2015’s AERA in Chicago is almost over for me, but it was very rewarding. See the prentations page for downloadable papers and PPTs. On Saturday April 18 I had the pleasure to chair a high-level coherent and empirical research session on Competence Development in Workplace Learning.  Continue reading 2015’s AERA

Dear website visitor. I have updated the list with downloadable papers. Check it if you want and download the papers which you need for your work. Accurate referencing will be highly appreciated. Enjoy.

The call for WU sandwich PhD’s applications has opened. The deadline for proposals is set on Friday, May 15^th 2015. Candidates must meet all of the eligibility requirements. See Website: http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Education-Programmes/PhD-Programme/Categories-of-PhD-Candidates/Sandwich-PhD-Candidates.htm For a submission via the chair of Education and Competence  Studies proposals must be built upon completed or running research of PhD candidates at ECS. Send project ideas to martin.mulder@wur.nl

The manuscript ‘Towards a Set of Design Principles for Developing Oral Presentation Competence: A Synthesis of Research in Higher Education Educational Research Review’, by Stan van Ginkel et al, has been accepted for publication in the Educational Research Review (Impact Factor: 3.107). The paper will appear online soon. Check http://www.journals.elsevier.com/educational-research-review/

Found back publication: Mulder, M. (1992). Toward a Comprehensive Framework for Research in Training in Business and Industry. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 11, 2, 139-155. The research agenda on training and development in business and industry published in that is still relevant.

‘Training and development, as one sector of lifelong education, plays an important role in the development of people and organizations. But in spite of its importance we have only a limited understanding of the interrelations of all the issues that have been raised in this sector during the past decades. This is partly due to the fact that there is only limited agreement on the research agenda for training and development of human resources in organizations. In this article we present both an approach to establish a set of priorities for such a comprehensive research agenda, and a proposal for such an agenda for research on training and development in business and industry. Preliminary results of a survey, content analysis, trainers’ inventory, trends analyses and cases studies were documented into a consultation document that was offered to a nominal group of 21 policy makers, training managers and other training practitioners. This group analysed a research proposal consisting of analytical propositions and accompanying candidate research questions. Three classes of research questions are distinguished: strategic, applied and fundamental. Within these categories 26 of the 35 stated research questions appeared to be of high priority. The remaining nine research questions are rated as of intermediate importance. None of the questions appeared to be considered irrelevant. We conclude this article by pointing out the most promising research areas in the field of training and development in business and industry by comparing our findings with those of Alden (1982): the contribution of training and development to organizational effectiveness, the access and mobility of people from target groups in the organization, cost-effectiveness of alternative approaches, the integration of training and development in human resource planning,  success and failure factors in HRD interventions, labour relations in relation to training and development, and the impact of training and development on management development.  We join Dopyera and Lay-Dipyera (1985) in calling for more experimental and quasi-experimental research, to produce knowledge about a series of causal relationships. This requires the availability of valid indicators of effectiveness of training and development interventions’. (Source: op cit)

The recent international intercultural tensions call for intercultural understanding between students in education. Vitaliy Popov was publishing about his in the International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 36, 3012-317. ‘This paper aims to examine challenges that are inherent in multicultural student group work (MCSG) in higher education and the differences between students from different cultural backgrounds in how they perceive the importance of challenges in MCSG. For this purpose as 19-item suvey was completed by studients (N=141) of the 9-EC (European Credits) Academic Consultancy Training (ACT) course of Wageningen University, a university in the Netherlands in the domain of life sciences with a student population consisting of over 30% foreign students from over 100 different countries. Students were required to rate on a Likert scale (from 1 to 5) the importance of a certain challenge in MCSG. Challenges for students in MCSG were analyzed using scales that centered on cross-cutting challenges and culture-related challenges in multicultural group work identified in exploratory factor  analysis. To examine the extent to which culturally diverse students differed with respect to their perceptions of the importance of the challenges, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted based on Hofstede’s individualist–collectivist cultural dimension. Free-riding, insufficient English language skills and students not communicating properly were perceived by all participants of this explorative case study to be the most important challenges in MCSG. The results suggest that students’ cultural background (the individualist–collectivist dimension) affects their perceptions of the importance of challenges in MCSG. Explanations for these results and recommendations for future research are provided.’ (source: Popov, V., D. Brinkman, H.J.A. Biemans, M. Mulder, A. Kuznetsov, O. Noroozi (2012). Multicultural student group work in higher education. An explorative case study on challenges as perceived by students. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 36(2), pp. 302– 317). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147176711000939

E.J.H. Spelt, P.A. Luning, M.A.J.S. van Boekel & M. Mulder (2014). Constructively aligned teaching and learning in higher education in engineering: what do students perceive as contributing to the learning of interdisciplinary thinking?, European Journal of Engineering Education, DOI: 10.1080/03043797.2014.987647

Abstract:

‘Increased attention to the need for constructively aligned teaching and learning in interdisciplinary higher education in engineering is observed. By contrast, little research has been conducted on the implementation of the outcome-based pedagogical approach to interdisciplinary higher education in engineering. Therefore, the present design-based research was undertaken to develop, implement, and evaluate a constructively aligned learning environment in the interdisciplinary field of food quality management. The practical aims were to reduce the perception held by the students of choppiness and to prevent them floundering in the disciplines; the theoretical aim was to accumulate theory on learning environment aspects that would help students to learn interdisciplinary thinking. The design-focused evaluation among 26 students showed that the practical aims were met, and concerning the theoretical aim, eight learning environment aspects were identified such as learning within an interdisciplinary framework. Further research should validate these aspects to continue with tackling teacher challenges on teaching interdisciplinary thinking.’ (Spelt et al, op cit).

Dear website visitor,

I wish you a Happy and Healthy New Year!!!

As I mentioned earlier, I am maintaining this website for your convenience. It started when I began doing projects in East-Africa. I learned then that many colleagues and students did not have access to current publications, thus I started uploading my papers and presentations on an earlier version of this website. I had never thought that it would get used so much. In 2014 the website again got hundreds of thousands of hits and tens of thousands unique visitors.

Last year I introduced a system by which persons who would want to download papers had to register their email address. That was because I was eager to learn who was downloading papers to see whether the users still match the original purpose of the website. Indeed, that is the case, although the visitors profile is quite broad. All of you who left your email address, rest assured that I will keep your address for personal use, and that I will not use them for commercial reasons.

One of my good intentions for 2015 is to complement the list of downloadable publications, to increase the usefulness of the site.

To all visitors: I hope you found this website interesting and useful.

Thanks a lot for visiting. Come again!