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Universities today are facing challenges regarding students' persistence and success especially among first year students who converge from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds and anticipate a smooth academic and social adjustment to the university setting. However, contextual and individual factors play important role in the academic and social adjustment of first year students. In order to provide an empirical explanation to this phenomenon, the current study examines the moderating effect of social adjustments on the relationship between academic adjustment and the transition experiences of first year students in a multi-campus university in South Africa. Data was gathered by way of a survey from a sample of 1538 students while the analysis was performed using bivariate correlation and hierarchical regression analysis. Results showed that while all the five academic adjustment factors evaluated demonstrated positive and significant relationship with the transition experiences of students, intellectual engagement and online engagement served as the strongest predictors of the transition experiences of first year students. The study further revealed that social adjustment significantly moderate the relationship between three academic adjustment factors (student-lecturer engagement, peer engagement and online learning) and the transition experiences of first year students. Therefore, through students' interaction with their peers and staff as well as their involvement in social and cultural activities, they enhance their academic adjustment and transition experiences. We highlight the implications of our findings in relation to theory and practice and propose ways that universities could develop structures and policies to enhance the transition experiences of first year students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction and hypothesis: This study is aimed at evaluating the readability and quality of Wikipedia articles on pelvic floor disorders (PFD) and comparing their content with International Urogynecological Association patient education leaflets. Methods: Readability was assessed using six different readability scales, including the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) Index, which is considered superior for scoring healthcare information. Quality was assessed by three female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery fellows using the modified DISCERN instrument. DISCERN is validated to evaluate the quality of written consumer health information; it was subsequently modified by health education researchers to enable the evaluation of Wikipedia articles. Results: We evaluated 30 Wikipedia articles that correlated with 29 International Urogynecological Association leaflets. The mean SMOG score of the Wikipedia articles was 12.0 ± 2.1 (12th-grade reading level) whereas the mean SMOG score of the International Urological Association (IUGA) leaflets was 3.4 ± 0.3 (third-grade reading level, p < 0.001). The mean modified DISCERN score of the Wikipedia articles was 34.43 ± 5.90 (moderate quality); however, the mean modified DISCERN score of the IUGA literature was 45.02 ± 1.36 (good quality, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Wikipedia articles on PFD are neither readable nor reliable: they require a 12th-grade-level education for comprehension and are merely rated moderate in quality. In comparison, IUGA leaflets require a third-grade education for comprehension and are rated good in quality. Urogynecological providers should provide appropriate health education materials to patients, as Wikipedia is both a popular and sometimes inaccurate resource for patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate university students' perceptions of social media as a learning resource (SM-LR) in China and the USA in terms of their attitudes, perceived usefulness and behavioral intentions. An instrument used for this study was adapted from a prior validated survey based on the Technology Acceptance Model. The sample population consisted of 241 respondents from universities in China and the USA. The results suggested that most respondents (>75%) from each nation had used social media for learning purposes and that they shared similar understandings and definitions of social media. However, significant differences by nation were found concerning students' attitudes, perceived usefulness and behavioral intentions. Most respondents from China were more positive about SM-LR than their counterparts from the USA. Also, respondents who had previously used social media for learning were more positive about SM-LR. No correlations were found between students' self-reported academic performance and their attitudes, perceived usefulness, or behavioral intentions. Proposed areas of future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the emergence of e-textbooks, along with expectations to integrate technology in instruction, teachers are becoming significant co-designers of the curriculum. Informed selection and sequencing of learning resources requires sensitivity to didactic nuance, and tools to support development and application of such sensitivity. Teachers' practices are constrained by the aspects of resources that are "searchable," which are limited using standard search engines, and the selection of tasks is influenced by the engines' ranking of search results, reflecting their popularity. We are developing and researching a coupled pair of tools to support mathematics teachers in making informed curricular decisions—a tool for tagging learning resources with prescribed categories of didactic metadata and a dashboard for browsing collections of resources according to this tagged metadata. In this article, we investigate affordances of these tools for the professional development of mathematics teachers—both practicing and pre-service teacher candidates. Viewing the dashboard, along with the metadata that it encodes, as a boundary object between the teachers' and the researchers' perspectives on curricular design, we show how teachers learned through acts of boundary crossing, conceived as transitions and interactions between the two communities' curricular discourses. We show how using the dashboard in a task-selection assignment encouraged teachers to reflect on their practice—making explicit the tacit considerations that they apply to curricular decisions and articulating them from the researchers' perspective. We also describe the emergence of "hybrid" search strategies, integrating multiple perspectives to create practices that are both didactically informed and practically relevant for instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focused on student-content interactions and engagement in an online graduate course. Student descriptions of their experiences and learning processes in relation to digital course resources were examined to understand how and why resources were used. Fourteen students provided detailed explanations of their use and perceived value of resources in gaining content knowledge. Results were mapped by whole group to examine patterns of behavior in use of course e-text, video tutorials, and self-check quizzes. Interactions with course e-text and video tutorials – reported as the primary sources for learning content – were also mapped on an individual level. Student explanations were then examined through the lens of Generative Learning Theory to further describe students process for learning content. Continued study of connections between learning resources and student-content interaction and engagement may inform effective and efficient design of online educational experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design is a powerful weapon for modern companies so it is important to have excellent designers in the industry. The purpose of this study is to explore the learning problems and the resources that students use to overcome problems in undergraduate industrial design studio courses. A survey with open-type questions was conducted to collect data. Participants in this study were 189 undergraduate industrial design students from three universities, and two coding schema were formulated for analysing the data. The results demonstrated that the most difficult design tasks included concept generation, design presentation, and design research. The learning resources used to solve the learning problems included four categories: people, object, method, and environment. This information will increase the understanding of the learning process of students and provide a reference for teaching and the setting of learning resources in industrial design education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational institutions may form virtual learning communities by cooperating with others to develop online academic activities. In the cloud, communities make up a grid of expertise, which is built with the learning resources that each organization shares with other pairs. Currently little is known about the problems that prevent the formation of the grid of Expertise in Virtual Learning Communities. Such techniques are not being implemented optimally and efficiently. In this paper we present a description of these problems. This work is important for community members (directors, teachers, researchers and practitioners) because it offers a conceptual framework that helps understand these scenarios and can provide useful design requirements when generating learning services for the community. We also propose an experience implemented at the University of Cartagena (Colombia) in which virtual learning communities have been integrated obtaining an alternative solution to the current problems. We believe that the result of this experience could solve the technological isolation to build communities efficiently and optimally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context modelling involves a) characterizing a situation with related information, and b) dealing and storing the information in a computer-understandable form. It is the keystone to enable a system to possess the perception capacity and adapt its functionality properly for different situations. However, a context model focusing on the characteristics of work-based learning is not well studied by pioneering researchers. For addressing this issue, in this work we firstly analyze several existing context models to identify the essentials of context modelling, whereby a hierarchical ontology context model is proposed to characterize work-based learning. Subsequently, we present the application of the proposed model in work-based learning scenario to provide adapted learning supports to professionals. Hence, this work has significance in both theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explores how engaging in modeling practice, along with argumentation, leverages students' epistemic and conceptual understanding in an afterschool science/math class of 16 tenth graders. The study also explores how students used mobile Internet phones (smart phones) productively to support modeling practices. As the modeling practices became more challenging, student discussion occurred more often, from what to model to providing explanations for the phenomenon. Students came to argue about evidence that supported their model and how the model could explain target and related phenomena. This finding adds to the literature that modeling practice can help students improve conceptual understanding of subject knowledge as well as epistemic understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to gain knowledge about how interactions in a gaming context become constituted as effective resources for a student's learning trajectory. In addition, this detailed study of a learning trajectory documents how a computer game becomes a learning resource for working on a specific topic in school. The article reports on a qualitative study of students at an upper secondary school who have played the computer game Global Conflicts: Palestine to learn about the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A sociocultural and dialogic approach to learning and meaning-making is employed as an analytical framework. Analyzing different interactional episodes, in which important orientations and reorientations are located, documents how the student's learning trajectory developed and changed during the project. When engaged in game play in educational settings, experiences with playing computer games outside of school can relevantly be invoked and become part of the collaborative project of finding out how to play the game. However, these ways of engaging with a computer game might not necessarily facilitate a subtle understanding of the specific topic that is addressed in the game. The findings suggest that the constitution of a computer game as a learning resource is a collaborative project, in which multiple resources for meaning-making are in play, and for which the teacher has an important role in facilitating student's adoption of a multiperspective on the conflict. Furthermore, the findings shed light on what characterizes student-teacher interactions that contribute to a subtle understanding, and offer a framework for important issues upon which to reflect in game-based learning (GBL). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives a brief introduction to Chinese higher education and the current situation about the development of digital learning resources in China. The author, from the point of view of an education publisher, analyses the existing problems in the market of digital learning resources. Based on the practice of Higher Education Press, the paper introduces current research works about standards, development mode, digital learning environment, resource sharing mechanism and other related factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farm animal welfare is a knowledge domain that can be regarded as a model for new ways of organizing learning and making higher education more responsive to the needs of society. Global concern for animal welfare has resulted in a great demand for knowledge. As a complement to traditional education in farm animal welfare, higher education can be more demand driven and look at a broad range of methods to make knowledge available. The result of an inventory on 'farm animal welfare,' 'e-learning,' 'learning resources,' and 'open educational resources' in three different search engines is presented. A huge amount of information on animal welfare is available on the Internet but many of the providers lock in the knowledge in a traditional course context. Only a few universities develop and disseminate open learning resources within the subject. Higher education institutions are encouraged to develop open educational resources in animal welfare for the benefit of teachers, students, society, and, indirectly, animal welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated 6 weeks of online asynchronous discussions in a graduate-level course involving eleven students. The research purposes of this study were to identify patterns of collaborative knowledge exploration (CKE) and to suggest new analytical dimensions for investigating online discussions. Based upon a unique theoretical framework integrating the concepts of transition community and discourse community, three major dimensions of online asynchronous learning were adopted in the analysis. The first dimension focuses on the various forms of social negotiation in the discourse. The second dimension regards references to various learning resources, while the third is related to the coherence of the resources utilized. Based upon these dimensions and the analysis of the participating students' online asynchronous discussions, this study suggested ten different patterns of CKE representing the cognitive processes of Elaborating, Challenging, Correcting, and Debating. We argue that the proposed analytical framework allows us to interpret the sociocultural and cognitive aspects of students' interactions for online problem-based learning. In addition, the results suggest that the more cognitively demanding the pattern is, the less frequently it occurs. Potential factors contributing to the observed findings are discussed in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum at the School of Medicine of the University of Melbourne has necessitated a reduction in the number of lectures and limited the use of dissection in teaching anatomy. In the new curriculum, students learn the anatomy of different body systems using PBL tutorials, practical classes, pre-dissected specimens, computer-aided learning multimedia and a few dissection classes. The aims of this study are: (1) to assess the views of first- and second-year medical students on the importance of dissection in learning about the anatomy, (2) to assess if students’ views have been affected by demographic variables such as gender, academic background and being a local or an international student, and (3) to assess which educational tools helped them most in learning the anatomy and whether dissection sessions have helped them in better understanding anatomy. First- and second-year students enrolled in the medical course participated in this study. Students were asked to fill out a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire. Data was analysed using Mann–Whitney’s U test, Wilcoxon’s signed-ranks or the calculation of the Chi-square value. The response rates were 89% for both first- and second-year students. Compared to second-year students, first-year students perceived dissection to be important for deep understanding of anatomy ( P < 0.001), making learning interesting ( P < 0.001) and introducing them to emergency procedures ( P < 0.001). Further, they preferred dissection over any other approach ( P < 0.001). First-year students ranked dissection (44%), textbooks (23%), computer-aided learning (CAL), multimedia (10%), self-directed learning (6%) and lectures (5%) as the most valuable resources for learning anatomy, whereas second-year students found textbooks (38%), dissection (18%), pre-dissected specimens (11%), self-directed learning (9%), lectures (7%) and CAL programs (7%) as most useful. Neither of the groups showed a significant preference for pre-dissected specimens, CAL multimedia or lectures over dissection. Both first- and second-year students, regardless of their gender, academic background, or citizenship felt that the time devoted to dissection classes were not adequate. Students agreed that dissection deepened their understanding of anatomical structures, provided them with a three-dimensional perspective of structures and helped them recall what they learnt. Although their perception about the importance of dissection changed as they progressed in the course, good anatomy textbooks were perceived as an excellent resource for learning anatomy. Interestingly, innovations used in teaching anatomy, such as interactive multimedia resources, have not replaced students’ perceptions about the importance of dissection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some business schools have integrated business ethics issues into their core functional courses rather than simply offering a separate ethics course. To accommodate such a strategy, functional faculty members usually teach ethical issues, a task for which they are rarely trained. However, learning materials are available: some core course textbooks provide additional coverage of ethics, and case studies (and accompanying teaching notes for instructors) are also available which cover ethical issues. This paper reports on an analysis of these materials. We find that a sample of the leading textbooks provides only very superficial coverage of ethical issues. Cases provide a wide range of issues suitable for class discussion, but their teaching notes in many cases provide little guidance for instructors unfamiliar with teaching ethics. Thus there remains a need for teaching resources for business faculty new to teaching ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

APPROACHES TO HYPERTEXT have often emphasized the additional flexibility associative links provide the author and reader in the organization of text. Our interest is in the creative challenge hypertext links present to the author. The problems of organizing ideas and creating associative links can be framed in a pedagogical context. Our objective is to develop appropriate software environments to exploit the learning potential of hypertext authoring. In this paper we outline a pedagogical model of hypertext, illustrated through examples from Anchors Aweigh, an implementation of this model. We also report on the impact that the effort of selecting anchor icons and assigning meaning to them has on thinking, as revealed in verbal protocols collected during hypertext authoring using Anchors Aweigh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]