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The rise in university bilingual science courses is explained by a certain phenomenon, the internationalization of higher education. Bilingual Argument Mapping (BAM) – the ability to construct argument maps using two languages – is a key aspect of bilingual scientific literacy. An argument map is a visual representation of argument structure. The problem is that little is known about how to foster BAM in this type of course. The goal of this study was to explore the possibility of using formal and informal formative assessment (FIFA) – a type of assessment for learning in which feedback is both preplanned and instantaneous –, to support undergraduates' BAM. The data consist of the bilingual argument maps constructed by forty-four students (27 females and 17 males, 18–23 years old) in Colombia during a university Spanish-English bilingual science course. Results indicate that FIFA helped the participants' creation of valid and coherent argument maps in Spanish, in English and in a hybrid version using code-switching as response to argumentative questions related to the scientific topics covered in the course. The potential contributions of FIFA and its implications are discussed in light of research and theory of bilingual science education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has proliferated across the United States, and in the process, it has disrupted all sense of normalcy. Because adolescents are in a critical period for growth and development, youth are particularly susceptible to negative impacts of disruption from COVID-19. Therefore, sustaining youth development programs is essential to ensuring positive youth development occurs despite significant challenges. Unfortunately, the implementation of programs that maintain safety precautions can be challenging. Many programs have been forced to either cancel all activities or to transition program elements to a virtual format. Rural Medical and Science Scholars (RMSS) program administrative staff made the decision to transition to a virtual delivery. Despite only having a few weeks to reshape the program, RMSS administrative staff were able to innovatively adapt to new challenges in order to deliver a successful program. The success of the program extends beyond its participants. By understanding potential program barriers and successful adaptation methods, other youth development programs will be better equipped to sustain program activities and youth outreach during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, this will ensure negative developmental impacts of COVID-19 are lessened in adolescents and positive youth development is cultivated through program support, stability, and structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Client-Focused Research (CFR) offers an approach to teaching research methods that brings classes into a professional environment by working directly with nonprofit or public sector clients. Students work with clients to define the scope of the research project, design the research methodology, create data collection instruments, gather and analyze data, and report findings. This real-world application of principles taught in research methods classes engages students in addressing client research needs, demonstrates the value of research methods in the world outside the academy, enhances an understanding of political science concepts, teaches skills valuable to employers, and lays the foundation for democratic citizenship, while promoting course learning objectives. This article discusses the authors' experience with CFR at a mid-sized, public university across a five-year period, and provides a "how to" guide for faculty interested in integrating CFR projects into their research methods classes. A discussion of course evaluation results highlights pedagogical benefits of adopting the CFR model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do students form perceptions of their professors' political ideology? Previous research has shown that students tend to project their own ideology onto professors whom they like, but the opposite ideology onto professors whom they dislike. We build on this research by running a similar survey at multiple points throughout the same semester to see if, and to what extent, students' perceptions of their professors' ideology change over time. We find that the interaction between student ideology and professor favorability manifests early in the semester for students who like their professor, while students who dislike their professor take half a semester or more to project the opposite ideology onto their professor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive learning (AL) courseware holds promise for helping break down challenges students face in college. In 2016–2017 we developed an AL Political Science course, Global Issues, implemented it across 51 classes and more than 5,200 students over the next two academic years, and initiated a study to assess student perceptions and performance. In each semester, except spring 2018 when half the sections used non-AL courseware, all sections were taught using the AL courseware. Across these AL sections and on every question in a survey of student perceptions, students gave highly positive perceptive ratings of the courseware. In the spring 2018 assessment of the AL courseware versus non-AL courseware, the perceptive differences between the adaptive and non-adaptive sections were statistically significant on 12 of 14 questions (though the difference in online classes was not significant and we found significant differentiation based on instructor rank). As for student performance, the difference between AL and non-AL classes again showed overall significance, though with marked between-instructor differences and again not in online classes. It is also important to note that first-year status informed the performance results, and the average DFW rate fell significantly once the AL courseware was introduced. Our findings support the case that AL courseware can be one tool that helps provide a useful foundation for student progression, satisfaction, and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This list of 10 recommendations is aimed at job seekers who seek a position among teaching faculty in higher education and is based on the author's experience as a recent chair of, and a frequent participant in, political science faculty searches that have been conducted at a small liberal arts institution, where primacy is placed on teaching excellence. Graduate students and others on the job market can treat this as a practical guide to preparing for full-time teaching jobs and will find advice about how they can create an application package that is likely to appeal to search committees at teaching institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sequential exploratory mixed methods approach guided research on the science program infrastructures (SPI) of a sample of 28 high schools representing 1,370 high schools in a large southwestern state. Comparisons of SPI were made between and among schools representing highly successful schools of low (n=9) and high diversity (n=10) with less successful, highdiversity high schools (n=9). Content analyses of interview data from science program teacher liaisons revealed the following characteristics for typical high school SPIs: (a) shared leadership within a diverse community of actors, including teachers, school principals, special education teachers, department heads, content-area leaders, curriculum directors, and district representatives; (b) supports for shared, balanced decision making, including frequent meetings, established communication channels, and explicit department head responsibilities; and (c) actions extending beyond general tasks of disseminating information to include resolution of issues regarding state-mandated test scores, curriculum-related tasks, and choice of professional development topics. We include a discussion of the implications for including SPI as an important mediating layer within the ecology of high schools. The science program layer links administration with classrooms by employing efficient, equitable, and effective practices to advance the goals of science achievement and college readiness established at national and state levels for all high school graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Colleges of Advanced Technology (CATs), specialist providers of advance science and technology which existed in England and Wales for ten years after the 1956 White Paper Technical Education. Its central argument is that recasting the CATs as broader-based universities following the 1963 Robbins Report was a significant error which attenuated the progress of science and technology, and prevented the Colleges' development as viable providers of higher education (HE) outside the university sector. This decision, it is argued, was shaped by typically English views about the relative value of different forms of learning, the nature and purpose of HE, and particular beliefs about the primacy of the university. It also conflated the general desire to increase participation in higher education with the wish to promote science and technology in particular. A bolder option, it is proposed, would have been to build the CATs up as prestigious institutes of technology, along the lines of those found in the USA and continental Europe – although this, it is recognised, would have entailed a substantial shift in the role of the state and reduced the individual and collective autonomy of HE institutions in England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching science in higher education has traditionally consisted of delivering knowledge as lectures to students following a teacher-centered methodology. The flipped methodology known as inverted instruction can be used as an alternative approach providing a student-centered class. This contribution presents a comparison of two different instruction methodologies, Traditional Instruction Methodology (TIM) and Inverted Instruction Methodology (IIM), in terms of students' perceptions and emotions in a science course. The results after applying various data analytics showed that the IIM had a significant influence in students' perceptions toward the course and made classes more interactive. Besides, the IIM had a positive impact in students' emotions self-reported during the course. In fact, the IIM made a promotion of positive emotions toward the course, particularly when students did not have a prior science educational background. That is especially relevant since the majority of students enrolled had not taken science subjects in the previous educational levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sketchnoting is a design methodology that involves communicating concepts visually. This active learning tool has shown potential for influencing student learning but its applications have been limited. Adopting the principles of research related to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and employing Mayer's cognitive theory of multimedia learning, our interdisciplinary team from industrial design, biology, and education incorporated this pedagogical tool in an undergraduate upper-level ecology course and assessed its effectiveness. We found that students' perceptions of the value of using tools such as sketchnoting did not significantly change after being introduced to the tool, but over two-thirds of students found the tool valuable and would recommend it to other students. The percentages of students who used the tool never or seldom, remained similar over the semester, but a much higher percentage of students increased their use of sketchnoting. We found that there were differences in how students utilized sketchnoting for learning. Students reported the importance of using sketchnoting for communicating. Because drawings are critical ways to communicate science, teaching visual representation techniques such as sketchnoting can improve science students'ability to identify and solve problems; subsequently improving their long-term success. Additional research exploring why and how this approach could be integrated within college coursework and how it can support learning in science is needed. Framed as an example of SoTL work, our efforts also highlight the iterative nature of these projects and the importance for researchers and faculty members to embrace the multiple roles of teacher and learner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a competitive higher education sector, large-scale curriculum reviews are common, and increasingly require alignment with broader graduate attributes. Outcomes-based reviews can be difficult in practice, especially in generalist degrees such as science and mathematics, where students' future career pathways are uncertain and varied. Working with academic leads, we revised learning outcomes across majors, streams and programmes within a diverse science faculty at a large Australian research-based university. We devised a novel measure to quantify the change and developed exemplars across the Faculty to further assist academics in aligning their curriculum to the University's graduate qualities. Following revision, the language and alignment of learning outcomes was significantly improved. Although this study provides a model for others undergoing curriculum reform, caution is required as such large-scale, time-intensive revisions – although essential – are insufficient to create the required twenty-first century Science curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that pragmatist philosophies and theories of science, education and art have dominated our understanding of aesthetics in science education in ways that overshadow other important and pertinent aspects of aesthetic experience. For all its strengths, a pragmatist account of science education and aesthetics remains vulnerable to a kind of instrumentalism that reduces the objects, practices and persons in science education to mere beings: the source and subject of a reductive objectification of experience. This paper proposes a counter-balancing perspective that both respects and also adds to that offered by pragmatism. It does so with reference to Heidegger's ontological difference: the one side of which is concerned with pragmatic, scientific, reflective thinking and the other with a meditative and phenomenological way of thinking that draws out our unmediated experiences of the world. Moreover, it argues that the latter is accessible in science classrooms by approaching objects and practices as works of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the availability of low‐cost high‐quality head‐mounted displays (HMDs) since 2013, there is a growing body of literature investigating the impact of immersive virtual reality (IVR) technology on education. This meta‐analysis aims to synthesize the findings on the overall effects of IVR using HMDs compared to less immersive desktop virtual reality (DVR) and other traditional means of instruction. A systematic search was carried out on the literature published between 2013 and 2019. Thirty‐five randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi‐experimental studies were identified. We conducted an analysis using the random effects model (REM) to calculate the pooled effect size. The studies were also coded to examine the moderating effects of their characteristics, such as learner stage, learning domain, learning application type, testing format, control group treatment and learning duration, on the outcome measure. The results showed that IVR using HMDs is more effective than non‐immersive learning approaches with a small effect size (ES = 0.24). The key findings of the moderator analysis were that HMDs have a greater impact (a) on K‐12 learners; (b) in the fields of science education and specific abilities development; (c) when offering simulation or virtual world representations; and (d) when compared with lectures or real‐world practices. The meta‐analysis also suggested that HMDs can improve both knowledge and skill development, and maintain the learning effect over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors of this essay reflect on the experience of co-teaching a course on the history of genetics and race. The collaboration has pushed them both—a historian of science and a biologist—to consider how to make space for moral and scientific judgment in a history classroom. Drawing on examples from the course, they argue that it is possible to encourage social action and thoughtful critiques of past and current science without succumbing to a whiggish narrative of progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In diverse classrooms, stereotypes are often "in the air," which can interfere with learning and performance among stigmatized students. Two studies designed to foster equity in college science classrooms (N s = 1,215 and 607) tested an intervention to establish social norms that make stereotypes irrelevant in the classroom. At the beginning of the term, classrooms assigned to an ecological-belonging intervention engaged in discussion with peers around the message that social and academic adversity is normative and that students generally overcome such adversity. Compared with business-as-usual controls, intervention students had higher attendance, course grades, and 1-year college persistence. The intervention was especially impactful among historically underperforming students, as it improved course grades for ethnic minorities in introductory biology and for women in introductory physics. Regardless of demographics, attendance in the intervention classroom predicted higher cumulative grade point averages 2 to 4 years later. The results illustrate the viability of an ecological approach to fostering equity and unlocking student potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Openness in science and education is increasing in importance within the digital knowledge society. So far, less attention has been paid to teaching Open Science in bachelor's degrees or in qualitative methods. Therefore, the aim of this article is to use a seminar example to explore what Open Science practices can be taught in qualitative research and how digital tools can be involved. The seminar focused on the following practices: Open data practices, the practice of using the free and open source tool "Collaborative online Interpretation, the practice of participating, cooperating, collaborating and contributing through participatory technologies and in social (based) networks. To learn Open Science practices, the students were involved in a qualitative research project about "Use of digital technologies for the study and habitus of students". The study shows the practices of Open Data are easy to teach, whereas the use of free and open source tools and participatory technologies for collaboration, participation, cooperation and contribution is more difficult. In addition, a cultural shift would have to take place within German universities to promote Open Science practices in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspects of open science and scholarly practices are often discussed with a focus on research and research dissemination processes. There is currently less discussion on open science and its influence on learning and teaching in higher education, and reversely. This paper discusses open science in relation to educational practices and resources and reports on a study to investigate current educational practices from the perspective of open science. We argue that offering students opportunities via open educational practices raises their awareness of future open science goals and teaches them the skills needed to reach those goals. We present online survey results from 210 participants with teaching responsibility at higher education institutions in Germany. While some of them try to establish more open learning and teaching settings, most respondents apply rather traditional ways of learning and teaching. 60% do not use open educational resources – many have not even heard of them – nor do they make their courses open for an online audience. Participants' priority lies in resource accuracy and quality and we still see a gap between the benefit of open practices and their practicability and applicability. The paper contributes to the general discussion of open practices in higher education by looking at open science practices and their adaptation to the learning and teaching environment. It formulates recommendations for improvements of open practice support and infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic is the reason why humanity is paying more attention to the importance of regular and rigorous handwashing. Interestingly, in the nineteenth century, regular and rigorous handwashing was a key (and controversial) solution proposed by the Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis to cut drastically cases of puerperal fever. The purpose of this study was to provide evidence that the case of Semmelweis and puerperal fever—a crucial historical scientific controversy—can be used as a springboard to promote university student argumentation. Our study was inspired by the fact that the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD) stressed that more efforts and resources should be invested in promoting argumentation as an essential component for scientifically literate citizens in twenty-first century societies. However, nowadays, argument and debate are virtually absent from university science education. The data was derived from 124 undergraduates' (64 females and 60 males, 15–30 years old) written responses and audio and video recordings in a university biology course in Colombia. The findings show that the articulation of this historical controversy with decision-making, small-group debate, and whole-class debate activities can be useful for promoting undergraduates' argumentation. This study contributes to the development of a research-based university science education that can inform the design of an argumentation curriculum for higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thought experiments are personal and tacit processes of experimentation that scientists perform within their own imagery in formulating new theories or refuting existing theories. However, by viewing learning as a social process, this study aims to show that thought experiments can also be constructed collaboratively and to present a detailed mechanism of how thought experiments occur as a collective activity. The paper presents a study involving 12 students divided into 3 groups. The physics problem-solving activities were used to set the necessary conditions for observing the processes of students in constructing collaborative thought experiments. The results show that while solving physics problems, students design, share, rethink, and evaluate their thought experiments. This indicates that thought experiments can be constructed in a collaborative context even though the thought experiments are mostly individual in nature. In the process of constructing collaborative thought experiments, the students carried out five activities: visualizing imaginary worlds, performing experiments, describing the results, sharing and evaluating experiments, and drawing conclusions. We refer to these activities as the steps of collaborative thought experiments. In the process of evaluating thought experiments, four evaluation sources were then identified: conceptual understanding, past–daily experience, logical reasoning, and conceptual–logical inference. Based on these results, we discuss the importance and implication of collaborative thought experiments to both current and future physics teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Active learning" strategies—peer instruction, simulations, hands-on activities, and the like—improve student performance and engagement. However, instructors often struggle to incorporate these techniques into their courses. Doing so can be especially difficult in large lecture courses, where the number of students makes activities time-consuming and unwieldy. Student response systems (SRS, or "clickers") provide useful tools for incorporating active learning techniques into political science courses regardless of size. While prior research has shown that clickers improve student engagement and mastery of course content, these tools remain underutilized in the political science classroom. Drawing on existing research, an original survey of faculty who use clickers, and our experience using clickers in multiple undergraduate courses, this article aims to provide a "toolbox" of clicker-based techniques and activities that political science faculty can use to align their courses with educational best practices. We offer suggestions for using clickers to implement these best practices, as well as to teach some of the specific concepts and skills that political science courses frequently cover. Finally, we describe some of the challenges that faculty face when they incorporate student response systems, and provide suggestions for addressing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once on the fringes of higher education, online learning is now mainstream. Today, there are fewer entirely online or entirely face-to-face students; increasingly, college students are taking courses in a variety of instructional formats. How might this new reality of diverse modalities affect student success? Does a greater or lesser proportion of online classes in a student's course load lead to different levels of success? And how might these outcomes be conditioned by demographic variables such as age and gender? We explore these questions using data from 761 students in the Political Science Department at the University of Central Florida (UCF), a large public university. Our findings indicate that overall student success varies by the specific mix of course delivery modalities students are enrolled in and is conditioned by demographic variables. For instance, the data show that younger female students tend to do well with any mix of course modalities, but older male students are less successful as they take a greater proportion of their courses online. These results indicate that a changing academic culture regarding online education may not affect all students equally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has pointed out that a good grouping strategy can improve the learning effectiveness of collaborative learning. However, the grouping strategy adopted in most past research is static grouping. This results in some disadvantages. Therefore, this study developed an item bank‐based collaborative practice system and proposed a dynamic grouping method which uses the concepts of weighted quizzes and bit coding as the rule of a regrouping algorithm. The method and the traditional static method were applied to two classes of sophomore students of a university of science and technology in the central region of Taiwan. There were 76 valid samples which included 38 students of the experimental group and 38 of the control group. The control group adopted the static grouping method, and the experimental group adopted the dynamic grouping method. The experimental duration was 9 weeks of 3 hours per week. Experimental results showed that the collaborative experience value and the learning effectiveness of the experimental group were significantly greater than those of the control group. This indicates that the experimental group students made more efforts to conduct coordination, discussion and finally reach consensus with their partners, and made greater progress than the control group students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I am the first to admit that my career has not followed a conventional path. But in talking to my colleagues, I am not sure that there is a conventional path to an academic career. This retrospective is both a look at how the profession has changed over the forty years since I began graduate school in the late 1970s, and a reflection on my own trajectory within that profession. Historiographical references reflect my own views and are not meant to be comprehensive. I first discovered the history of science as an undergraduate history major at Connecticut College in the early 1970s. The course of physics for non-majors I took with David Fenton was based on Harvard Project Physics, which had been developed in the 1960s by two professors of science education, F. James Rutherford and Fletcher G. Watson, and the historian of science Gerald Holton. We actually wrote term papers for the class; mine was on the theory that Stonehenge was an astronomical observatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What influences gender representation in assigned readings during graduate training? Whereas recent studies have identified gender gaps in citations and publications, less is known about the readings used to train future political scientists. Introducing a unique data set of 88,673 citations from 905 PhD syllabi and reading lists, we find that only 19% of assigned readings have female first authors. Scholarship by female scholars is underrepresented in all subfields, relative to several benchmarks. Both supply- and demand-side factors affect gender representation. First, representation of female-authored readings varies by the size of the pool of female scholars, over time and across subfields. Second, instructor gender and department composition affect demand for female-authored scholarship. As departments hire more female faculty, instructors of both genders become more likely to assign female-authored work. This article contributes an original data set to the study of graduate training and advances understanding of gender diversity in political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Users across academic disciplines utilize different information sources based on the resource's usefulness and relevance. This study's findings show that users from arts and sciences disciplines are much more likely to utilize university library website resources and printed materials than business users who heavily rely on commercial websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information literacy is essential for success in undergraduate science programs, but teaching faculty are generally ill-prepared or unwilling to provide intentional support in their courses. Librarians are uniquely qualified to help. In this article, the author presents one example of a faculty-librarian collaboration in which the science librarian is embedded in a first-year, undergraduate course in nanoscience, both as a codesigner of the curriculum and a member of the teaching team. She traces her progress from new appointee to faculty partner, and describes the unique, electronic-journal project they designed to promote the development of information and academic literacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students in science disciplines often arrive at college without experience using primary science literature and lacking in skills required to manipulate information. A cohesive, curriculum-integrated information literacy program is crucial in teaching science majors how to determine information needs and to locate, evaluate, synthesize, and use information. Described are the best practices, challenges, and assessment tools as applied in the implementation of a four-year science information literacy program at a large state university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important goal for educators, especially those in postsecondary education, is teaching students essential skills that will allow them to become lifelong learners. The Association of College and Research Libraries's Information Literacy Competency Standards for Science and Engineering/Technology address this issue in Standard Five. Library instructors who teach information literacy courses that focus on the natural sciences can use this standard to develop performance indicators and outcomes for their courses. This article reports on the results of a survey administered to the students in information literacy classes taught by the author. The survey examined students' attitudes toward science literacy and lifelong learning as addressed in Standard Five. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students within higher education increasingly expect a teaching and learning environment which makes effctive use of technology enhanced learning and respond particularly well to information delivered using a visual medium. One way in which colleagues have responded is through the increased use of new, free presentation software. This review evaluates one of the most popular and dynamic options - Prezi. It finds that Prezi's functionality enables us to explore complex spacial relationships and connections visually and, more broadly, can feed into deeper learning. As such, it has considerable potential as a teaching and learning tool within political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes two problem-based exercises that are part of an introductory course in intelligence analysis at Lund University in Sweden. The exercises illustrate how bias and group dynamics influence the analytical process. The goal of the first exercise is to improve the students' ability to react to events decisively and effectively without prior thought or planning. The second exercise trains the students to anticipate the improbable with limited information at their disposal.

The goal of this article is to understand the multidisciplinary field of public affairs. Based on data and text mining on the profiles and publications of all faculty members from a list of research‐oriented U.S. public affairs programs, we describe the landscape of public affairs schools and scholars, identify 15 topics in public affairs research and discuss their trends of change between 1986 and 2015, and show the clustering and hiring networks of public affairs schools. Our results suggest a broader approach to understanding the field of public affairs than the public administration focus in the literature. Although public administration is highly visible in the field, which is evidenced by the journals most favored by public affair scholars, various specific policy areas (such as health, social, urban, environmental, global, and education policies) show strong representations based on our topical analysis of public affairs research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the article "Decolonising the Curriculum" by Neema Begum and Rima Saini. She recognizes Begum and Raini for showing the status of women of color researchers in the field political science in Great Britain. She also explores the gender and racial disparities in citations and publications in political science journals and the prevalence of racism, sexism and exploitative labor conditions of women in the academia.

As a young discipline, political science in Kazakhstan could be regarded a poster child of collective intellectual offspring that reflects well all political and socioeconomic transformations that an emerging community of political scientists has had to go through for the last three decades to thrive and promote the field. In this regard, the key purpose of the article is to share an interesting insightful story of developments in the discipline in this transitional nation. The research is mostly based on a retrospective analysis of key periods in introducing new agendas in university curricula and review of the latest trends, practices, and challenges in research and classroom from the perspective of professional communities in the field. This inherently ethnographic narrative, which is based on the analysis of rich empirical data, could be interesting for researchers who seek to understand the development of political science as a liberating phenomenon in a typical transitional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to describe an internationalization project that was developed at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, Florida to provide faculty across the disciplines with assignments they can use to foster the development of their students' global competency. After describing the project and the series of assignments they developed, the authors focus on one of the assignments, a cultural interview, and describe how it was adapted in two disciplines: hospitality management and political science. Overall, the students found the experience to be a positive one. They gained confidence as a result of conducting the interview and developed a broader perspective on their chosen profession. Finally, many students reflected on the fact that before completing the interview they thought their level of cultural competence was much greater than it actually was. The interview assignment is a valuable tool for faculty who wish to help their students develop their global competency whether the primary motivation is to help students become more competitive in the job market or to foster students' development as engaged global citizens. As shown by the findings of this study, the assignment has the potential to do both simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In research into higher education, the evaluation of completion and dropout rates has generated a steady stream of interest for decades. While most studies only calculate quotes using student and graduate numbers for both phenomena, we propose to additionally consider the budget available to universities. We transfer the idea of the excellence shift indicator [] from the research to the teaching area, in particular to the completion rate of educational entities. The graduation shift shows the institutions’ ability to produce graduates as measured against their basic academic teaching efficiency. It is an important advantage of the graduation shift that it avoids the well-known heterogeneity problem in efficiency measurements. Our study is based on German universities of applied science. Given their politically determined focus on education, this dataset is well-suited for introducing and evaluating the graduation shift. Using a comprehensive dataset covering the years 2008 to 2013, we show that the graduation shift produces results, which correlate closely with the results of the well-known graduation rate and standard Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Compared to the graduation rate, the graduation shift is preferable because it allows to take the budget of institutions into account. Compared to the DEA, the computation of the graduation shift is easy, the results are robust, and non-economists can understand them results. Thus, we recommend the graduation shift as an alternative method of efficiency measurement in the teaching area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excellent courses have a stake in the high education reform and in the improvement of instruction quality, so play a significant part in the curriculums of colleges and universities. This paper designs and implements an online Ideology and Political (I&P) learning sharing platform based on classic curriculum repository on the .NET platform in C# language and B/S infrastructure mode by combination with Web Service and SQL technologies. This platform effectively converges a string of I&P quality courses to independently construct an instruction repository for online excellent curriculums whereby to facilitate students to retrieve a variety of quality curriculums for independent online learning, effectively exchange and share the information about the I&P instructions, so as to boost the education cause march on toward informationization, improve the level of I&P education in colleges and universities. After running the test, the platform is stable and reliable with practical value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The curriculum integration has become more important in the practice of college education. However, the general law of curriculum integration is not systematic grasped in the research. This paper studied the ideological and political education of entrepreneurship curriculum to explore the feasible path of effective curriculum integration. The key and core of effective curriculum integration is to find out the point of convergence, establish a constructive internal fit relationship in a seamless and organic way, and build a WWHF integration framework based on the steps and logic of "Why to integrate→ What to integrate→ How to integrate→ Effect Feedback", which provides reference for the practice of curriculum integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the work of the authors at the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) at the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University designed for educating for the future and health of democracy through promoting political awareness and engagement on campus. Topics covered include positive outliers in terms of political engagement at the institutional level, and five common, overlapping features that created robust campus climates.

The article cites a study concerning the attitudes of students towards the study of science in the U.S. The researcher aims to determine the level of acceptance of students in the study of science, with reference to their behavior, psychological well-being, rationality and level of acceptance. Researchers employed the method of interview to a dispersed, random sample of 20 undergraduate and 5 graduate students that are science majors. Field of studies used as variables include population health, physics, ocean science, engineering, space research, pathophysiology, and basic research. Summation of the interviews done reflects that students showed more interest on the application of birth control in the effort of controlling or limiting population than any other field of scientific studies.

Experimental methods are on the rise in Political Science, and we have a growing demand for teaching experimental methods within university courses. This article is an update on an article published in European Political Science (EPS) in 2012 titled ‘Teaching Experimental Political Science’. It presents an alternative teaching concept, where experiments are not just experienced but also designed by students. Consequently, this article argues that teaching experimental methods in Political Science should include students working on their own research projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This narrative project used rhizomatic analysis and reflexivity to describe a layered process of responding to a student’s identity of non-participation within an undergraduate science classroom. Mapping rhizomes represents an ongoing and experimental process in consciousness. Rhizomatic mapping in educational studies is too often left out of the products of academic pursuits. In this paper, we try to capture this process, and let the process capture us. This manuscript starts with a focus on just one student, but maps our reflexive terrain that helped us think in new ways about persistent problems in science learning. As we decided how to address this student’s identity of non-participation, we learned about the intertwined stories of the researchers and the researched and the challenges of designing inclusive learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]