Student Credit Research Articles

409 PB 048 INCREASED ENROLLMENT AND MULTIPLE ACADEMIC PROGRAM SITES TYPIFY FLORIDA'S ENVIRONMENTAL HORTICULTURE UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS

Environmental Horticulture-undergraduate student enrollment at the University of Florida (UF) Gainesville campus decreased from 88 students in 1980/81 to 34 students in 1989/90. In 1983/84 a resident instruction program in Environmental Horticulture for placebound students was initiated by UF at the Ft. Lauderdale Research and Education Center. Enrollment rapidly increased from 6 students in 1984 to 67 students in 1989, with an average student credit load of 3.5 credits per semester. In 1990/91 increased student recruiting efforts were made with a common undergraduate handbook, recruiting brochure, and guides for academic program specializations developed to serve both locations. These efforts and others have increased enrollment at both sites. Currently there are 73 students in the Environmental Horticulture program at Gainesville and 87 students at Ft. Lauderdale. Students may begin their academic program at one location and transfer to the other site to complete their undergraduate requirements for the Bachelor of Science degree. A Bachelor of Science program in Environmental Horticulture will be initiated in the fall of 1994 in Milton, Florida, a small community in northwest Florida.

A Strategy for Awarding Students Credit for Prior Experiential Learning whilst Protecting Academic Standards

Abstract The thinking behind this paper derives from the experience of the author in being a manager within a structure of awards for teachers based on the principles of credit accumulation and transfer schemes (CATS). It also derives from making use of this experience for curriculum development in a number of other curriculum areas, notably in nursing, in midwifery and in physiotherapy. The thesis borrows substantially from the good practice of one of Britain's leading institutions in the use of CATS (the University of Greenwich) and extrapolates from that experience to propose a model of curriculum management that, it is suggested, might reconcile the tension between the flexibility offered by CATS and the needs of higher education for objective measures of the quality of student learning. The paper proposes a context in which the quality of learning can be judged and goes on to describe the experience of a number of schemes in the University of Greenwich in the application of CATS. It then describes the strategies used at Greenwich for the granting of accreditation for experiential learning (APEL) within an appropriate context. The final part of the paper then makes use of the Greenwich experience to propose a model for delivery of APEL within a CATS framework.

Consumer Credit and Style for Students

Consumer Credit and Style for Students

The challenge of mass higher education

ABSTRACT The United Kingdom is creating a mass higher education system with little debate about the challenges ahead. It will be important to foster institutional diversity in the more homogeneous funding system that has been introduced. Mass higher education requires greater opportunity for part-time study. Current changes make it possible to integrate part-time and full-time study and a funding methodology based on student credit points could achieve this. A major staff development exercise is called for since most academics are unaware of the magnitude of the changes ahead.

Rethinking the objectives and content of elementary accounting

Any proposal to meaningfully improve accounting education in the United States must begin with a fundamental reassessment of the elementary accounting sequence. At present, we contend these courses are intellectually sterile, textbook bound, and bookkeeping oriented. While comprising approximately 50% of an accounting program's student credit hours, they are typically taught by part-timers, short-timers, and graduate students. Given this environment, it is not surprising to find that the best and brightest students in the business school often foresake accounting as a major. The authors explore the causes of this situation and suggest that the elementary accounting courses should be reconceptualized. New objectives are identified for the courses, and new topical content and pedagogy is suggested.

Sociology in the General Education Curriculum: A Cognitive Structuralist Perspective

While general education courses comprise the single largest block of student credit hoursfor most sociology departments, few universities or departments provide guidelines regarding which thinking skills are to be developed in general education social science courses. Research by cognitive structuralists suggests that substantial numbers of entering students are not yet capable of formal operational thinking. The thesis of this article is that, in addition to teaching the content of a discipline, service courses need to address the deep structures of thinking by fostering formal thinking capability. Utilizing insights from cognitive structuralist research, goals and objectives for general education courses are suggested and implications for teaching strategies are discussed.

Maintaining commitment to quality education

AbstractThe commitment to quality education in the midst of declining enrollments and budgets requires community colleges to consider more than student credit hours and costs per student when cutting back programs.

Clinical engineering as an academic discipline.

This paper includes sections written by the current or former Clinical Engineering coordinators of five universities on common problems faced by Clinical Engineering (CE) educational programs and the different solutions adopted on various campuses. The problems discussed include student recruitment, financial support, containment of student credit hours and faculty time, retention of CE graduates in the profession, and differentiation between Clinical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering Technology.

Academic calendar change impact on enrollment patterns and instructional outcomes

A study of 10 universities in two states was completed to determine the impact of a change from the quarter to the semester calendar on enrollment patterns and instructional outcomes. A decrease in average student credit hour load and an increase in the percentage of students withdrawing from courses were observed after institutions changed to the semester calendar system.

Differential instructional productivity indices

Teaching load formulas to provide for differential program productivity ratios are in wide use. However, the various sets of differential weights on student credit hours (SCH) in use tend to be the result of historical accident, negotiation, or limited cost studies. To bring a unity into these formulas, a new statistical methodology applied to three years of teaching load data from 21 major public universities has yielded an objective, broadly applicable set of SCH weight factors. Those weights give promise of providing comparison of instructional productivity via unobtrusive measures. A table of optimum weighting factors for upper division and graduate SCH (relative to lower division) is presented by NCES Code discipline division. The weights derived from analysis are then compared with those developed by more traditional means.

Equity among assistant professors in instructional work load

In recent years salary equity has been the focus of studies dealing with equity. This paper extends the concept of equity to include faculty instructional activities or work load. In an effort to determine to what extent instructional efforts differed between men and women at a large land-grant university, the following variables were investigated: number of weighted student credit hours, number of sections taught, number of different courses taught, and didactic hours by level of course. Because the faculty members varied in their full-time-equivalent instructional effort, it was necessary to normalize the data. When men and women were compared for equity of instructional activity (MANOVA) taking their college into consideration, there was no significant difference by sex or from the interaction of college with sex. When a balancing technique was used to review men and women by departments, again no significant differences were found in the pattern of instructional activity within the group of departments being compared.

An Experiential Partnership for Effective Self-Paced Education

The XPRT project's primary objectives were: 1. to cooperatively develop self-paced, PSI/Keller course materials in core engineering courses offered at six partner schools; 2. to train the partner school faculty to develop and use these PSI materials; 3. to establish PSI (Personalized System of Instruction) methods at the partner schools as optional learning modes available to the students; and 4. to evaluate the costs and effectiveness of courses given in the PSI mode at those schools. The partnership involved Drexel University, which also served as the administrative headquarters for the project, Lehigh University, University of Lowell, Rutgers University, Southeastern Massachusetts University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. By the conclusion of the project sixty faculty had become involved, materials for ten courses had been developed and evaluated, more than 8400 students had taken courses using these materials and 350 student teaching assistants (coaches) had gained valuable experience tutoring and proctoring students in these courses. Evaluation studies have shown these PSI methods to be at least as effective as the traditional methods employed at the partner schools and in many cases the PSI methods produced significantly better student learning (based upon retention studies and common final exam grades) at lower teaching costs (dollars per student credit). The project demonstrated how, with proper planning and organization, effective self-paced course materials can be cooperatively developed and used by a variety of faculty at different schools.

Explaining Teacher Explanations of Pupil Performance: A Self-Presentation Interpretation

Professional teachers often make counterdefensive attributions for pupil performance-they tend to assume responsibility for student failure and to give the student credit for success. This study examines the possibility that teachers' counterdefensive attributions are self-presentations designed to establish favorable social identities. The study simulates an experiment by Ross et al. (1974) in which teachers were led to believe that they had been successful or unsuccessful in teaching a lesson to a pupil. Simulation observers were assigned to one of ten conditions in a 2 x 5 experiment. Observers learned that a particular teacher either failed or succeeded and offered either no explanation or one of four explanations that varied from highly or moderately defensive to moderately or highly counterdefensive. The moderately counterdefensive attributions corresponded to the mean attributions given by teachers in the Ross et al. study. Consistent with the prediction of the self-presentation analysis, observers rated the moderately counterdefensive teacher significantly more positively than the moderately or highly defensive teacher on traits relevant to professional competence as well as concern for others and overall likability.

Criteria for Effective University Teaching

It was easier a century ago than it is today to define effective teaching, and to determine criteria and means for evaluating it. Definition is also an easier task at the basic education level, where teachers are held respon sible for having students prepared to progress to the next grade level and for maintaining reasonable order in the classroom, than it is at the higher level. The century-old paradigm of the ideal in university teaching Mark Hop kins on one end of a log and a student on the other, is a luxury few colleges can emulate today. It would be too unproductive in terms of student credit hours.

External and nontraditional graduate programs

This paper deals with both external and nontraditional degrees. As used here, an external degree is an off-campus degree offered by a traditional campus-based institution. Off campus refers to the fact that all requirements for the degree can be completed without a period of residency on the central campus. External degrees are, in some sense, nontraditional, for many institutions have long required a period of residence for granting any degree. The residence requirement has been regarded as the means of insuring that a graduate student spend a period of time in a situation where he or she can interact with other graduate students and graduate faculty members and enjoy advantages of a range of facilities and resources perhaps not otherwise available. In addition to these obvious advantages, many persons have long assumed that the scholarly life not only required interaction with and support from other scholars but also sufficient time both to contemplate and concentrate so that understanding, insight, and creativity might ensue. Originally, the campus-based graduate degree symbolized, in fact, largely a life of scholarship involving seminars in which students and faculty interacted in discussing and reporting research. Over time, graduate programs have incorporated many characteristics of undergraduate education and have come to depend, in great part, upon traditional credit and class hour specifications, residency requirements, rigidly defined course and examination requirements, and availability of extensive resources in library, advising, laboratory, and learning materials. Though originally requirements were not intended necessarily to be enforced rigorously upon each student, the waiver or the ignoring of any requirement for a particular individual came to be regarded as favoritism and possibly contributing to a reduction of standards. And so, rather than risk that accusation, advisers and students themselves tended to fulfill stated requirements rather than indulge in flexibibility and individualization of programs. The time required to complete graduate degrees tended to expand far beyond that specified even if graduate student credit loads equaled those of undergraduates. The research product and examination requirements, even when clearly embedded into the program, were likely to consume much time. In particular, the unfortunate tendency to postpone research activity until completion of all other requirements also tended to produce

Calculation of productivity of laboratory-type courses

A mathematical model is presented for calculation of productivity (student credit hours per-full-time equivalent faculty) for combined lecture-laboratory-recitation courses. Analysis of computer-generated plots of productivity versus enrollment for typical combined lecture-lab courses leads to the following conclusions: (1) Productivity levels off rather than continuously increasing as enrollment increases, suggesting that large lecture sections cannot be justified. (2) The productivity increase with enrollment is not monotonic, but has a sawtooth appearance, suggesting that forbidden intervals of enrollment would maximize productivity. (3) In lab-optional courses, productivity is maximized by discouraging lab enrollment after the first lab section is filled. The overall productivity of an instructional unit such as a department is shown to be calculable as the sum of course productivities, each multiplied by a weighting factor equal to the fraction of total teaching time devoted to that course. Potential applications of the model to course and curriculum design are discussed. The effects on productivity of varying any of the parameters in the model—for example, lecture and lab contact and credit hours, lab capacity, average lecture size, and fraction of students taking the lab—can be quantitatively predicted.

Portfolio versus syllabus methods in experiential education

The “portfolio” method of assessing past experience for the award of academic credit is being nationally promoted by the Council for the Advancement of Experiential Learning (CAEL). The portfolio method has evolved since 1974 and is used in a number of colleges and universities. The project-syllabus method was developed by the author in 1969 to support experiential credit for students in sponsored experiences. Beginning about 1973, the project-syllabus method was also used to support credit for past experiences in some areas. These two methods are contrasted, comparisons made to traditional classroom methods, and strengths and weaknesses analyzed.

Survival: Playing the Student Credit Hour Game

Survival: Playing the Student Credit Hour Game

Proficiency Exams: Giving Students Credit for Skills Learned Elsewhere

Proficiency Exams: Giving Students Credit for Skills Learned Elsewhere

Maintaining enrollments in physics with declining university enrollments

The general education program in the Department of Physics at Southern Illinois University (Edwardsville) is described in considerable detail. Enrollments in courses and student credit hour production have been maintained in spite of an overall decline in university enrollments. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of general education courses for staffing in physics departments.