This chapter presents a case study of a large common first year unit/subject in a major Australian university. The unit introduces students to the theory and practice of design through a learning environment that is brief and intense; being delivered in block mode over just four days, and being free of other academic commitments. Students choose from one of two concurrent environments, either a camping field trip or an on-campus alternative, and work in mixed discipline groups of six to nine students, on two sequential design projects. Participant survey and reflective journal data are used to analyse student perceptions of the learning activities and to establish the pedagogical success of learning about collaboration through the act of collaborating; specifically through a project-based design environment. The data supports the hypothesis that groups that emotionally engaged with collaboration and collaborated more effectively achieved higher academic grades.
HERE'S SOMETHING wrong with a law that brands good schools with "failing" labels, places the heaviest burdens on states that were already striving to meet challenging education goals, imposes inflexible rules, and fails to make good on promises to pay for programs that would help struggling schools meet the demands of the law. These are the features of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which was passed with great fanfare and hope two years ago but now is mired in complexity and is the cause of widespread concern.
Left-leaning and right-leaning governments hold opposing views on economic policy, resulting in disparities in economic behaviours and outcomes. Given this context, we explore the effect of political ideology on domestic credit using an unbalanced panel data of 29 countries from 1960 to 2014. Our empirical analysis shows that left-leaning governments reduce total domestic credit allocations. Also, we find that right-leaning governments provide more credit to the private sector, while left-leaning governments prefer to boost domestic credit to the public sector. In a further analysis, we show that political parties and their domestic credit strategies remain unchanged even during electoral periods. Our novel insights, that are robust to alternative measures, samples, and a set of econometric identifications, contribute to the literature on partisan politics and lending behaviour.
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