neurology,Teaching Methods,Educational Technology,Electronic Learning,Anatomy,Models,Program Effectiveness,Computer Oriented Programs,Usability,College Students,Foreign Countries

Health education is one of the knowledge areas in which augmented reality (AR) technology is widespread, and it has been considered as a facilitator of the learning process. In literature, there are still few studies detailing the role of mobile AR in neuroanatomy. Specifically, for the spinal cord, the teaching-learning process may be hindered due to its abstract nature and the absence of three-dimensional models. In this sense, we implemented a mobile application with AR technology named &quot;NitLabEduca&quot; for studying the spinal cord with an interactive exploration of 3D rotating models in the macroscopic scale, theoretical content of its specificities, animations, and simulations regarding its physiology. To investigate &quot;NitLabEduca's&quot; effects, eighty individuals with and without previous neuroanatomy knowledge were selected and grouped into control and experimental groups. Divided, they performed learning tasks through a questionnaire. We used the System Usability Scale (SUS) to evaluate the usability level of the mobile application and a complimentary survey to verify the adherence level to the use of mobile applications in higher education. As a result, we observed that participants of both groups who started the task with the application and finished with text had more correct results in the test (p &lt; 0.001). SUS results were promising in terms of usability and learning factor. We concluded that studying the spinal cord through &quot;NitLabEduca&quot; seems to favor learning when used as a complement to the printed material.
Argumentation within Upper Secondary School Student Groups during Virtual Science Learning: Quality and Quantity of Spoken Argumentation
Author: Telenius, Marko
Date: 2020-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Secondary School Students,Oral Language,Persuasive Discourse,Electronic Learning,Cooperative Learning,Science Education,Verbal Communication,Group Discussion

In many studies, the focus has been on students' written scientific argumentation rather than on their spoken argumentation. The main aim of this study was to relate the quality of spoken argumentation to groups' learning achievement during a collaborative inquiry task. The data included video recordings of six groups of three upper secondary students performing a collaborative inquiry task in a virtual learning environment. The target groups were selected from a larger sample of 39 groups based on their group outcome: two low, two average, and two high-outcome groups. The analysis focused on argumentation chains during the students' discussions in the planning, experimentation, and conclusion phases of the inquiry task. The core of the coding scheme was based on Toulmin's levels of argumentation. The results revealed differences between the different groups of students, with the high-performing groups having more argumentation than the average and low-performing groups. In high-performing groups, the students asked topic-related questions more frequently, which started the argumentative discussion. Meanwhile, there were few questions in the low-performing groups, and most did not lead to discussion. An evaluation scheme for the quality of the arguments was created and the spoken argumentation was analyzed using a computer-based program. The results may be used to benefit subject teacher education and to raise teachers' awareness of their students' scientific, topic-related discussions.