Planning Cities in Africa

This open access book provides insights into challenges, threats and opportunities of urban development in Africa. It discusses how and why African cities need localised urban planning concepts and theories to deal with challenges and threats of rapid urbanisation and climate change. The book delivers an in-depth view of the nature and gaps of the framework on which current planning practice and education in Africa are based. With that, it discusses the potentials of African cities to mobilise local knowledge, resources and capacity building for sustained and resilient urban growth. This work is addressed to educationists and practitioners in the field of urban development management, climate change adaptation and urban resilience. Specifically, such audiences include researchers, spatial planners, graduate students and member of civil societies working on urban development management

Planning Cities in Africa

This open access book provides insights into challenges, threats and opportunities of urban development in Africa. It discusses how and why African cities need localised urban planning concepts and theories to deal with challenges and threats of rapid urbanisation and climate change. The book delivers an in-depth view of the nature and gaps of the framework on which current planning practice and education in Africa are based. With that, it discusses the potentials of African cities to mobilise local knowledge, resources and capacity building for sustained and resilient urban growth. This work is addressed to educationists and practitioners in the field of urban development management, climate change adaptation and urban resilience. Specifically, such audiences include researchers, spatial planners, graduate students and member of civil societies working on urban development management

Faculty Senate Monthly Packet April 2010

The April 2010 Monthly packet includes the April agenda and appendices and the Faculty Senate minutes and attachments from the meeting held March 201

Formative Assessment in Engineering Education: Exploring Ways to Enhance Students\u27 Learning Achievement

Formative assessments have been found to enhance students’ learning across a variety of disciplines, educational levels, and laboratory and classroom settings. Research attributes the positive effects of formative assessments in improving students’ learning to its (backward and forward) testing effects. Moreover, formative assessments provide an extra opportunity to students to assess their learning early in the learning process, reflect on their learning, and identify address learning gaps and misconceptions (if any) using feedback. However, optional nature of formative assessments and having no stakes associated with them to have any bearing on final grades offers two challenges to capitalize on their benefits. Firstly, optional nature offers a challenge in formative assessment participation and secondly, large enrollment classes particularly in fundamental engineering courses make it difficult to administer frequent formative assessments and provide systematic personalized feedback. Therefore, purpose of this dissertation research was threefold. Firstly, this research tried to unfold students’ different participation trends in completely optional, online formative assessments with minimal automatic feedback. Secondly, this research assessed relationships between students’ formative assessment participation and summative exam achievement, and how their task value beliefs (i.e., importance, usefulness, and interest) in the course materials moderate these. Lastly, a qualitative investigation into the reasons and motivations behind selected quantitative trends in participation and associations was conducted to identify, explore, and understand these reasons for future improvement. To achieve purpose this research, sequential explanatory mixed method research design was employed. Quantitative strand of the study assessed relationships between students\u27 formative assessment participation in 12 practice quizzes corresponding to 12 major topics (modules), their task value beliefs, and their achievement scores on three midterm and one final comprehensive examination, in fundamentals of electronics for engineering course at a public sector land grand university in United States, over the course of 8 regular semesters (spring 2018 - fall 2021). Secondary data (of 978 students) for the purpose of this analysis was acquired from academic and instructional services for students\u27 analytics department and registrar office of the educational institution in de-identified form after approval of Institutional Review Board. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 8 students from fall 2021 semester to explore students\u27 reasons and motivations for decisions regarding participating or not participating in formative assessments. Results of quantitative analysis showed overall participation trend by around 50% students. Gender based differential participation trends showed higher participation from female students. However, relationships between formative assessment participation and summative achievement did not show many significant differences based on gender. Very interesting were the moderation effects of task value beliefs on the relationships between formative assessment participation and students’ summative achievement. Statistically significant positive associations between formative assessment participation and summative achievement were found for students who reported the course materials as important, useful, and/or interesting and vice versa. Research findings have implications for students\u27 self-regulated, self-directed learning