Expanding America's Capacity to Educate Nurses: Diverse, State-Level Partnerships Are Creating Promising Models and Results

Outlines the need to expand nursing education capacity to address the coming personnel shortage. Highlights strategies of twelve partnerships, including pay-for-performance funding and new curricula and technology, and makes policy recommendations

Laptops for teachers: An evaluation of the TELA scheme in schools (Years 4 to 6)

The purpose of this evaluation was to investigate the impacts of the Laptops for Teachers Scheme (referred to from here as the TELA scheme) on Years 4 to 6 teachers’ work over a period of three years (2004-2006) and to record emerging changes in laptop use. The investigation focused on the Ministry of Education expectation (Ministry of Education, 2004) that teacher access to a laptop for their individual professional use would lead to gains in confidence and expertise in the use of ICTs, to efficiencies in administration, would contribute to teacher collaboration and support the preparation of high quality lesson resources. It was also anticipated that teacher would use their laptop in the classroom for teaching and learning

Education in Undergraduate Construction Management Degrees - Is it "Construction" or "Management" that is in bold type?

The proposition of this study is that the content of education in construction management degree programs has changed over time. Content has moved away from construction technology and has moved more towards generic areas of management. Here, issues arise such as prescriptive versus principle-base teaching and the degree to which experiential learning can be provided. This study explores quantifiable data to test the above proposition over an extended period of time for a selected University in Australia. The study looks at course handbook data for the construction management degree including the likes of assigned subject credit points and contact hours. From the analysis, debate and related sources of supporting information are used to extrapolate themes demonstrating the resultant changes in graduate profile arising from the analysis. Comment is also provided on the impact of such changes including the differentiation of university graduates in the past and present. The industry perspective is also canvassed in terms of how changes have affected their expectations relating to employment of University qualified graduates

Accommodating student's learning experience through personalized learning style adaptation in computer programming course at Centre for Foundation Studies, IIUM

Teaching and learning computer programming can be difficult, especially for beginners. Since they are not exposed to any computer programming experience, they may face difficulties if the teaching approaches do not match with their learning styles. Computer programming requires the students to understand logical reasoning and syntax and be able to apply them practically for solving programming problems in nearly all disciplines. Mitra [1] claims that most students feel computer programming is a challenging intellectual exercise. At Centre for Foundation Studies, foundation students encounter difficulties in learning and applying computer programming concepts. Some of them perform better in other science subjects, but find difficulties in grasping the computer programming concepts. In this research, we have used Felder-Solomon Learning Style Inventory to identify C Programming’s students for their preferred learning styles. The result of the survey shows that the Engineering/Computer Science students came from mixed learning styles. Therefore, we have adapted Felder-Solomon’s learning style model, and come out with a model of three hybrid categories. This paper will provide detail suggestions for an online learning system based on a selected topic in C Programming. The system will accommodate the students’ learning style in accordance to the modified Felder-Solomon’s learning style model. As a significant contribution to programming educations, our suggestions may further be adopted for designing personalized learning for other disciplines