(2007). Setting the Tone. Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education, v19 n4 p31-34 Sum. Introductory activities create a positive environment, enhance performance and set the tone for the rest of the program. Taking time for the group to get comfortable and learn each others' names will pay off later. An engaging opening activity designed to get the group interacting and sharing names, backgrounds and goals in an intriguing way can really maximize the group process. Every facilitator has their own set of favourite opening activities. Many activity books have whole sections on this subject. The author has learned some of the best and most effective activities in her repertoire from other facilitators, experimenting with groups, and adapting activities over time and experience. This article offers a few favourite activities that work to set the tone for most group situations…. [PDF]
(1998). Improving Self-Esteem of Women Offenders through Process-based Writing in a Learning Circle: An Exploratory Study. Journal of Correctional Education, v49 n4 p142-51 Dec. Over 18 weeks, nine female offenders worked in a collaborative learning circle with process-based writing (prewriting, drafting, sharing, revising, editing, proofreading, publishing). Most showed a significant increase in self-esteem. (SK)…
(2011). The Impact of Study Tours in Developing Global-Mindedness among PK-12 Educators in Southeastern Massachusetts. ProQuest LLC, Ed.D. Dissertation, Northeastern University. College and career readiness requires that PK-12 educators provide a global education, yet many educators have had insufficient professional training to address this need. This mixed methods study investigated the impact of international study tours in the development of global-mindedness among educators participating in a Southeastern Massachusetts (SEM) public school study tour program. Additionally, this study sought to understand the importance and impact of study tour activities on extending thinking and views of education and global perspectives. The sample population was represented by 51 participants of two study tour programs. The quantitative study aspect employed a pre-experimental one group pre-test post-test design. The Global-Mindedness Scale (GMS) (Hett, 1993) was administered as a pre and post-tour survey. An additional post-tour Activity Impact Survey (AIS), containing three additional researcher-developed sections, was also administered to obtain data on the impact… [Direct]
(2011). Wrangling Software: Computing Professionals and the Interpretation of Software Ownership in the University Computing Environment. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota. This project explores the way information about law is transformed into organizational policies and practices. Existing literature emphasizes the state and organized professional groups as primary interpreters of the law and as creators of legal implementation strategies in the organizational setting. This case study of university responses to software-related intellectual property protections focuses on the role of computing professionals in the creation and implementation of university policies and practices related to software ownership. This case challenges and extends existing research about professional construction of the law by examining a loosely organized profession, computing, and a law for which the state provides little or no regulatory enforcement. This research finds that professional boundary maintenance among computing professionals is difficult in a labor force environment where demand for professionals outpaces the availability of persons to do the work…. [Direct]
(2011). Making Meaning of Work: Uncovering the Complexity of Immigrant Experience in a Multicultural Landscape. Multicultural Perspectives, v13 n4 p209-214. Many educators draw the public's attention to the need for diversifying the teaching force. They argue that teachers from diverse cultures offer a variety of perspectives, encourage students to participate in community work, and exhibit cultural awareness and appreciation of differences. One of the ways to diversify the teaching force includes involving more minority students in teacher education programs. Another strategy is to hire immigrant teachers who have teaching qualifications from their countries of origin. Alternative certification programs allow immigrant teachers to obtain certification without completing a campus-based teacher education program. In reality, many immigrants work in schools. Some of them had to overcome obstacles to become teachers and adjust to existing cultural norms; others occupy secondary positions in schools and are viewed as linguistically incompetent due to their accents. Many minority immigrant teachers are marginalized due to their racial… [Direct]
(1977). Consortium for Sharing Instructional Materials. Occupational Education Research Project. Final Report. A consortium was formed to experiment in sharing instructional ideas and materials among the membership of the North Carolina community college system for the purpose of improving the quality and efficiency of instruction by increasing the availability of high quality instructional materials while at the same time decreasing the costly duplication of effort in developing such materials. Representatives at member institutions located and screened materials for input to a clearinghouse, and they handled negotiations involving sharing among institutions. The clearinghouse maintained detailed listings of its materials and distributed a newsletter describing new materials available and communicating consortium internal affairs information. The project was considered successful in that 53 of the 57 North Carolina community colleges had joined the consortium and over 200 listings of materials had been received. However, the actual amount of sharing was difficult to pinpoint and promotion…
(2013). Maximizing Resource Utilization in Video Streaming Systems. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Wayne State University. Video streaming has recently grown dramatically in popularity over the Internet, Cable TV, and wire-less networks. Because of the resource demanding nature of video streaming applications, maximizing resource utilization in any video streaming system is a key factor to increase the scalability and decrease the cost of the system. Resources to utilize include server bandwidth, network bandwidth, battery life in battery operated devices, and processing time in limited processing power devices. In this work, we propose new techniques to maximize the utilization of video-on-demand (VOD) server resources. In addition to that, we propose new framework to maximize the utilization of the network bandwidth in wireless video streaming systems. Providing video streaming users in a VOD system with expected waiting times enhances their perceived quality-of-service (QoS) and encourages them to wait thereby increasing server utilization by increasing server throughput. In this work, we analyze… [Direct]
(2006). Making Knowledge Services Work in Higher Education. EDUCAUSE Review, v41 n5 p84-86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100 Sep-Oct. Over the past three years, knowledge-based practices in higher education have advanced, driving the development of low/no-cost, mass-market tools for knowledge sharing and reducing some barriers to change. New investors in higher education are developing strategies to exploit the knowledge-driven value propositions. Existing institutions, anxious to maintain their position in a fast-changing world, are also taking notice. The latter are finding that past investments (e.g., in e-learning, knowledge management, and information technology) can indeed live up to the promises made for them, if knowledge sharing is encouraged and used to drive necessary change in technology, services, and culture. This article discusses the basics of \e-knowledge\ and knowledge services, the potential benefits of knowledge services, and examples of knowledge services that could be implemented at institutions of higher learning. (Contains 1 table and 19 notes.)… [Direct]
(2008). Working from Our Strengths: Partnerships in Learning. International Journal of Training Research, v6 n2 p75-91. Over the past four years a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners in learning research across Northern Australia have identified many of the issues that underpin the implementation of training and investment through enterprise development to improve economic and community outcomes of Indigenous partners. This paper provides an overview of a series of recent projects developed around enterprise development and training. The issues that the project teams have explored include developing industry, community and training institutional partnerships in the recognition of diverse knowledge systems within the recognition of prior learning process, the role of digital literacy's in sharing knowledge, the co-production of knowledge and work-based learning. The paper then foreshadows the future directions of this work; addressing a range of issues such as infrastructure, funding, technology and identifying relevant skills sets. Approaches to sustainable enterprise learning and… [Direct]
(2008). Is Parceling Really Necessary? A Comparison of Results from Item Parceling and Categorical Variable Methodology. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, v15 n2 p211-240 Apr. This study examined the efficacy of 4 different parceling methods for modeling categorical data with 2, 3, and 4 categories and with normal, moderately nonnormal, and severely nonnormal distributions. The parceling methods investigated were isolated parceling in which items were parceled with other items sharing the same source of variance, and distributed parceling in which items were parceled with items influenced by different factors. These parceling strategies were crossed with strategies in which items were either parceled with similarly distributed or differently distributed items, to create 4 different parceling methods. Overall, parceling together items influenced by different factors and with different distributions resulted in better model fit, but high levels of parameter estimate bias. Across all parceling methods, parameter estimate bias ranged from 20% to over 130%. Parceling strategies were contrasted with use of the WLSMV estimator for categorical, unparceled data…. [Direct]
(2008). Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. They have so permeated young lives that it is hard to believe that less than a decade ago these technologies barely existed. Today's youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing so amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression. This white paper summarizes the results of a three-year ethnographic study, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, examining young people's participation in the new media ecology. It represents a condensed version of a longer treatment of the project findings. The study was motivated by two primary research questions: How are new media being integrated into youth practices and agendas? How do these practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge?… [PDF]
(2008). Language of the People Forever: Bay Mills Spins Thread Tying Ojibwa Communities Together. Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education, v19 n3 p28-31 Spr. Why would anyone want to spend thousands of hours away from home and pay hundreds of dollars in tuition to acquire one of the world's most difficult languages? For Anishinaabe people, that is an easy question to answer. The Ojibwe language is the thread that ties communities together and unites all Anishinaabe as one people sharing a common culture. Ojibwa (also known as Anishinaabe or Chippewa) people live around the world. There are over 30 distinct tribal entities or reservations of Ojibwa living throughout their original homelands in the northern United States (Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana) and about the same number of First Nations in southern Canada (Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan). Bay Mills Community College (BMCC, Brimley, Michigan) serves its Ojibwa community in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, offering classes based in tribal culture, similar to what other tribally controlled colleges do. However, it has found an important niche for itself… [Direct]
(2010). Protecting Our Priorities: 2010 Annual Report. Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education What does "protecting our priorities" mean in an era when economic realities require that institutions of higher education trim their budgets while also providing critical education and training to more and more students–those "human resources" whose skills will be the key to any economic turnaround? This is a question WICHE addresses every day. For over 50 years, WICHE has helped states deal with scarcity: it was founded specifically to assist states that lacked important resources–specifically, medical, dental and vet schools–to find a way to train the physicians, dentists and veterinarians they needed. Since those early days, WICHE has worked to provide states and institutions with the programs, tools, and research to improve access to higher education–including hundreds of professional, graduate, and undergraduate programs–and to ensure that students succeed. At the core of all its efforts are three elements: efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation. Its… [PDF]
(2008). Delivering Cost-Efficient Public Services in Health Care, Education and Housing in Chile. OECD Economics Department Working Papers, No. 606. OECD Publishing (NJ1) The Chilean authorities plan to raise budgetary allocations over the medium term for a variety of social programmes, including education, health care and housing. This incremental spending will need to be carried out in a cost-efficient manner to make sure that it yields commensurate improvements in social outcomes. Chile's health indicators show that it fares relatively well in relation to comparator countries in the OECD area and in Latin America. But this is less so in the case of education, where secondary and tertiary educational attainment remain low, despite a significant increase over the years, and performance is poor on the basis of standardised test scores, such as PISA. Even though comparison with countries in the OECD area is difficult, a sizeable housing deficit has yet to be closed in Chile. To meet these various challenges, efforts will need to be stepped up to: i) narrow the disparities in performance that currently exist among schools with students from varying… [Direct]
(2011). The EPIC Leadership Development Program Evaluation Report. Research Brief. New Leaders for New Schools (NJ1) New Leaders for New Schools created the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) initiative in 2006 to learn from educators driving achievement gains in high-need urban schools. EPIC identifies school leaders and teachers whose students are making significant achievement gains and financially rewards these educators in exchange for sharing and documenting the practices that have contributed to the gains. Since 2006, New Leaders has awarded over $15.5 million to EPIC partner districts and charter schools and led them in a rigorous examination of their practices, culminating in the publication of video cases and practice profiles on the online EPIC Knowledge System. In 2009, New Leaders introduced the EPIC Leadership Development Model as a way to make these practices more widely available. Leveraging the rich resources of the Knowledge System, which now contains more than 200 case studies of effective practices from award-winning schools, the model offers school leaders within… [PDF]