Described in this article is how sport management curricula can offer unique, real-world learning experiences and corresponding student learning gains, when grounded in community based learning (CBL). To achieve these ends, this study was designed to explore how to best execute CBL in sport management, informed, in part, by analyzing the lived experiences of students who were required to develop their understanding of community needs and resources, as well as devise and execute plans to meet these needs, in order to successfully complete the course. Students’ structured reflections of their discipline-specific CBL course and changes-in-self were assessed using rigorous qualitative analysis to detect emergent themes. Results indicated students’ self-reported professional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal gains in relation to how the course was taught/specific pedagogical practices. Competencies subsumed within these categories included learning how to effectively fund raise, learning to negotiate the challenges of group work and team dynamics, cultivating critical thinking and leadership skills, and cultivating self-as-professional. These data inform how to derive the unique impacts of service learning in sport, including the opportunities it presents for students to cultivate professional skills often reported to be under cultivated among recent graduates. Thus, results of this study fill a gap in the literature regarding how to foster student preparedness for “real world” experiences, and serve as model of how faculty and administrators can successfully integrate CBL in experiential sport management coursework. Key words: Community-based learning (CBL), sport management, high-impact practices, fundraising, cultivating pre- professional skills in CBL coursework.

Higher education is at a crossroads. Institutions need to be increasingly adaptable to unexpected stressors while building more robust systems for assessing their students’ longitudinal, multifaceted development within the context of mission-driven operations. Integrated planning is a collaborative process that meets these goals through the intentional coordination, within and among units, to engage in long-term planning while nimbly responding to changes that warrant procedural alterations so that institutions can meet their strategic goals. In this paper, we demonstrate how the architecture of institutional effectiveness (IE) is inextricably linked to the quality of its integrated planning (IP), with student learning and developmental outcomes at its nexus.

The United States (US) has accreditation agencies that assess higher education in a manner analogous to external examiners in the United Kingdom. An example accreditor, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, requires university-level Educator Preparation Program providers (EPPs) to evaluate the degree to which (a) their graduates feel prepared to assume their professional roles as a result of their EPP training and (b) their impacts on PK-12 students’ learning. These are meaningful forms of programmatic assessment, however, governmental agencies in the United States do not uniformly collect these data. This has required many EPP providers to do so, with unintended negative consequences. The authors use this context as a case study to examine what must be done when reporting guidelines do not align with the data available. Although a single example, readers are asked to consider analogous situations within their own contexts. Presented in this chapter is the accreditation landscape, a description of the challenges listed above, common solutions, and recommendations for greater coordination among stakeholders in order to expand the systematic conferral of data in safe, ethical, and meaningful ways.

Tablet devices, as assistive and instructional technologies, can be highly effectual pedagogical tools with multifaceted benefits, such as the ability to integrate multimedia and the ability to track student progress over time. The unique value of particular assistive and instructional technologies explains, in part, why they are more widely used to teach struggling learners, as well as learners in general who demonstrate a spectrum of strengths and weaknesses. Given the centrality of reading and the cultivation of attendant skills as a prerequisite for learning all subjects, assessing the quality of literacy-based applications for tablet use is important. No such evaluative tool currently exists, necessitating the creation of a systematic tool, for use by both parents and educators, to select appropriate applications for their children or students who are struggling readers. To address this need, this article distills the effective instructional components for reading and provides a comprehensive rubric for reading applications. Suggestions from practitioners informed this process and were also implemented to enhance the usability of the rubric for educational reading applications. Descriptions of each rubric item and examples based on the sample reading application are provided.

Leaders of higher education need practical solutions to engaging in program improvement, providing student supports, and fortifying partnerships with collaborators. Compounding these needs are the heightened demands thrust upon faculty to advise students online, reconfigure in-person courses to hybrid and online models, and attend to their students’ emergent psychological, academic and social needs – as they themselves navigate through a new set of personal stressors associated with COVID-19. Making matters worse is that many of these changes have been and will be unpredictable; a shift from in-person to hybrid instruction can occur in less than a week. Members of the academy are faced with one paradoxical certainty: we are in an era of flux that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Understanding factors that influence live game-day attendance has garnered significant attention from both researchers and practitioners in the sport industry. Despite the National Football League’s unprecedented annual revenues, league attendance remains down, spurring large-scale investment into the game-day experience (Florio, 2008). In this case, students will perform various statistical analyses (i.e., computing chi-square tests of independence, t tests, effect sizes [Cohen’s d], and confidence intervals) to determine which factors most strongly influence fan attendance at Jacksonville Jaguars home games. Specifically, this case investigates the degree to which stadium upgrades motivate fans to attend and explores the extent to which fans support the use of public funds for stadium upgrades. Answering these questions will further equip future sport managers to make data-driven decisions regarding the utility of strategies—such as stadium projects—to enhance the game-day experience. Furthermore, students can use the knowledge gained from the case to critically analyze public investment in sport stadia as well as the ways in which consumers’ preferences are either independent of or depend on categorical variables such as gender. The case is intended for use in research methods courses and is also applicable to sport marketing, sport facility, and sport finance courses.

This case explores the potential implications of the National Football League’s (NFL) domestic violence problem. The purpose of this case study is to introduce students to logistic regression analysis. The case uses this method to address if the NFL’s Ray Rice domestic violence scandal will impact consumer behavior and loyalty toward the league. Given the significant role loyalty and retention has on profitability, the case investigates whether the Rice incident influenced fan decision-making, paying close attention to female consumers. The framework of analysis considers fan perceptions of the Ray Rice domestic violence scandal and the league’s response as potential deterrents of NFL game attendance and consumption of league media. Students will consider a variety of predictors, such as gender, age, and fan perception of the league’s domestic violence problem, in an attempt to yield insight into the possible influence of the Rice events on the commitment level of NFL fans. This case study is intended for use in research methods and assumes knowledge of regression analysis. However, in the event an instructor does not wish to run a logistic regression analysis, descriptive statistics could be used to detect patterns of responses that illustrate variance in fans’ perceptions of how consumer behavior may be affected by domestic violence issues.

The student teaching experience is cited as one of the most critical facets of teachers’ professional development. However, teachers’ beliefs about pedagogical practices and disciplinary procedures, as well as their perceptions of students, also influence the approaches they use in the classroom. This study uses a humanistic and custodial orientation theoretical framework to compare the beliefs of pre-service teachers immediately after having completed their core didactic coursework – but prior to the student teaching experience – with their beliefs immediately after the student teaching experience. Findings from this study reveal that upon completion of their didactic coursework, pre-service-teachers’ espouse humanistic beliefs, in contrast to a custodial orientation. Furthermore, although the use of external rewards to shape student behavior as well as other specific management and pedagogical practices were more highly prioritized after immersion in the field, student teaching did not appear to alter pre-service teachers’ core beliefs.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were released in 2010 (for mathematics, English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects). These new standards set high benchmarks for what K–12 students need to know to compete in a global, knowledge-based economy (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010; Hanushek, Peterson, & Woessmann, 2012). The standards, adopted by 45 states, require students to demonstrate high levels of competency in literacy skills. For example, the CCSS require all students to demonstrate critical thinking skills when processing texts of different lengths and levels of complexity, to extract important concepts from a large amount of print and digital media, to explain their point of view based on evidence, and, while doing so, to meet the standards already established by content-area experts in mathematics, science, social studies, and other disciplines. It has been pointed out that the standards are intended to increase students’ ability to handle complex texts (Hiebert & Mesmer, 2013). Due to this specific change alone, it will be challenging for all students throughout the nation to demonstrate the levels of academic competency defined by the CCSS. Furthermore, the emphasis on text complexity has consequences for a subgroup of the student population, English learners (ELs), whose English proficiency may be limited and who will be required to demonstrate complex literacy and content skills that are highly dependent upon language ability. ELs might demonstrate limited proficiency levels in academic English and native language literacy skills due to a wide range of factors, including educational opportunities in their native country or in the United States, the quality of schooling they have received in the United States, and so on.

Highly skilled teachers are one of the single most important influences on student success (Kane, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2007). Class size and other salient variables do not impact students' learning trajectories as much as the quality of their teachers (Kane, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2007). In addition, teacher-based influences impact students' performances throughout a significant span of their school careers (Sanders & Rivers, 1996). Teachers facilitate the process whereby students cultivate habits of mind and knowledge schemes that are prerequisites for success, meaningful contributions and prosperity in an open, technological world (Darling-Hammond, 1997). This makes effective teacher training of paramount importance in the cultivation of an educated citizenry within this country. The highest performing countries in educational achievement-Finland, Sweden, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea-have all make extensive teacher training a priority. Again, this illustrates the strong, positive relationship between well-executed teacher training and high-level student learning. Tuition and stipends for living expenses are provided for those in multiyear preparation programs. Salaries for new teachers are, relatively speaking, substantial. In addition, a full fifteen to twenty hours per week is allocated for collaborative planning and professional development. This practice stands in stark contrast to the three to four hours per week typically allocated to educators working in the United States. Consistent with the multifaceted support and compensation given to teachers in high-performing countries, is the practice of conferring financial incentives to those willing to serve students in more disadvantaged locations. Teachers in the United States have received little or no incentives to work in low income contexts throughout urban and rural America. Methods of teacher recruitment however, do exist. One is called the alternate route training program, which is thought to be a tool for attracting men, teachers of color, and teachers willing to work in understaffed districts. These programs vary tremendously, yet each moves prospective teachers into full-time paid teaching positions before they have completed the requirements for licensure. Where traditional teacher training programs instituted by schools of higher education require students to know theories of child development, cognition and pedagogy, alternate route programs cover the " no-nonsense " tools of teaching such as classroom management. Some " fast-track " programs require just four to eight weeks of pre-service training and cost as little as $500. Most of the programs are very practical and generic; little focus is placed on cultivating pedagogical content knowledge. In the end, individual states dictate what …