More than 3 million students study outside their home country, primarily at a Western university. A common belief among educators is that international students are insufficiently adjusted to higher education in their host country, both academically and socially. Furthermore, several groups of international students experience considerable amounts of stress while adapting to the culture of the host-institute. Several researchers argue that studies on adaptation of international students should widen its focus to the underlying mechanisms that leads towards this ''misalignment''. In a cross-institutional comparison among 958 students at five business schools in the Netherlands, differences in academic performance between local and international students were identified by focussing on their levels of academic and social integration. Students' academic integration was measured with the Students' Adaptation to College Questionnaire (SACQ), while students' social integration was measured with a newly developed and validated -011-9468-1 questionnaire. The results indicate that the degree of academic success of international students is multi-faceted. International students with a (mixed) western ethnic background perform well on both academic and social integration, and also attained higher studyperformance in comparison to domestic students. In contrast, international students with a non-Western background are less integrated compared to other international students. Nevertheless, they have a similar study-performance. Finally, academic adjustment is the main predictor of study-performance for Dutch, Western and Mixed-Western students. Social adjustment was negatively related to study-performance. The lack of fit for predicting long-term study success of non-Western students indicates that their academic and social integration processes are more complex and non-linear.123 High Educ (2012) 63:685-700 DOI 10.1007/s10734

a b s t r a c tThe present study investigates the role of process and social oriented smartphone usage, emotional intelligence, social stress, self-regulation, gender, and age in relation to habitual and addictive smartphone behavior. We conducted an online survey among 386 respondents. The results revealed that habitual smartphone use is an important contributor to addictive smartphone behavior. Process related smartphone use is a strong determinant for both developing habitual and addictive smartphone behavior. People who extensively use their smartphones for social purposes develop smartphone habits faster, which in turn might lead to addictive smartphone behavior. We did not find an influence of emotional intelligence on habitual or addictive smartphone behavior, while social stress positively influences addictive smartphone behavior, and a failure of self-regulation seems to cause a higher risk of addictive smartphone behavior. Finally, men experience less social stress than women, and use their smartphones less for social purposes. The result is that women have a higher chance in developing habitual or addictive smartphone behavior. Age negatively affects process and social usage, and social stress. There is a positive effect on self-regulation. Older people are therefore less likely to develop habitual or addictive smartphone behaviors.

An experiment evaluated the impact of two typical features of virtual learning environments on anatomical learning for users of differing visuo-spatial ability. The two features studied are computer-implemented stereopsis (the spatial information that is based on differences in visual patterns projected in both eyes) and interactivity (the possibility to actively and continuously change one's view of computer-mediated objects). Participants of differing visuospatial ability learned about human abdominal organs via anatomical three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions using either a stereoptic study phase (involving stereopsis and interactivity) or using a biocular study phase that involved neither stereopsis nor interactivity. Subsequent tests assessed the acquired knowledge in tasks involving (a) identification of anatomical structures in anatomical 2D cross-sections (i.e. typical Computed Tomography pictures) in an identification task, and (b) localization of these cross-sections in a frontal view of the anatomy in a localization task. The results show that the stereoptic group performed significantly better on both tasks and that participants of low visuo-spatial ability benefited more from the stereoptic study phase than those of high visuo-spatial ability.

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This paper reports work in progress investigating gender differences and styles in the use of digital games amongst advanced level biology students. It is an elaboration on previous work exploring the relationship between cognitive style and academic performance in Maltese students taking biology at advanced level. In this previous work the cognitive style of 581 (212 male and 369 female) advanced biology students was correlated with their academic performance in five different subjects. Pearson's correlation showed that the wholist-analytic dimension, the verbalimagery dimension, and gender were not correlated. Regression analysis showed that none of the style dimension combinations had a significant effect on performance in any of the subjects. However, gender proved to be a stronger determinant of performance. These results were interpreted from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Numerous studies have consistently found gender differences in language and visuospatial skills. Female superiority is seen on tests of both receptive and productive language, and on more complex tasks such as making analogies and creative writing. Males have an advantage in visuospatial reasoning, being more adept at performing disembedding and internal spatial transformations. In view of these results and the constantly reported gender difference in the use of digital games, this paper describes the initial stage of an investigation about gender-determined propensities to digital media. Different studies claim that males dedicate more time than female students to playing digital games. A marked emphasis on the use of particular game genres by the different sexes is also reported. This reported phenomenon is investigated within the context of Maltese students taking advanced biology. Through a questionnaire, data were collected about the time students spend playing digital games, their preferred platform, and their preferred games. Data were analysed to establish gender differences in the time spent on playing digital games, the preferred platform, the most popular digital games amongst males and female students, and the preferred game genre. The results are interpreted from neurocognitve and psychosocial perspectives. Suggestions are made for possible integration of digital games in learning. Theoretical Background and Research RationaleThis paper reports work in progress investigating gender differences and styles in the use of digital games amongst advanced level biology students. It is an elaboration on previous work that explored the relationship between cognitive style and academic *Corresponding author.