Search results for "higher education."
showing 10 items of 1317 documents
Providing assessment feedback to pre-service teachers : a study of examiners’ comments
2020
This article reports a study of written feedback comments in the context of teacher education. While feedback is believed to have the potential to improve students’ learning, the provision will res...
The internationality imperative in academia. The ascent of internationality as an academic virtue
2017
ABSTRACTThe paper investigates internationality as an academic virtue that is highly relevant for research biographies. The discursive trajectory of this virtue is assessed by comparing ascriptions of internationality in 216 academic obituaries from the US, UK and Germany, from physics, sociology and history, and from the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s. Our analysis reveals that internationality as a virtue is more prevalent in German than in US obituaries, that it plays a greater role in physics than in history obituaries, and that, independent from national and disciplinary contexts, the ascription of internationality increases over time. The results are relevant for research on academic values a…
The Role of Perceived Relevance and Attention in Teachers’ Attitude and Intention to Use Educational Video Games
2017
Educational video games (EVGs) are becoming a trending topic in education as a new teaching methodology which can help teachers to increase students’ attention and engagement during the learning process. Nevertheless, despite an increasing academic interest in EVGs little research has been devoted to delve into teacher’s beliefs affecting their attitude towards EVGs and how these beliefs also affect their intention to use EVGs in their courses. Using Keller’s ARCS model as a theoretical framework, the role of perceived relevance and attention in teachers’ attitude and intention to use EVGs is analyzed. To do so a research model is tested using a sample of 312 Higher Education teachers via s…
Looking towards the Future of Language Assessment: Usability of Tablet PCs in Language Testing
2016
[EN] This research addresses the change in how the Spanish University Entrance Examination can be delivered in the future. There is a wide acknowledgement that computer tests are very demanding for the delivering institutions which makes computer language testing difficult to implement. However, the use of tablet PCs can facilitate the delivery at even lower cost than the regular computer based language testing. 183 students in their last year of high school took a computer based language test which included reading, writing, listening and speaking. The research aspects were 1) whether they feel at ease with the tablet PC exam; 2) if they felt that visual aspects were accessible and 3) whet…
Beyond the “student” position: Pursuing agency by drawing on learners’ life-worlds on an EAP course
2018
AbstractIn today’s world, individuals should be able to maintain their expertise amidst constant changes. Thus, this type of agency should be supported in higher education. One approach for a teacher-researcher to examine supporting agency and how it manifests itself in higher education courses is through the learning design. In this article, learning design is defined as the planned course path and the way in which that path is enacted in the course in a real-life setting. Thus, the learning design of a blended EAP course is examined, with a focus on the course assignments in two different groups in two consecutive years. Different types of agency were assumed through the tasks and those t…
University language policies : How does Finnish constitutional bilingualism meet the needs for internationalisation in English?
2018
In this article, we discuss the position of Finnish constitutional bilingualism in higher education in the context of internationalisation in English, by focusing on two universities: one dominantly monolingual (Finnish), one dominantly bilingual (Finnish–Swedish); in addition, both teach in English. This article investigates how discourses around language choices (language policy documents, selected staff and student interviews) construe these universities as monolingual, bilingual or trilingual, and what these discourses say about the universities as organisations themselves. Results suggest that, although lack of clarity remains regarding language choices in many practical situations, Fi…
Metadiscourse in Persuasive Writing
1993
Metadiscourse refers to writers' discourse about their discourse—their directions for how readers should read, react to, and evaluate what they have written about the subject matter. In this study the authors divided metadiscourse into textual metadiscourse (text markers and interpretive markers) and interpersonal metadiscourse (hedges, certainty markers, attributors, attitude markers, and commentary). The purpose was to investigate cultural and gender variations in the use of metadiscourse in the United States and Finland by asking whether U.S. and Finnish writers use the same amounts and types and whether gender makes any difference. The analyses revealed that students in both countries …
Nordic language policies for higher education and their multi-layered motivations
2016
Language policies have been drafted in Nordic higher education with the obvious, but unproblematised and unchallenged motivation caused by internationalisation. In this article, we analyse the various motivations for drafting language policies in Nordic higher education and the ideological implications of those motivations. We do this by approaching the question from multiple (macro, meso and micro) viewpoints, in order to make visible some of the undercurrents in higher education language policy. We are particularly interested in the explicit motivations for language policy change, and the explicit and implicit actors and action represented in our data. We will first discuss the background…
Acquisition of Generic Competencies Through Project Simulation in Translation Studies
2017
Motivated by the research in several international and interdisciplinary initiatives, for example, P21 Partnership for 21st Century Learning or the Collegiate Learning Assessment instruments, we seek for a scalable and measureable set of generic competencies for translation studies. Up to now, the acquisition of competencies in translation studies has primarily been operationalized by implementing authentic projects in higher education classes using socio-constructivist approaches. This results in a hybridization of subject-specific competencies and generic competencies in translator education. Because of the necessity to focus on the acquisition of generic competencies as a primary learnin…
A Tool to Assess Architectural Education from the Sustainable Development Perspective and the Students' Viewpoint
2021
[EN] Architectural education plays a fundamental role in achieving sustainable development by training future professionals who can contribute to sustainability through their practice. Nevertheless, to ensure the introduction of sustainable development in the education of future architects, it is fundamental to understand what is being done and what could be improved. Despite this, a big gap has been detected in the assessment of architectural education in Spain and worldwide. Thus, a close-ended questionnaire for students has been designed based on the outcomes from a literature review, exploratory interviews with specialists, and the qualitative analysis of two schools of architecture. Ad…