Benchmarking is a formalised evaluation process by which a university can measure the standard of their policies, processes, programmes or strategies through comparison with other universities. Currently, there is a paucity of research that focuses on the documentation associated with external benchmarking undertaken by Australian universities.…

Spatial skills, which represent the ability to mentally manipulate objects (Schneider & McGrew, 2012; Atit et al., 2020) have been shown to be correlated with entrance, persistence and success in STEM (Shea et al., 2001; Wai et al., 2009). Specifically, these skills have been shown to be necessary to geologists and geoscientists (Hegarty,…

This study reports on an adaptation of the course experience questionnaire (CEQ) to the Arab learning context. An Arabic version of the CEQ was used to test the perceptions of a random sample of students at a public university in the UAE as regards their learning environment. The participants were 488 women students who study at nine different…

The higher education (HE) landscape continues to grow in complexity; thus, there is a need to improve the understanding of leadership in this context. This action research (AR) study was undertaken in a multi-disciplinary context of an Australian university to develop and evaluate an action learning (AL) project promoting leadership practice. An…

Systematic changes to higher education curriculum typically occur within the extended timeframes of formal curriculum review processes. Programmes need to be reviewed periodically for internal and external accountability or to determine whether the curriculum has lost its coherence due to the accumulative effect of continual small-scale changes.…

This project seminar aims at creating and evaluating a manual for interdisciplinary projects as part of a learning process. Working together, pedagogies and students from different disciplines assess tools and recommendations for successful collaborations while developing an app for the cathedral in Freiberg. As part of the project the students…

This article outlines a methodology for characterising features of programme-level assessment environments so that the relationship between features of the assessment environment and students' learning response can be studied. The methodology was developed through the detailed case study of nine undergraduate degree programmes: one in each of…

The ADAPT program for freshmen emphasizes building an experiential base in introductory courses before moving to abstract formulations. The goal is to develop thinking processes that are integrated with the student's experiences. Students in the ADAPT program outperformed two comparison groups on a variety of thinking tasks. (Author)

Embedding samples of items designed for program evaluation in course exams improves student motivation and faculty acceptance of assessment procedures. Sources of information on learning are discussed including: course examinations, course-based observations, locally developed comprehensive examinations, and externally developed comprehensive…

Third-year students in the University of Alberta's B.Ed. elementary generalist program think that the program's practicum is valuable but that the program's organization hampers learning and causes stress. Students feel ambivalent about their own preparedness for student teaching and perceive a discrepancy between the program's professed and…

This discussion article addresses the nature of models used in hydrology. It proposes a minimalist classification of models into two categories: models built on data from observations of the processes involved, and those for which there are no observation data on any of these processes, at the scale of interest. (LZ)

The paper disucsses the need for training in critical thinking and the effects of debate training across the curriculum as a teaching tool and learning mechanism. The debate training provided through the Oral Communication Program at Virginia's Radford University is described (design, implementation, results), along with data from a report on the…

This discussion of questions related to the most appropriate role for the computer in undergraduate postsecondary education begins by describing the Educational Testing Service's evaluations of two large-scale funded projects intended to stimulate the incorporation of computer assisted instruction (CAI) into undergraduate instruction--the…

A learning strategy system and a set of training procedures to facilitate the communication of this system to college-age students were developed. Students receiving this training exhibited significantly greater positive precourse-postcourse changes on comprehension/retention and self-report measures than did students in the control groups.…

College students need a learning environment that encourages them to develop their reasoning abilities, as well as to master course content. This booklet discusses an attempt to create such an environment: the ADAPT program at the University of Nebraska. ADAPT, Accent on Developing Abstract Processes of Thought, is a comprehensive,…