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Following a professional program to ensure qualification for school leadership is a growing trend. However, school leaders have also come to understand and use content from educational programs in widely different ways. There is therefore a need to study how participating school principals experience learning differently within one and the same program. This empirical study uses qualitative methods to examine fourteen compulsory school principals' experiences of how the mandatory Swedish National Principal Training Program contributes to their professional development. The findings show how program elements can be experienced as contributing to professional development of some principals while being experienced as obstacles for others, depending on becoming active or passive driving forces for participants in terms of orientation, reflection, exploration, and interplay. Applying a theoretical framework made it possible to describe and understand their professional development through program participation in a nuanced way. In terms of analytical generalization such knowledge may form the basis for development of school leader programs.

Objective: Existing research demonstrates that being mastery oriented is associated with several academic outcomes such as better engagement and achievement. To date, however, there is a dearth of research evidence on the emotional payoffs of mastery orientation. The current study explored the link between mastery orientation, subjective well-being (SWB), and the mediating functions of perseverance and adaptability. Method: The study used data from the PISA 2018 dataset and had 6,062 participants, of which 54.4% were female and 46.4% were male. The proposed model was tested using path analysis to determine if perseverance predicts SWB and to examine the mediating roles of perseverance and adaptation. Results: The results showed that students' SWB was positively predicted by mastery orientation. Perseverance and adaptability also predicted SWB and served as a partial mediator of between mastery orientation and SWB. Conclusions: The study advances knowledge of the psychological benefits of students embracing mastery orientation. The findings suggest that pupils who are mastery-oriented not only succeed academically but also report higher levels of subjective well-being. Perseverance and adaptability serve as underlying psychological mechanisms in this relationship.

This study aiming to compare the effectiveness of Cognitive Orientation to Daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) and Conductive Education (CE) approaches on motor skills, activity limitation and participation restrictions in children with Down Syndrome (DS). Twelve children were randomly assigned into two groups. Twelve-week CO-OP or CE intervention (period-1) followed by a 12-week washout period. Same interventions were crossed over for another 12 weeks (period-2). The Performance Quality Rating Scale (PQRS), Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) and the Bruininks Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency Second Edition-Brief Form (BOT2-BF) were used for outcome measurements. CO-OP was effective in the improvement of task-specific activity performance, while both approaches have similar effects on the improvement of perceived performance, satisfaction, and motor skills performance.

Australian university students who are the first in their family to attend university are more likely to encounter challenges in their transition to university, and programs to support students are important for success and retention. Fifteen first-in-family (FiF) students participated in an Australian-first pilot orientation program. Program students had better engagement (attendance and study hours) and higher grades compared to a control group. There were no group differences in self-efficacy, program participants had steady social support over time while the control group experienced a decline across semester 1. Qualitative findings indicate that participants felt confident about their transition and did not report academic challenges. They had made connections and felt supported. Commute times were the most common adjustment reported.

Although there have been many studies investigating international students, many of them focused on the students who travel in pursuit of higher education in English countries and/or universities. This current qualitative study is intended to explore the experiences of international students, particularly the challenges, and strategies to deal with the challenges and the culture shock while studying in Jambi, Indonesia. In order to collect the data, a semi-structured interview was employed and guided by an interview protocol to stimulate the participants in answering the questions during the interview. The participants of this study were nine international students who studied at one public university in Jambi. Through thematic analysis, we found that international students faced some challenges living and studying in Jambi, such as language issues, academic issues, individual issues, and living style and related issues. To overcome the challenges, international students employed two main strategies, including self-management strategies and seeking help. Moreover, although the culture of international students is quite similar to the culture of the hosting country, we identified a lack of foreigner sense and physical contact as the culture shocks experienced by one international student. Looking at the challenges and culture shocks experienced by international students, this study suggests that preparation is crucial for prospective international students before pursuing their studies overseas.

This study aimed to explore the factors reported by first-year international students which helped or hindered their experiences of transition to a multicultural higher education institution in the United Arab Emirates. Descriptive phenomenology was used to portray participants constructed and co-constructed views, formed through their individual and social experiences of transitioning to international higher education. Six focus group interviews were used to collect data from international students to access a wide variety of nationalities. The qualitative data were analyzed using an inductive approach. Three themes emerged as being significant to their transitional experiences: students' experiences of freshmen orientation, their academic experiences, and the institutional environment. Researching international students' experiences of transitioning to higher education in the United Arab Emirates, and even generally in the Middle East, constitutes an original context. The context of this study also offers originality because the international students are in the majority rather than the minority.

Final-year nursing students are known to face high levels of stress due to increased demands in academics and clinical practicum. In this study, a virtual peer mentoring program was pilot-tested, involving alumni as mentors. Using a mixed-methods approach, we sought to describe the acceptability, feasibility and satisfaction associated with the intervention. Study intervention involved: (a) orientation, (b) mindful self-compassion training workshop, and (c) virtual mentorship interactions for nine months. Evaluation of study variables was done at the completion of training and at the end of the virtual peer mentoring program via self-reported questionnaires and interviews. The current virtual peer mentoring intervention was deemed acceptable, feasible and satisfactory to mitigate challenges for final-year nursing students. The virtual component of the study was considered to be convenient and appropriate, however, future mentoring interventions could be more effective by employing a form of mixed-contact involving both virtual and in-person interactions.

Gamification, the use of game-like elements in non-game contexts, has gained popularity in the field of human resources. However, little research has been conducted on the use of gamification in the employee onboarding process, specifically in terms of socializing and assimilating new employees into an organization. This study aimed to explore the design, development, and implementation of a gamified smartphone application for employee onboarding in a manufacturing company. Ethnographic data was collected over the course of 60 weeks through participation at various field sites and analyzed using thematical analysis with a human-centered design focus, examining the meaning attributed to the gamified application by different stakeholders within the organization. The results showed that different stakeholder groups attributed different and sometimes conflicting meanings to various design elements. The key finding was the identification of four bipolar design dimensions that both supported and hindered the design among stakeholders. These findings have both academic and practical implications for the design of future gamified employee onboarding tools in large enterprises.

For the most part, information landscapes such as libraries are structured, organized, created, and used by the dominant groups. These spaces may be unfamiliar territory for many students. Humour used in library orientation elicits enjoyment and helps to connect librarians and students. Low and high inference humour used during orientation can help connect students new to those landscapes with information and to librarians. Appropriate use of instructional humour in orientations can reduce students' anxiety about using the library, especially when they need help from library staff. This reflective write up on using humour in library orientations, is to demonstrate how we used humour to create a comfortable learning environment, to encourage students to visit the library, to improve (hopefully!) recall and retention of course content, and enable positive associations with library resources or the librarian. There are challenges with humour when the classroom is diverse or if humour is used negatively. Care should be given to use humour to support course content.

We investigated the extents of automaticity in location and orientation encoding in visual working memory (VWM) by manipulating their task relevance and assessing the amount of resource recruited by their encoding. Across five experiments, participants were surprised with a location report trial (Experiment 1A, 2A, and 3) or an orientation report trial (Experiment 2A and 2B) at a point when only the item's color had been task-relevant. This was followed by control trials to assess the memory quality of color when location or orientation had become task-relevant. We found the surprise trial performance to be significantly worse than the first control trial for both location and orientation, although to a greater extent for orientation for which there was virtually no measurable information from the subjects' reports. This was the case even when encoding was the only incidental memory process before the control trials (Experiment 2A and 2B), and the surprise memory costs cannot be attributed to the unexpectedness inherent to the surprise question (Experiment 3). The control trials revealed a consistent reduction of color memory only in the orientation experiments. These results suggest that although location encoding is more automatic than orientation, neither is encoded in a fully automatic manner. Our results show that incidentally encoded location is only coarse-grained, constraining the spatial precision of space-based indexing systems.

This article presents several examples of digital technologies, such as the use of augmented reality, virtual reality, mLearning, web-based GIS, online applications, and the like, which can be used in the educational process of geography. We also present the methodologies created within the national project called IT Academy - Education for the 21st Century, which tries to achieve the educational goal through inquiry-oriented teaching and digital technologies. We discuss in more detail the methodology focused on field teaching using mLearning and digital technologies.

Successful transition for students commencing university is a focus of increasing institutional interest and resourcing to optimise student success and retention. Investigation of student expectations of university commencement and their lived experience provides an opportunity for identification of a potential mismatch which has received less scrutiny. The Bachelor of Sport Development has an integrated transition initiative with an employability and academic skill development focussed curriculum, designed to support students' successful transition into university. The transition initiative was informed by the Five Senses of Success and First Year Curriculum Principles. This article reports student expectations in week one and at the completion of the first semester after experiencing the transition initiative. Students reported changes in their expectations, assessment concerns, and the assistance they expected from lecturers over this period. Students' early exposure to employability-focused curriculum provided valuable insights into their future profession, consequently reinforcing their long-term goal of employment in the sport sector. Results highlight the effectiveness of the supportive, student focused strategies embedded within the tailored transition initiative in the first semester of study.

Employee turnover is costly to businesses; replacing one employee costs 90-200% of the employee's annual salary (Allen, 2008; Cascio, 2006). Business leaders know that ineffective onboarding may be a component of the problem. This quasi-experimental study compares results from three annual cohorts of Associate Software Engineers who participated in a nine-month extended onboarding program (n = 184) and those who did not (n = 261). Specifically, this quasi-experimental study used a chi-square test to compare retention. The extended onboarding group had significantly higher one-year retention than the control group. The results of this study suggest that longer onboarding may be a solution for the human resource community regarding long-term engagement and retention.

This paper uses lived experiences to critically examine the orientation of international graduate students at research-intensive Canadian universities. We, five co-authors, embody diverse ethnic, racial, sexual, religious, national, and gender identities, yet are all (or have been) international graduate students in Canada. Through collaborative autoethnography, we destabilize the notion of "orientation." We argue that international student orientation should be understood as a fluid, ongoing process rather than one with rigid boundaries and timelines. Furthermore, orientation programming should more deeply consider the intersecting identities and positionalities of international students as multifaced individuals, as well as the implicit expectations of one-way "integration" into settler-colonial Canadian society. We suggest a different approach to orientation and offer a conceptual framework to guide future practice, highlighting the role universities play in not only supporting students academically but also in (im)migrant settlement.

The study aimed to support the resolution of problems experienced due to preschool children not adjusting to school at the start of first schooling. Thus, problems leading to school rejection and many other probable issues will be prevented. The experimental study about orientation problems occurring in students newly starting preschool used a semi-experimental method with implementations to ensure school adjustment. The study included 53 students with ages between 60-72 months with frequent school absenteeism due to a variety of reasons. Parents of selected students were given information and the general lines of the Designed Adjustment Program (DAP) were explained. The study applied to the students who could not adapt to the school and have experienced school refusal included a preparation phase for a maximum of 1 week. Afterwards, it covers a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 12 days of application. Accordingly, all students in the experimental group to whom DAP implemented adjusted to school, while 66.7% of students in the placebo group and 61.5% of students in the control group were identified to adjust to school. In conclusion, it was identified that the parental training about duties falling to parents during school adjustment provided positive results, individual studies actively including parents, school and teachers were more effective, peer acceptance was important for adjustment to school, there was a need to use social skill acquirements, and girls were more successful at adjustment to school compared to boys.

Spatial updating based on self-motion cues is important to navigation in the absence of familiar landmarks. Previous studies showed that spatial updating without vision was automatic. The goal of the current study was to investigate whether ambiguous orientations indicated by visual cues affect spatial updating based on self-motion. Participants learned an object array in a rectangular room. After the objects were removed, participants maintained their actual perspective or turned 180° to face opposite walls of the room. Participants judged relative directions from imagined perspectives based on the memories of the object array. The actual and imagined perspectives were aligned or misaligned. Better performance for aligned than misaligned perspectives (sensorimotor alignment effects) was used to indicate spontaneous updating of ones' headings relative to the object array. In Experiment 1, participants turned their bodies in the middle of the room so that their distances to the walls of the room looked similar before and after turning (spatial symmetry at the turning position with the rectangular room shape). In Experiments 2-3, participants turned their bodies in a location so that the distances to the facing walls looked different before and after turning (spatial asymmetry at the turning position with the rectangular room shape). The results showed sensorimotor alignment effects in Experiments 2-3 but not in Experiment 1. These results suggest that updating self-orientation based on self-motion was cancelled by ambiguous orientations indicated by spatial symmetry at the turning position, but not cancelled by ambiguous orientations indicated by the rectangular room shape per se.

Background: To improve employment outcome, systematic research that is based on demandside needs is needed to clarify how employer practice factors can affect customized training efforts. Objective: The purpose of this study is to report the results of a scoping review to identify the best employer practices that are used to improve customized training efforts and results for people with disabilities in the workplace. Method: A scoping review of demand-side employment literature was conducted. Five databases were searched for articles published between 1985 and 2017. After filtering articles based on the search criteria, the final number of articles included in the analysis was 27. Findings: We identified three key themes related to customized training efforts. These include: (a) employment support, (b) work values, and (c) employment temperature. Conclusion: The findings of this scoping review provide valuable information for disability employment professionals and rehabilitation counselors to engage and assist employers in relation to customized training efforts.

Metacognition and motivation are considered key facets of self-regulation in various contexts. Recent studies identified a link between metacognition and creative performance, with metacognitively aware students performing more creatively and exhibiting higher levels of intrinsic and identified extrinsic motivation. The present study aims to examine the relationship between metacognition, orientation toward intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, and creative performance. One hundred nineteen university students completed the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) and Scale of Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Orientation in the Classroom and performed four verbal creativity tasks (product improvement task, consequences task, and two unusual uses tasks). The partial correlation network showed that all the creativity tasks were uniquely related to at least one facet of metacognition, and that the most complex task (product improvement task) was linked to both metacognitive knowledge and regulation. Furthermore, the structural equation model indicated that orientation toward intrinsic motivation mediated the relationship between metacognition and creative performance, explaining 16% of the variance in creative performance.

Career choice research has attracted the attention of recruiters and young graduates. The study aims to investigate the psychological factors that influence college students' employment choices. As a result, data for the study were gathered from 250 final-year college students in China via an online questionnaire survey. The study identified the psychological barriers faced by college students during job interviews through interviews with 120 h recruiters. The SPPS tool is used for data analysis. The study identified personal interest, self-efficacy, and self- esteem; social responsibilities; confidence; professional development opportunities; and future orientation as the important psychological factors that influence the career choice of college students. The study also found that the barriers faced by the college students during the interview were anxiety, inferiority complex, cowardice, and pride. Therefore, the study suggests that the college provides job-oriented training for college students' employment choices. The college should take the initiative to provide students with career opportunities and proper training to avoid psychological barriers during interviews.

Readiness for online learning has been established as a key component of student success in online classes. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored how vital being prepared for online can be. This paper highlights an orientation technique widely used in the business field, namely Realistic Job Preview (RJP), as a method to prepare students for what online learning might be like. Our research proposes an RJP would help students adapt to their new role as online learners. For the purposes of this study, we developed a video providing a realistic preview of online learning following recommendations from RJP research. We then conducted a mixed methods study to examine student perceptions of our realistic preview video and an online readiness selfassessment. Overall, our findings provide strong evidence for the use of RJP as a strategy to improve student readiness for online learning.

Superintendency is regarded as one of the most visible and powerful leadership roles in the world of education today (Sovine, 2000). This research was conducted to identify the challenges faced by assistant superintendents and their perspectives in terms of preparation and support. The study made use of the qualitative research design and was conducted in Region III, Philippines with 10 participants. Findings showed that assistant superintendents faced issues and challenges in terms of organizational and job-related mandates and have negative perspectives about the preparation and support extended to them. During the day-to-day operations in their respective divisions, assistant superintendents face governance and culture-related problems in terms of procurement, handling administrative cases and managing personnel-related actions. On the other hand, during the epidemic, public school superintendents faced several hurdles due to the complexities and challenges of education reforms at both the national and local levels. The school systems are undergoing continuous reforms and redirections as they transition from distance learning to limited face-to-face instructions. Additional obstacles have arisen because of increased public pressure for higher student performance in the face of the pandemic, causing problems throughout the educational system. As educational leaders, the Assistant Superintendents have a lot of work to accomplish to fulfill their duties. Furthermore, in the new normal, there is a leadership crisis due to teacher shortages, insufficient school finance, a lack of school facilities and resources to manage distance education, and excessive time demands. These complicated elements have added to the difficulties that assistant superintendents have in meeting the demands of their jobs. Finally, the critical requirement for skills and competencies to deliver efficiently and effectively has caused them stress, prompting them to seek personal and professional help by whatever means available. Based on the findings and analysis generated, this study recommends several pre-service activities, programs, and projects relevant to superintendency preparation and support. Conduct of immersion programs to prepare aspiring superintendents; coaching and mentoring of skills and competencies relevant to the functions of the job; attend graduate school; participate in exchange study programs; undergo induction program provided by DepEd; and intense preparation on legal and moral aspects of the leadership role.

Discrimination, as a psychosocial stressor functions as one pathway in reduced mental health among Hispanic/Latinx undergraduates. Intrinsic value orientation is associated with adaptive functioning and may protect from mental health symptoms. From a strengths-based perspective, this study examined intrinsic value orientation as a buffer against adverse effects of discrimination on mental health among Hispanic/Latinx undergraduates enrolled in a Hispanic Serving Institution. Intrinsic value orientation buffered only against depressive symptoms. Hispanic/Latinx mental health implications are discussed.

Parental involvement, as one of the most widely researched and discussed issues. It has been characterized by a variety of meanings, definitions and frameworks. Such notions and definitions provide a foundation for solving parental involvement challenges in the education of the visually impaired learners. This study provides a literature review on a quite number of related theories and models in regard to this study. However, Epstien parental involvement theory, Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler parental involvement model, Turnbull, Summers, and Brotherson parental involvement model, and Rieser social model of disability are discussed. These theories are connected significantly and linked closely to the main focus of this study. Hence, the current study finds the relevance of employing the four perspectives of the theories with the conviction that the involvement of parents can be deeply examined and explained if the four interrelated theoretical perspectives will be jointly employed for better understanding and representation of the phenomenon.

Concerns about mental health and wellbeing in doctoral researchers have grown in recent years. To address these concerns, preventative strategies that seek to mitigate the onset of poor mental health and wellbeing could be valuable. This article outlines the co-design approach adopted to generate evidence that could inform the design of inductions to support mental health and wellbeing in doctoral researchers. Over a 9-month period, we collaborated with 47 doctoral researchers from 24 institutions and 13 stakeholders from one university, collecting qualitative data via focus groups and follow-up surveys. After analysing our data thematically and making refinements based on feedback from participants, actionable strategies that could be considered in the design of induction programmes for doctoral researchers were generated and captured by five themes: "peer connections"; "supervisor relationships"; "information and resources"; "student services advice and support"; and "training and development." Feedback on the co-design process suggested participants felt positive about their involvement, with the doctoral researchers valuing the opportunity to contribute to the development of the co-designed evidence. Further research is required to examine the efficacy of the identified strategies, but we suggest that co-design shows promise for developing inductions to support mental health and wellbeing in doctoral researchers.

Purpose: The present study has been designed with the aim to determine whether there are differences in individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) between students, doing their major in business studies and the ones whose areas of study are science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Design/methodology/approach: The theoretical research methods comprise the review of secondary sources to build a sound theoretical framework for the research activities. The empirical research method is a survey in Latvia and Poland applying non-parametric inferential statistical methods as well as linear regression analysis to investigate which factors and components contribute to EO orientation development among different groups of students, and, thus, verify the research hypotheses. Findings: The yielded research results demonstrate that there are significant differences between business and STEM students when they analyze their IEO. It turned out that STEM students obtain significantly lower scores for risk-taking and innovation but higher for proactiveness. Additionally, it was detected that the chosen field of study affects students' perception of educational support, thus, influencing their innovation, proactiveness, and risk propensity characteristics. Research limitations/implications: In this research, the authors focused on exploring IEO among business and STEM students in Latvia and Poland, hence the findings cannot be one-to-one applied to other countries. Practical implications: The topicality of the theme is determined by the fact that changes in external environment require higher educational institutions (HEIs) in Latvia and Poland to foster their entrepreneurial ecosystems and re-master study programs both for business and STEM students as well as conduct projects that include students, academic staff, and business representatives -- the transformation is necessary to create positive attitude towards entrepreneurship among the students and help them to consider entrepreneurial career path later. Originality/value: Factors and components which contribute to IEO development among different groups of students are under-researched in the Baltic countries, experiencing systemic transformation. The authors believe that universities can use the analysis of their students' IEO to allocate their resources in a better way, adjust curricula to the real needs of students and facilitate entrepreneurship.

Game-based learning has been recognised as a strategy to increase students' engagement in higher education. Alternate reality games (ARG) provide players with the opportunity to apply newly developed knowledge and skills, such as visiting important campus locations and completing relevant activities. The collaborative nature of these games means they have the potential to support socialisation in the new environment. This study used a mixed-methods approach to examine the experience of 13 students who participated in an ARG during orientation week at a regional university in Australia. Data were collected using an online survey implemented at three time points, and from focus groups which took place at the end of the semester. Results of the analysis indicate that participants who played the game, reported a more positive emotional state, greater familiarity with the university campus and engaged in more social interactions than their peers who attended orientation, but did not play. These results suggest that an alternate reality game can engender positive emotions in new enabling program students and help them to create friendships at university. This impacts their sense of connectedness, one of the factors identified as important for success in higher education.

Nine experienced university pre-service teacher educators used a collaborative autoethnography method to reflect on what they say to students on the first day of new classes and how their performance sets up the semester. Our group exchanges provided an opportunity to express long-developing values and practices embedded in individual's teaching craft. The exchanges were often revelatory to other participants unfamiliar with the performative day-one interactions for start-of-semester classes that their colleagues had developed in different teaching specialities. Narratives of practice, experience and philosophies of class management are present in these conversations about applying pedagogical strategies. The shared accounts revealed skills developed experimentally over many semester-starts to achieve successful class management. The accounts demonstrated a range of interwoven practices individual pre-service teacher educators emphasised in engaging students: what the educators said and how they positioned their opening statements and actions for students at the start of each new semester.

This essay is a discussion of the lived experiences of first-generation college students each August when they arrive on a college campus for the first time. The author's approach offers a reflective component for institutions of higher education to consider when creating support or programs for first-generation students as they navigate an unfamiliar terrain in which they are expected to understand its components instantly.

This article investigates local curricular plans and job advertisements of institutions offering music in generalist teacher education (GTE) in Norway. The aim is to identify the values and ideologies represented locally in the music subject in terms of how content, learning outcomes, activities and assessment forms are prioritised and how working staff are recruited. By using elements from critical discourse analysis, we find that several ideological processes in the new five-year GTE programme lead to tensions in the music subject. We discuss such discursive tensions in the following five categories: 1) musical skills versus pedagogical skills, 2) activity orientation versus reflection orientation, 3) academic orientation versus artistic orientation, 4) research focus versus teaching focus and 5) future orientation versus tradition orientation. Despite the tendency of preserving traditions and values in the field of music, we find that the national guidelines for music in GTE are quite open and flexible in terms of changing the traditions and adjusting for the needs of the present and future. However, in 2020 when local plans were collected, we found only limited use of the potential the national guidelines offer for local adjustment and innovation. Job advertisements, on the other hand, show a tendency towards ideological mismatch between the institutional level, which lean mostly towards innovation for the future, and music staff, who lean mostly towards traditions.

This orientation session was designed to prepare students for their final MBA Capstone project, leverage lessons learned from graduates, transfer prior learning about teams and project management, and launch consulting projects with actual clients. Companies have used orientation sessions to onboard new employees for many years to improve productivity and innovation. Comparatively, the use of student orientation sessions is an understudied area. Our exploratory survey of 68 Capstone students on the completion of their course indicates that they benefit from this session, and subsequently have demonstrated marked improvement in teamwork and client deliverables according to their professors. This article addresses the elements of the orientation session that can be replicated and implemented by other professors teaching similar courses. We recommend that future research continue to examine this pedagogy.

Purpose: Study abroad has been exceedingly popular among students, recently. Turkish youth have become even more willing to study abroad and improve their English language skills. As lingua franca (ELF), English is the main Language for interaction, particularly in international education. The current study investigated the language learning perceptions of Turkish students having participated in the Erasmus Exchange Program before. Research Methods: The participants were 100 (58 females and 42 males) university students from different departments having been in the Erasmus Exchange Program in the last five years. The data were collected using two sets of questionnaires containing 41 items and an interview protocol. These aimed to elicit information about participants' views on their English language learning process back then and at the time of data collection and their study abroad experience. Besides, ethics committee approval was obtained for the research on July 3, 2020 (Bursa Uludag University Social and Human Sciences Research and Publication Ethics Committee, 2020-04). Findings: The findings indicated that this experience made a lasting impact on them. They have a positive outlook on their language learning experience. They seem to be eager to take part in intercultural communication. In addition, they said that they gained first-hand information on different cultures through the friends they made in Europe, which was an eye-opening experience. Also, students thought that they had improved themselves academically. The participants who are employed at the moment believe that they owe their current position to the qualifications gained abroad. Implications for Research and Practice: The study's findings indicated that the participants had developed positive thoughts during their one-semester stay in Europe. A longer study abroad experience might have affected their perceptions differently. They stated that they had not gone through an orientation programme before going to Europe. They all agreed that an awareness-raising orientation program would be a perfect start for any exchange students. For further research, it is advisable to organise a project whereby exchange students receive an orientation programme and are made aware of how to cope with cultural differences before travelling to Europe.

In 2016, one university began discussions of how to use the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to their advantage to address an adversarial position parents were taking with university personnel. These parents were termed "helicopter parents"--parents who take an "overprotective or excessive interest in the life of their child or children" (Swalboski, 2018). Given the reported influx of demanding parents/guardians seeking information about students, the Division of Enrollment Management at the university, began planning strategies to limit parent/guardian inquiry of student records through clever interpretation of FERPA. According to FERPA, schools must have written permission from the parent or eligible student in order to release any information from a student's education record. Therefore, the goal of the Division of Enrollment Management was to limit conversations with parents as much as possible. At the same time university department housing academic success services for students noted that the support parents offer may complement university retention efforts if channeled appropriately. This department rallied against the planning strategies of the Division of Enrollment Management and developed a "Parents as Partners" orientation program presented to parents at summer orientation. The presentation familiarized parents with campus support systems and encouraged an alliance between the service providers on campus and parents in support of student success. This article describes the orientation program's presentation and shares results from evaluation forms given to the participanting parents.