To refine selective admission models, we investigate which measure of prior achievement has the best predictive validity for academic success in university. We compare the predictive validity of three core high school subjects to the predictive validity of high school grade point average (GPA) for academic achievement in a liberal arts university programme. Predictive validity is compared between the Dutch pre-university (VWO) and the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma. Moreover, we study how final GPA is predicted by prior achievement after students complete their first year. Path models were separately run for VWO (n = 314) and IB (n = 113) graduates. For VWO graduates, high school GPA explained more variance than core subject grades in first-year GPA and final GPA. For IB graduates, we found the opposite. Subsequent path models showed that after students' completion of the first year, final GPA is best predicted by a combination of first-year GPA and high school GPA. Based on our small-scale results, we cautiously challenge the use of high school GPA as the norm for measuring prior achievement. Which measure of prior achievement best predicts academic success in university may depend on the diploma students enter with.
How can we change the conversation about faculty work? Informed by recent changes in higher education in the Netherlands, this chapter highlights three areas that are at the intersection between faculty development and educational renewal as salient for supporting mid‐career faculty—addressing first the emerging opportunities and responsibilities for individual faculty members, then for teams, and finally for institutional leaders.
The use of nonspatial attentional mechanisms in search tasks was investigated by presenting observers with stimuli that contained 4-12 elements located on a circle around the fixation point. The elements differed in one of six nonspatial 'dimensions', namely orientation, contrast, scale, number of cycles, 'shape', and place in the alphabet. The target element of the search task differed from trial to trial but was always presented to the observer as a nonspatial, visual cue. This cue was displayed either before the stimulus (precue) or after the stimulus (postcue). Whereas a precue creates optimal conditions for the use of nonspatial attentional mechanisms, a postcue precludes benefits from their use. The fact that performance was better in the case of precued stimuli than in the case of postcued stimuli indicates that observers employed nonspatial attentional mechanisms. In the final analysis, however, the effect of nonspatial attention reduces to spatial attention in combination with limited storage capacity.
Inclusive teaching and learning is central to our educational mission. In this project, we used a whole-institution approach to make our institution’s inclusive objectives concrete and specific. We aimed to develop ways to capture our own community’s goals and objectives in a ‘living document’, a syllabus template in which insights from educational literature on diversity and inclusion are presented alongside the voices and practices of members of our own community of practice (CoP). We created the syllabus template by using the literature to list elements of inclusive design, inclusive delivery, inclusive assessment, and learning-focused syllabi, then identifying examples of those elements in syllabi of local experienced practitioners, and deepening the good practices in interviews with the experienced practitioners. The final syllabus template presents authentic practices from local syllabi, with explanations of the relevance of those examples and reference to educational literature, links to teaching tools, and contact-information for individual colleagues. The shared syllabus template deliberately situates academic development within the practice of the local CoP. We found that even the most experienced practitioners find it challenging to work on inclusive practices, which is all the more reason to stimulate a collaborative approach.
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