Learning the Lessons of Openness

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has built up a record of experience and achievements since it was formed 10 years ago as an identifiable approach to sharing online learning materials. In its initial phase, much activity was driven by ideals and interest in finding new ways to release content, with less direct research and reflection on the process. It is now important to consider the impact of OER and the types of evidence that are being generated across initiatives, organisations and individuals. Drawing on the work of OLnet (http://olnet.org) in bringing people together through fellowships, research projects and supporting collective intelligence about OER, we discuss the key challenges facing the OER movement. We go on to consider these challenges in the context of another project, Bridge to Success (http://b2s.aacc.edu), identifying the services which can support open education in the future

Situation types in American Sign Language

Several kinds of situation types have often been distinguished in the literature: states, activities, semelfactives, achievements and accomplishments. Since these situation types relate to properties of states and events that occur in the world, they are understood in any language. It is at the linguistic level that situation types are claimed to be encoded differently across languages. This paper argues that all five situation types are manifested at the linguistic level in American Sign Language and is thus chiefly concerned with identifying the linguistic means that ASL uses to distinguish one situation type from another. Examples of linguistic means include the ability of a certain morpheme to appear with a verb and the ability of a certain adverbial to appear in a sentence. In identifying the linguistic correlates of situation types in ASL, this paper hopes to offer an interesting cross-linguistic and crossmodal perspective on aspect. For example, the discussion of accomplishments includes two morphemes (xMOVy and HOLD) and two kinds of complex verb constructions

Types of Chinese Negative Transfer to English Learning and the Countermeasures

Based on the knowledge of language transfer and previous research achievements, the paper attempts to analyze the types of Chinese negative transfer and the countermeasures. By introducing the knowledge of Chinese negative transfer reflected at the levels of English pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, grammar, pragmatics and culture, the paper presents a relatively comprehensive study of the types of Chinese negative transfer. Meanwhile, the paper is organized in a logical way: identifying the problem, analyzing the problem and putting forward methods to solve the problem. This paper may serve to enrich language learners’ knowledge of Chinese negative transfer to English learning. Meanwhile it provides learners with some practical measures to mitigate the effects of negative transfer. Knowing the differences between English and Chinese would help learners get rid of the interference of mother tongue. Consequently, learners’ English proficiency and intercultural competence will be improved.

The Nature and Development of Giftedness

Following a short discussion of conceptual and theoretical problems of giftedness, the methodological foundations and selected results of a (presently) four year longitudinal study are presented. This study is based on a multidimensional concept of giftedness: intelligence, creativity, social competence, musical ability, psychomotor ability (or practical intelligence). Both academic achievements and leisure activities, as well as cognitive and motivational personality factors and school and family socialisation conditions relevant to giftedness, were studied. During the second project phase developmental aspects and achievement analyses of gifted and normal students aged 6 to 18 years were the central aspects of the study. Finally, methodological problems in the identification of gifted children and adolescents as well as consequences for the nurturing of giftedness are discussed

Developing student’s accounting competencies using Astin’s I-E-O model: an identification of key educational inputs based on Indonesian student perspectives

This paper discusses a model for developing Students’ Accounting Competencies (SAC) using Astin’s Input-Environment-Outcome (I-E-O) model. SAC based on AICPA core competency is considered important due to business and environment changes. Student Motivation, Student Previous Achievement, Student Demographic Characteristics, Learning Facilities, and Comfort of Class Size are educational inputs. Student Engagement and SAC are proxies for Environment and Outcome respectively. Empirically, the aforementioned educational inputs except Student Demographic Characteristics are important inputs for improving SAC. Student Engagement effectively mediates the influence of inputs on SAC. The I-E-O model is appropriate for analysing relationships among a single input, Student Engagement, and SAC. This model becomes less powerful for analysing simultaneous relationships among multiple inputs, Student Engagement, and SAC. Future research on using other assessments for gauging SAC, identifying other significant inputs, identifying the impact of real class size on Student Engagement and SAC, and developing Student Engagement for accounting courses are required