Relatively inexpensive studies that go beyond the boundaries of individual institutions have considerable attraction, particularly at a time when resources are under significant constraint. These studies can be viewed as existing under the rather larger umbrella of "supra-institutional research". Three examples illustrate the argument…

With the proliferation of Web sites that allow students to praise or disparage their instructors depending on their whims, instructors across the country essentially are becoming subjects of comparison shopping by prospective students. Using a sample survey of 258 students majoring in business at a public university on the west coast of the United…

Research has shown that, among children, boys tend to play video games more than girls do. There are several theories addressing this phenomenon, including that stereotypes and lack of opportunity leave girls feeling inadequate with certain types of technology. No research has yet examined the interactive relationships between time spent playing…

Although very little research has been done on cooperative learning (CL) in New Zealand, international research is positive about the educational benefits of working in culturally diverse groups. This paper presents the findings of a research project examining New Zealand experiences with CL in multicultural groups. Data were collected via surveys…

This article investigates the psychological well-being of students from all faculties across their undergraduate degree from pre-registration to semester two of year three at one UK university. Data were collected on seven occasions, with 66% of students who began their studies between 2000 and 2002 taking part in the project. Psychological…

In view of South African policy developments related to the care of older persons, it was necessary to examine the nature of the geriatrics content within physiotherapy curricula. A survey was conducted amongst final-year student physiotherapists at South African universities, together with content analysis of physiotherapy curricula. Very little…

While this paper set out to discover what activities and/or interaction channels might be expected to lead to more highly engaged students, what it found was a bit different. After first creating a scale to measure online student engagement, and then surveying 186 students from six campuses in the Midwest, the results indicate that there is no…

There has been a rapid increase in the use of technology in university classrooms. Many university classrooms and laboratories include an overhead projection unit, computer, and connections for laptops. More recently, tablet PCs have been investigated as another way to effectively engage students in a classroom environment. This study summarizes…

This paper examines the mission, structure and outputs of one organisation, the Student Platform for Engineering Education Development (SPEED), as a case study for how student-led organisations can use student involvement to promote and sustain student self-efficacy in an academic field. SPEED attracts young people to engineering through student…

This paper presents preliminary findings from a research study in Australia, Malaysia and Iran on students' perceptions of the roles of supervisor and student in the production of their thesis and the contribution of their cultural knowledge to thesis development. The 360 respondents who answered an online survey were studying for their Master's…

Project-based learning (PBL) is a highly effective means of motivating students to learn independently. However, training or encouraging teachers to practice PBL in their classrooms is challenging, especially if the educational system does not accommodate creative teaching practices. In particular, in a test-driven educational system, time…

This article presents research findings on acculturation strategies (attitudes and behaviors) in the language domain of Russian-speaking adolescents in Latvia in the context of the education reform. Data comes from a longitudinal study of adolescents from schools with Russian as the language of instruction in Riga; the same schools were invited to…

The underrepresentation of women in engineering is well known and unresolved. However, Turkey has witnessed a shift in trend from virtually no female participation in engineering to across-the-board proportions that dominate other industrialised countries within the 76 years of the founding of the Turkish Republic. This paper describes the largest…

This paper presents a research study that was conducted in the Faculty of Creative Multimedia, Multimedia University, Malaysia, to investigate students' perceptions in developing a multimedia project within a constructivist-based learning environment. Students worked in groups to create an interactive multimedia application using an authoring…

In this study we report on issues related to the use of color as a third dimension on graphical representations provided to students. We find that a majority of the students sampled have a preconceived color map regarding temperature, with blue indicating low temperatures and red indicating high temperatures. Attempts to transfer this particular…