Excellence in Higher Education (E-Journal)
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How to Read English Research Articles: A Case Study of Graduate Students Majoring in Information Systems
Full text linkReading research articles in English will be a special challenge for those students who speak English as a foreign language (EFL). EFL graduate students will require a specific method for helping them to cope with the articles they have to read. This study tries to offer a method for helping them to read, understand, and analyze English articles easier. This study employs evaluation and trialing. It is accompanied by pre and post surveys that will give information about the condition of the students before and after the method is implemented. This study involved graduate students majoring in Information Systems at Satya Wacana Christian University. It is expected that the method proposed will help the students to know exactly what they need to read and focus on when they read a research article so that they can use their time more efficiently and effectively
Book Review: Researching Student Learning in Higher Education: A Social Realist Approach
Full text linkThis is a review of Researching Student Learning in Higher Education: A Social Realist Approach by Jennifer M. Case (Routledge, 2013)
A Model for a Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence: A Catalyst for Program Improvement in Developing Institutions
Full text linkA focus on the past 20 years has shown an evolution in International Higher Education from the concept of teaching to the concept of learning. As universities in developing nations make the transition to become regional and international in quality it is important to the university administrators and the ministries of education to develop strategies to support this evolution from teaching to learning. This paper argues that an integral piece of this transition is the presence of a center for teaching and learning excellence
An “Other” Social Mobility, Viewed from the Standpoint of Exclusion
Full text linkThe purpose of this article is to analyze how social mobility and social inclusion are perceived by a group of professionals from modest backgrounds, who graduated from public universities and whose personal histories reflect levels of exclusion. This qualitative study, which is organized in six dimensions of analysis—migration and territorial mobility, education, occupation and income, social capital, vulnerability, and expectations—shows four main findings, which inevitably also raise new working hypotheses. The findings are the following: that social mobility and social inclusion are heterogeneous processes that education remains a means of both mobility and inclusion, that social mobility coexists with inequality, and that mobility and social inclusion require broader means of conceptualization because of the difficulty of understanding this process in people with particular characteristics and from particular backgrounds
MOOCs: Hope and Hype in Viral Technologies and Policies
Full text linkMassive open online courses (MOOCs) have emerged in the last couple of years as Internet-based vehicles providinglow cost global access to quality education. They come in two basic forms: expert and self-organizing. Thedominant expert model provides access to expertise through centralized software platforms with expert-designedshort lecture videos, free online reading materials, discussion forums and a strong emphasis on measurable assessments.Self-organizing models focus on problems that may be too new for well-developed expertise, but are tooimportant to ignore. Their rapid (viral) growth has resulted in related “viral policies” created by administrators andothers who feel under competitive pressure to act quickly. MOOC interest is growing in many countries, openingnew opportunities for international education partnerships. Backlashes have taken the form of: (a) unresolvedproblems with course perseverance, (b) assessment procedures to reduce cheating and improve peer review, and (c)faculty resistance to viral governance. While low course completion rates remains problematic, rapidly developingtechnologies and competitive networks are likely to influence higher education institutional policy for some timeto come
From Education Policy to Class Practices: Indonesian Secondary EFL Teachers’ Self-Efficacy in Developing School-Based EFL Syllabi
Full text linkThe purpose of this quantitative inquiry was to examine the self-efficacy of Indonesian secondary school English as foreign language (EFL) teachers in developing a school-based EFL syllabus. The data were collected through a survey to 98 secondary school EFL teachers in the District of Kerinci, Jambi Sumatra, Indonesia. The data were analyzed through the Rasch Analysis (Linacre 2004, 2006). The results revealed that the teachers had a high-self efficacy in developing the syllabus. However, they tended to be less efficacious on theoretical tasks in the syllabus development and on tasks that were not part of their responsibility in previous curricula. In addition, this study also produced an instrument for measuring teachers’ self-efficacy in developing the syllabus that can be used for similar purposes in other contexts
Front Matter
No full textThis is the second issue of Volume 3, with articles that examine higher education and/or action research projects in Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, and other contexts
The Mysterious Fall of Soeharto: A Genre Analysis of Richard Mann’s Plots and Schemes that Brought Down Soeharto (PSBDS)
Full text linkThe real cause of Soeharto’s fall from the Indonesian presidency remains a mystery. Richard Mann (1998) launched three significant rhetorical questions: (a) Was President Soeharto toppled by student demonstrators and people’s power? (b) Was he brought down by the withdrawal of support from the United States? (c) Or, was his sudden fall brought about by all of the two plus large doses of Oriental plotting and scheming? This article attempts to analyze Richard Mann’s PSBDS in terms of its macrostructure in order to find out the real cause of Soeharto’s fall. The analysis is substantiated by different resources as linguistic evidences, to justify the validity of the findings. The study revealed a proposition that critical reading is the key to successful comprehension of a text which may include a crosschecking with other resources, a careful identification of the generic structure of a text, and paying attention to how an author positions his or her readers. The article concludes, that in fact, Soeharto resigned from presidency on his own wisdom in order to avoid more bloodshed in Indonesian dreamland
IELTS as a Literacy-Based Proficiency Test
Full text linkThis is an exploratory case study aimed at investigating whether or not International English Language Testing Systems (IELTS) scores correspond with literacy levels. During the 2011-2012 academic year, 20 first semester students in the English Literature Program in the Faculty of Language and Cultural Studies (Fakultas Bahasa dan Ilmu Budaya) at Universitas Stikubank (UNISBANK) were randomly selected to take the IELTS. Results were matched against predetermined criteria for literacy levels (Hammond, et al. 1992) in order to classify them into the appropriate levels of literacy. Findings indicate that all students (100 percent) were at the performative level of literacy with respect to their overall IELTS scores. Only 25 percent of the students on the speaking subtest and 20 percent of the students on the reading subtest managed to test at the functional level. It is therefore recommended that action research be conducted in Central Java level to upgrade the level of literacy from the performative level up to the informative level. As well, similar research may be conducted with a multi-disciplinary approach employing a correlational study between IELTS band scores with literacy levels