Language Skills Training through Mobile Apps

With the advancement in technological tools and devices, language teachers can foster learning of communication skills through mobile devices. There is a growing interest among students to use the latest gadgets for getting connected with their peers. It must be admitted that the usage of these devices would bring in a real revolution in the teaching and learning process. It has been widely accepted that mobile learning promotes students' active participation. Teachers also now understand that one of their responsibilities is to create more opportunities to make their students practice language skills. Although numerous researches has been done in the field of English Language Teaching in India, research on mobile assisted language learning is still in an infancy stage. In this chapter, the author discusses the possibility of offering training through mobile apps, based on research she conducted recently.

Academic Advising and Student Persistence

Academic advising is at the forefront of conversations in higher education (Drake, 2011). The mentoring relationship that occurs between students and advisors can be beneficial for both students and institutions, yet academic advising programs may not offer a quality mentoring relationship able to impact student success. When properly constructed, quality academic advising can have a positive impact on a student's undergraduate experience, as well as directly connecting to student persistence. If not constructed properly, the adverse reaction on student success may occur, and particularly can negatively impact student retention. The following chapter will explore quality academic advising, the means by which quality academic advising can be provided, the connection of quality academic advising to student persistence and methods to assess the academic advising process.

The Role of Social Media in the Globalized World of Education

Social media has transformed the way that people communicate during the 21st century. This occurrence has transformed society in a globalized world by impacting social interactions, financial institutions and ways of completing transactions, ways of communicating as well as the educational sector. This chapter will introduce the audience/reader to definitions/terms such as communication, media, social media and globalization while discussing the role of social media in a globalized world. In addition, an exploratory discussion of social media and education will be established.

An Individualized Approach to Student Transition

This chapter discusses the creation of a Success Coaching program at a midsized, urban research institution in the South. The purpose of this chapter is to offer a review of current literature, discuss the implementation, successes, and challenges of establishing a coaching program at a mid-sized institution in the South, review assessment data, and finally, conclude with implications and thoughts for moving forward. It is the authors' hope that you find this chapter to be beneficial to establishing your own success coaching model on your respective campus.

Purposeful Course Scheduling

Almost half of undergraduate students in the United States enroll in community colleges, unfortunately community colleges face a harsh reality of low completion and graduation rates. Delgado Community College in New Orleans is the largest community college in Louisiana serving over 25,000 students annually. There are numerous reasons for the low completion rates for community colleges that include financial, family, academic, scheduling conflicts and lack of resources contribute to the challenge of improving program completion. The West Bank campus of Delgado established an innovative and comprehensive scheduling program designed to significantly increase the number of students enrolled and to increase student progression in specific degree programs. Purposeful course scheduling combines 1) career alignment through academic advising, 2) course sequences and rotation, and 3) blocking time for specific types of courses.

Personal and Professional Perceptions

This chapter is focused on the Eynesbury Institute of Business and Technology's (EIBT) Diploma of Business pathway, as business-related programs are most common in the Australian pre-university Higher Education (HE) sector. EIBT's diplomas are deemed equivalent to the first-year of the corresponding Bachelor's degree at the partner university for ‘international' students who did not reach direct entry requirements due to their English language proficiency and/or previous academic results. While many sessional academic staff work cross-institutionally, there are few occasions for associating with fellow EIBT colleagues on a personal level and equally few to learn about the professional experiences that have contributed to their pathway teaching philosophy and/or pedagogical practice(s). The author-researchers decided to undertake a period of self-reflection and composed their own narratives to story the notable differences between teaching in a pathway school compared with mainstream university.

Prior Learning Assessment

The average time taken to earn an American four-year degree is 55 months, with only 40% of students graduating on time. Increased time to graduate, failure to complete degrees, spiraling tuition costs, and daunting graduate debt have all focused minds on finding ways of accelerating the degree-granting process without eroding its quality. One solution is using Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) to generate college-level credits from learning that has taken place outside the academy. PLA can range from the acceptance of standardized examinations results to the determination of college-level equivalencies by evaluating the student's informal learning. This chapter explores different forms of PLA and suggests that more extensive forms of PLA provide considerable benefits, not only in generating credits but in supporting, integrating, and potentially transforming learning experiences. The chapter discusses the multiple benefits of PLA and explains how it might be implemented to benefit students, faculty, and institution.

Encouraging Continuing Professional Development and Teacher Professional Development in Global Education

This chapter aims to encourage the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and Teacher Professional Development (TPD) in global education, thus explaining the overviews of professional development, CPD and TPD; TPD and teacher education; technologies for TPD; TPD, classroom dialogue and higher-order learning; the significance of CPD in global education, and the significance of TPD in global education. The attainment of CPD and TPD is required in the educational institutions in order to serve school administrators and students, increase educational performance, sustain competitiveness, and fulfill expected accomplishment in global education. Therefore, it is urgent for educational institutions to encourage their CPD and TPD and develop a strategic plan to regularly check their practical advancements in the educational institutions. The chapter argues that encouraging CPD and TPD has the potential to improve educational performance and reach strategic goals in global education.

Exploring Inter-Linkages between Cultural Intelligence and Student Satisfaction

Universities are not limited to national / regional boundaries and have students from different nations across the globe. Such culturally diverse students could sometimes pose a challenge for university top management. Measuring student's satisfaction and cultural intelligence is an important task which needs to be done by university officials. Current study, thus, aims to measure the cultural intelligence as well as student satisfaction of students studying in a large private University, Lovely Professional University situated in Punjab (India). Spread across 600+ acres of land, this university is the largest university in India in terms of people residing on-campus and hostel population for any university in Asia. Emphasis is then laid on studying the impact of cultural intelligence on student satisfaction in the later section of the manuscript. Current study also focuses on exploring the Nationality and Gender differences across the select constructs.

Student Perceptions of Value and the Impact on Curriculum Design

This research adopts a case study approach to interrogate key questions regarding how curriculum design, assessment and delivery impacts on student perceptions of overall value relative to their job readiness. The initial research question to be answered in this study is how can shifts in curriculum design and assessment affect student perceptions of value? The method uses a case study and adapts Brookfield's multiple source approach, which enables the examination of the case study from multiple perspectives. The objective of the case study is to draw out the implications for understandings of student perceptions of value and how curriculum design can enhance this sense of value.