The Skills that Lead to Employment in Undergraduate Online Education

In higher education employability has come to the forefront of the debate. Arguments revolve around graduate success in finding employment.  Research by Silva, et. al (2013) helps highlight which skills seem to encourage employability in the market based upon the perceptions of students and teachers at a public university that offers online classes. The report indicates that the societal function of higher education is to encourage the highest employment readiness but cannot determine actual employment itself which is dependent on market factors. 

The study was based upon perceptions of employment skills needed for successfully navigating the market. Research subjects were drawn from an online learning center from the Universidade Alberta to help determine the most important employment skills and those skills to be developed in the online undergraduate system. 

It is beneficial to understand what the purpose of higher education is within society. Knowing how higher education fits within society will help provide a conceptual framework for determining proper skills. According to Harvey (1999) higher education should:

-Establish links to employers that assist them with developing strategies to overcome lack of qualifications.

-Contribute to solutions for education and training in highly-skilled areas with a lack of qualified workers. 

-Prepare graduates with effective skills ensuring that employability requirements are explicit within courses of study. 

Higher education follows the same supply and demand concepts within the market as other entities. Where there is a need for educated workers higher education can help fill the gap through adjusting their curriculum for maximum relevance. They cannot control the market but are able to respond appropriate to that market through understanding the needs of employers and reflecting those needs within their curriculum. 

The development of students naturally has an impact on the development of a nation. When job needs are fulfilled the employer is able to move closer to maximum productivity. Think of how low I.T. skill availability is forcing companies to outsource operations or hire foreign workers. Reich, cited by Knight, discusses the need for higher education to enhance natural skills (Knight, 2003):

-Abstraction: Theory and empirical analysis that includes formulas, equations, models, and metaphors. 

-Systems of Thought: The way the brain processes information. 

-Experimentation: Intuitive experimentation and analytical experimentation. 

-Collaboration: Using communication and teamwork to solve problems. 

The study highlights how students and faculty have a slightly different impression of the skills needed to find jobs. Both groups agree that the concepts of problem solving, planning, decision-making, and willingness to learn as fundamental skills that guild them in their careers. Adaptable and transformative profiles should be enhanced. Adaptive employees are able to learn new skills and apply them to their workplace while transformative people are able to move beyond the rules to change the workplace into a higher functioning entity. Higher education has the responsibility to improve upon the process of knowledge attainment and job skill competence but the specific employment opportunity is the responsibility of the graduate and the employer. The closer schools are to businesses and their needs the more likely relevant market skills will be developed.

Harvey, L, (1999). New realities: The relationship between higher education and

employment. Birmingham Centre for Research into Quality.

Knight, T. P., & Yorke, M. (2003). Assessment learning and employability. England:

SRHE and Open University Press Imprint.

Silva, A., et. al. (2013). Employability in Online Higher Education : A Case Study. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 14 (1).

Webinar: Dealing With Difficult Students In Online Classes

Dealing With Difficult Students In Online Classes: How To Address And Diffuse Problems Quickly And Efficiently
March 5th 2014-3:00-4:30 EST

General Information:

Online learning has revolutionized education, allowing students who would otherwise be unable to commit to a classroom schedule to attend college while maintaining work and family responsibilities. Despite its innovative format and flexibility, the online classroom can contribute to some of the same "behavioral" problems found in the face-to-face classroom. The online classroom is rich with opportunities, but it is crucial for instructors to learn how to easily mitigate the factors that can undermine their best efforts.

This program will address how to manage the difficult student in the online classroom. We will identify the most common types of problems unique to this environment. We will also share personal (and often humorous) scenarios, as well as allow participants to share and collaborate on problem solving approaches. Participants will learn practical strategies with great impact that can easily be incorporated into their courses. We will also discuss how student problems can be mediated in such a way that will contribute to student growth.

Objectives:
- Identify problems intensified by the online environment
- Collaborate on and problem solve real world scenarios
- Attain specific advice on where in their course to implement changes
- Learn specific ways to incorporate expectations into their course
- Acquire ways to create respect in the online forum
- Address and diffuse problems quickly and efficiently
- Know when to address the concern privately or publicly, and when to ask for help from colleagues

Website: http://www.innovativeeducators.org/product_p/2096.htm

Gifted College Students and Androgynous Identities

College students are trying to determine an identity in life and a path forward in their careers. Gifted college students don’t fit well into narrow stereotypes and maintain identities that are deep and complex. Research by Miller, et. al. (2009) on gifted gender roles indicate that gifted excitability and higher potential have androgynous identities that accept a more complex set of male and female personality traits.

Gender identity and personality are associated into an intertwined relationship. Incorrectly people assume that males are supposed to be instrumental while females are supposed to be expressive. There is an assumption that the sex is related in some way to the personality and behavior of the individual. Societal influence appears to be the most profound definition of how boys and girls should act. 

Males and females are considered opposite ends of the spectrum. Generally, people adhere to one or the other.  When doing so they prescribe tightly to social norms regardless of internal processes.  When individuals have androgyny they are capable of accepting both male and female aspects of their personality within the same individual construct. Undifferentiated individuals do not adhere to either male or female roles nor have they integrated varying aspects of gender behavior. 

Androgynous individuals are considered psychologically the healthiest. They can understand their personal characteristics as existing on a plane of traditional male to female aspects and accept the varying degrees of their personality that fits within these modes. They are not rigidly defined by sex norms and are situational in their actions and behaviors. One aspect of their personality may be more masculine (i.e. sports) while another could be more feminine (i.e. empathy) in traditional sex roles.

According to Dabrowski’s theory of high gifted development with over excitability, their success lays in developmental potential, social environment, and internal decision-making.  Those with over-excitabilities that impact the central nervous system develop to higher levels because they have stronger experiences of emotional, intellectual, imaginational, sensual, and psychomotor stimuli. When an individual contains all of the potentials they have the highest capabilities for development.

The authors study of 562 gifted college students found that those with androgynous identities have intense over-excitabilities. Such individuals have the highest potential for advanced personality development. Of all the excitabilities emotional, intellectual, and imaginational seems to have the greatest influence on personality development.  Colleges and teachers should not rigidly define sex and stereotypes for this group so as to ensure the most comfortable learning environment.

We can draw some inferences from this study. Gifted college students do not fit rigidly into male and female social roles. Those with the highest excitabilities and potential incorporate aspects of both male and female traits within their personality. This is part of advanced development. When people rigidly define their behaviors by their sex they lack a sense of awareness and genuiness about themselves which can create tension. Professors should avoid pushing less developed stereotypes about sex roles on gifted college students who have higher potentials in multiple facets of their personalities.

Miller, et. al. (2009). Gender identity and the overexcitability profiles of gifted college students. Roeper Reivew, 31 (3).

Gifted Moral Development in Youth Far above College Students

Derryberry, et. al. (2005), works to understand the early moral development in gifted populations. When comparing gifted youth to adult college students they found that such youth were more advanced than their adult peers. The research is designed to help understand the nature of giftedness, how to foster further development, and to encourage possible transfers to other members of the population.

Moral development has a number of stages. At the lowest stage such development is associated with a personal interest schema, then norm maintenance, and then the post-conventional schema (Rest. et.al, 1999). Each stage indicates a level of personal development that grows overtime. A large percentage of society never advances beyond the first or second stage.

At the lowest stage of personal interest schema people naturally interpret morality through what is best for them. This means that people are involved in self-serving interests and associations. In the maintaining norms schema morality is based with conventions, rules, and standards. At the highest level of post-conventional schema people base their moral judgments on universal principles of justice and fairness.

There are factors associated with development that include education, intelligence, complexity of thought, personality, and open to experience. People who are likely able to develop morally seek higher levels of education, can reflect on their thinking processes, have positive personality traits, and are open to trying and understanding new things. These are the people who love to experience and learn. They are capable of seeing themselves in a larger social context of history and institutions while able to see broad cultural trends.

The study indicates that age has only a small association with moral development. Gifted people are capable of taking in a wider context of information to come to their own moral conclusions and start doing so at a young age. These differences make them inherently unique compared to both their peers as well as older members of the population. The authors encourage greater study of this population as they are widely outside the bell curve of the norm and often fight against such identification.

Derryberry, et. al. (2005). Moral judgment developmental differences between gifted youth and college students. Journal of secondary gifted education, 17 (1).

Rest, et. al (1999). Postconventional moral thinking: a neo-Kohlbergian approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Life Satisfaction as a Predictor of Optimism in Hotel and Tourism Students

It is hard to be motivated if you are not optimistic about life. The greatest asset students have is their optimism and the desire to create the lives they seek. In college optimism keeps students focused and working on their long-term goals which are often broken down into little steps of studying and making choices over their lives. Research helps shed some light on how optimism and life satisfaction work together to create higher levels positive outlook in hotel and tourism education.

Employee’s perceptions are an integral part of developing their approaches to the work environment and their personal lives. Perception leads to behavioral rituals employees use to navigate their environment (Kagitcibasi, 1992). The rituals will run throughout their working lifetimes unless they are questioned or adjusted by important new self-understandings.  

When employee viewpoints are optimistic by nature they have the benefit of developing stronger rituals that help them achieve their goals. When a person has an optimistic outlook, they can develop better strategies for perception, problem-solving, interpretation, decision-making and even relationships with other employees (Oner-Koruklu, 2010).  It is these positive self-images and optimistic outlooks that help employees and organizations become more productive.

Life satisfaction comes when a person believes they can influence their environment and have positive beliefs about their likelihood to achieve goals. Life satisfaction can be defined as the ability of a person to develop a point of view about life quality under their own judgments (Rode, 2004). It can be seen as a process in which individuals try and reach their own goals and make concrete conclusions about their chances.

Optimism and satisfaction are similar by nature but slightly different by definition. If one is optimistic about their future opportunities as well as come to their own conclusion that their quality of life is high they will have two important components for career development. It is important to help students develop this optimism and satisfaction to sustain them in the development of their careers once they leave college. 

Research conducted by Unuvar, Avsaroglu & Selahattin (2012) of college students in the school of Tourism and Hotel Management  at Selcuk University in Turkey during the spring semesters of 2010 and 2011 assessed life satisfaction and optimism. The goal was to predict optimism by life satisfaction and determine how this impacts student’s outlook. 

Results: 

-Females had higher levels of life satisfaction and more optimistic than men. 

-There is an association with income level increases and life satisfaction and optimism.

-When income levels raise so does life satisfaction and optimism. 

-Students in the tourism industry have a medium level of life satisfaction.

-Positive levels of optimism from students.

-There is a positive relationship between optimism and satisfaction.

Analysis: 

College students in the Hotel and Tourism Management programs have high levels of optimism about their future work arrangements and a moderate level of life satisfaction. The research helps to highlight that optimism is a particularly strong and potent part of motivation to continue studies and work toward career options. Maintaining and growing optimism may help in maintaining levels of effort and motivation. Programs should understand how their language, teaching methods, and approaches influence this optimistic viewpoint. 

Kagitcibasi, C. (1992). Nsan ve nsanlar. Basm. Istanbul, Evrim Yaymcilik.

Oner-Koruklu, N. (2010). Ki ileraras leti im ve Etkili leti im. Ankara, Pegem Akademi.

Rode, J. (2004). Job satisfaction and life satisfaction revisited: a longitudinal test of an integrated model. Human Relations, 57 (9).

Unuvar, S., Avsaroglu, S. & Ulsu, M. (2012). An evaluation of optimism and life satisfaction of undergraduate students in the school of tourism and hotel management. Asian Social Science, 8 (12).