Academic Attainment in Students with Dyslexia in Distance Education.

This investigation studied attainment in students with dyslexia or other specific learning difficulties who were taking modules by distance learning with the Open University in 2012. Students with dyslexia or other specific learning difficulties who had no additional disabilities were just as likely as nondisabled students to complete their modules, but they were less likely to pass the modules that they had completed and less likely to obtain good grades on the modules that they had passed. Students with dyslexia or other specific learning difficulties who had additional disabilities were less likely to complete their modules, less likely to pass the modules that they had completed and less likely to obtain good grades on the modules that they had passed than were nondisabled students. Nevertheless, around 40% of students with dyslexia or other specific learning difficulties obtained good grades (i.e. those that would lead to a bachelor's degree with first-class or upper second-class honours).

Achievement goals in adult learners: evidence from distance education.

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that learners may adopt different kinds of achievement goals: mastery approach, mastery avoidance, performance approach, and performance avoidance. In higher education, this evidence has mainly come from young people who have recently gone straight from secondary education to higher education. However, higher education is increasingly populated by older students, and it has been theorised that the relationship between goals and achievement might be very different for adult learners. AIMS: The aim of the present study was to examine whether the relationships between achievement, drop-out rate, and goal orientation observed for non-adult populations are mirrored in adult learners. METHOD: The Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ) was administered to adult learners taking courses by distance learning. SAMPLE: Respondents were 195 men and 586 women between the ages of 19 and 87. RESULTS: The results confirmed the reliability of the 2 × 2 version of the AGQ for this distinctive population. As in previous studies of younger students, mastery-approach goals were unrelated to attainment, performance-approach goals tended to facilitate attainment, and performance-avoidance goals tended to impair attainment. In addition, mastery-avoidance goals tended to impair students' attainment and also increased the likelihood that they would drop out of their course altogether. CONCLUSION: The achievement-goal framework is as appropriate for understanding influences on attainment in adult learners as it is in younger students. Adult learners may be more sensitive to the deleterious effects of adopting mastery-avoidance achievement goals.

Field independence: reviewing the evidence.

BACKGROUND: The construct of field independence (FI) remains one of the most widely cited notions in research on cognitive style and on learning and instruction more generally. However, a great deal of confusion continues to exist around the definition of FI, its measurement, and the interpretation of research results, all of which have served to limit our understanding of and practice in education. AIMS: This study reviews research evidence on FI and highlights key issues to frame a more informed agenda for future research. ARGUMENTS: Caution needs to be exercised over the interpretation of the evidence around FI and field dependence (FD). In tests measuring FI only, it is inappropriate to use the term FD. FI is clearly correlated with measures of spatial ability; however, whether FI is just a measure of perceptual and more specifically spatial ability is a matter of debate. Furthermore, whether FI is just a cognitive ability or a cognitive style is not the central issue, as both can be developed. FI has a significant relationship with aspects of working memory and with other variables. It is especially important in the management and interpretation of complex cognitive tasks. CONCLUSIONS: Field independence has an important role to play in the navigation of the complex and information-rich learning environments of the 21st century. It is therefore important to move beyond the present narrow focus on FI as a style or trait by acknowledging, embracing, and exploring the complexity of the interaction between individual and contextual variables.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing students' experiences in mainstream and separate postsecondary education.

In order to better understand academic achievement among deaf and hard-of-hearing students in different educational placements, an exploratory study examined the experiences of postsecondary students enrolled in mainstream programs (with hearing students) versus separate programs (without hearing students) at the same institution. The Course Experience Questionnaire, the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory, and the Classroom Participation Questionnaire were utilized to obtain information concerning their perceptions, participation, and access to information in the classroom. Both groups were concerned with good teaching and the acquisition of generic skills. Both were motivated by the demands of their assessments and by a fear of failure while being alert to both positive and negative affect in their classroom interactions. Overall, students in separate classes were more positive about workload expectations, instructor feedback, and the choices they had in coursework. Students in mainstream classes were more positive about their acquisition of analytic skills (rather than rote memorization) and about their instructors' interest in them, including flexibility in methods of assessment.

Conceptions of learning and approaches to studying among White and ethnic minority students in distance education.

BACKGROUND: The attainment of White students at UK institutions of higher education tends to be higher than that of students from other ethnic groups, but the causes of this are unclear. AIMS: This study compared White students and students from other ethnic groups in their conceptions of learning, their approaches to studying, and their academic attainment. SAMPLE: A stratified sample of 1,146 White students and 1,146 students from other ethnic groups taking courses by distance learning with the UK Open University. METHODS: The Mental Models section of the Inventory of Learning Styles and the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory were administered in a postal survey. RESULTS: The students' questionnaire scores were contaminated by response bias, which varied across different ethnic groups. When adjusted to control for response bias, the scores on the two questionnaires shared 37.2% of their variance and made a significant contribution to predicting the students' attainment. White students were more likely to exhibit a meaning-directed learning pattern, whereas Asian and Black students were more likely to exhibit a reproduction-directed learning pattern. However, the variation in attainment across different ethnic groups remained significant when their questionnaire scores and prior qualifications were taken into account. CONCLUSIONS: There is a strong relationship between students' conceptions of learning and their approaches to studying, and variations in conceptions of learning in different ethnic groups give rise to variations in approaches to studying. However, factors other than prior qualifications and conceptions of learning are responsible for variation in attainment across different ethnic groups.

Approaches to teaching in mainstream and separate postsecondary classrooms.

The study examined attitudes toward teaching reported by university instructors who normally teach hearing students (with the occasional deaf or hard of hearing student) and by instructors who normally teach deaf and hard of hearing students at the same institution. Overall, a view of instruction as information transmission was associated with a teacher-focused approach to instruction, whereas viewing instruction as a means of promoting conceptual change was associated with a student-focused approach. Instructors in mainstream classrooms were more oriented toward information transmission than conceptual change, whereas instructors experienced in separate classrooms for deaf and hard of hearing students reported seeking to promote conceptual change in students and adopting more student-focused approaches to teaching. These results are consistent with previous findings concerning instructors' approaches to teaching and deaf and hard of hearing students' approaches to learning, and may help explain recent findings regarding student outcomes in separate versus mainstream secondary classrooms.

Conceptions of learning, approaches to studying and personal development in UK higher education.

BACKGROUND: Students in higher education are known to vary in their conceptions of learning, their approaches to studying, and the personal development and personal change that result. AIMS: This study aimed to explore the relationships among these four aspects of students' experience; to examine whether there were variations across academic subjects and across departments in each subject; and to explore whether there were changes from first year to after graduation. SAMPLE: Students in the first year and the final year of the undergraduate programmes at 15 departments, five offering each of three subjects: bioscience, business studies, and sociology. METHOD: Participants completed a questionnaire containing four instruments and were given a similar questionnaire roughly two years later (when the entering students were in their third year, and when the exiting students were in their second year after graduation). RESULTS: The students' conceptions of learning showed a clear relationship with their approaches to studying, but the relationships with their personal development and personal change were much weaker. The students' scores were significantly related to age and gender and showed some significant differences across academic subjects and departments. However, there was little change in their scores over time. CONCLUSION: Students' approaches to studying are influenced by their conceptions of learning and are relatively consistent across different contexts. In contrast, their reports of personal change and development seem to be determined by their implicit theories on entering higher education.

Perceived academic quality and approaches to studying in the health professions.

BACKGROUND: Students in higher education may adopt different approaches to studying, depending upon their perceptions of the academic quality of their courses and programmes, and both are likely to depend upon the nature of the curricula to which they are exposed. AIMS: Perceptions of quality and approaches to studying were investigated in students taking pre-registration programmes in a school of health professions. Two of the programmes were 3-year undergraduate programmes with subject-based curricula, and two were 2-year entry-level masters programmes with problem-based curricula. METHOD: The Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) and the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory (RASI) were administered to the students within a single survey. Their teachers were also surveyed with regard to their beliefs and intentions about teaching. RESULTS: The teachers on the two kinds of programme exhibited similar beliefs and intentions about teaching. However, the students on the masters programmes produced higher ratings than did the students on the undergraduate programmes with regard to the appropriateness of their assessment, the acquisition of generic skills and the emphasis on student independence. The students on the masters programmes were also more likely to show a deep approach to studying and less likely to show a surface approach to studying than were the students on the undergraduate programmes. CONCLUSIONS: The CEQ and the RASI provide complementary evidence for use in research, in quality assurance and in quality enhancement. In comparison with subject-based curricula, problem-based curricula seem to enhance students' perceptions of their programmes and the quality of their learning.

Measures of short-term memory: a historical review.

Following Ebbinghaus (1885/1964), a number of procedures have been devised to measure short-term memory using immediate serial recall: digit span, Knox's (1913) cube imitation test and Corsi's (1972) blocks task. Understanding the cognitive processes involved in these tasks was obstructed initially by the lack of a coherent concept of short-term memory and later by the mistaken assumption that short-term and long-term memory reflected distinct processes as well as different kinds of experimental task. Despite its apparent conceptual simplicity, a variety of cognitive mechanisms are responsible for short-term memory, and contemporary theories of working memory have helped to clarify these. Contrary to the earliest writings on the subject, measures of short-term memory do not provide a simple measure of mental capacity, but they do provide a way of understanding some of the key mechanisms underlying human cognition.

Mental models of learning in distance education.

BACKGROUND: Interview-based research has shown that students in higher education hold a number of different conceptions of learning and of themselves as learners. There is debate about whether these conceptions constitute a developmental hierarchy. AIMS: This study evaluated the Mental Models section of Vermunt and van Rijswijk's (1988) Inventory of Learning Styles (ILS) as a measure of students' conceptions of learning and sought to identify conceptions of learning as qualitatively different patterns of scores. SAMPLE: A random sample of 1,000 students who were taking courses by distance learning with the Open University in the UK. METHOD: A translated and adapted version of the Mental Models section of the ILS was administered in a postal survey. Complete data were obtained from 441 students and were subjected to principal component analysis, cluster analysis and discriminant analysis. RESULTS: The five scales in the Mental Models section of the ILS were homogeneous and achieved a satisfactory level of internal consistency, but two of the five scales could not be differentiated from each other in the students' responses. A cluster analysis identified four subgroups of students who had different patterns of scores on two discriminant functions. CONCLUSION: The four mental models identified in this study were broadly similar to those identified by Vermunt (1996) in an interview-based study. However, these do not seem to constitute a developmental hierarchy, and, following Vermunt, it is suggested that they are better interpreted as aspects of four over-arching 'learning styles' or 'learning patterns'.

Investigating the relationship between variations in students' perceptions of their academic environment and variations in study behaviour in distance education.

BACKGROUND: Recent research on student learning in higher education has identified clear associations between variations in students' perceptions of their academic environment and variations in their study behaviour. AIMS: This research investigated a general theoretical model linking students' demographic characteristics, perceptions and study behaviour with measures of outcome and in particular compared four accounts of the casual relationship between perceptions and study behaviour. SAMPLES: Study 1 employed data from 1,123 students taking six courses by distance learning; Study 2 employed data from 2,049 students taking seven courses by distance learning. METHODS: Path analysis was used to assess the causal relationships among the students' age, gender and prior qualifications, their scores on the Course Experience Questionnaire, their scores on a short version of the Approaches to Studying Inventory or the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory, their overall marks and their ratings of general satisfaction. RESULTS: Both studies yielded evidence for the causal efficacy of all the paths identified in the general theoretical model. CONCLUSIONS: There exists a bi-directional causal relationship between variations in students' perceptions of their academic environment and variations in their study behaviour.

Knox's cube imitation test: a historical review and an experimental analysis.

The cube imitation test was developed by as a nonverbal test of intelligence. Many variants show satisfactory reliability, but performance is correlated both with Verbal IQ and with Performance IQ. Performance is impaired by cerebral lesions but unrelated to the side of lesion. Examinees describe both verbal and visuospatial strategies. In a new experiment, performance was disrupted by concurrent random generation, manual tapping, and articulatory suppression. The cube imitation test is not simply a measure of the ability to retain visuospatial information but also depends on verbal representations as well as attentional capacity. Even so, the test was central to the modern appreciation that any adequate measure of intelligence must incorporate both verbal tests and performance tests.

Perceived academic quality and approaches to studying at Danish schools of occupational therapy.

Students in the fourth semester of basic training programmes in occupational therapy at seven different institutions of higher education in Denmark were surveyed using the Course Experience Questionnaire [CEQ] and the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory [RASI]. The CEQ proved to be a reasonably robust in this setting: most of the scales demonstrated satisfactory reliability, and a factor analysis confirmed its intended constituent structure. The CEQ also discriminated among students at the seven institutions in their patterns of scores. The RASI proved to be less satisfactory: many subscales did not demonstrate satisfactory reliability and its intended constituent structure was only partly confirmed by factor analysis. Moreover, the RASI failed to discriminate clearly among students at the seven institutions. The scores on the CEQ produced by students at four of the institutions raised concerns relating to the clarity of academic goals and standards, the teaching performance of staff, and the academic workload imposed on students. Nevertheless, students at five institutions produced relatively high ratings of their general satisfaction with their programmes, and students at all seven schools produced high ratings of the appropriateness of their assessments and the acquisition of generic skills.

Academic engagement in students with a hearing loss in distance education.

This investigation compared 267 students with a hearing loss and 178 students with no declared form of disability who were taking courses by distance learning in terms of their scores on an abbreviated version of the Academic Engagement Form. Students with a hearing loss obtained lower scores than students with no disability with regard to communication with other students, but some felt that communication was easier than in a traditional academic situation. Students who were postvocationally deaf had lower scores than students with no disability on learning from other students, but they obtained higher scores on student autonomy and student control. In general, the impact of a hearing loss on engagement in distance education is relatively slight.

Students with an undisclosed hearing loss: a challenge for academic access, progress, and success?

It has been suggested that only 8% of postsecondary students in the United States who have a hearing loss have disclosed that hearing loss to their institutions. Consistent with this suggestion, two anonymous surveys of students enrolled in courses with the Open University in the United Kingdom suggested that there were roughly 9,000 students in the Open University itself and over 42,000 students in higher education across the United Kingdom as a whole who had a hearing loss that they had not disclosed to their institutions. These students tended to be older people with a relatively mild hearing loss that did not disrupt their communication with other students or their active engagement with learning activities. The impact of the students' hearing loss upon their approaches to studying seemed to be relatively slight, but it was associated with an increase in the students' perceived academic workload.

Howard Andrew Knox and the origins of performance testing on Ellis Island, 1912-1916.

Howard Andrew Knox was Assistant Surgeon at the immigration station at Ellis Island, New York, between April 1912 and May 1916. In response to public disquiet that the physicians at Ellis Island were failing to prevent mentally retarded people from entering the country, Knox and his colleagues assembled a collection of performance tests that could be administered to potential immigrants with little knowledge of the English language. They were subsequently used in clinical practice and in educational, psychological, and social research. Because of the early work done at Ellis Island, it is nowadays taken for granted that any adequate measure of intelligence must include both verbal and performance subtests.

A jigsaw-puzzle imagery task for assessing active visuospatial processes in old and young people.

Recent studies have suggested a theoretical distinction between active elaboration and passive storage in visuospatial working memory, but research with older adults has failed to demonstrate a differential preservation of these two abilities. The results are controversial, and the investigation of the active component has been inhibited by the absence of any appropriate experimental procedures. A new task was developed involving the mental reconstruction of pictures of objects from fragmented pieces, and this provides a useful procedure for exploring active visuospatial processing. Significant differences in terms of both correctness and response latency were obtained between young and older adults and between younger old and older old adults. Performance also varied with visual complexity, mental rotation, and processing load. It is concluded that this ecologically relevant procedure constitutes a very powerful, sensitive, and reliable tool for identifying individual differences in visuospatial working memory.