As the higher education environment changes, there are calls for university teachers to change and enhance their teaching practices to match. Networking practices are known to be deeply implicated in studies of change and diffusion of innovation, yet academics' networking activities in relation to teaching have been little studied. This paper…

The present study aims to investigate how conceptual symmetry plays a role in the use of spatial particles in English and to further examine its pedagogical implications via a corpus-based evaluation of the course books in senior high schools in Taiwan. More specifically, we adopt a quantitative corpus-based approach to investigate whether bipolar…

Objective: The use of pictorial warning labels on tobacco packets has gained almost universal international acceptance. In a public consultation exercise in 2006, the Department of Health in England, through a web-based answering system, asked people's preferences of 42 images, asking which images might be effective to encourage tobacco cessation…

This paper examines a sample of online discussion data from the course forum for the large-scale beginners' Chinese course offered by the UK Open University. This forum is open to all registered students, their participation is completely voluntary and they (rather than tutors) initiate communications. The aim of this study is (i) to seek to…

The purpose of this study was first to determine factors associated with intellectual reputation, specifically among selected biomedical departments worldwide within the university setting. Second, the study aimed to examine intellectual reputation in relationship to doctoral graduates' productivity in the biomedical sciences and in relationship…

This cross-national scenario based study examined fourth-grade students' perceptions of high-performing classmates in terms of their expected intellectual abilities, positive social qualities and popularity among their peers across seven countries. The overall results show that high academic achievements predominantly lead to positive expectations…

This study investigated the extent to which women's and men's relationship satisfaction within couples is similarly or differently affected by becoming a parent and the extent to which changes in work hours and hours spent on household labor affect a person's own and his or her spouse's relationship satisfaction across the transition to…

These authors have previously described how to use the "t" test to compare two groups. In this article, they describe the use of a different test, analysis of variance (ANOVA) to compare more than two groups. ANOVA is a test of group differences: do at least two of the means differ from each other? ANOVA assumes (1) normal distribution…

In the last few years, digital games have become increasingly popular with both "hardcore" and "casual" audiences. At the same time, it has been argued that games can be powerful learning environments, since they are seen to encourage active and critical learning through participation in affinity groups and semiotic domains but…

According to a recent report, the top skill that employers are looking for in graduates is an ability to work collaboratively with teams of people from a range of backgrounds and countries. So as universities seek to internationalise, an important question is how successful they are in developing this skill. Both research and anecdotal evidence…

Entry into higher education (HE) is recognised as a challenging time for undergraduates as they negotiate the norms and practices of new academic communities and foster relationships with peers and academics. Given the significance of this time period, our University has piloted a new four-week module that immerses students in their discipline and…

Schooling can produce both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, both of which are important determinants of adult outcomes. Using very rich data from a UK birth cohort study, I estimate teacher value added (VA) models for both pupils' test scores and non-cognitive skills. I show that teachers are equally important in the determination of pupils'…

Despite entering higher education in good numbers, candidates from some black and minority ethnic groups are concentrated in less prestigious institutions. A similar pattern is evident in candidates' applications, raising important questions about the role of "self-exclusion". Statistical analysis confirms that candidates from some…

In this study, we investigate the development of primary memory capacity among children. Children between the ages of 5 and 8 completed 3 novel tasks (split span, interleaved lists, and a modified free-recall task) that measured primary memory by estimating the number of items in the focus of attention that could be spontaneously recalled in…

This paper reports on an exploratory research project on the evaluation of the engagement with a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) carried out by six members of staff and two "expert students" involved in the MA in English Language Teaching (ELT) in the Department of English and Languages at Coventry University (CU), United Kingdom,…