What is the Value of the GED?

The case study of this adult learning program for low-income women in an urban environment highlights the importance of a holistic approach to literacy programs, an approach that engages not just the learner but also the learner\u27s family and community. In such a setting, women are able to focus on their own educational attainment and also build the life skills and self-esteem required for success in any academic program. In such a setting, women attain literacy and life skills that will enable them to achieve both economic and noneconomic successes that are important to them as individuals and to the communities in which they live, work, and raise the next generation. They come to this work from two distinct disciplinary perspectives: as a composition specialist with more than ten years of experience at Mercy Learning Center, and as a labor economist. As such, they are able to examine the interaction between literacy and economics in ways that previous studies of adult learners have not done, integrating interview data, participant observation, and census and economic data

Development, Implementation and Evaluation of a Peer Review of Teaching (PRoT) Initiative in Nursing Education

For many years, an area of research in higher education has been emerging around the development and implementation of fair and effective peer evaluation programs. Recently, a new body of knowledge has developed regarding the development and implementation of fair and effective peer evaluation programs resulting in formative and summative evaluations. The purpose of this article is to describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of a peer review of teaching (PRoT) program for nursing faculty, initiated at one small comprehensive university in the northeastern United States. Pairs of nursing faculty evaluated each other’s teaching, syllabi, and course materials after collaborating in a pre-evaluation conference to discuss goals of the classroom visit. Qualitative data gathered in post project focus groups revealed that faculty found their modified PRoT process to be a mutually beneficial experience that was more useful, flexible and collegial, and less stressful than their previous evaluation process

Development, Implementation and Evaluation of a Peer Review of Teaching (PRoT) Initiative in Nursing Education

For many years, an area of research in higher education has been emerging around the development and implementation of fair and effective peer evaluation programs. Recently, a new body of knowledge has developed regarding the development and implementation of fair and effective peer evaluation programs resulting in formative and summative evaluations. The purpose of this article is to describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of a peer review of teaching (PRoT) program for nursing faculty, initiated at one small comprehensive university in the northeastern United States. Pairs of nursing faculty evaluated each other’s teaching, syllabi, and course materials after collaborating in a pre-evaluation conference to discuss goals of the classroom visit. Qualitative data gathered in post project focus groups revealed that faculty found their modified PRoT process to be a mutually beneficial experience that was more useful, flexible and collegial, and less stressful than their previous evaluation process

Business education in Central Asia : best practices in integrative study and teaching

Edited by Dr. Kathryn Nantz, Professor of Economics at Fairfield University, the volume contains 21 articles by faculty of KIMEP University in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan exploring such topics as collaborative learning techniques, role playing, curriculum design, classroom simulation exercises, and the instructional value of Central Asian case studies. The collection provides both a theoretical grounding for more learner-centered approaches to business instruction and practical advice for faculty seeking to develop innovative exercises, assignments, and activities for students of economics, marketing, management, accounting, and other business fields.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/economics-books/1011/thumbnail.jp

Firm structure and incentives

The purpose of this study is to examine and compare the nature of the principal agent problem in both neoclassical and labor-owned firms. In the neoclassical firm, the agent (worker) is hired to perform a task by the principal (firm owner); however, due to the fact that output is not always perfectly observable, or that when observable, it may not be a deterministic function of effort, the principal may not be able to verify the actual level of effort expended by the agent. This gives the agent an incentive to shirk in the performance of his task; shirking involves avoiding work, or providing an amount of effort determined by the contract to be insufficient. In the labor-owned firm, the individual agent may also have this incentive to shirk. However, each worker plays a dual role, serving both as one of many agents as well as one of many principals. Shirking can be more costly in this setting, since it leads to lower individual income as well as a higher probability of dismissal. The dissertation is composed of three essays. The first is a review of the current literature on incentive mechanisms, the principal-agent problem, and labor-ownership. The second essay defines monitoring technology when supervision is a choice variable for the firm and examines the characteristics of both the neoclassical and the labor-owned firms. The third essay allows the level of employment to be a choice variable for the firm and examines firm and economy-wide response to changes in exogenous macroeconomic variables

Utilizing Interdisciplinary Insights to Build Efficient and Effective Reading Skills

In team-teaching classes of first-year undergraduate Honors students, we have found that even well-motivated students complain of “too much reading.” We can make it easier for students to read extensively and critically, particularly via interdisciplinary pedagogy. Many of our students’ “ah-ha” moments combined historical with economic perspectives showing the creativity that results from reading economic monographs, historical texts, and an historical novel in the same course. We found outlines, discussion questions, study guides, and glossaries useful, but we also selected our course readings to ensure significant topical overlap. The diagrammatic methods of Economics helped students comprehend more loosely-connected historical narratives. We used matrices and other visual methods to accustom students to different patterns of prose, giving them practice in what Nancy Spivey calls the “reorganizing” of unfamiliar texts to conform to the students’ schemata

Building Students’ Integrative Thinking Capacities: A Case Study in Economics and History

Having engaged in interdisciplinary team-teaching in both the two-course cluster format and the single course format, we intend to show how we helped students recognize and find their own integrative insights between the disciplines of history and economics. In the process we not only compare the advantages and disadvantages of each format but also illustrate more fully the differences between multidisciplinarity and true integration. We show (1) how the weaknesses and strengths of our two disciplines complement each other, (2) how the different goals of each discipline can be reached using the methods of the other, and (3) how appropriately-designed readings, writing assignments, group presentations, and other activities can help students to achieve the goals of integrative interdisciplinary pedagogy

21st Century Economics: A Reference Handbook, Vol. 1

Kathryn Nantz is a contributing author, Labor Markets , pp 141-151. Book description: Interest in economics is at an all-time high. Among the challenges facing the nation is an economy with rapidly rising unemployment, failures of major businesses and industries, and continued dependence on oil with its wildly fluctuating price. Economists have dealt with such questions for generations, but they have taken on new meaning and significance. Tackling these questions and encompassing analysis of traditional economic theory and topics as well as those that economists have only more recently addressed, 21st Century Economics: A Reference Handbook is a must-have reference resource.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/economics-books/1008/thumbnail.jp

The uses of economics in an integrated cluster

An effective way to teach history is to cluster courses around certain team-taught themes or subjects. One way to make economic history come alive for business majors is to have both history and economics instructors team teach the course. This occurs at Fairfield University, where business majors are required to take a course in economic history. The team-taught course requires students to use primary sources, debate historical interpretions, and move away from fact-based history. These changes allow the instructor a better opportunity to convey lessons in deeper, longer-lasting fashion