Field courses are essential for subjects like Earth Sciences, Geography and Ecology. In these topics, GIS is used to manage and analyse spatial data, and offers quantitative methods that are beneficial for fieldwork. This paper presents changes made to a first-year Earth Sciences field course in the French Alps, where new GIS methods were…

Assessment in health sciences education has become an extremely critical issue in recent years, given the rapidly changing disease patterns and behavioral changes in communities among diverse cultural and economic contexts of patients. Globally, there is increasing demand for highly qualified contemporary healthcare professionals. Subsequently,…

This research highlights pre-service and in-service teachers' beliefs on competence- based learning: Teachers who want to facilitate the acquisition, development and strengthening of competencies in their students. From an assessment perspective, such a competence-based approach implies providing students with authentic learning situations related…

This report describes the processes undertaken to revise the IDEA Student Ratings of Instruction (SRI) system. The previous revision occurred in 1999, as described in IDEA Technical Report No. 11, "Revising the IDEA System for Obtaining Student Ratings of Instructors and Courses" (Hoyt, Chen, Pallett, & Gross, 1999). The procedures…

Teaching entrepreneurship--how to create, grow and run a business or organization--is one potential means to increase college and career readiness skills. Learning how to start a business can improve critical thinking, communication and collaboration (Gallagher, Stepien, & Rosenthal, 1992; Hmelo, 1998), which are key qualities for academic as…

In order to realise increasingly complex objectives of compulsory education, it is necessary to have in place appropriate teaching concepts as well as assessment and testing guidelines. The question, however, is what should be assessed: levels of acquired knowledge, skills or attitudes? Should assessment be only a measure of the educational…

Learning outcomes are statements of intended learning within a module. In practice, students may consider various options when undertaking assessments. They may feel they can meet the stated learning outcomes by demonstrating other aspects of study which are termed "distractions." Thirty-three undergraduate students' constructed scientific posters…

The development of "Carrascolendas," a television series devised for Mexican-American children, is summarized. Emphasis is placed upon strategies for evaluation. Evaluation evidence indicates that "Carrascolendas" may be an alternative or an addition to the Sesame Street approach to dealing with the education of the…