New Media

Videoplayer (Videoplayer Publishing Co., Suite 3, 4731 Laurel Canyon Blvd., North Hollywood, Cal. 91607 -- $10.00 per year/6 issues)

Conference on Communication Policy Research: Papers and Proceedings (National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Va. 22151 -- hard copy and microfiche prices not known: you might also write directly to OTP for this one)     

Performance as content in speech communication education

Certain behavior patterns, or junctions, are uniquely related to speech communication and these junctions can only be fully actualized through performance, performance deserving of being identified as content.     

Making the Familiar Strange: Creative Cultural Storytelling within the Communication Classroom

Courses: Public Speaking, Performance, or other communication classes, integrating performance and/or cultural studies

Objectives: After completing this activity, students will be able to look critically at an everyday experience, creating a story that re-languages this practice performatively. Additionally, students will develop confidence in presentation skills, further enhancing critical thinking and cultural awareness, by learning to creatively engage voice, gesture, and performance through “making the familiar strange” within the communication classroom     

ARMs,OCLC Internet Services,and PURLs

Abstract

Internet communication delays adversely affect the performance of online services like those offered by OCLC. This article discusses some of OCLC's efforts to provide more consistent communication performance. This includes the use of Alternate Routing Methods (ARMs) and specialized URLs.     

Slovak Search Engines

ABSTRACT

This article describes some of the most popular Slovak search engines, discusses their merits, and assesses their performance on some sample search queries.     

Welfare economics and media performance

The author focuses on criteria for assessing the economic performance of media markets using three concepts from the field of welfare economics: efficiency, equity, and externalities. He argues that the ultimate purposes of media economics research are to identify market structure and conduct elements that harm or help these three criteria, and to suggest policy changes that would improve media market performance.     

Retórica Española: A checklist in the history of Spanish rhetoric

Communication research on small groups has focused primarily on isolating variable that affect the process. Future scholarship should have a more applied character. Investigators should be attempting to discover if it is possible to improve the performance of established groups.     

Central states speech association members as of July 1, 1963

This study attempted to determine the possible differences in verbal output when normal speaking children were paired with speech defective children in an unstructured communicative situation as compared with the performance of normal speaking children paired with other normal speaking children.     

Living the Future: Organizational Performance Assessment

ABSTRACT

Organizational performance assessment is a practice-based framework that builds on the synergy between planning and assessment, and results in the discernment of impact and value. It promotes a set of practices that enables the library to effectively integrate planning, strategy, performance, assessment, and organizational development in order to advance the parent institution's mission. This article discusses some foundations of organizational performance assessment, useful practices, and examples from libraries that are “living the future.”

This article originally published in Journal of Library Administration, Vol. 51, Issues 7–8, pages 618–644, 2011. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2011.601267.     

Question formulation skills training using a novel rubric with first-year medical students

Objective:The authors used an assessment rubric to measure medical students'' improvement in question formulation skills following a brief evidence-based practice (EBP) training session conducted by a health sciences librarian.Method:In a quasi-experimental designed study, students were assessed using a rubric on their pre-instructional skills in formulating answerable EBP questions, based on a clinical scenario. Following their training, they were assessed using the same scenario and rubric. Student pre- and post-test scores were compared using a paired t-test.Results:Students demonstrated statistically significant improvement in their question formulation skills on their post-instructional assessments. The average score for students on the pre-test was 45.5 (SD 11.1) and the average score on the post-test was 65.6 (SD 5.4) with an average increase of 20.1 points on the 70-point scale, p<0.001.Conclusion:The brief instructional session aided by the rubric improved students'' performance in question formulation skills.     

A core competency model for clinical informationists

Objectives:Access to high-quality information improves the quality of patient care, but lack of time and sufficient skills in information seeking can prevent access to information by clinicians. To solve this problem, clinical informationists can provide high-quality, filtered information for clinical team members. This study identified the core competencies that clinical informationists need to effectively fulfill their roles on clinical teams.Methods:Participants were selected purposefully from clinicians and medical librarians. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using qualitative content analysis.Results:The authors identified six competencies—communication, research, education and training, domain knowledge, information services, and technology—which together were used to develop a “CREDIT” model of core competencies for clinical informationists.Conclusions:The CREDIT model can be used as criteria for evaluating the performance of clinical informationists as well as for developing and assessing clinical informationist educational programs and curriculums.     

Crossing the Line

Summary

Working in both public and technical services can be beneficial to one's job performance in each area. Although frustrating at times, the rewards outweigh the agonies. Working as a cataloger and reference librarian helps diminish animosities that may exist between the two groups and promotes understanding and cooperation.     

What's Your Type? Using the Myers–Briggs Personality Inventory to Improve Team Performance

Objective: This activity is designed to improve team performance by giving students a better understanding of their own and their peers’ personality traits. Consequently, the exercise is intended to: (1) improve communication between team members; (2) increase understanding of and appreciation for the diversity of personality traits; and (3) reduce the misunderstandings and frustrations that often impede successful teamwork.

Courses: This exercise can be used for any high school, undergraduate, or graduate course that requires students to work in a team setting for an extended period of time.     

Using genderize.io to infer the gender of first names: how to improve the accuracy of the inference

Objective:We recently showed that genderize.io is not a sufficiently powerful gender detection tool due to a large number of nonclassifications. In the present study, we aimed to assess whether the accuracy of inference by genderize.io can be improved by manipulating the first names in the database.Methods:We used a database containing the first names, surnames, and gender of 6,131 physicians practicing in a multicultural country (Switzerland). We uploaded the original CSV file (file #1), the file obtained after removing all diacritic marks, such as accents and cedilla (file #2), and the file obtained after removing all diacritic marks and retaining only the first term of the compound first names (file #3). For each file, we computed three performance metrics: proportion of misclassifications (errorCodedWithoutNA), proportion of nonclassifications (naCoded), and proportion of misclassifications and nonclassifications (errorCoded).Results:naCoded, which was high for file #1 (16.4%), was reduced after data manipulation (file #2: 11.7%, file #3: 0.4%). As the increase in the number of misclassifications was small, the overall performance of genderize.io (i.e., errorCoded) improved, especially for file #3 (file #1: 17.7%, file #2: 13.0%, and file #3: 2.3%).Conclusions:A relatively simple manipulation of the data improved the accuracy of gender inference by genderize.io. We recommend using genderize.io only with files that were modified in this way.     

Object lessons: Using trans porn in class to explore gender fluidity

Gender categories and gender fluidity can be explicitly performed and demonstrated in sexually explicit media such as pornography. In this class lesson, a rhetoric/performance studies class on pornography focuses on trans* performers in scenes. A critical communication pedagogical approach is used to encourage dialogue and intersectional analyses of trans* identities and erotics in the scenes.

Courses: Media Studies, Porn Studies, Popular Culture, Critical/Cultural Communication, Gender in Communication, LGBTQ Studies in Communication, Sex Communication

Objectives: Students will (1) gain knowledge about gender identity, sexuality, and sex work; (2) increase their skills in critical thinking on the fluidity of gender and sexuality; and (3) demonstrate the capacity to be more attentive to trans issues in conversation.     

Development of an efficient search filter to retrieve systematic reviews from PubMed

Objective:Locating systematic reviews is essential for clinicians and researchers when creating or updating reviews and for decision-making in health care. This study aimed to develop a search filter for retrieving systematic reviews that improves upon the performance of the PubMed systematic review search filter.Methods:Search terms were identified from abstracts of reviews published in Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and the titles of articles indexed as systematic reviews in PubMed. Both the precision of the candidate terms and the number of systematic reviews retrieved from PubMed were evaluated after excluding the subset of articles retrieved by the PubMed systematic review filter. Terms that achieved a precision greater than 70% and relevant publication types indexed with MeSH terms were included in the filter search strategy.Results:The search strategy used in our filter added specific terms not included in PubMed''s systematic review filter and achieved a 61.3% increase in the number of retrieved articles that are potential systematic reviews. Moreover, it achieved an average precision that is likely greater than 80%.Conclusions:The developed search filter will enable users to identify more systematic reviews from PubMed than the PubMed systematic review filter with high precision.     

Gunn and Heid: Teaching small group development with reality TV

Courses: Small group communication or any courses with units on group/team work.

Objective: In this single-class activity, students will use reality TV to identify Tuckman’s five phases of group development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Students analyze how phases of group development manifest through group interaction and ultimately contribute to group performance.     

Export markets and the U.S. motion picture industry

The authors explore the competitive advantage of the U.S. film industry in the world market in light of current trends in revenue streams, exhibition outlets, costs, and changes in production, distribution, marketing, and promotion. The article discusses key legal and trade concerns, and the film markets in selected regions and countries in relation to their impact on the future performance of the U.S. film industry abroad.