Post-traditional Learners and the Transformation of Postsecondary Education: A Manifesto for College Leaders

Our traditional system of two- and four-year colleges and universities is not well-suited to educate post-traditional learners, writes Louis Soares. Postsecondary education leaders need to be challenged to embrace a future of innovation that may put their current institutional, instructional, and financial models at risk. This paper includes a brief primer on innovation, a profile of post-traditional learners, a look at the U.S. investment in postsecondary education and training, and concludes with three principles to "catalyze a manifesto for college leaders on how to proceed.

Theoretical models of the role of visualisation in learning formal reasoning

Although there is empirical evidence that visualisation tools can help students to learn formal subjects such as logic, and although particular strategies and conceptual difficulties have been identified, it has so far proved difficult to provide a general model of learning in this context that accounts for these findings in a systematic way. In this paper, four attempts at explaining the relative difficulty of formal concepts and the role of visualisation in this learning process are presented. These explanations draw on several existing theories, including Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, Green's Cognitive Dimensions, the Popper-Campbell model of conjectural learning, and cognitive complexity. The paper concludes with a comparison of the utility and applicability of the different models. It is also accompanied by a reflexive commentary[0] (linked to this paper as a hypertext) that examines the ways in which theory has been used within these arguments, and which attempts to relate these uses to the wider context of learning technology research

Students Versus the Research Paper: What Can We Learn?

If we are to develop library services that meet the expectations of our patrons in this changing technological environment, we must first understand how they currently interact with our information services and systems. This paper presents preliminary results from a qualitative study that elicits perspectives of undergraduates engaged in writing research papers. Because this study has been in progress since the early nineties, results also reflect ways in which technological advances such as the Internet may have altered strategies. Findings highlight some commonly used information gathering strategies, issues which impact motivation and use of time, and sources of help students consult most often in the process. Implications and recommendations for librarians conclude the paper

Who Learns from Collaborative Digital Projects? Cultivating Critical Consciousness and Metacognition to Democratize Digital Literacy Learning

Collaborative group work is common in writing classrooms, especially ones assigning digital projects. While a wealth of scholarship theorizes collaboration and advocates for specific collaborative pedagogies, writing studies has yet to address the ways in which privilege tied to race, gender, class, and other identity characteristics replicates itself within student groups by shaping the responsibilities individual group members assume, thereby affecting students\u27 opportunities for learning. Such concerns about equity are especially pressing where civically and professionally valuable twenty-first century digital literacies are concerned. This article uses theories of cultural capital and the participation gap to (1) analyze role uptake in case studies of diverse student groups and (2) suggest ways to expand writing studies\u27 current use of metacognition to address such inequities

Every student counts: promoting numeracy and enhancing employability

This three-year project investigated factors that influence the development of undergraduates’ numeracy skills, with a view to identifying ways to improve them and thereby enhance student employability. Its aims and objectives were to ascertain: the generic numeracy skills in which employers expect their graduate recruits to be competent and the extent to which employers are using numeracy tests as part of graduate recruitment processes; the numeracy skills developed within a diversity of academic disciplines; the prevalence of factors that influence undergraduates’ development of their numeracy skills; how the development of numeracy skills might be better supported within undergraduate curricula; and the extra-curricular support necessary to enhance undergraduates’ numeracy skills

MILO: Models of innovation in learning online at Key Stage 3 and 14-19: Final report appendices

This document contains the appendices to the main report, which presents case studies, which reflect a wide range of models of online learning, each of which has been developed for specific reasons, largely in relation to visions of how technology can transform learning, but also to solve practical problems such as re-engaging disaffected learners and coping with rising pupil numbers

Operations Management Curricula: Literature Review and Analysis

A review and analysis of studies on the interface between Operations Management (OM) academicians and industry practitioners indicate the existence of a persistent gap between what is being taught and what is relevant to practitioners in their daily jobs. The majority of practitioner studies have been directed at upper management levels, yet academia typically educates students for entry level or management trainee (undergraduate) and mid-management (MBA) positions. A recurring finding was that academicians prefer to teach quantitative techniques while practitioners favor qualitative concepts. The OM curricula literature shows some disagreements between academicians concerning subject matter, and a wide variety of teaching opinions. This paper provides an extensive analytical review of OM curricula literature along with their respective authors’ conclusions. From this analysis we suggest a customer-focused business plan to close the gap between industry and academia. This plan can be modified to account for faculty teaching and research interests, local industry requirements and institution specific factors such as class sizes and resources

A Perspective Distilled from Seventy Years of Research

Physical organic chemistry might be regarded as officially recognized as a distinct discipline through the publication of L. P. Hammett’s book of that title, although substantial earlier work can be traced back to the turn of the 20th century. Many of the instrumental tools that helped the discipline develop in so many different ways began to appear in the late thirties and during World War II and were soon built to be increasingly operated in the “hands-on” mode. This development became very popular in academia, where instruments are not operated for you by an expert, but even if you are an undergraduate, you can more or less be the expert yourself and take many varieties of data on instruments usually available on a 24 h basis. It has been my privilege and joy to begin research in chemistry just as these waves of change began to grow and to savor the great contribution that the new methods, such as measurement of 14C, UV−vis, IR, NMR, and hands-on use of computers, made in facilitating our research programs at MIT and later at Caltech. Among those programs, which will be discussed, were 14C tracing of carbocation rearrangements and benzyne formation, electrical effects of substituents, Grignard reagents, synthesis of small-ring compounds, (2 + 2) cycloaddition reactions of halogenated ethylenes, assisting in development of ^(19)F, ^(13)C, and ^(15)N NMR for conformational analysis, other structural, kinetic, and tracer studies, as well as helping through textbooks to bring Hückel MO theory and the elements of NMR to familiarity for organic chemists. From the very beginning of my research career, I have been the beneficiary of personal mentoring which has been very crucial to my success in research and is an important theme in what follows