This dissertation focuses on student learning outcomes assessment in criminal justice programs in American colleges and universities. Particularly, this research sought to establish a baseline understanding about how criminal justice programs are measuring student achievement toward learning outcomes. The baseline does not include what students should be learning or how that learning should be assessed; it includes only what is actually happening in criminal justice programs in terms of how student learning is being assessed. The baseline data were then compared to the results from two studies that focused on student learning assessment in political science departments and public relations programs in institutions of higher education.The population for this research included 834 two-and four-year accredited institutions of higher education that offer a degree in criminal justice/criminology. A total of 369 criminal justice programs were included in the randomly-generated sample, and 44 percent of these programs completed the online questionnaire.The online survey instrument used for this research consists of 30 questions that are aligned with the "ideal type" of learning assessment model where a set of learning objectives are developed, assessment instruments are created and implemented, data are regularly collected and analyzed, and changes are made to improve the curriculum/instruction.The major findings of this research indicate that a large majority of criminal justice programs are assessing student learning to some degree, but many are using instruments that are documented as ineffective measures of assessment (e.g., grades, surveys, and Major Field Test). Also, a substantial number of criminal justice programs are located in institutions that place a high priority on learning assessment, but a small percentage of the programs reported that adequate resources are available for assessment purposes. Regardless of these factors, many criminal justice programs seem to be following the ideal type of learning assessment model where the process is completed by making changes to the curriculum and instruction to improve student learning and development. When compared to political science and public relations, it appears that criminal justice as an entire discipline is up to par in terms of its overall involvement in student learning assessment.

Industries have expectations that university graduates possess well-rounded theoretical and practical knowledge to be successful in their jobs. While effective teaching and learning are essential goals in higher education institutions, lessons and learning activities in traditional classroom settings are often out of context, presented to students with much theoretical generality and abstract representations. This leads to a disconnection between academia and industry, where students struggle to apply abstract principles and knowledge in a real-world context to perform effectively in their workplace. Live role-play has been traditionally used as an educational technique to engage students and provide them the opportunity to learn with a real-world context within classroom settings. While role-playing in the classroom encourages transfer of learning, one of its limitation is traditional role-play often does not provide an authentic and believable real-world experience to participants. The primary aim of this study is to converge the pedagogical benefits of role-playing, educational technology and digital games to investigate the effectiveness of using digital role-playing games in classrooms to achieve learning outcomes. Qualitative data were collected from digital media lecturers of a transnational university based in Vietnam and Australia to identify desirable learning outcomes and describe teaching and learning challenges of digital media courses. Through interviews, lecturers also discussed their perceptions of digital RPGs and their level of acceptance in using this educational technology as part of their teaching practice to accomplish learning outcomes. The results highlighted three key desirable learning outcomes: The first learning outcome is students should develop solid understanding of theoretical and foundational design knowledge, enabling effective application of theoretical knowledge to produce creative digital media outputs. The second learning outcome - students should speak the "design language". Students should develop the ability to articulate, critique and explain creative works using appropriate design vocabularies and terminologies, which are used by design practitioners in the industry. The third learning outcome indicated that students should be resourceful and self-sufficient to conceptualise and generate creative ideas. Using Bloom’s taxonomy categories, game characteristics and identified learning outcomes, a conceptual framework was developed for the design and use of digital RPGs to achieve learning outcomes for digital media education. In validating this conceptual framework, a 3d digital role-playing game, Virtual Designer was developed and implemented in classroom environment. A pre/post-test experimental setup was implemented, in which performance gains were measured and compared between control (conventional learning methods) and treatment group (played digital RPG) to determine the learning effectiveness of digital RPGs. Opinion-based survey and focus group interview was also conducted. Based on collected feedback, students find Virtual Designer an effective tool to assess their state of knowledge in different areas of design and apply theoretical knowledge into practical contexts. Students find the game to be an engaging alternative to conventional learning methods, but some have commented the game to be too difficult and at times frustrating to play. Lecturers have also play-tested Virtual Designer and provided favorable views on the overall feasibility of using similar digital RPGs as a teaching and learning tool to sustain students’ interest in learning their subjects – and successfully accomplishing learning outcomes.

<p>This degree project has studied how a changed preparation affected students' outcome of a laboratory exercise. Through use of cognitive load theory and sociocultural theory a guided writing of summary was designed. Students in secondary school were let to prepare for a laboratory exercise through a traditional teacher led introduction or the guided writing of summary. Data was collected as observations, worksheets, tests and evaluations. Results suggest that the guided writing of summary facilitated a construction of cognitive schema supporting students' method. This made them follow instructions and understand purpose of the laboratory exercise before and during the exercise in a better way than students preparing through a teacher led introduction. Furthermore students' perception of aim of the exercise shifted from theoretical work afterwards to theoretical work before and practical work during the exercise. This shows an improved understanding of links between theory and practice.</p> / <p>Detta examensarbete har studerat hur en förändrad förberedelse påverkade elevers utfall av en laborationsövning. Med stöd av kognitiv belastningsteori och sociokulturell teori designades ett väglett skrivande av sammanfattning. Studenter, i motsvarande grundskolans senare år, fick förbereda sig för en laboration genom en traditionell lärarledd introduktion eller det vägledda skrivandet av sammanfattning. Data samlades in i form av observationer, arbetshäften, tester och utvärderingar. Resultatet tyder på att den vägledda skriftliga sammanfattningen underlättade för en konstruktion av kognitivt schema vilket undelättade elevernas metod. Detta gjorde att de följde instruktioner och förstod mening med laborationen före och under denna på ett bättre sätt än elever som förberedde sig med en lärarledd introduktion. Vidare ändrades elevernas uppfattning om målet med laborationen från teoretiskt arbete efter övningen till teoretiskt arbete före och praktiskt arbete under laborationen. Detta visade på en ökad förståelse av kopplingar mellan teori och praktik.</p>

Technology mediated learning (TML) refers to an environment in which the learner interacts with learning materials, peers, and/or instructors that are mediated through advanced information technology (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). Recently, there have been increasing interests in investigating if TML can yield positive learning outcome. In this thesis, an interpretive study of TrainNet, a TML implementation by a well-known multinational corporation, is conducted. The study bases its investigation on the TML framework suggested by Alavi and Leidner (2001). The findings show that different stakeholders of TrainNet hold different views of learning effectiveness. For the manger, learning effectiveness means cost reduction; for the trainer, speedy information dissemination; and for the technicians, the profit, skill and social network. Yet, while TrainNet satisfies both managers and trainers in reducing cost and enhancing speedy information dissemination, it has failed to meet the aspiration of the technicians. These may result from the fact that instructional strategies have been changed from the experiental learning focus to abstract, conceptual learning. The change in turn has the adverse effect of undermining technicians¡¦ motivation to learn. Furthermore, the context governing the strategy of TrainNet adoption plays a key role in this change. A technical/economic perspective of system adoption and an objectivism approach to instructional strategy causes the company to ignore the important learning effectiveness issues that are important to learners. For TML to be effective, business must go beyond the technical and economic focus. The social cultural perspectives must be incorporated into the design of information technology and instructional strategies.

This degree project has studied how a changed preparation affected students' outcome of a laboratory exercise. Through use of cognitive load theory and sociocultural theory a guided writing of summary was designed. Students in secondary school were let to prepare for a laboratory exercise through a traditional teacher led introduction or the guided writing of summary. Data was collected as observations, worksheets, tests and evaluations. Results suggest that the guided writing of summary facilitated a construction of cognitive schema supporting students' method. This made them follow instructions and understand purpose of the laboratory exercise before and during the exercise in a better way than students preparing through a teacher led introduction. Furthermore students' perception of aim of the exercise shifted from theoretical work afterwards to theoretical work before and practical work during the exercise. This shows an improved understanding of links between theory and practice. / Detta examensarbete har studerat hur en förändrad förberedelse påverkade elevers utfall av en laborationsövning. Med stöd av kognitiv belastningsteori och sociokulturell teori designades ett väglett skrivande av sammanfattning. Studenter, i motsvarande grundskolans senare år, fick förbereda sig för en laboration genom en traditionell lärarledd introduktion eller det vägledda skrivandet av sammanfattning. Data samlades in i form av observationer, arbetshäften, tester och utvärderingar. Resultatet tyder på att den vägledda skriftliga sammanfattningen underlättade för en konstruktion av kognitivt schema vilket undelättade elevernas metod. Detta gjorde att de följde instruktioner och förstod mening med laborationen före och under denna på ett bättre sätt än elever som förberedde sig med en lärarledd introduktion. Vidare ändrades elevernas uppfattning om målet med laborationen från teoretiskt arbete efter övningen till teoretiskt arbete före och praktiskt arbete under laborationen. Detta visade på en ökad förståelse av kopplingar mellan teori och praktik.

This thesis reports on a research program to study learning in economics utilising non-traditional research methodology. The study aimed to achieve four inter-related objectives. Research in other disciplines (Meyer and Cleary, 1998; Meyer and Eley, 1999; Eley and Meyer, 2004) show that there are important factors influencing learning that are unique to the discourse of a discipline. The first objective of this study was to construct an instrument that captured students' cognitive ability that was specific to learning in economics. The psychometric properties and validity of this construct (called economic thinking ability), and the influence of students' pre-course economic thinking on their learning approaches and academic performance were investigated. Traditional economics education research typically utilises a single end-of-semester score as a measure of learning output. This research program utilised multiple measures of academic performance. By investigating the determinants of academic performance in three assessment types commonly used in introductory economics, namely essay assignment, multiple choice question (MCQ) exam and exam essay, it examined the limitations of the traditional single-score approach. Most traditional input-output learning models in economics education bypass the learning 'black box' (Shanahan et al., 1997), which is the learning approach the student utilises. The third objective of the research program was to construct a learning approach instrument that was sensitive to different assessment contexts so as to investigate the mechanism by which the learning inputs influenced academic performance in economics. This research program also measured students' general learning approaches for assessments utilised before the commencement of their economics unit, and investigated the stability and changes of learning approaches. Based on empirical research evidence and survey findings, it has been observed that many economics students do not possess the ability to apply economic concepts in real world situations. The fourth objective of this research program was to explore the issue of knowledge transfer in economics education. To investigate this issue, students' economic thinking ability was examined at the end of the course using both quantitative and qualitative methodology. The key findings obtained from this research program are: The discipline-specific construct of economic thinking ability possesses sound psychometric properties and predictive validity. Students' pre-course economic thinking ability was found to measure cognitive ability different from pre-course academic aptitude and have important effects on learning approaches. The determinants of academic performance were shown to be assessment specific. This observation provides an explanation of the inconsistency of findings by the traditional input-output approach that utilises a single measure of learning output in economics education. By examining the mediating role of learning approaches in the learning process, it was found that there were important differences in the mechanism by which different personal learning inputs impacted on academic performance in different assessment contexts. Lastly academic performance and post-course economic thinking ability were found to measure different dimensions of learning outcome. The thesis concluded that economics education as investigated in this research program focused mainly on acquisition and reproduction of knowledge and technical skills in routine academic situations rather than making connections of economic concepts to real world experiences. Implications for teaching and further research in economics education were also discussed in this thesis.

The project was concerned with action research aimed at improving the range and effectiveness of reading-to-learn. Students (Advanced Level and Undergraduates) report reading-to-learn problems but they are only vaguely aware of the cognitive organisation (intuitive tactics and strategy) which underlies and structures their reading behaviour. The research emphasis was therefore primarily learner oriented. 2. This approach clarified such issues as: (i) Learner interpretation of instructional directives to learn for specific tasks. (ii) Learner methods of translating the task definition into an operational plan for reading. (iii) The systematic relationship between the tactics and strategies of reading (the time-structure of reading behaviour), and the variety of reading outcomes, within sentence, paragraph and chapter sized texts. (iv) Training procedures (incorporating feedback of performance) by which a student can explore now tactics of reading-for-learning. 3. This approach has required the development of three now techniques: a) A method for recording reading behaviour. b) A method by which the ‘structure of a text’ can be systematically described. c) A system of training procedures for encouraging students to develop more effective methods of reading-for-learning. 4. The empirical data showed that there were two related aspects in developing more effective reading-for-learning; the first was to develop a clearer definition of instructional directives and the second was the ability to translate these into effective operational plans. As a result of individual differences in cognitive structure and skill, students differ in their operational task definition in relation to specific learning outcomes. The plans of a 'beginner' or an 'expert' may bring about the same outcome but they differ considerably. Students also differ in their training needs within a training procedure for reading-to-learn effectively. This emphasises the need to level a hierarchically organised learner-controlled programme of self-diagnosis and training. 5. The theoretical outcome of the research was a tentative model of the student learning by reading. This model is based on the concept of a dynamic interaction between the learner's cognitive structure and skill, the learner's task definition and how this becomes operational, and the syntactic and semantic structure of the text. The model can be considered as a hierarchically organised multi-level description of the reading process. The reading strategy formed of the tactics and the learning outcome, represent the observables of this interaction. The model was influenced by the theories of J. Bruner, G. Miller, N. Chomsky and R. Gagné. 6. The research was directed towards the identification of strategies and outcomes of reading-to-learn, with the double aim of investigating these areas and training students to increase their skill; both these aims were in line with endeavours to increase self-organisation and individual autonomy in learning. 7. Whilst the goals of the research were largely achieved, the results have illuminated a number of practical and theoretical issues that need further investigation.

This thesis examines the potential of a learning outcome-led model of curriculum design to influence how students perceive learning in education studies within a modular context of a new university. It identifies and compares the conceptions of learning held by students and lecturers on traditional and outcome-led modules, and it explores and specifies the design factors which shape these conceptions. The issue is located within the interpretivist paradigm for the research seeks understanding which derives from the perceptions, attitudes and beliefs that students and their lecturers hold about learning in a given context. But the methodology employed is not wholly consistent with this paradigm, for a qualitative approach is complemented by the use of factor analysis techniques to facilitate the identification of the design features which influence how students perceive learning. The approach is thus eclectic drawing on quantitative methods to examine what is essentially qualitative data. An innovative model of learning outcome-led design is proposed, implemented and modified as a result of the research. The learner is placed at the centre of the learning experience which is defined as incorporating three domains: the teaching context; the assessment régime; and the directed learning undertaken by students outside of taught sessions. The model incorporates a trichotomy of outcomes which define the subject -specific, the transferable skills and the generic academic outcomes which influence directly both the content and process of learning, and which successful students are expected to achieve on completion of a module. The findings show that five design features influence how students perceive learning: the clarity of expectations; congruence between the content and process of each domain of the learning experience; direction in respect to the learning activities which should be undertaken in each domain to achieve the outcomes; and the content and process of the teaching context. The data suggest that a much higher profile should be given to metacognitive skills in curriculum development in HE because how students perceive both the process and the content of learning profoundly influences their conception of learning and, consistent with the underpinning theory, how they approach learning and therefore ultimately the kind of outcomes they achieve. The research leads to recommendations for the modification of the three models of learning in context; Ramsden (1988), Biggs (1990b) and Prosser (1995), which are presented and analysed in the thesis. The findings suggest that the learning experience should be redefined to specify the three domains - the teaching context, assessment régime and directed learning - and that clarity of expectations, metacognitive skills and congruence between the content and process of learning in each of the domains should be articulated as directly influencing students' conceptions of learning. The models should also seek to indicate that learning outcomes influence how students perceive learning, and that therefore they feature both at the starting point and as the end product of a contextualised learning process. The findings relating to students' conceptions of learning show that the study of outcome-led modules has resulted in a much greater degree of congruence between how lecturers and students perceive learning in a given module and that fewer students studying outcome-led modules hold a quantitative conception of learning. This suggests that the outcome-led model does have the potential to improve teaching and learning and consequently that there is an educational rationale for curriculum development premised on this model.

The proposed tool will provide users with a platform to access a side-by-side comparison of classroom assessment and job posting requirements. Using techniques and methodologies from NLP, machine learning, data analysis, and data mining: the employed algorithm analyzes job postings and classroom assessments, extracts and classifies skill units within, then compares sets of skills from different input volumes. This effectively provides a predicted alignment between academic and career sources, both federal and industrial. The compilation of tool results indicates an overall accuracy score of 82%, and an alignment score of only 75.5% between the input assessments and overall job postings. These results describe that the 50 UNT assessments and 5,000 industry and federal job postings examined, demonstrate a compatibility (alignment) of 75.5%; and, that this measure was calculated using a tool operating at an 82% precision rate.

<p>Denna kvalitativa pilotstudie har som syfte att utifrån en fallstudiemetod undersöka varför de som valt MNR gjort det valet, vilken nytta MNR bidragit med både yrkesmässigt och personligt, vad den lett till samt vilka för- och nackdelar den flexibla studieformen haft.</p><p>Pilotstudien är baserad på telefonintervjuer med tre studenter som genomgått programmet från allra första programstarten hösten 2001. Intervjuerna har sedan bearbetats med en modifierad fenomenografisk metod.</p><p>Resultatet visar en mycket positiv hållning till MNR från samtliga tre intervjupersoner genom uppfyllda förväntningar och mål, personlig utveckling och att den flexibla studieformen gjort högre studier möjligt. Men framför allt har nyttan med en examen från högskolestudier lyfts fram. Detta visar att högskolekompetens har stor betydelse vid arbetssökandet men även att MNR skapar en bred bas med flera valmöjligheter på framtidens arbetsmarknad.</p>