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Summary. This paper discusses the cultural specificity of constructs reported in research into approaches to study of western students. Data are reported from a survey of approaches to study of students at a Hong Kong tertiary institution. The Biggs' Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) was administered to a sample of 1043 students. The SPQ and the Approaches to Studying Inventory were both administered to a smaller sample to aid in interpretation of the data. The resulting factor structures for deep and achieving approach scales were reasonably consistent with those obtained in western countries. However, the results cast doubt on the direct transferability of the surface approach construct to Hong Kong students for whom a narrow approach appeared to predominate, characterised by a systematic, step-by-step, processing of information. Students tried to understand each segment of information before committing it to memory. It is suggested that the different approaches might arise because of either limited English language ability or the nature of schooling and upbringing of children in Hong Kong.

The starting point for this paper is a model of student progress and drop-out from distance education courses. The model includes components of background characteristics, motivation, academic environment, and the family, work and social environment. The model allows for the interaction of variables and the influence of one component of the model on another. The author then derives from the model a series of recommendations as to the ways in which distance education courses might be formatted so as to reduce student drop-out. Ways of enhancing intrinsic motivation are discussed. A case is put for focussing learning skills initiatives towards reorientating student conceptions of knowledge. Strategies for improving collective affiliation are described, and the employment of local support staff is advocated.

(1990). A synthesis of open, distance and student centred learning. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 3-8.

There is general consensus in the literature that the goal of education is to increase the students' capacity to learn, to provide them with analytic skills and to increase their ability to deal with new information and draw independent conclusions. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the extent to which higher education does promote these abilities which can be summarised as independent learning. Quantitative data from the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) and qualitative data (semi-structured student interviews) from a tertiary institution in Hong Kong are compared with similar findings from institutions in other parts of the world. The relationship between demographic variables and the SPQ sub-scales appears to follow a pattern consistent with results from elsewhere. As students become older they are less likely to adopt a surface approach and more likely to adopt a deep one. However, there is a decrease in the use of a deep approach from first to third year of a course, suggesting that education at this tertiary institution does not promote independent learning. Possible explanations are derived from the literature and the student interviews. Implications for the structure of tertiary education in Hong Kong are discussed.

This paper draws upon contingency theory to support a flexible eclectic approach to staff development in distance education. The approach utilizes the Concerns‐Based Adoption Model focussed towards developing instructional design skills in academic staff. Strategies are described for lecturers in each of the seven stages of concern. For the staff development procedures to be effective, it is argued that study materials development should take place within an infrastructure which involves the writer(s) and an instructional designer in a team. Perhaps, the main message of the paper is merely that flexible eclecticism is a desirable approach to staff development — and contingency theory offers that concept — and staff developers need to be mindful of differing staff attitudes — some of which are identified by CBAM.

There has been wide recognition that today’s graduates need the type of generic capabilities necessary for lifelong learning. However, the mechanism by which universities can develop these generic skills is not clearly established. This study aimed to investigate the mechanism for their development. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test a hypothesized model of capability development through a suitable learning environment with 1756 undergraduates at a university in Hong Kong. To triangulate against this model and more fully characterize the learning environment, focus group interviews were held with five to six students from three programs with good records of capability development. Analysis of the interview data resulted in a set of categories, describing a learning environment, which were consistent with the SEM model. The learning environment which seemed conducive to capability development aimed for understanding of key concepts through a variety of assessment methods and active engagement in learning activities. Teacher–student relationships were developed through interaction, feedback and assistance. The promotion of peer–student relationships led to a high degree of collaborative learning.

The effect of the teaching and learning environment on the development of generic capabilities was examined through a survey of 1756 undergraduate students at a university in Hong Kong. The survey assessed students' perceptions of the development of the six capabilities of critical thinking, self-managed learning, adaptability, problem solving, communication skills, and interpersonal skills and groupwork. Students were also asked to rate the quality of nine facets of the teaching and learning environment. Structural equation modelling was used to test a model of the influence of teaching on the nurturing of the six capabilities. The model grouped the nine facets of teaching and learning under the three higher-order latent variables of teaching, teacher–student relationship, and student–student relationship. The model showed a good fit to the data, indicating that the teaching and learning environment had a significant impact on the development of the generic capabilities while the students were taking their degree. The teaching latent variable had the strongest effect on the development of all six of the capabilities. A suitable teaching environment was characterised by a focus on understanding, the active participation of students in learning activities, a coherent curriculum, and assessment which focused on analytical skills and self-learning capability. Strong student–student relationships nurtured communication and interpersonal skills. There was a mutually reinforcing effect between the type of teaching, teacher–student relationships and student–student relationships.

Models of staff development are initially considered from the perspective of positivist, interpretative and critical paradigms. The positivist model, which has been prevalent in both conventional and distance education, is considered problematic in that it takes a deficit view of academics’ teaching and fails to address the issue of implementing organisational change.

Aim: This study aimed to produce a revised two‐factor version of the Learning Process Questionnaire (R‐LPQ‐2F) with deep and surface approach scales, measured by a reasonably small number of items, suitable for use by teachers in secondary schools to evaluate the learning approaches of their students. Method: A set of 41 items was derived, with modification, from the original version of the LPQ and from items used to develop the revised version of the SPQ. These items were tested using reliability procedures and confirmatory factor analysis and items were deleted until scales were of a suitable length and confirmatory factor analysis indicated a good fit to the intended two‐factor structure. Sample: The sample consisted of 841 students from 20 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Results: The final two‐factor version of the questionnaire had good Cronbach alpha values and reasonable goodness‐of‐fit values for the confirmatory analysis. There was a much better fit, though, to a hierarchical structure with motive and strategy subscales for each approach, each of which, in turn, had two subcomponents. Conclusion: Approaches to learning have a hierarchical dimensionality with motive and strategy elements. Each motive and strategy element is itself multidimensional. The results are used to question the conventional approach to the testing and acceptance of instruments, which place sole reliance upon reliability tests. The use of confirmatory factor analysis is recommended as a routine procedure in the development and testing of instruments.

Previous research has established a close link between students'conceptions of learning, approaches to study and learning outcomes.Until recently, there have been few studies of lecturers' approaches toteaching in higher education and their relationship with conceptions ofteaching. This study aimed to characterise the alternative approaches toteaching of university lecturers, and to examine the relationshipbetween lecturers' approaches to teaching and their conceptions of goodteaching. This study adopted an open naturalistic approach. Seventeenlecturers in three departments in a university were selected forinterview based on their rank, years of teaching and industrial orprofessional experience. Lecturers were interviewed individually abouttheir conceptions of good teaching, motivational strategies andeffective teaching. The interview records were then content analysed bythe two researchers of the study. The study found that (a) it waspossible to characterise lecturers' approaches to teaching with onemotivation and five strategy dimensions; (b) the conceptions of teachingof the lecturers were best described by two main orientations oftransmissive and facilitative teaching; (c) lecturers who conceivedteaching as transmitting knowledge were more likely to usecontent-centred approaches to teaching, while those who conceivedteaching as facilitative tended to use learning-centred approaches. Thestudy concludes by suggesting that fundamental changes to the quality ofteaching and learning are unlikely to happen without changes tolecturers' conception of teaching.

Quality Assurance for Teaching Higher education has been the subject of increasing criticism in recent years. Daly [12], for example, reviewed no less than thirty-seven major reports and articles from government agencies, employers, and academics, detailing faults with higher education in the United States. Critics have been just as vocal in the rest of the world. Partly in response to this chorus of concern, governments have moved to make universities and colleges more accountable for the finances they receive from state coffers. Concern about the quality of teaching has been particularly strong as many have begun to suspect that teaching has been relegated to a poor second place behind research because of ever increasing pressure on academics to publish. The general thrust has usually been toward mechanisms for quality assurance of teaching. Either external systems are imposed or universities are encouraged or required to establish their own procedures. Inspection teams may be used to ensure that internally established mechanisms are adequate. In discussing quality assurance and quality enhancement in this article, we draw upon a distinction made by Elton [14]. He grouped the quality "A's": quality assurance, accountability, audit, and assessment, and saw them as concerned with control of both quality and the people who control quality. Quality enhancement was seen as related to the "E's": empowerment, enthusiasm, expertise, and excellence. Program accreditation is a mechanism for quality assurance that has become almost universal. Internal or external panels may withhold approval for a program to be offered if they are not convinced the program can be taught according to an adequate standard. Use of external examiners is another well-established quality assurance mechanism designed to verify the appropriateness of degree awards. Recently it has also become more common to appraise teaching directly. The most widely used mechanism has been the use of student feedback questionnaires, though some institutions have sought more diverse forms of feedback through teaching profiles or portfolios [15, 33]. The limitation of these and other forms of quality assurance is that they concentrate on bringing the poorest teachers and courses up to some level of minimum acceptance. Program accreditation panels can withhold approval if a proposed program has not been adequately planned, but there is no mechanism for giving real rewards to teams preparing outstanding programs. Similarly, external examiners can refuse to approve results if quality appears unsatisfactory but can offer little beyond a pat on the back for good or even excellent teaching. Appraisal of individual teachers also tends to make use of sticks for the poorest performers rather than carrots for the best. Those who receive poor ratings from questionnaires or other evaluation face the threat of not having contracts renewed, tenure not granted, or other sanctions. In theory outstanding teachers could be rewarded with promotions, but institutions that actually do this still seem to be considered as sufficiently rare and innovatory that their procedures are deemed worthy of publications in the literature [e.g., 1]. Even where universities have introduced teaching as an explicit criteria for promotion, the popular perception is that promotions still go to those with the best research records [10, 28]. If teaching is taken into account at all, it is largely in terms of reaching some threshold level of performance. Even ideal quality assurance mechanisms, then, do little or nothing to encourage teachers or courses to go beyond minimum acceptable levels. In fact, excessively onerous or iniquitous assurance mechanisms can have a negative effect on the quality of teaching by those above the threshold. Firstly, the assurance procedures require faculty to produce evidence that their teaching is of an acceptable standard and courses have been adequately planned. …

SUMMARY Publishing software for a range of computers now often includes features which considerably facilitate the development of printed study materials. The most important is probably a style sheet facility, which automatically applies a designated format to identified components within study materials. This paper describes the use of templates, incorporating style sheets, for the development of printed study materials. Text can be keyed‐in to a template document or text files can be transferred from other computers The template serves as a guide to authors. Advantages accrue in operator training, especially if inexperienced operators are employed Other features of publishing software which are discussed, include graphics input from graphics packages or scanners and the automatic generation of indexes and tables of content A method is described for generating page layouts with marginal keywords and icons in a wide margin alongside a column of text.

The 1979 intake to the matriculation studies programme, run by the Department of Extension Studies of the University of Papua New Guinea, has been used as a population for a study on attrition and performance. The study has examined the relationship between two success criteria and several factors with a possible bearing on attrition rates. The factors which turned out to be most important were age, number of children, housing conditions, sex, sponsorship and region of residence.

The tems surface and deep are widely used to describe student approaches to studying and learning. Different writers have attributed different shades of meaning to the terms, as the categories have resulted from the work of a number of groups or individual researchers. There are greater divergences of opinion on the question of how students can be influenced to adopt either a surface or a deep approach. This paper attempts to synthesise some of the divergent positions into a simple model of student approaches to learning which concentrates on the ways that students may be influenced to adopt either surface or deep approaches. The model recognises the existence of predispositions to either deep or surface approaches, and the use of strategies for particular tasks. A number of contextual variables seem to influence students with a deep predisposition to adopt surface strategies. The transition between surface and deep predispositions is seen as difficult to influence, but three types of intervention are discussed.

Summary. The Approaches to Studying Inventory of Ramsden and Entwistle (1981) has now been used in a variety of educational contexts. Comparison of factor analysis results reveals a high degree of consistency in the first two factors extracted. These are interpreted in terms of a fundamental deep/surface dichotomy. The suggested explanation takes into account styles and pathologies which consistently load on these factors. The other two factors are more variable but do show an element of consistency. They possibly show some influence from the environmental context.

Three methods are described for offering the practical work for external science courses: on‐campus residential school sessions, the use of centres by groups of students in a neighbourhood and the use of kits for individual study in the home. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed and examples are given of each method in operation.

The study used the Approaches to Studying Inventory of Ramsden and Entwistle (1981) on a sample of 1095 internal and external students at the Capricornia Institute and the Tasmanian State Institute of Technology in Australia. The inventory yields scores for sixteen sub-scales relating to approach to study. Discriminant analyses were performed separately for external and internal students, using the sub-scale scores as discriminating variables. The variables distinguished significantly between those who persisted with a course and those who withdrew or failed. Discriminant functions were also produced to distinguish students receiving pass grades from those achieving a higher grade. A different set of variables appeared in this discriminant function showing that withdrawal or drop-out could not be treated as part of a continuous scale of grades awarded. The results are discussed in terms of the relationship between input variables (eg, curriculum, instructional design and learning environment), process (approach to studying) and the output or course outcomes. Surface approach was the major discriminator between withdrawal, or failure, and persistence. The effect of study skills programmes and curriculum changes on surface approach and hence persistence is discussed.

The‘Approaches to Studying’inventory of Ramsden and Entwistle (1981) was administered to groups of external and internal students at Capricornia Institute and the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education. Factor analysis revealed a similar factor structure for external students to that of the total sample. This finding, together with analysis of variance data, is taken as evidence that it is valid to use the inventory and the associated theories on learning styles with distance education students. Analysis of variance data showed differences in learning styles for older students. The implications of this finding for the design of distance education courses are discussed.

The results of an extensive survey of distance education students are used in a discussion of whether external students desire academic support. The conclusion is that the overwhelming body of students consider academic support valuable in remediating problems with the study package. Meetings are more likely to be attended if they are lecturer/tutor initiated and focus on learning difficulties or problems encountered in interpreting the learning package. Provision of academic support through study centres is compared to provision through residential schools. The facilities needed to offer academic support through study centres are discussed. Changes in the mode of offering academic support are considered in the light of developments in computer and communication technology.

The authors discuss the potential impact of computer-aided publishing hardware and software on the production of distance education and self-instructional study material. They compare the capabilities of computer-aided publishing systems with those of other equipment. General typographic design criteria are raised. The implications of the availability of computer-aided publishing systems are then discussed in relation to the production of printed learning materials. Computer-aided publishing systems have benefits in revealing instructional design strategies, aiding development and revision, and in the production and incorporation of graphics. However, an ability to operate the software does not guarantee the production of high quality printed materials. The knowledge and skills of the graphic designer are as necessary as ever.

A model of drop‐out from distance education courses is explained and illustrated by reference to quotations from case studies of students in Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Open University of the United Kingdom. The model includes components which relate to background characteristics, goal commitment, the academic environment, and the social and work environment. The last two components are examined with respect to integration of the study process. The model is linear in nature and includes a recycling loop. The indirect influence of one component via another and changes to components over time are therefore taken into account. The final drop‐out decision is visualised as a cost/benefit analysis.

This study investigated facets of the teaching and learning environment which motivate student learning. Interviews were conducted with 36 students from nine repres- entative undergraduate degree programs in Hong Kong. The interviewees were asked to describe teaching approaches and learning activities typical of their program. They were asked about the effect of these on their motivation. Analysis of the transcripts, using a grounded theory approach, revealed that motivation was enhanced through a teaching and learning environment with eight supportive conditions, namely, establishing relevance, establishing interest, allowing choice of courses, learning activities, teaching for under- standing, assessment of learning activities, close teacher-student relationships and sense of belonging between classmates.

Distance education has at its disposal new technologies such as the telecommunications data bases. In this article a comparison of these alternatives is presented.

SUMMARY This study examines the ways in which reflective journal writing can be used to promote critical discussion in small group tutorials. Conclusions are drawn by synthesizing findings from action research studies of five professional education courses in the allied health area. It was found that reflective writing serves as a valuable stimulus for discussion and that the two in combination lead to fresh insights for students and promote critical reflection. The study examines the impact upon critical discussion of variables such as disclosure, ground‐rules, group size, physical arrangement of classrooms, inter‐group interaction and the role of the tutor. In formulating arrangements for journal writing and tutorials, it was often necessary to develop an intelligent working position between apparent dichotomies.

The use and importance of English language teaching (ELT) is increasing worldwide, in developed as well as developing countries. Regardless, the quality of teaching and learning has decreased considerably in most countries; significant efforts have been made and applied to improve English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching and learning processes (Fareh, 2010).

Objective. To implement an outcomes-based approach to pharmacy curriculum development. Design. Desired learning outcomes were identified; course content, learning activities, and assessment instruments were designed; and evaluation was conducted and feedback obtained to refine the curriculum. Assessment. All professional skills, 4 generic capabilities, and the coherence of the curriculum scales showed significant improvement compared to graduates' performance under both the old and transitional curriculum. Conclusion. An outcomes-based approach to pharmacy curriculum development provided convincing evidence of enhancement to the curriculum. Such an approach should be considered when implementing or revising pharmacy curriculum.

A model of drop-out from distance education is proposed. The longitudinal model is developed from Tinto's model. It includes components for background characteristics, goal commitment, academic and social integration, and a cost/benefit analysis. Issues inherent in testing the model are discussed.