We Ning-ed a Virtual Pre-Workshop: Now What?

In 2009, a group of instruction-minded librarians in Oklahoma added unconference-like elements to their usual workshop structure and agenda to make their workshop more participatory and attendee-driven. The result was a virtual pre-workshop hosted on a Ning social networking site. The virtual pre-workshop enhanced the actual physical workshop in several ways. The group's new challenge: where to host its new pre-workshop format without Ning and how to gear the new format to be more mobile friendly while not excluding non-mobile interested workshop participants.     

Boys Will Be Boys and Girls Better Be Prepared: An Analysis of the Rare Sexual Health Messages in Young Adolescents' Media

Despite concerns about high rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease in the United States, the mass media adolescents attend to most frequently include little accurate information about sexual health. In this study, a preliminary quantitative analysis of the sexual content in four media (television, magazines, music, and movies) popular among 3,261 Black and White adolescents (12–14 years old) found that less than one half of 1% of the content included information about or depictions of sexually healthy behavior. A qualitative analysis of the relatively rare instances of sexual health content revealed that across all four media the sexual health content was ambiguous and/or inaccurate, reinforced traditional gender stereotypes that males seek sex and females are responsible for protection against pregnancy, and presented puberty as funny and contraception as embarrassing or humiliating. These analyses suggest that significant changes in the media's presentations of sexuality would be required if the media are ever to be considered a healthy part of adolescents' sexual socialization.     

ASPECTS OF SUB-LITERATURE

The research community is continually trying to find the quickest method for evaluating the quality of a scholarly article. Today’s technological advancements and growing communication outlets complicate the meaning of a quality article. Altmetrics attempts to take the place of impact factor and citation counting by predicting the outcome of an article based on the previous behavior of statistics. Perhaps, the best way to evaluate the quality of an article is to look at all of the Altmetrics methods and their relationship to each other. Context explains every Altmetric and is more significant than an article’s popularity. Librarians should guide patrons and researchers alike through these statistics’ advantages and disadvantages.     

Book reviews

Meheroo Jussawalla, Donald M. Lamberton, and Neil D. Karunaratne, eds., The Cost of Thinking: Information Economies of Ten Pacific Countries. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing, 1988. 272 pages, $29.50.

Vincent Mosco and Janet Wasko, eds., The Political Economy of Information. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. 368 pages, $40.

Robert G. Picard, James P. Winter, Maxwell McCombs, and Stephen Lacy, eds., Press Concentration and Monopoly: New Perspectives on Newspaper Ownership and Operation. Norwood, N. J.: Ablex Publishing, 1988. 231 pages, $39.50.     

Balancing Plan-Driven and Agile Methods in Software Engineering Project Courses

Abstraction is a major concept in computer science and serves as a powerful tool in software development. Pattern-oriented instruction (POI) is a pedagogical approach that incorporates patterns in an introductory computer science course in order to structure the learning of algorithmic problem solving. This paper examines abstraction processes in the course of solving an algorithmic problem and highlights three distinct, although interrelated, facets of abstraction: pattern recognition, black-boxing, and structure identification. A study that examined the influence of the POI approach on students' abstraction skills is described; students who learned according to the POI approach were compared with students who learned in a traditional manner with regard to analogical reasoning and problem decomposition and solution, as well as verbal expression. The three facets of abstraction were used to analyze students' abstraction skills and their competency in algorithmic problem solving.     

Understanding Cross-Cultural Meaning through Visual Media

Lack of shared meaning can make communication difficult for people of different cultures. Perceptions and practical experience are important influences when devising and developing online learning experiences in cross-cultural contexts. In this study, 15 educational designers studying for their Masters Degree were asked to contribute their interpretations to an ongoing study of what meaning and interpretations were generated from a series of different learning environments offered via the Web. Course materials were designed in Australia and delivered into Hong Kong, SAR, and China. Students did not always interpret the visual information in the manner expected by the original designers. This paper discusses the outcomes of the investigation relating students' perceptions of the appropriateness of the western interface design guidelines as they applied them to a number of exemplary Chinese WWW sites, highlighting the cultural differences in meaning and representation. Comprendre les diversités culturelles À travers les images. Le manque de sens partagé peut rendre difficile la communication entre peuples de différentes cultures. L'expérience pratique et les diverses perceptions peuvent avoir leur importance lors de la conception et le développement de projets de formation en ligne dans des contextes multiculturels. Dans cette étude, quinze concepteurs multimédias, du niveau de la maîtrise, ont été sollicités pour étudier les différentes interprétations et perceptions générées par différents cours offerts sur le Web. Les cours ont été produits en Australie et diffusés À Hong Kong, en SAR, et en Chine. Les étudiants n'ont pas toujours décodé les informations visuelles selon les voeux de leurs concepteurs. Cet article analyse les résultats de cette investigation portant sur la perception qu'ont les étudiants chinois, par exemple, de directives proposées par des auteurs occidentaux, laissant apparaître d'importants écarts dans la représentation qu'ils s'en font. Interkulturelle Bedeutung durch visuelle Medien verstehen> Kommunikation zwischen Menschen verschiedener Kulturen kann durch die Verwendung von Begriffen mit nicht gemeinsamer Bedeutung erschwert werden. Eigene Wahrnehmungen und praktische Erfahrungen sind wichtige Grundlagen für den Entwurf und die Entwicklung von Online-Lehrgängen in interkulturellen Kontexten. In dieser Studie wurden fünfzehn Kursdesigner, die für ihre Masters Degrees studierten, darum gebeten, ihre Interpretationen einer laufenden Studie über die Frage, welche Bedeutung und Interpretationen durch eine Serie von über das Netz angebotenen verschiedenen Lernumgebungen generiert wurden, abzugeben. Die Kursmaterialien wurden in Australien gestaltet und nach Hongkong, SAR China, übermittelt. Die Studenten interpretierten die visuelle Information nicht immer in der Weise, wie das von den Original Designern erwartete worden war. Dieses Papier erörtert die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung, die die Wahrnehmungen der Studenten über die Sinnentsprechung der westlichen Schnittstellenentwurfsrichtlinien in Beziehung setzt, indem sie sie auf eine Anzahl vorbildlicher chinesischer Web-Sites anwandten und damit die kulturellen Unterschiede in Bedeutung und Darstellung hervorhoben.     

A grand day out: towards a mode of interrogation of non-school pedagogic sites

Interest is increasingly being taken in educational sites which extend or which are located beyond the school. These include sites associated with developing information and communications technologies and mass media organizations as well as institutions of longer standing, such as museums, galleries and so forth. In this article we shall deploy a sociological framework originally developed for the analysis of school texts to such non-school sites. Our focus will include considerations of heritage and conservation sites in the form of castles and zoos. We contend that in operating in terms of both pedagogic and exchange relations, such sites may have something to teach as well as something to learn from schooling.     

An Evaluation of the Spitz Student Response System in Teaching a Course in Logical and Mathematical Concepts

The problem of this study was the effect of teaching freshman mathematics with the Spitz Student Response System (SSRS) upon a student’s anxiety, attitude, and achievement. Subjects were seventy-three freshman men and women at a liberal arts college in the Southwest. A 2 x 2 factorial analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data. Several research hypotheses were formulated to be consistent with the purposes of this research problem. It was found that the use of the Spitz Student Response System did not significantly change a student’s achievement, anxiety, or attitude in mathematics. The statistical data of this study would tend to support the idea that the effect of attitude on achievement in independent of the method of instruction. Subjective evaluation by the students tends to support the use of the Spitz System.