University Research Articles

Probation, Practitioners, and Pedagogy: Lessons Learned from Self-Study

The reward systems typically found in colleges and universities often serve as a barrier rather than a catalyst for improving teaching. As such, an increasing number of university faculty members are using their own classrooms as a site of inquiry and reflective practice (e.g. self-study) to concurrently advance their own research and teaching. This paper portrays a yearlong self-study of two former practitioners turned probationary faculty members within a college of education at a comprehensive regional university. Findings include tensions within relationships, the influence of our past positions, the engagement of students, and how scholarship requirements influence our professional lives. Finally, the authors suggest five reasons tenure-track faculty ought to consider participating in a self-study.

Research Supervision of International Doctoral Students: Perspectives of International Students in Two Comprehensive Universities in China

Aim/Purpose: This study aimed to explore the challenges faced by international doctoral students in Chinese universities and find out what international doctoral students perceive to be effective supervision. Background: As higher education internationalization is proliferating, there is a need for adjustment in every educational system. Despite the rise in the internationalization of higher education in China, very little research has been carried out on internalization at the doctoral level. Since research forms an essential part of doctoral programs, it is necessary to examine the challenges international students face as far as research supervision is concerned. Methodology: This study employed the exploratory case study research design adopting the qualitative research methodology. The study participants were 68 doctoral students from two comprehensive universities in China. A comprehensive university consists of diverse programs and students: for example, master’s programs, doctoral programs, undergraduate programs, and professional programs. Data were collected using a semi-structured interview guide. The qualitative data collected was analyzed thematically. Contribution: This study offers new insights into the research supervision of international doctoral students. This study suggests that every university hosting international students should pay attention to doctoral students’ research supervision and implement appropriate strategies such as those proposed in this study to allow international students to acquire new knowledge and skills as far as research is concerned. This study also proposed some strategies based on what doctoral students perceive to be effective supervision that universities can implement to improve research supervision. Findings: The study found that international doctoral students faced many challenges regarding research supervision. These challenges are language barriers, ineffective communication with supervisors, insufficient time to discuss with supervisors, cultural differences and adapting to a new environment, depression, and forcing students to change research topics. Moreover, this study found that the following strategies can be implemented to improve research supervision of international students: considering student’s research interests when assigning them to supervisors, the need for a specific time to meet with supervisors, providing or directing students where to get research materials, in-service training for research supervisors, and evaluating and modifying criteria for selecting supervisors. Recommendations for Practitioners: University administrators can establish informal research supervision learning communities that can enable supervisors from different universities to share cross-cultural supervision ideas and learn from one another. Moreover, it is necessary for supervisors to guide and direct students both in academics and social life to help them overcome depression; isolation, and adapt to a new environment. Recommendation for Researchers: This study was limited to two universities, and the participants were international doctoral students in English-taught programs. However, the situation may differ with international doctoral students in Chinese-taught programs. As a result, the researchers suggest that another study should be carried out focusing on international doctoral students in Chinese taught programs; their experiences may differ. Impact on Society: Doctoral students are significant contributors to the research productivity of an institution. It is, therefore, necessary to ensure that they acquire sustainable research skills to solve the complex problems affecting the education sector and society at large. Future Research: It is vital to explore international doctoral supervision in other disciplines as well as universities.

A State University’s Assessment of ACUE: Feasible Model for Evaluating the Impact of a Faculty Instruction Quality Program

State comprehensive universities often stress the development of teaching quality to improve the outcomes and retention of students, especially for recently matriculated students. These universities invest in teaching quality programs, but often lack a feasible method to examine the longitudinal impacts of these programs. The purpose of this paper is to provide a model for universities to evaluate outcomes related teaching quality programs.\r ACUE, a teaching quality program, was implemented across 30 instructors, which equated to 463 course sections. ACUE instructors were matched to non-ACUE instructors using propensity score matching (PSM) and compared on the rate of end-of-the-semester students with DFW (underperformance) standing across course sections. PSM was based on if courses were honors sections, lower level classes, size of enrollment in the sections, and if the section occurred after the completion of the program. DFW rate is a parsimonious metric that predict retention.\r The ACUE recipients had an average treatment effect of -.37, or 3.7% fewer students receiving a DFW. That translated to 171 fewer DFW grades.\r Implications include that the use of PSM and DFW rates could help universities examine longitudinal outcomes for teaching quality programs. Given the financial and personnel resources needed for program like ACUE, comprehensive regional universities could use similar methods to determine if the investment yields satisfactory returns.

Identifying factors influencing Iranian innovation ecosystem and determining their links

Economically and technologically powerful countries in today's world are those that progressed significantly in terms of scientific and technological developments. With technology and innovation come power and influence. To this end, Iran too must follow the same path towards innovation in producing science and technology. Therefore, a systemic view is required to align every component of the innovation ecosystem towards innovation based on a dynamic macro-, meso-, and micro-level strategic approach. The present study aims to identify and determine the links between components and subcomponents of innovation ecosystem. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to survey a statistical population consisting of all department chairpersons and faculty members at four Iranian universities, namely University of Tehran and Shahid Beheshti University (as comprehensive universities) and Allameh Tabatabaei University and Amir Kabir University (as technical-professional universities) where a sample was selected through stratified random sampling. Quantitative analysis was conducted using descriptive and inferential statistics; the inferential part consisted of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), structural equation modeling (SEM), and other techniques needed. The findings were analyzing in PLS using SEM combined at lower levels with first and second order CFA. Finally, components and subcomponents of innovation ecosystem were identified. CFA results indicated that support and service, business, science and technology, finance and economy, sociocultural, policymaking and planning, innovative university, government, industry, and statutory-legal components were the most effective ones influencing innovation ecosystem where “support-service” (factor loading=0.92) was the most influencing while “statutory-legal (factor loading=0.52) was the least influencing factor when it comes to innovation ecosystem. Therefore, an innovative ecosystem consists of a set of various components and factors interacting dynamically and continuously with one another and with the environment towards development of science, technology, and innovation, leading to overall growth of the ecosystem.

Modeling the industry perspective of university-industry collaborative innovation alliances: Player behavior and stability issues

Many firms find it challenging to develop innovations, evidenced by the ever-mounting number of university-industry research alliances. This study examines the strategic choices of actors who participate in collaborative innovation alliances involving partnerships between industry and universities (U-I) based on a stochastic evolutionary game model. White noise was introduced to reflect uncertainty and the stochastic interferences caused by the differences between actors. Using the Itô stochastic differential equation theory, we analyze stability issues of player behaviors in the evolution of a collaborative innovation alliance. The results illustrate that improvements in innovation efficiency can contribute to U-I collaborative innovation alliances. High knowledge complementarity appears to be unbeneficial to the stability of these alliances, and controlling knowledge spillovers may suppress free-rider problems from both sides of the game. Our study contributes to innovation research by providing a decision-making reference for the design of U-I cooperation.

A Culture of Undergraduate Research at a Diverse Public University Leads to Unprecedented Student Success

Student participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate research experiences has received national emphasis. The undergraduate research model used at a comprehensive public university supported faculty-mentored student projects across STEM and all disciplines. Between 2016 and 2019, 356 undergraduate students presented their research work annually at a campus showcase, with participation levels more than doubling over time. A rigorous study identified best practices for engaging all undergraduate majors in authentic research experiences. Results confirmed that the undergraduate research model successfully supported both traditional and minority populations. At the same time, 24 percent more STEM-related majors maintained an overall 0.13 higher first-year GPA than the general population of undergraduates. In addition, campus engagement was 42 percent higher for the showcase participants.

Cognitive and Affective Influences on Managerial Creativity

Managerial skills and being Creative are two abilities that individually and together in the form of managerial creativity became very pivotal and its importance was realised more than ever before as once-working solutions proved futile during COVID times. Managerial creativity is influenced by the learned behaviour resulting from socio-cultural influences and the belief system about the outcome contingency emerging from such learned behaviour. Formal education responsible for shaping the learned behaviour influencing the gender roles and belief system or locus of control may independently or in interaction become crucial for developing the much-needed ability of managerial creativity. There is paucity of researches exploring this aspect hence this paper explores the influences of the Stream of study, Gender and their interaction, influence of the Stream of study, Locus of Control and their interaction on managerial creativity. The sample of 288 Higher Education male and female students belonging to management, education and science streams was selected from colleges situated in Indore and the University Teaching Departments of D.A.V.V. using a stratified sampling technique. The tools used were the locus of control scale developed by Rotter and the managerial creativity Test developed and standardised by the researcher. Data were analysed using Two Way Analysis of Variance. The findings show managerial creativity was independent of the interaction between the stream of study and locus of control, whereas the stream of study and gender individually and in interaction significantly influenced managerial creativity. The implications of the findings have been discussed.

Music Cultivation in Art Education of Comprehensive University

Music Cultivation in Art Education of Comprehensive University

Comparison Research of Hotspots and Trends of Learning Analytics from 2011-2021: A Visualization Analysis Based on CiteSpace

With the development of big data and social informatization, learning analytics became a popular topic in education and received more and more attention from scholars. In order to explore the similarities and differences of learning analytics between home and abroad, CiteSpace was used to compare and analyze 178 articles from the CNKI database and 1056 articles from the WOS database from 2011 to 2021. Hotspots, trends, frontiers of domestic and foreign research in learning analytics were visually analyzed. The findings show that: 1) The number of international publications was higher than that of Chinese publications from 2011 to 2021; 2) While more teacher education universities focus on the field of learning analytics in China, comprehensive universities pay more attention to the topic from the result of international publications. 3) Online learning is a key research area for learning analytics research, both in China and in other countries. 4) The research frontier of learning analytics in China mainly focused on learning prediction, while the research frontier in the international articles mainly focused on “educational data mining”, “big data”, and “the design of learning environments and tools”. The analysis captures the hotspots, trends, frontiers in the field of learning analytics and provides a reference for further research by scholars at home and abroad.

Sending our faculty to MaRS: The Materials Request System

The Salisbury University (SU) Libraries developed a hosted library materials ordering system in 2018 and has begun to survey discipline faculty users to determine enhancements that they recommend and are possible to enact. Now, before we go any further, we would like to point out that I, James Parrigin, am not in a collection management or library technology unit. I am SU Libraries’ coordinator of library instruction. At our mid-size, public, regional comprehensive university of approximately eight thousand FTE and more than four hundred full-time faculty, eight faculty librarians liaise with forty academic schools and programs. I am the subject librarian to the communication, English, and modern languages departments. Like my librarian colleagues, I provide several kinds of support including information literacy instruction one-shots, personal research consultations for students and faculty, research guide creation, course-embedded research support in the Canvas learning management system, and associated development of learning objects ranging from handouts to learning tutorials.

From Shared Governance to Shared Leadership: Our COVID Response to Faculty Evaluation, Support, and Advancement

As a state comprehensive university in a small, midwestern metropolitan area, “Students First” is more than a slogan. The preamble to our Faculty Constitution and our University’s mission statement both specify that students and their flourishing are the justification for our institution’s existence. We have learned, however, that a precondition to robust attention to students’ well-being is parallel attention to the well-being and development of our faculty. This article chronicles the principles and practices by which our shared leadership team responded to unique challenges presented by the COVID crisis and its ripple effects. A closing theme acknowledges that COVID revealed latent, pre-existing gaps in our care for faculty and students as well as introducing new and temporary challenges, and that some of our resulting solutions may require institutionalization as permanent fixtures.

Feasibility and Utility of a Virtual Reality Laboratory Exercise in an Undergraduate Neuroscience Course.

To improve undergraduate students' understanding of neuroanatomy and structure, we leveraged existing virtual reality infrastructure to create a novel dissection assignment in an undergraduate neuroscience course. Students completed a virtual reality dissection of the central nervous system that augmented status quo instruction in lecture and textbook format. We found that such an assignment is feasible at a regional comprehensive university with intrauniversity partnerships that are mutually beneficial. Results showed positive engagement from students and feasibility of incorporating virtual reality in undergraduate neuroscience courses.

Community and Invisible Work at the Szkéné Collective: Methodological Questions on Researching Amateur Theatres during the 1960s and 1970s

The essay aims at highlighting the methodological challenges of researching amateur theatres under Hungarian state socialism, including the accessibility of documents in official archives, leading and sometimes misleading narratives of historiography, and the emerging role of oral history interviews and personal collections. Focusing on the history of the university theatre at Budapest University of Technology, namely, the Szkéné Collective, the case study investigates the dynamics of invisible work, collective creation, and the role of female participants between 1962 and 1973. In order to acknowledge the role of community in amateur theatre practices, it is essential to readdress the hierarchical understanding of a collective, and search for the usually hidden stories of shared creativity and labour.

Preparation of Methyl 6,7-Dimethoxy-1,2,3,4-Tetrahydroisoquinoline-3-Carboxylate: A Comprehensive College Medicinal Chemistry Experiment

Preparation of Methyl 6,7-Dimethoxy-1,2,3,4-Tetrahydroisoquinoline-3-Carboxylate: A Comprehensive College Medicinal Chemistry Experiment

Comparative Analysis of Dance Education and Teaching between Colleges and Universities in China and South Korea — Using Zhaoqing University in China and Gyeongsang National University in South Korea as Examples

With the increase in demand for art education and art culture, dance education at universities is being paid more and more attention. At present, in addition to colleges and universities majoring in dance, many comprehensive colleges and universities have quickly incorporated dance majors into their curricula, which has promoted the development of dance as a discipline, but also produced many problems. Zhaoqing University and Gyeongsang National University are two local comprehensive universities offering dance majors in China and South Korea. This paper compares the dance education and teaching levels of the two universities from the perspective of professional development history, discipline construction and education and teaching courses. It also analyzes existing problems, and proposes that we should continuously improve the training programs for dance students and encourage professional development of dance teachers, while encouraging the construction of hardware facilities and paying attention to the educational role of Folk Dance, so as to further improve the dance education and teaching quality of local comprehensive colleges and universities.

Analisis Bentuk Kewirausahaan Mahasiswa pada Revolusi Industri 4.0 di Perguruan Tinggi Kota Pekanbaru

The 4.0 industrial revolution made students more creative in many entrepreneurship forms. This study aims to determine how students are interested in entrepreneurship and find out the forms of entrepreneurship that are of interest to students at tertiary institutions in Riau province. 150 students from 3 tertiary institutions in Pekanbaru, namely Sultan Syarif Kasim Riau State Islamic University (UIN Suska Riau), Riau University (UR) and Riau Islamic University (UIR) became participants in this study. The research instrument in the form of a questionnaire was filled out by students and then analyzed to see the percentage of student interest and the forms of entrepreneurship they had. The results showed that students in 3 colleges in the city of Pekanbaru have an interest in entrepreneurship by utilizing the 4.0 industrial revolution. They utilize information technology in terms of ease of internet access with the platform of social media accounts they have in entrepreneurship. Then, the form of student entrepreneurial activities is engaged in online trading business, Fintech (Finance Technology), Cloud hosting and On-Demand service (Services).

Student Parents and HIPs: Missing Out on High-Impact Practices

High Impact Practices (HIPs) have become a flashpoint of efforts to create transformative higher education experiences that lead not only to greater success while in college but also result in life-long educational and personal benefits. In this article, we identify a growing category of students who are systematically excluded from engaging in many types of HIPs: student parents. Based on a survey of both student parents and non-parents at a regional comprehensive public university in the upper Midwest, we demonstrate, through both qualitative and quantitative data, the consistent barriers that student parents face in accessing HIPs as well as the self-help strategies and campus resources they employ to mitigate these challenges. We conclude by discussing implications and offering recommendations on both the institutional and individual levels designed to change the current status quo. On a theoretical level, the article brings together concerns and insights of two types of scholarship: higher education literature on HIPs and the research on equity and inclusion in higher education, especially advocacy on behalf of student parents. We find that previous studies of HIPs did not discuss this demographic, and it remains underserved in the new educational efforts to provide all students with richer and more impactful learning experiences.

Constellations of Support: A Community Development Model

This article describes the rationale, development process, and initial artifacts and outcomes of a faculty support (a.k.a. mentoring) model developed for a specific academic context: a College of Education at a Southeastern comprehensive public university. The purposes of this article are to (1) describe the research and theoretical models that guided the development of the program; (2) provide a research-based rationale for a context-based community development model of faculty support; (3) propose a set of principles for a context-based developmental community model of faculty support; (4) describe the process for developing a community development mentoring model for faculty at all career levels; and (5) offer artifacts, tools, and activities that faculty developers and institutions may use or adapt for their own context-based communities of support.

KAJIAN PERAN UPT PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS SEBELAS MARET SURAKARTA DALAM PEMBERDAYAAN LITERASI MASYARAKAT DI SEKITAR KAMPUS SEBAGAI UPAYA MENDUKUNG TRI DHARMA PERGURUAN TINGGI

Libraries have a role to foster and develop a literacy culture. The library is one of the information centers because it provides many books and knowledge needed as scientific references. The existence of the Sebelas Maret University (UNS) campus is inseparable from the surrounding community. So it is hoped that there will be a symbiotic mutualism (mutual benefit) between the academic community of the UNS campus, especially the UPT Library of UNS Surakarta and the surrounding community. This study aims to examine the role of UPT Sebelas Maret University (UNS) Surakarta Library in empowering the literacy of the community around the campus. Libraries have an important role as a center for knowledge resources, to support the process of education, research and community service, including the role of libraries to participate in developing the literacy of the community around campus. This research was conducted in June 2021 using quantitative and qualitative research methods with purposive sampling as the source of information. The sample population in this study were people directly adjacent to the UNS campus, namely Jebres, Pucangsawit and Mojosongo Villages, Jebres District, Surakarta City, Central Java, where the population sample of each village was taken intentionally (purposive sampling) as many as 15 people from each village, so there were as many as 15 people from each village. 45 respondents. From this research, it can be seen that the role of UPT Sebelas Maret University Library (UNS) Surakarta in empowering the literacy of the community around the campus is still quite low. It is proven by the data that only 35.6% of the total respondents have felt their role. The role of the UPT for the UNS library still needs to be improved so that it can touch the layers of society around the UNS campus. With a higher role for the community, it is hoped that it can foster interest and reading culture for the community. In addition, the community also hopes that the role of the UNS Library UPT can increase knowledge and community literacy.

There is more than what meets the eye: university preparation for the socio-economic impact requirement in research assessment exercise 2020 in Hong Kong

PurposeThis paper aims to examine how Hong Kong universities have responded to a newly included assessment element of socio-economic impact in a government-implemented research evaluation system – Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2020 – within the context of tightening audits and forceful knowledge economy objectives.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reports an institutional case study of the institutional-level response to the RAE 2020 impact requirement at a top-ranked comprehensive university in Hong Kong. A qualitative inquiry approach was adopted. The data sources mainly include university documents related to the RAE 2020 socio-economic impact policy, interview data with nine RAE-eligible academics at the case university, documents on the RAE exercises issued by the University Grants Committee (UGC) and field notes taken during the RAE information sessions.FindingsThe institutionalisation process of the RAE socio-economic impact agenda could be considered as establishing an indicator-oriented reward and recognition regime for knowledge transfer and knowledge exchange (KT/KE). Overall, two major institutional strategies were identified in operating the RAE 2020 impact agenda at the case university: (1) launching various policy initiatives: driven by the RAE-defined socio-economic impact; (2) incorporating socio-economic impact into faculty evaluation: premised upon the 16 KT performance indicators laid down by the UGC.Originality/valueThis article adds to the theoretical debate on the local reproduction of the global in studies of neoliberalism in higher education by describing a Hong Kong case study, supported by empirical data, of an actual university's responses to the newly included impact requirement in RAE 2020. More specifically, this study reveals that (1) the policy for socio-economic impact might be designed in a neutral or even benevolent manner, but has taken on a neoliberal and managerial dimension in its actual implementation; and (2) the neoliberal discourse underpinning the university's operation can be accounted for and explicated by the local factors embedded in the specific academic environment.