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

Core Competencies for Undergraduate Community-Engaged Researchers

Undergraduate community-engaged research (UCEnR) is a growing trend which VCU has proactively pursued by providing grants for UCEnR projects and assimilating UCEnR into interdisciplinary curricula. However, a definitive sense of core competencies for undergraduate community-engaged researchers has not yet been established. To that end, this literature review answers the question, What skills should UCEnR students have

Linking engagement and performance: The social network analysis perspective

Theories developed by Tinto and Nora identify academic performance, learning gains, and involvement in learning communities as significant facets of student engagement that, in turn, support student persistence. Collaborative learning environments, such as those employed in the Modeling Instruction introductory physics course, provide structure for student engagement by encouraging peer-to-peer interactions. Because of the inherently social nature of collaborative learning, we examine student interactions in the classroom using network analysis. We use centrality---a family of measures that quantify how connected or "central" a particular student is within the classroom network---to study student engagement longitudinally. Bootstrapped linear regression modeling shows that students' centrality predicts future academic performance over and above prior GPA for three out of four centrality measures tested. In particular, we find that closeness centrality explains 28 % more of the variance than prior GPA alone. These results confirm that student engagement in the classroom is critical to supporting academic performance. Furthermore, we find that this relationship for social interactions does not emerge until the second half of the semester, suggesting that classroom community develops over time in a meaningful way

Pedagogical Techniques that Provide Educational Value to Social Work Students through Bereavement Academics and Empathetic Advancements

The lack of empathy in college students has been documented and empathy levels are reported to have declined over recent years. College student bereavement has not been well-researched (Balk, 2008) but the lack of declining college student empathy has documentation in psychological expressions (Balk, 2008). This article addresses social work students engaged in an academic bereavement assignment that incorporates student centered instruction (SCI) and “teaching through relationships.” Using an untimely social work students’ death, students utilize research, reflection, cooperative small group learning, and applied theory, to compose a writing assignment. Intentionally introducing the “sorrowful empty chair” in the bereavement assignment led to reflective thoughts that are equal to empathy and shows a reflection model in production. Applying theoretical framework to current events aids students understanding of theory. While current events’ research improves student research skills as well as their theoretical understanding, the application of theoretical frameworks and current events with research, leads to an increase in student devotion and commitment to produce good work

Beyond Technology, How are Global Organizations Simplifying Their HR Processes and What are the Processes That Most Organizations Choose to Centralize?

A growing realization was that with global changes in the labor force, HR Professionals are being asked to do more with less, to do different work and to do it better, which puts them under greater pressure to redefine their roles and reevaluate their structure. The HR function must not only be focused on the workplace but also the marketplace and linked directly to the core business strategy. In order to achieve this, the HR department should be an integrated unit within the business and therefore centralized. A centralized human resources department streamlines all the functions of the department within a complex system. The essential aspect of this style of human resources management is the centralized location of all the individuals within the human resources department. According to Wendell French, author of Human Resources Management, the physical proximity of centralized human resources personnel not only improves communication, but also helps ensure that everyone works toward the same company goals. The article will introduce the technology and process companies use to better manage and operate the Human Resources Management Centralization

Educational commitment and social networking: The power of informal networks

The lack of an engaging pedagogy and the highly competitive atmosphere in introductory science courses tend to discourage students from pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. Once in a STEM field, academic and social integration has been long thought to be important for students' persistence. Yet, it is rarely investigated. In particular, the relative impact of in-class and out-of-class interactions remains an open issue. Here, we demonstrate that, surprisingly, for students whose grades fall in the "middle of the pack," the out-of-class network is the most significant predictor of persistence. To do so, we use logistic regression combined with Akaike's information criterion to assess in- and out-of-class networks, grades, and other factors. For students with grades at the very top (and bottom), final grade, unsurprisingly, is the best predictor of persistence---these students are likely already committed (or simply restricted from continuing) so they persist (or drop out). For intermediate grades, though, only out-of-class closeness---a measure of one's immersion in the network---helps predict persistence. This does not negate the need for in-class ties. However, it suggests that, in this cohort, only students that get past the convenient in-class interactions and start forming strong bonds outside of class are or become committed to their studies. Since many students are lost through attrition, our results suggest practical routes for increasing students' persistence in STEM majors.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, 8 tables, 6 pages of Supplementary Material

Reengaging Readers: How Choice Reading Promotes Lifelong Literacy

For instructional purposes, teachers often use an informal reading inventory, among other assessments, to sort students into like-ability groups. While undoubtedly beneficial in terms of planning and small group work, it appears in some classrooms that informal reading inventory (IRI) data sometimes becomes the driving force in literacy-related curricular decisions – including using IRI data to limit the books students have access to. With this observation as a starting point, this research attempts to answer the questions – What is the correlation, if any, between the text difficulty of books students self-select and the amount of reading growth they experience? The research conducted over the last year examines how children’s literacy growth is effected in a classroom context where readers are making their own decisions about what books to read during daily independent reading time. This research was conducted in a second grade classroom in an urban school in the Midwest. Informal reading inventory data was collected at the beginning and end of this study providing a measure of students’ reading ability, and book logs kept by students in their book totes were collected each week to track book choices of individual readers for the duration of the study. A wide range of professional texts both in favor of and against students having the opportunity to self-select books regardless of reading level were also consulted

A second chance at education for early school leavers

Programs that encourage an early return to study and programs that develop post-school career plans may be more effective than programs that concentrate on improving numeracy and literacy scores, according to this paper. Despite efforts to engage youth in education, there have been only modest improvements in the rates of school completion across OECD countries since the mid- 1990s. These modest improvements underline the importance of programs that encourage early school leavers to return to post-school education. The objective of this paper is to better understand the factors that affect the chances of re-engaging early school leavers in education, with a particular focus on the importance of time out from school (duration dependence) and school-related factors. Using data from three cohorts of the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth and duration models that control for unobserved heterogeneity, this paper\u27s results suggest that programs that encourage an early return to study and programs that develop post-school career plans may be more effective than programs that concentrate on improving numeracy and literacy scores. Authored by Cain Polidano, Domenico Tabasso and Yi-Ping Tseng