Over one-quarter of all undergraduates attending Australian universities enrol on a part-time basis. This paper addresses the social, educational and financial characteristics of these students. In a survey in 2000, questionnaires were sent to a sample of 84,591 domestic (i.e. excluding overseas fee-paying) undergraduate students at 19 Australian…

It is generally accepted that the undergraduate cumulative point average (UCPA) is associated with graduate performance of the same discipline. Less known, however, is how good the UCPA at predicting graduate performance in a different discipline. This paper discusses a study on the relationship between UCPA, undergraduate program of study, and…

Implementing information systems (IS) is expensive and sometimes unsuccessful due to low levels of system user acceptance (Legris, Ingham, & Collerette, 2003). For this reason, IS research has focused, in part, on variables contributing to system user acceptance of technology. As a part of this effort, Davis (1989) theorized and tested the…

The prevalent use of student ratings in teaching evaluations, particularly the reliability of such data, has been debated for many years. Reports in the literature indicate that there are many factors influencing student perceptions of teaching. Three of these factors were investigated at the University of Western Australia, namely the broad…

The authors report on a large-scale study examining the effects of self-reported psychosocial factors on 1st-year college outcomes. Using a sample of 14,464 students from 48 institutions, the authors constructed hierarchical regression models to measure the predictive validity of the Student Readiness Inventory, a measure of psychosocial factors.…

The report describes the educational system of Kuwait from primary school through university. An introductory section gives an overview of the system, and subsequent sections detail curricula at each level, pre-university (including primary, intermediate, and secondary) and university-level. Pre-university education is divided into four…

This study analyzed data from a survey conducted in 1987. The sample consisted of 2,136 examinees who took the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) during 1986-87. The purpose was to determine how well the intended field-of-study item in the GRE background questionnaire can be relied on as an indicator of what examinees will actually study in…

The second in a series on service-learning in the community college, this monograph presents 14 essays by community college faculty, chronicling their experiences in developing service-learning activities. Following two introductory essays describing the current status of service-learning and the purpose and organization of the monograph, the…

Franklin Pierce College (New Hampshire) has established an information technology (IT) major which combines courses from the computer science, graphic communications, and mass communication disciplines to conform more closely to the reality of technology in the late 1990s. Information technology brings together tools from these disciplines for the…

A study of the discourse of book reviews in several academic disciplines examines how interaction of text and context varies across disciplines. Sixty academic book reviews in linguistics, chemistry, and economics were analyzed for rhetorical structure and for the communicative goal of the genre, that of evaluating knowledge production. The book…

This study examined the influence of background characteristics, disciplinary differences, institutional context, academic library experiences, and the perceptions of the college environment on the estimated gains of critical thinking skills in undergraduate students (N=9,361). The study used data from a national, cross-sectional survey completed…

This handbook translates the findings and recommendations from earlier reports on purposes and practices in selected arts and sciences majors into a practical framework for reviewing the effectiveness of major programs in the arts and sciences as liberal learning. The handbook stresses the value of assessment as a dimension of program review and…

This paper describes the analysis and policy development involved in formulating a University of Wisconsin-Madison teaching load policy. The paper presents a preliminary teaching load policy developed in 1991 and describes its review and integration into ongoing strategic planning and budget allocation processes. Current teaching load patterns are…

This conference focused on the field of critical thinking emphasizing social and cultural inquiry, through the perspectives of scholars and practitioners in a variety of academic disciplines. Following an overview describing the mission of the institute, and an introduction entitled "Critical Thinking and the Improvement of Undergraduate…

As background for its fifth meeting, Ocotillo, the faculty-driven think tank for instructional technology issues of the Maricopa Community Colleges (Arizona), presents reports from its working groups for 1991-92. The groups explore the uses and development of educational technology, particularly in the community college setting. The reports are:…