Productivity Environmental Preference Survey (PEPS) of Undergraduate Nursing Students - A Generational Perspective

A change in the generational demographics of college students is occurring throughout the United States. By 2012, the number of Millennial students, those born from 1982 to 2003, will jump from 44 percent to 75 percent of the total college enrollment. It has been suggested that their methods of learning are different from those of previous generations. The purpose of this study was to identify and compare individual productivity and learning style preferences of undergraduate nursing students that fall into the Generation X and Millennial age cohort. Using the Dunn & Dunn Learning Style Model and the Productivity Environmental Preferences Survey(PEPS), the study examined the conditions under which an adult learner is most likely to achieve the highest level of productivity and learning. Seventy-three undergraduate nursing students in their junior year of college were surveyed on twenty different stimuli subscales. Overall results did not demonstrate strong learning style preferences in either group and demonstrated more similarities than differences. Four areas of slightly stronger preferences were noted: Generation X preference for learning from authority figures verses peer learning and the need for frequent snacking for increased productivity and learning. Millennia} students demonstrated a greater preference for wanting a more structured learning environment and having afternoon and evenings as the time of their highest level of energy for learning more difficult content. Using at-test and 2-tailed significance analysis showed a statistical significant difference between the generational cohorts in the subscales referring to Authority oriented learner , Time of day and Afternoon . Understanding the academic productivity and preferred learning style preferences of these two groups is important for both curriculum planning and policies to help increase student retention

Diffusion of Common Application Membership and Admissions Outcomes at American Colleges and Universities

We study the adoption of Common Application membership by private four-year postsecondary institutions and its role in explaining the growth in undergraduate applications. Using data from the College Board’s Annual Survey of Colleges, proportional hazards models suggest that institutions respond to the net benefit of adoption. We then estimate that membership increases applications by 5.7–7.0 percent and decreases yield rates by 2.8–3.9 percent. Acceptance rates decrease for members when their local networks are large. Falsification tests indicate that membership effects occur as a one-time adoption shock. Membership also decreases SAT scores and increases the percent students of color

Taxi Drivers and Beauty Contests

The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The British economist John Maynard Keynes likened playing the market to voting for the prettiest face in a beauty contest; hence the second part of this article’s title

The Graduate Education Initiative: Description and Preliminary Findings

[Excerpt] In1991 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched the Graduate Education Initiative (hereafter GEI) to improve the structure and organization of PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences. Such changes were seen as necessary to combat high rates of student attrition and long times-to-degree in these programs. While attrition and time-to-degree were deemed to be important in and of themselves, and of great significance to degree seekers, they were also seen more broadly as indicators of the effectiveness of graduate programs. Several characteristics of doctoral programs were earmarked as contributing to high attrition and long degree time, including: unclear expectations, a proliferation of courses, elaborate and sometimes conflicting requirements, intermittent supervision, epistemological disagreements on fundamentals and not least, inadequate funding. Projections that faculty shortages would occur in the late 1990s in the humanities made the goals of reducing student attrition and time-to-degree particularly timely if an adequate number of PhDs were to be available. This was far from the first such effort to reduce times-to degree-and rates of attrition. Earlier programs, which provided grants in aid to individual students or to graduate schools to distribute as they saw fit, had failed conspicuously. Based on data which showed that there were marked differences among departments and on a great deal of experience on the ground, the architects of the GEI determined that to improve graduate education would require departments to make changes in their PhD programs. As such, the Foundation shifted much of its support for doctoral education, which had previously gone directly to students, to block grants that would be awarded to departments within major universities

Inside the Black Box of Doctoral Education: What Program Characteristics Influence Doctoral Students’ Attrition and Graduation Probabilities?

[Excerpt] In this paper, we go inside the “black box” of graduate education to investigate what characteristics of graduate programs in the humanities and related social sciences actually influence PhD students’ attrition and graduation probabilities. We make use of data from the Graduate Education Survey; a retrospective survey of all graduate students who entered PhD programs in the treatment and control departments during the 1982-1997 period that was conducted by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. for the Mellon Foundation. After briefly describing the survey in the next section, section III outlines our methodological approach. Section IV presents our empirical findings and brief concluding remarks appear in section V. While our focus is on evaluating the effects of the GEI, we believe the methodological approach that we use can be profitably employed in a wide range of program evaluation studies

Research students exhibition catalogue 2011

The catalogue demonstrates the scope and vibrancy of current inquiries and pays tribute to the creative capacity and investment of UCA research students. It brings together contributions from students who are at different stages in their research ad/venture. Their explorations are connected by the centrality of contemporary material practices as focal point for the reconsideration of societal values, cultural symbols and rituals and their meaning, and the trans/formation of individual, collective and national identities The media and formats employed range from cloth, jewellery and ceramics to analogue film, the human voice and the representation of dress and fashionin virtual environments. Thematic interests span from explorations at the interface of art and medical science to an investigation of the role of art in contested spaces, or the role of metonymy in ‘how the arts think’ And whilst the projects are motivated by personal curiosity and passion, their outcomes transcend the boundaries of individual practice and offer new insights, under-standing and applications for the benefit of wider society. Prof. Kerstin Me

Citizenship, Gender, and Racial Differences in the Publishing Success Of Graduate Students and Young Academics

Although extensive research exists on the publishing success of academics, few studies have examined factors influencing the publishing success of graduate students and young academics. Data from a survey of 12,000 graduate students in the Humanities and related social sciences was used to examine citizenship, gender and racial/ethnic differences in publishing success during graduate school and the first three years after graduation. The results of this analysis indicate that international students have the highest publication rates during graduate school as well as in the first three years following receipt of degree. Results also indicate that female graduate students are less likely than male graduate students to publish, a gap that remains in the years following graduate school. Finally, results indicate that U.S. citizen minority students exhibit lower levels of publishing success compared with non-minority students during graduate school, but that this gap that disappears within the first few years after graduate school

Introduction to \u3ci\u3eDoctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future\u3c/i\u3e

[Excerpt] Concern has been expressed, however, that the growing enrollment of foreign students in American PhD programs crowds out potential American citizen PhD holders and discourages them from pursuing PhD study. On the other hand, the aftermath of 9/11, the growth of research infrastructure and research support in other nations, and the growth of other nations\u27 higher education systems all cast doubt on the ability of the United States to continue to rely on foreign PhD holders to meet our nation\u27s need for scientific researchers and to fill future faculty positions. Given all of these issues, in October 2006 the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute brought together a group of researchers from a wide number of science and social science fields, academic administrators, and policymakers for the conference Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future. The sessions at the conference focused on efforts to increase and improve the supply of future faculty, and covered topics ranging from increasing undergraduate interest in doctoral study to improving the doctoral experience and the representation of underrepresented groups in doctoral education. The chapters in this book are revisions of the papers presented at that conference

Community-Working Occupational Therapists Serving as Fieldwork Supervisors: Characteristics and Associated Factors

As enrollment numbers grow in occupational therapy academic programs in Norway, the need for more fieldwork placements and supervisors increases. More knowledge about factors of importance for occupational therapists’ decisions to take on the role of fieldwork supervisor may promote easier access to supervisors who are ready for the task, and it may assist in addressing the barriers for those who are not. We recruited a sample of 561 community-working occupational therapists for an electronic survey conducted in 2017. Quantitative survey responses were obtained and used in the current study. The differences between supervisors and non-supervisors were examined with independent t-tests and Chi Square tests. To assess factors associated with serving as a supervisor, a multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted. One hundred fifty-six participants (27.8%) had served as a fieldwork supervisor during the preceding year. The adjusted analysis showed that having a job physically located together with other occupational therapists was significantly associated with increased odds for serving as supervisor (OR:1.79, 95% CI:1.17-2.74, p \u3c 0.01). A minority of the participants had supervised occupational therapy students during the preceding year, suggesting that community-based services are an under-used arena for occupational therapy students’ fieldwork. In a long-term perspective, providing social and organizational support for occupational therapists who might take on student supervision may increase their willingness and opportunity to do so