This paper discusses the challenges and experiences which social science students in Africa undergo to complete the PhD program. Focusing on Mbarara University of Science and Technology, the paper present that many students who register on the PhD program in Africa, are unable to complete the program in the stipulated time. The paper identifies…

"Designerly Talk in Non-Pedagogical Social Spaces" (Gray and Howard, 2014) is a paper on a study that was conducted as an early attempt to understand the kinds of talk students engaged in outside of the formal curriculum in student-run communities that enhanced their design learning. While the paper has only been available for a…

Large cohorts (>200 students) are an ever-increasing presence in the UK higher education (HE) sector. Providing excellent teaching and learning to these large classes is an ongoing challenge for teaching faculty, a challenge intensified when the cohort comprises 85% non-native English speakers. This paper presents the findings of a project to…

Resident doctors have an important and integral responsibility of teaching a number of individuals. The purpose of this study was to measure the effectiveness of the University of Saskatchewan's resident-as-teacher training course--Teaching Improvement Project Systems (TIPS). Residents who attended the TIPS course from January, 2010 through June,…

This paper focuses on the use of the teaching method Peer-Assisted Reflection (PAR) to help graduate student instructors (GSIs) develop as teachers. PAR engages students in analyzing the work of their peers and providing feedback to promote their abilities of communication, collaboration, and persistence. The goals of the PAR activity were taken…

The non-completion of doctoral degrees has been a concern due to its economic, social, and personal consequences. In the current study, the researchers investigated perceived barriers of select doctoral students in completing their doctoral degrees by utilizing a fully mixed sequential mixed research design. The quantitative and qualitative data…

In UK higher education, ethnic differences in academic attainment are ubiquitous and have persisted for many years. They are only partly explained by ethnic differences in entry qualifications. They vary from one institution to another and from one subject area to another. This suggests that they result in part from teaching and assessment…

Mezirow (1978) applied and used Transformative Learning Theoretical (TLT) processes while studying women who reentered academics during the 1970s. Similar to Mezirow's original 1975 work, we identify "factors that impeded or facilitated" participants' progress to obtain their undergraduate degree during the traditional student…

The formation of social ties is a major factor in the international student experience (Ramsay et al. in High Educ 54(2):247-265, 2007), influencing student wellbeing and adjustment to the new academic and sociocultural environment (Ward et al. in The psychology of culture shock. Routledge, Hove, 2001). Although a significant body of research in…

Students in communication, and particularly in advertising, are encouraged to value creativity. However, even in programs that value creativity, it can be difficult to encourage creativity in the process of research that guides communication efforts. The project described in this paper--"Street Crossing"--is used in upper-division and…

Cognitive diagnostic models (CDM) have been around for more than a decade but their application is far from widespread for mainly two reasons: (1) CDMs are novel, as compared to traditional IRT models. Consequently, many researchers lack familiarity with them and their properties, and (2) Software programs doing CDMs have been expensive and not…

The purpose of this study was to benchmark the types of Socratic questioning that were occurring in a Socrates Café, an online discussion forum, in a graduate-level diversity course in teacher education. The Universal Intellectual Standards were used to analyze Socratic questioning. Results suggested that the nine Universal Intellectual Standards…

Using phenomenological approaches, the author explored the meanings and essences of a cross-cultural immersion experience in South Africa among counseling master's-level students. Five core themes--the meaning of being American, sociopolitical awareness, engagement with South Africans and their communities, appreciation of life, and commitment to…

This article is a report on research into the role of fiction in promoting transformative learning in higher education settings. Participants were 131 undergraduate and graduate students from two universities in the United States. To determine the type of learning promoted by reading fiction, we performed qualitative analyses on participants'…

Robbins Carter's portrait of the librarian workforce is still true. According to the latest American Library Association (ALA) demographics, the profile of today's librarian is that of a white (87.1 percent) woman (80.7 percent) of middle age (57.1 percent, age 45 or older) (ALA, 2013). Despite these data, support for increased diversity is…