The student housing system worldwide and South-South Nigeria in particular has witnessed an unprecedented transformation, such that private off-campus student housing facilities (SHFs) are now the primary source of accommodation for students in tertiary institutions. A considerable gap exists between the supply and demand for on-campus student housing and the quest to fill this gap has stimulated the creation of a significant student housing market in the areas where these tertiary institutions are located. The prospect for economic investments in the student housing sector is high and private investors are involved in the provision and management of offcampus student housing. The main consequence of this practice in South-South, Nigeria is the delivery of low-quality buildings that are not able to meet the needs and expectations of residents. SHFs that are constructed without due regard to residents needs are characterised by dissatisfaction with attributes of housing and low investment performance. The implication is that residence users are often not satisfied with the attributes of the residential environment that are provided; thus their behaviours often impose some consequences on investors gains and objectives.Therefore, understanding the dynamics among attributes that are important to students, that give the required satisfaction, and the impact of the availability or lack-of on behaviour such as loyalty, willingness to pay for attributes and word of mouth behaviour are critical to profitability. Most often, the relationship among these attributes are treated as linear and symmetrical with the assumed implication that better attributes produce improved behaviours. However, this may not always be the case. This approach is rarely addressed and is little understood in student housing studies. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify student housing attributes that act as drivers of resident atisfaction and the consequences/effects of these drivers on student behaviour in order to determine appropriate measures that could be used to develop, maintain and upgrade student accommodation. The methodology of the study included an extensive literature review and a field study conducted to obtain the perceptions of students in seven tertiary institutions located in South-South, Nigeria. The main task was to define attributes of student housing facilities based on the symmetric and asymmetric impact of the performance of attributes on satisfaction with residence. The Kano model and importance-performance analysis (IPA) were used to establish sets of criteria that could be used to prioritise attributes that are required in student housing for optimal investor gains. Analysis of the findings lead to the conclusions that different degrees of behaviour were associated to the perception of importance that is attached to attributes by residents and the satisfaction that is derived from the use of such attributes. The implication of the conclusions is that to meet users satisfaction needs, varied improvement strategies are required for different attributes in order to maximise the use of resources for maximum gains. The recommendations for investors in SHFs include among others to segment the SHFs market based on demographic characteristics, prioritise and provide only attributes that add-value to identified groups. Emphasis should also be placed on providing attributes that are not only satisfactory, but with capacity to improve loyalty/retention, willingness to pay and positive word of mouth behaviour. It is also recommended that the local authority should improve critical attributes that are deemed to be outside the scope of the investors.

This quasi-experimental study examined the impact of living-learning communities on GPA and fall-to-fall retention rates for college freshmen at Regional University (RU). The specific focus of this study was the effect of these communities on students of different ethnic groups and on the potential of these communities to reduce the academic performance gap. RU was a small public university that offered both undergraduate and graduate degree programs. RU required all freshman students to live on campus in living-learning communities beginning with the 2007-2008 academic year. This study utilized the 343 student freshman cohort class of 2008 in the living-learning communities as the treatment group. This treatment group was compared against the 193 student freshman cohort class of 2008 living off campus and against the 643 student freshman cohort class of 2006 living on campus prior to the implementation of living-learning communities. In addition, the statistics were analyzed by ethnicity to examine the impact of these communities on White, Hispanic, African American, and Native American students and their ability to reduce the academic performance gap. The research revealed that the communities implemented at RU were not statistically significant at improving academic performance or at reducing the achievement gap. The results of this study were not consistent with the literature available on living-learning communities. Current research identifies six fundamental factors critical to the success of living-learning communities: positive working relationship between academic affairs and student affairs, involvement of faculty in the residence halls, appropriate funding, assessment strategies, university wide buy-in to implementing these communities, and commitment from institutional leadership. Examination of the inputs and processes on which these learning communities developed and operated indicated that the majority of these were not well developed to sustain these communities. The divergence of these findings from the literature may be attributed to key departures from the literature regarding the set-up and operation of these communities at RU.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

This thesis consists of two parts theoretical and practical. In the theoretical one, definition of creativity, terms connected with creativity such as intelligence, imagination, age, barriers and methods of developing creativity are mentioned. Every creative process has its stages and it is also possible to enumerate qualities of a creative personality that a good creative teacher should have. Art lessons represent one of many options how to develop creativity and an art project is a very good tool for that. Students accommodated in a student's hall of residence that comes under schools OA,SOŠ and SOU in Třeboň are participants of this project. These students are about 16-18 years old. The art project called "Člověk napříč časem" represents the second part of this thesis. At the beginning of this part, I mention inspiration for this project and I explain its structure. The aim of this project is to make the participants think about values, relationships, communication among us and also to make them think about themselves while emphasising environmental education. One of the sub-goals of this project is naturally also the development of creativity and to find out whether it is possible with this group.

Upward Bound is a federally funded program designed to help low-income and first-generation high school students become college graduates by providing them with academic enrichment, financial aid information, and relevant educational experiences. Many Upward Bound programs throughout the country include a 6-week summer program when participants stay in residence halls on a university campus. The Upward Bound program at the University of North Texas is one such program. The goals of this research project are to understand how the residential component of the summer program affects the experience of participants in Upward Bound and the possible benefits it may have towards meeting the overall goals of the program. Participant observation during the 2016 UNT Upward Bound summer program and interviews with participants, RAs, program alumni, and organizational leaders uncovered the ways in which the residential component benefits and enriches the experience of participation in Upward Bound.

This theses focuses on the issue of study of foreigners from formal Soviet Union in the Czech Republic. The goal of this work is to analyse and evaluate steps on the student's journey from initial idea to study in the Czech Republic, through main obstacles that need to be overcome in the process to basic requirements and necessities that need to be fulfilled. These issues were analyzed in eight connected chapters, six theoretical and two practical. Results of the practical part uncover the most problematic areas a foreign student encounters during the study at the college in the Czech Republic. The paper also includes suggested solutions to these problems.