Paper long abstract:

Online teaching and learning have become an essential part of today's educational institutions. One of the advantages online courses provide is an opportunity for higher education institutions to organize a blended learning curriculum. It helps students study for their degrees without leaving work posts. The focus of the paper is to discuss the results of an action research which is designed to understand what problems students and teachers encounter during an online course. Participants of the research are graduate students who study English for Academic Purposes (EAP). This course has been developed to support students' ability to write assignments and to give instructions to students on how to improve their writing performance. Pedagogical approaches, online behavior and time management are needed to help students   achieve their EAP course goals. Thus, to find out problems that students and teachers face, a questionnaire for the participants has been developed.  The problems that students mention in the questionnaire are various, including the reading load; time-management; extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. This paper will present a literature review on online teaching didactics; analysis of the questionnaire; and recommendations for improved online EAP teaching for graduate students within blended learning programs in Kazakhstani Higher Education Institutions.

Paper long abstract:

In the post-9/11 world, a paradox has emerged concerning the future of area studies programs at institutions of higher education in the United States. On the one hand, policymakers and scholars have repeatedly emphasized that the U.S. government desperately needs to develop a cadre of experts with broad knowledge of strategically important areas of the world. On the other hand, the U.S. government has made significant budget cuts to several key programs that emerged after WWII in response to a similar call for greater area studies expertise. These cuts have negatively impacted two programs that played a critical role in the development of Central Asian studies within the United States: the Department of Education's Title VI Program funding to university area studies programs (known as National Resource Centers), and the Department of State's Title VIII Program funding individual scholars who conduct research in Eurasia and Eastern Europe.

Those who push for budget cuts question whether area studies programs provide a valuable return on investment to the country as a whole. This paper takes a different approach by focusing on the value of area studies training to individual scholarly careers. Do humanities and social science scholars with a strong emphasis on area studies training have an advantage over other scholars? In the past 25 years, approximately 500 individuals have completed dissertations, focusing on Central Asia, in humanities and social science disciplines at North American institutions. This paper examines whether scholars who appear to identify strongly as Central Asian area studies scholars have different outcomes in academia than scholars who conduct research in Central Asia yet identify less strongly as area studies experts. For the purpose of this paper, we use participation in CESS conferences and publication in relevant area studies journal as a proxy for determining the extent to which an individual "identifies" as an area studies expert. The paper asks two questions: (1) Are scholars with PhD degrees from universities with Title VI Centers more likely to identify strongly as area studies experts? (2) Are scholars who identify strongly as area studies experts more likely to "succeed" in academia, as evidenced by their success in achieving full-time employment in academia? This paper is based a database we created of scholars completing PhD dissertations in North America between 1991 and 2015 that focus on Central Asia.

Paper long abstract:

We examine how the transition to English-only instruction affects college students' academic outcomes in a non-English speaking country. Making use of a natural experiment at a selective university in Central Asia, we utilize a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate the causal effect of switching to English-only instruction on college outcomes. We find that the introduction of English-only instruction led to a decrease of GPAs and probability of graduation and an increase in the number of failed course credits. The effects were similar across gender, but heterogeneous across type of locality students come from and native language. Although negative, the effects were temporary. The findings suggest that at least in selective universities in non-English speaking countries, the switch to English-only instruction negatively affects college outcomes at the time of transition but does not necessarily imply longer-run negative effects.