Student Acceptance of a Civic Engagement Graduation Requirement in an Urban Community College

Civic engagement is an essential part of a democratic society, though it has recently tended toward adversarial political conflict. Although many college administrators favor encouraging or requiring student civic engagement, little is known about whether students themselves would support this, and how student characteristics are related to acceptance. Past and present civic activities of 2,327 students at a large, very diverse urban community college were surveyed using the newly developed KCC Civic Engagement Scale. Results showed strong agreement that the college had a responsibility to develop civically engaged students, but that the term “civic engagement” is unclear to many. Principal components analysis revealed four distinct factors: general non-political civic engagement, and low-effort, high-effort, and unconventional political activities. Level of student participation in various activities is primarily determined by a student's time availability and secondarily by a complex assortment of personal characteristics, including residency status.

Exploring ESL Students’ Current Competency and Needs in Academic Writing Skills at University

Mastering academic writing is one of the skills to be acquired by all university students. Ability to master academic writing skills enables university students to be more competent in presenting ideas and information related to their field. Inability to master required skills in academic writing will consequently impact the students’ performance in fulfilling the graduation requirement. Generally, students in higher learning institutions (HLIs) are constantly struggling with unfamiliar styles and mechanisms in academic writing. The current situation subsequently resulted students’ incompetency in presenting their ideas and discussion. In this study, the researchers aim to discover the students’ expectation for an academic writing skills course and their current competency academic writing skills. An adapted questionnaire from Choo (1998) was used as the main instrument in this study to 65 undergraduate TESL students in public higher learning institution (HLI) in Malaysia. Analysis of data was done quantitatively using statistical software. Results from the analyses revealed that more than half of the respondents (76.9%) agreed that academic writing skills are regarded as complex skills to be acquired. In addition, the results also yielded that almost half of the respondents (46.2%) believed that literature review section is the most difficult section in an academic paper. Results from this study will be able to guide future researchers and educators in producing more teaching and learning related to academic writing mastery.

Research on Evaluation and Analysis Model of Graduation Attributes Attainment

This article reveals a meta-analysis on the evaluation of the graduation attributes attainment for 22 domestic and foreign universities. Common problems can be concluded into the following four aspects: 1. Compared with the technical graduation requirement index points, the descriptions of non-technical index points were vague, and the measurability was generally poor. 2. The weight setting between different courses supporting the same index point was generally subjective. 3. According to the “Wooden Barrel Short Board Principle,” single use of the lowest value of the index points usually covered up the attainment of other index points of the similar graduation requirement. 4. The lack of information support in each section of the graduation attributes evaluation could result in heavy workload, low efficiency and weak teacher initiative. Based on the 12-year experience of engineering educational reformation in Dalian Neusoft University of Information (DNUI), this article proposes an evaluation and analysis model of graduation attributes attainment, on the basis of TOPCARES, supplemented by scientific and reasonable calculation methods and evaluation strategies. By analyzing the problems, discussing the optimization method and demonstrating the calculation, it is proved that the model can effectively solve the above common problems.

Using Rasch analysis for determining the cut score of a computer science placement exam

A key strategy for broadening computer science participation in the Chicago Public Schools has been the enactment of a yearlong computer science course as a high school graduation requirement. The Exploring Computer Science (ECS) curriculum and professional development program serves as a core foundation for supporting policy enactment. However, students with prior background in computer science might find the course repetitive. This paper reports on district efforts to develop a placement exam for students to take an advanced computer science course in lieu of the introductory computer science course. The placement exam tasks were modeled after the ECS exam tasks but with higher difficulty. We used Rasch modeling to equate the placement exam tasks to the ECS exams and to establish a cut score for passing the placement exam.

Introduction to Information Literacy: An Online Library Media Course for High School Students

During the academic year 2007-2008, a hybrid online course was piloted at Lakeview High School in Battle Creek, Michigan. The course was created in response to a newly mandated Michigan Department of Education online learning graduation requirement. Blackboard Learning Management System was utilized for instruction. The curricular focus was information literacy. Students included 11th and 12th graders who also gained real world library work experience. In the new online learning environment, library media specialists are creating an infrastructure to support the dynamic and evolving ways that students and teachers use information resources.

Sistem Pendukung Keputusan Pemilihan Topik Skripsi Program Studi Teknik Informatika Menggunakan Simple Additive Weighting (SAW)

The Department of Informatics at STMIK Pelita Nusantara is one of the departments at private universities that focuses on the science of information technology. Thesis problems in this department must also be resolved immediately, one of which is a system that utilizes information technology. It is difficult for students to determine the choice of thesis topic to be prepared as a graduation requirement. There are 7 criteria used, namely: Academic Value, Historical Project, Research Activeness, Training, Interests, Value of Practice and Research Place. Research data obtained from STMIK Pelita Nusantara applied the SAW (Simple Additive Weighting) method using Visual Basic Net 2010 with Mysql Database. From the ranking it shows that the highest result is alternative A1 where in this example the thesis topic chosen is Expert System.

The Design of the College English Curriculum from the Perspective of International Engineering Education Accreditation—A Case Study from the Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology

A scientific curriculum system is of vital importance for an institution’s professional accreditation. This paper seeks to improve the previous College English curriculum by resolving certain recalcitrant problems impeding both teaching and learning; furthermore, it takes into account the demands of international society. By embracing an outcome-based, student-centered approach for International Engineering education accreditation, the paper emphasizes teaching targets of a College English curriculum for future engineers based on knowledge, capacity and quality. In addition, it provides a graduation requirement index matrix and, a differentiated curriculum system, which specifies a clear relationship between the system and students’ outcomes. Finally, four characteristics of the system are elaborated: compulsory courses and optional courses are compared; English for General Purpose (EGP) and English for Special Purpose (ESP) are correlated; classroom teaching and extracurricular context are integrated; and formative assessment and summative assessment are combined.

Redesigning a “Writing for Chemists” Course Using Specifications Grading

The Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) instituted an upper-division “Writing for Chemists” course in fall 2017 that fulfills part of UCI’s writing graduation requirement. During the 2019-2020 school year, we re-designed the course using a specifications grading system with the following goals: 1) to teach students how to develop their own writing practice, while mastering chemistry discipline-specific writing conventions, 2) to provide students with frequent and constructive instructor and teaching assistant (TA) feedback by providing ample revision opportunities, 3) to increase transparency in how students can achieve course SLOs, and 4) to provide students with consistent and clear assessment rubrics. This specifications grading approach uses a high-pass, low-pass, unsatisfactory system predicated on whether students meet a certain number of criteria for each assignment. Achievement of Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) was assessed using criteria instead of points so that instructors and students could more objectively measure student learning. Standardized rubrics and a student grade tracker helped students understand the relationship between meeting criteria, achieving SLOs, and earning grades. Students completed surveys at the end of the course to determine if their writing habits and attitudes towards writing changed. After the course, students self-reported increased propensities to pre-write and edit, and several students mentioned that they appreciated the transparency of the specifications rubrics and the control the specifications system gave them over their grades.

Redesigning a “Writing for Chemists” Course Using Specifications Grading

The Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) instituted an upper-division “Writing for Chemists” course in fall 2017 that fulfills part of UCI’s writing graduation requirement. During the 2019-2020 school year, we re-designed the course using a specifications grading system with the following goals: 1) to teach students how to develop their own writing practice, while mastering chemistry discipline-specific writing conventions, 2) to provide students with frequent and constructive instructor and teaching assistant (TA) feedback by providing ample revision opportunities, 3) to increase transparency in how students can achieve course SLOs, and 4) to provide students with consistent and clear assessment rubrics. This specifications grading approach uses a high-pass, low-pass, unsatisfactory system predicated on whether students meet a certain number of criteria for each assignment. Achievement of Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) was assessed using criteria instead of points so that instructors and students could more objectively measure student learning. Standardized rubrics and a student grade tracker helped students understand the relationship between meeting criteria, achieving SLOs, and earning grades. Students completed surveys at the end of the course to determine if their writing habits and attitudes towards writing changed. After the course, students self-reported increased propensities to pre-write and edit, and several students mentioned that they appreciated the transparency of the specifications rubrics and the control the specifications system gave them over their grades.

ICT AS A TOOL FOR REDUCING ANXIETY IN PRE-SERVICE FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ PRACTICUM

Pre-service teachers who have grown up with ICT all around them are considered to be digitally literate. In this case, they are supposed to be proficient in their use of ICT for learning and teaching. This article explores ICT as the factor that influences pre-service teachers’ anxiety. Additionally, it aims at determining the role of ICT in reducing the level of pre-service foreign language teachers’ anxiety during their teaching activities. Anxiety is considered to have a powerful impact on people’s everyday life and on learning and teaching process in particular.The research tools were close-ended questionnaires filled by the respondents.The first one was used to measure pre-service teachers’ anxiety scale in different everyday life situations. The second questionnaire was based on the authors’ socio-psychological experiment, aiming at revealing the influence of ICT on pre-service teachers’ anxiety during their teaching practicum. The study was carried out with 120 pre-service EFL teachers studying at Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University and Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University who completed their teaching practicum as part of their graduation requirement at the Departments of Foreign Languages.The data obtained from the questionnaires were grouped into two main categories: the general level of students’ anxiety and the anxiety connected with using ICT in teaching English. The latter was categorized into “Very positive”, “Positive” and “Negative” groups based on pre-service teachers’ experience gained during their teaching practicum. ICT use was found to be positively and significantly related to reducing teachers’ level of anxiety. The results of the research proved that the students who did the ICT-related course as a part of their curriculum felt more confident while conducting classes and their level of anxiety was reduced while using modern information technologies.