Online Assessment and Instruction Using Learning Maps

Online assessment, in its infancy, is likely to facilitate a variety of innovations in both formative and summative assessment. This chapter focuses on the potential of online assessment to accelerate learning via effective links to instruction. A case is made that detailed learning maps of academic progress are especially conducive to effective skill and concept diagnosis and prescriptive learning, contributing construct validity and precision to assessment results and coherence to instructional interventions. Item adaptive testing using learning maps and the paradigm of intelligent agents is discussed in the context of a vision of a seamless integration of assessment and instruction. The chapter is primarily speculative rather than technical.

Knowledge Management Trends

While the pressure of public accountability has placed increasing pressure on higher education institutions to provide information regarding critical outcomes, this chapter describes how knowledge management (KM) can be used by educational institutions to gain a more comprehensive, integrative, and reflexive understanding of the impact of information on their organizations. The practice of KM, initially derived from theory and practice in the business sector, has typically been used to address isolated data and information transfer, rather than actual systemwide change. However, higher education institutions should not simply appropriate KM strategies and practices as they have appeared in the business sector. Instead, higher education institutions should use KM to focus on long-term, organization-wide strategies.

The Online Discussion and Student Success in Web-Based Education

This article examines the performance of students in a Web-based corporate finance course and how the technologies associated with communication on the Internet can enhance student learning. The article provides statistical evidence that documents that the online discussion board in a Web-based course can significantly enhance the learning process even in a quantitative course such as corporate finance. The results show that ex ante predictors of student performance that had been found useful in predicting student success in face-to-face classes also had significant predictive power for exam performance in the online course. However, these predictors did not have predictive power for participation in the online discussion. Yet, online participation and exam performance were highly correlated. This suggests that the use of the online discussion board technology by the students enhanced the performance of students who otherwise would not have performed as well without the discussion.

Gender Differences in Education and Training in the IT Workforce

Historically, women have had lower levels of educational attainment (Freeman, 2004; NCES, 1999), which in turn could negatively affect their opportunities in the labor market. However, in the past decade, this has changed dramatically. In general, more women have completed college, and more women have received bachelor’s and master’s degrees than men. Only in the highest level of education (PhD), men hold more degrees than women (NCES, 1999, 2002). In a recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Freeman (2004) presents an overview of the latest developments with regard to gender differences in educational attainment. Historically, females have tended to account for the majority of bachelor’s degrees in fields that often lead to lower paying occupations, such as education and health professions, while males have typically predominated in higher paying fields, such as computer science and engineering. While some of these disparities persist, many changes have occurred since the 1970s. Certain fields in which men received the majority of degrees in the 1970s, such as social sciences, history, psychology, biological sciences/life sciences, and business management and administrative services, attained relative gender parity or were disproportionately female by 2001. While other fields, such as computer and information sciences, physical sciences and science technologies, and engineering, continue to have a larger proportion of males, the percentages of females majoring in those fields is increasing (Freeman, 2004). Between 1970 and 2001, the percentages of master’s, doctoral and first-professional degrees earned by females increased substantially in many fields. However, advanced degrees conferred still tend to follow traditional patterns, with women accounting for the majority of master’s and doctor’s degree recipients in education and health, and men accounting for the majority of recipients in computer and information sciences and engineering. Higher levels of educational attainment are associated with certain labor market outcomes, such as higher labor force participation rates, higher rates of employment, and higher earnings (Freeman, 2004). A study by Igbaria, Parasuraman and Greenhaus (1997) looked at gender differences in the information technology (IT) work force with regard to education and experience, career history and attainments and career orientation. The results showed significant differences in educational attainment. A larger percentage of female IT employees in the study ended their formal education after attaining a bachelor’s degree.

Technology-Mediated Progressive Inquiry in Higher Education

In higher education, students are often asked to demonstrate critical thinking, academic literacy (Geisler, 1994), expert-like use of knowledge, and creation of knowledge artifacts without ever having been guided or scaffolded in learning the relevant skills. Too frequently, universities teach the content, and it is assumed that the metaskills of taking part in expert-like activities are somehow acquired along the way. Several researchers have proposed that in order to facilitate higher level processes of inquiry in education, cultures of education and schooling should more closely correspond to cultures of scientific inquiry (Carey & Smith, 1995; Perkins, Crismond, Simmons & Under, 1995). Points of correspondence include contributing to collaborative processes of asking questions, producing theories and explanations, and using information sources critically to deepen one’s own conceptual understanding. In this way, students can adopt scientific ways of thinking and practices of producing new knowledge, not just exploit and assimilate given knowledge.

Quality Assurance and Online Higher Education

This is an urgently needed topic. It is the author’s conviction that, currently, there are no 21st century schools and, even worse, there is no substantive and widely held vision about what such schools should look like, and what the role and competencies of teachers in those schools should be. So, the tendency of most educators writing about needed 21st century teaching competencies will be to pretty much “rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.” Most will be driven by another equally repugnant cliché, “Technology is only a tool,” and they will try to determine how this misunderstood tool can best enhance out-of-date and fast-aging approaches to K-12 curriculum, instruction, and assessment. This is not to say that the wonderful array of traditional teaching competencies and skills that have enabled teachers to have generally done such an impressive job of teaching our children over the last century will cease to be important. The ability of teachers to understand and connect with students; to impart considerable knowledge and wisdom about their subject; to provide them with good adult role models; to cultivate their motivation for learning; to encourage their sensitivity toward, and appreciation of, individual and cultural differences; to prepare them for post-secondary education and/or the world of work; and even, to sometimes be “the sage on the stage,” will remain critical competencies as long as there is a teaching profession. But just as technology has dramatically transformed society, the way we work, the way we live, even the way we think about things, schools must be dramatically transformed in the way they work, in the way content is processed, and maybe most importantly, in the way teachers teach and students learn.

Distance Learning as Commercializing Higher Education

Since computer-based learning can involve partnerships with for-profit organizations, be viewed as a route to increased revenue, and potentially be used to reduce labor expenses, it is naturally tied to what is often described as the commercialization of higher education, or what Slaughter and Leslie (1997) term “academic capitalism.”

Peer Coaching and Reflective Practice in Authentic Business Contexts

The development of managerial expertise is a combination of acquiring further knowledge and integrating it with past experience and beliefs. To do so in isolation limits the potential for positive outcomes in one’s management development. Peer coaching is one experiential learning method that can be used to enhance the depth of learning in managerial education. In this chapter, the experiences of 43 students who participated in a peer-coaching program as part of their post-graduate management education are revealed. Powerful learning effects are reported as well as characteristics of successful peer-coaching relationships.

Methodologies to Determine Class Sizes for Fair Faculty Work Load in Web Courses

This paper presents two modeling approaches that can be used to determine student class sizes for instructors who teach Web-based courses. The methodologies act to provide assurance to faculty that they will not have to compromise quality of instruction when teaching a Web course, nor have to sacrifice time away from research or service activities to develop and manage a Web course. These methodologies will also help department chairs plan student class size limitations to achieve “fairness” in asking instructors to adopt and teach Web courses at their universities. The models are applied to actual Web course experience at a university to demonstrate their practicality. Results of the application revealed faculty processing efficiencies that are inherent in offering Web-based courses and efficacy of the modeling approach.

Operational Success in Distance Education

The education industry is being transformed by the ever-growing presence of distance education. Distance education has several market drivers that make educators, colleges and businesses take a serious look at how to implement programs and courses. This interest is driving a huge investment without a set direction.