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1.
AbstractEffective communication of science is a ubiquitous learning outcome for most science degrees, and a national threshold learning outcome for science in Australia. Evidence suggests that employers and academics are dissatisfied with the communication skills of many science graduates. Our study examines communication tasks used in summative assessment in bachelor of science (BSc) degrees. We compiled public information for all units of study from the BSc programmes at five research-intensive Australian universities. Our analysis suggests that science academics place high value on developing the ability of students to communicate, with 66% of all science units (n?=?1225) using one or more communication tasks as assessment (mean weighting 44%). However, opportunities for students to communicate in a variety of contexts are lacking. We found that communication tasks from eight majors (n?=?683) across the five universities addressed a very narrow range of contexts; an audience of scientists (including students) in the same discipline (97%), in the mode of traditional writing (79%) and for the purpose of interpreting and presenting results (66%). As such, assessment practice does not match the variety of contexts required by the Australian threshold learning outcomes or guiding statements in other countries. We identify opportunities and offer practical recommendations to help correct this mismatch. 相似文献
2.
Yvonne Hodgson Cristina Varsavsky Kelly E. Matthews 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2014,39(5):515-530
This study reports on science student perceptions of their skills (scientific knowledge, oral communication, scientific writing, quantitative skills, teamwork and ethical thinking) as they approach graduation. The focus is on which teaching activities and assessment tasks over the whole programme of study students thought utilised each of the six nominated skills. In this quantitative study involving two Australian research-intensive universities, the teaching activities identified by students as developing the broadest number of skills were laboratory classes and tutorials. Lectures were only effective for developing scientific knowledge and, to a limited extent, ethical thinking. Assessment tasks that students perceived to utilise the broadest range of skills were assignments and oral presentations. The findings of this study document the students’ perspective about their gains in skill sets, and the teaching activities and assessment tasks that require them to use and thus develop these skills. The findings provide an opportunity to evaluate the constructive alignment of skills development, teaching activities and assessment tasks from a student’s perspective. Further research is required to actually measure the skills that students gain over their whole programme of study. 相似文献
3.
Lucy D Mercer-Mapstone Kelly E Matthews 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2017,42(1):98-114
Higher education institutions globally are acknowledging the need to teach communication skills. This study used the Science Student Skills Inventory to gain insight into how science students perceive the development of communication skills across the degree programme. Responses were obtained from 635 undergraduate students enrolled in a Bachelor of Science at an Australian research-intensive university. Students rated their perceptions of two communication skills, scientific writing and oral scientific communication, across the following indicators: importance of, and improvement in, developing communication skills; the extent to which communication skills were included and assessed in the degree; confidence in using communication skills; and belief of future use of communication skills. While the majority of students perceived both communication skills to be important and of use in the future, their perceptions of the extent to which those skills were included and assessed were less, with oral communication being included and assessed less than scientific writing skills. Significant differences among year levels were discerned for most indicators, signifying a lack of coherent opportunities for students to learn and develop these skills across year levels. Results are discussed through the lens of progressive development of complex learning outcomes, with suggested areas for curriculum development and future research. 相似文献
4.
Joanne Edmondston Vaille Dawson Renato Schibeci 《International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education》2010,8(6):1091-1108
Public concerns about biotechnology have resulted in greater attention being paid to the mechanisms by which biotechnology
is communicated with non-scientists, including the provision of science communication training. As undergraduate and postgraduate
courses form the foundation of the biotechnology sector by providing a pipeline of university graduates entering into the
profession, it has been proposed that formal science communication training be introduced at this early stage of career development.
Using an Australian biotechnology degree course as a case study, this paper examines science communication training within
this course and the views of past and present students towards this training. Interviews were undertaken with 22 stakeholders
in the case, including undergraduate lecturers (who also supervise postgraduate research students), doctoral candidates and
biotechnologists recently graduated from the course. Few of the students felt the course provided them with any form of science
communication training, let alone training in how to engage non-scientists. Many were unaware of the training available to
them and few of the lecturers were able to identify where communication skills are taught within the course. A previous study
of this case has also shown that biotechnology undergraduates taking this course do not value communication with non-scientists.
Clearly, the current state of science communication training for these students needs to be improved if they are to enter
the biotechnology workforce as able civic scientists. The findings of this study may be useful for other university biotechnology courses which have yet to integrate science
communication training into their curriculum. 相似文献
5.
Qi Wu 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2018,43(7):1019-1031
In this study, we analysed survey data from 386 third year undergraduate students on 14 programmes within three UK universities. The universities are characterised as teaching-focused or research-intensive: a ‘plate-glass’ and ‘red-brick’ research-intensive; and a ‘new’ teaching-intensive university. We used the Assessment Experience Questionnaire Version 4.0 (AEQ 4.0), designed to understand students’ perceptions of programme assessment environments. The AEQ contains scales constructed from theories about assessment, feedback and deep learning. We performed exploratory factor analysis on AEQ 4.0 and identified five salient domains: how students learn; quality of feedback; internalisation of standards; student effort; and formative assessment. These domains were compared across the three universities. Formative assessment was the weakest domain in all three university assessment environments, followed closely by students’ internalising standards. Students at the new teaching-focused university had significantly higher scores on scales about deep learning, student effort and the quality of feedback than students in the two research-intensives. Findings show that theories about the virtue of formative assessment have yet to play out in practice; and that the teaching-focused university seemed to be encouraging deeper approaches to learning through its feedback and assessment tasks. 相似文献
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7.
Anna Chur-Hansen 《高等教育研究与发展》2001,20(1):71-79
Self-evaluation of professional skills is recognised to be an essential requirement in undergraduate medical education, yet this aspect of learning is rarely taught in an explicit and systematic fashion. This paper reports on a teaching project in which first year Australian and international medical students self-evaluated their ability to demonstrate medical communication skills during two interviews with a standardised patient. These self-evaluations were compared with clinical tutors' evaluations of the same interactions, for the purpose of formative assessment. Students' self-evaluations showed moderate, significant correlations with those of their tutor. Students improved in their medical communication skills across the two interviews, whilst English language proficiency as assessed by a standardised screening instrument, was not indicative of ability. Further research is necessary to ascertain whether short-term interventions result in enduring outcomes in both improved medical communication skills and a capacity to self-assess. 相似文献
8.
P. M. Kruit R. J. Oostdam E. van den Berg J. A. Schuitema 《International Journal of Science Education》2018,40(4):421-441
In most primary science classes, students are taught science inquiry skills by way of learning by doing. Research shows that explicit instruction may be more effective. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of explicit instruction on the acquisition of inquiry skills. Participants included 705 Dutch fifth and sixth graders. Students in an explicit instruction condition received an eight-week intervention of explicit instruction on inquiry skills. In the lessons of the implicit condition, all aspects of explicit instruction were absent. Students in the baseline condition followed their regular science curriculum. In a quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test design, two paper-and-pencil tests and three performance assessments were used to examine the acquisition and transfer of inquiry skills. Additionally, questionnaires were used to measure metacognitive skills. The results of a multilevel analysis controlling for pre-tests, general cognitive ability, age, gender and grade level indicated that explicit instruction facilitates the acquisition of science inquiry skills. Specifically on the performance assessment with an unfamiliar topic, students in the explicit condition outperformed students of both the implicit and baseline condition. Therefore, this study provides a strong argument for including an explicit teaching method for developing inquiry skills in primary science education. 相似文献
9.
J. W. Willison 《高等教育研究与发展》2012,31(6):905-919
This study considered outcomes when 27 academics explicitly developed and assessed student research skills in 28 regular (non-research methods) semester-length courses. These courses ranged from small (n?=?17) to medium-large (n = 222) and included those from first year to masters in business, engineering, health science, humanities and science, across five universities in three Australian cities. The two-year study used three data sets to determine the outcomes of development and assessment initiatives: student pre- (n?=?779) and post-questionnaires (n?=?601), interviews with students (n?=?46) one year after completing a course that developed research skills and interviews with academics (n?=?17) involved in developing and assessing student research skills. These multiple sources provided evidence that students developed a variety of discipline-specific research skills and that these skills were useful for subsequent studies and especially for employment. Academics indicated that the process of making explicit the development of student research skills led to enhancement of their teaching, helping the academics to clarify major course purposes as well as enabling them to provide more substantial feedback to students than in the past. Academics also indicated that this teaching process changed their understanding of disciplinary research and, for some, even suggested new directions in their research. 相似文献
10.
The CREATE (Consider Read, Elucidate the hypotheses, Analyze and interpret the data, and Think of the next Experiment) strategy aims to demystify scientific research and scientists while building critical thinking, reading/analytical skills, and improved science attitudes through intensive analysis of primary literature. CREATE was developed and piloted at the City College of New York (CCNY), a 4-yr, minority-serving institution, with both upper-level biology majors and first-year students interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. To test the extent to which CREATE strategies are broadly applicable to students at private, public, research-intensive, and/or primarily undergraduate colleges/universities, we trained a cohort of faculty from the New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania area in CREATE pedagogies, then followed a subset, the CREATE implementers (CIs), as they taught all or part of an existing course on their home campuses using CREATE approaches. Evaluation of the workshops, the CIs, and their students was carried out both by the principal investigators and by an outside evaluator working independently. Our data indicate that: intensive workshops change aspects of faculty attitudes about teaching/learning; workshop-trained faculty can effectively design and teach CREATE courses; and students taught by such faculty on multiple campuses make significant cognitive and affective gains that parallel the changes documented previously at CCNY. 相似文献
11.
The academic literature arguing that there is an urgent requirement for businesses to become more sustainable is rapidly expanding.
There is also a demonstrated need for managers to develop a better understanding of sustainability and the appropriate strategies
required to improve business sustainability. In addition, there have been international calls for educators to address sustainability
in their programs. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which business sustainability was incorporated into
undergraduate business and management courses in Australian universities. The high percentage of international students enrolled
in these courses suggests our findings have implications beyond the Australian context. Students currently studying these
courses are the managers and leaders of the future and their knowledge and skills will influence the extent to which business
sustainability will be achieved. The findings demonstrate that more than half of Australian universities did not explicitly
identify sustainability as part of their business/management curricula and those universities that did address sustainability
did so, in most cases, only in a limited way. 相似文献
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13.
Despite the expansion and professionalisation of university administration over the past 20 years there has been no scholarly
study on the extent to which universities, which promote the value of generic skills from research degrees to prospective
research students and their employers, capitalize on the research and transferable skills of PhD graduates later employed
in the university sector as professional staff. Findings from this study of research-trained professional staff at one research-intensive
Australian university suggests that these professionals are using their research and generic skills in management roles, to
the benefit of the university. In the context of the knowledge based economy, this study suggests that universities could
benefit from actively targeting the products of their own system for professional roles. 相似文献
14.
Samuray B. Ozay 《Teaching in Higher Education》2013,18(4):453-464
Most Australian Universities offer a selection of research-intensive pathways at the graduate level, which provides opportunities for independent inquiry and intellectual autonomy. Undergraduate students, however, are somewhat short-changed in their experience in research. They are exposed to a variety of areas and disciplines, which forms a general cluster of knowledge, but students graduate without obtaining the skills associated with research and inquiry. Digital communication networks and the ways in which information is disseminated in modern society play an important role in the way people live and learn. At the same time, younger generations are emerging with greater skills in digital literacy, which bears an impact on how knowledge is produced and information is shared. This prompts to question, are undergraduate students acquiring the generic attributes that will help them to cope with the complexities of an information-driven society? The following article is based on the premise that undergraduate students need to be empowered to construct their own knowledge as potential producers rather than mere consumers of knowledge. It provides a synthesis of cross-disciplinary perspectives and educational debates that support the argument for, and benefits of, providing research-enriched learning for undergraduate students. This article adopts a framework for the dimensions of research in undergraduate learning. The different models presented in this article aim to illustrate the various ways that research can be integrated with teaching to benefit learning. 相似文献
15.
Kelly E. Matthews Jennifer Firn Susanne Schmidt Karen Whelan 《International Journal of Science Education》2013,35(6):742-760
ABSTRACTThis study investigated students’ perceptions of their graduate learning outcomes including content knowledge, communication, writing, teamwork, quantitative skills, and ethical thinking in two Australian universities. One university has a traditional discipline-orientated curriculum and the other, an interdisciplinary curriculum in the entry semester of first year. The Science Students Skills Inventory asked students (n?=?613) in first and final years to rate their perceptions of the importance of developing graduate learning outcomes within the programme; how much they improved their graduate learning outcomes throughout their undergraduate science programme; how much they saw learning outcomes included in the programme; and how confident they were about their learning outcomes. A framework of progressive curriculum development was adopted to interpret results. Students in the discipline-oriented degree programme reported higher perceptions of scientific content knowledge and ethical thinking while students from the interdisciplinary curriculum indicated higher perceptions of oral communication and teamwork. Implications for curriculum development include ensuring progressive development from first to third years, a need for enhanced focus on scientific ethics, and career opportunities from first year onwards. 相似文献
16.
Communication is widely recognised as an important capability for university graduates [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2013). OECD skills outlook 2013: First results from the survey of adult skills. Author. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264204256-en]. Yet, research suggests that it is often not adequately developed by Australian universities, remaining implicit in teaching and assessment. This is in part because Australian universities have historically conceptualised communication not as an outcome of disciplinary study, but as a generic, foundational competency or skill. It has therefore been managed outside the curriculum by establishing academic language and learning units that help students develop written and spoken communication through a range of student services. The services model of communication development is becoming untenable, however, given the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of students and the recognised importance of communication as a graduate outcome. Whole-of-institution approaches are required to integrate communication into course curricula as a fundamental part of disciplinary learning, and develop the capacity of teaching staff to teach it. This paper explores Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing Inside the Disciplines, two complementary approaches used widely in the US for developing literacy in higher education. They emerged in the 1970s in response to the kind of student diversity now common in Australian universities, and offer institution-wide strategies for developing communication as an essential outcome of study in academic and professional disciplines. 相似文献
17.
General conditions which should be met in the development of the idea of science processes and the potential benefits which would result are suggested. An approach to the definition of science processes based on variables and variable handling is outlined. It is argued that this should occur specifically in the context of educational practice. The processes should be elucidated within a taxonomy of tasks, the ultimate components of which should be interpretable and transferable skills. The development and utilization of such a taxonomy can most obviously occur in the context of assessment. The techniques of item banking and domain definition in domain‐referenced tests are then discussed in relation to the above issues. Multi‐dimensional labelling of an item bank is considered to be appropriate, and suggestive of a research programme for investigating the requirements of transferability and interpretability. The labelling scheme resulting from an attempt to identify the significant dimensions of the age 15 Assessment of Performance Unit (APU) science item bank is reported. The paper indicates the effectiveness of the scheme and discusses the value of labelling those items within the assessment programme which draw heavily on the conceptual framework of taught science. A discussion of how the labelling scheme/item bank can be used in an attempt to identify the skills required in undertaking tasks based on science processes, and thus to develop tests of such identifiable skills for diagnostic and placement purposes in schools, concludes this paper. 相似文献
18.
美国研究型大学本科生科研的价值诉求
——基于情境认知与学习理论的视角 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
培养学生的科研创新力是美国研究型大学本科教育的一个重要方面,本科生科研作为一种新型的培养方式,对研究型大学的本科教育的发展产生了积极的影响。本科生科研作为一种成功的教育实践活动,强调学习者的主体性、知识的情境建构性、学习的文化适应性,顺应了构建实践取向的情境认知与学习理论的主旨。因此,从情境认知与学习理论的视角分析美国研究型大学本科生科研的价值诉求,便于我们深入了解美国研究型大学本科生科研的本质及其重要意义,可为我国研究型大学培养本科生科研创新力提供借鉴。 相似文献
19.
Raoul Mulder Chi Baik Ryan Naylor Jon Pearce 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2014,39(6):657-677
Involving students in peer review has many pedagogical benefits, but few studies have explicitly investigated relationships between the content of peer reviews, student perceptions and assessment outcomes. We conducted a case study of peer review within a third-year undergraduate subject at a research-intensive Australian university, in which we examined: (1) students’ perceptions of the peer review process before and after peer review, (2) content of the peer reviews and what kinds of feedback were adopted and (3) the effect of participation in peer review on performance (grades) in the assessment task. Students overwhelmingly perceived peer review to be beneficial, and the opportunity to participate in peer review resulted in a significant improvement in the quality of work submitted for assessment. Students who benefited most from peer review were those of below-median performance, and the magnitude of benefit was related to the degree to which students engaged with the peer review process. Our study confirms that participation in peer review can lead to important improvements in performance and learning outcomes. 相似文献
20.
This research compared how the scientific literacy-related goals of the current Chinese and Finnish national science curricula at primary school level are actualised using a revised Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scientific literacy framework in the content analysis of the curricula. The content of the curricula focuses principally on knowledge, followed by competencies and attitudes, respectively. The learning context was seen to be thoroughly integrated with the content in both countries. However, the curricula are written in different ways. Generally, the literacy objectives for both curricula are based on scientific knowledge (Vision I) and the application of knowledge-based skills in situations (Vision II). However, they are characterised by implicit views that derive from the pursuit of the value-driven transformation of individuals and society achieved through science education (Vision III). The Chinese curriculum appears to favour the Anglo-American curriculum tradition, whereas the Finnish curriculum appears to be more attached to the Bildung-Didaktik tradition in terms of core tasks and the specification of objectives. The recommendation is that Vision III should be included in the science curricula, and should explicitly relate to social and scientific topics with a view to furthering a scientifically literate public. 相似文献