Projetos DINTER: Contribuição para a expansão do Sistema Nacional de Pós-Graduação no Brasil

This article investigates the interinstitutional PhD projects’ (DINTER) influence on the National Graduate System expansion in Brazil. These projects are a graduate system flexibilization in which a graduate institution named the promoter offers its stricto sensucourse to another institution, the receptor. First, we analyzed the approved projects on three different calls for proposals, CAPES-SETEC and New Frontiers, that last from 2007 to 2009, and the nº 13 call, published on 2011. Second, from 2009 to 2016, we checked the receptor institutions that had established their own courses in the same field of the previously approved projects. To corroborate the influence relation, it was observed the data annually informed by the promoter institution during the DINTER effectiveness, and the one communicated by the receptor institution after developing its own course. The results showed a direct contribution of these projects to the faculty qualification when conceiving new graduate courses, which justifies the public policy under analysis.

Use of the Wiki for Cross-Institutional Collaborations

This article discusses how groups of student teachers use the wiki to collaborate cross-institutionally in order to design tasks for English language learners. Participants in this case study involved student teachers at a private graduate institution on the East Coast in the U.S. and students at a public graduate institution in Luxembourg. In this action research approach, data triangulation involved gathering information through a combination of different instruments such as computer-mediated communication data, needs analyses, journal entries, and post-course questionnaires. Findings showed that in addition to writing collaboratively, groups used the wiki as a discussion tool. This subsequently led to an exploration of the interactions through computer-mediated discourse analysis and a discussion of methodological implications.

Fixed and Manipulated Temporal Frames

The chapter focuses on evaluating the temporal rhythms of written messages on an asynchronous discussion board in a distance learning class, and it provides a blueprint for the analytic process. In order to assess the method, data is drawn from a distance learning course in a graduate institution in the Northeast region of United States. 322 messages written on Blackboard by 41 students were framed by an Aristotelian spatio-temporal terminology (chronos, kairos, chora, and topos). The research identifies different ways to analyze time and points towards the necessity to contextualize it in space/place and content. Mixed methods of analyses are applied: basic descriptive statistical temporal analysis is employed by the use of bar charts, figures, tables; and content analysis (modified version of Practical Inquiry Model) is used for the detection of higher order thinking’s relation to time and space. Finally, the study elaborates on the pedagogical benefits of the analyzed spatio-temporal rhythms through themes such as momentum, dialogic communication, time lags, while making connections between temporal clusters and dialogic communication, critical thinking, and spatial expansion. Students manipulate temporal rhythms, on one hand, they establish their own nonlinear and continuous chronological clusters of time, or on the other hand, they are unwilling to escape imposed temporal structures.

A Tale of Two Courses

In this case study, the researchers detail the transformation of a traditional, face-to-face, graduate-level seminary course into an online offering. The course, Biblical Studies 1: Torah and Former Prophets, part of the core curriculum at a Midwestern seminary, was adapted into a distance learning course. The first group of students enrolled in the online course for the spring 2009 term. Previously, the course was offered to first-year seminarians enrolled in traditional, face-to-face, degree and non-degree programs. This was the first course offered online at the graduate institution. This study provides a description of the process of adaption of the course to a distance learning option, and contains an analysis of student assessment outcomes for assignments required in both course formats. From the analysis of student outcomes, recommendations for future instructional practice are made.

A Forum for Researchers: Dissertation Publication: The Issue of Joint Authorship

When I served on the editorial board of this journal, there was divided opinion concerning the ethics of joint publication of dissertation research by advisors and advisees. One point of view is that the author of a dissertation is justly entitled to sole responsibility and credit for the work, that the major professor is paid by the university for his or her roll in the activity, and that the true investigator's credit is diminished by sharing author-ship of the published articles. Further, some researchers feel that the sharing of authorship results, at least to some degree, from a kind of subtle but nonetheless coercive pressure on the part of the dissertation advisor. Certainly the advisor's publication list is lengthened and his or her professional stature is thereby enhanced. The graduate institution is identifiable from coauthorship, and its prestige grows incrementally with the successive appearance of such studies. A final point is that studies in an area tend to accumulate, and the evolution of identification in the literature moves toward the major professor, for example, Cronbach and Snow's (1977) discussion of “studies in the Carry series” (p. 284). Such labeling inappropriately suppresses the contributions of Webb (1972) and Eastman (1973).