Tutor-student interaction in undergraduate chemistry: a case of learning to make relevant distinctions of molecular structures for determining oxidation states of atoms

ABSTRACT

In this study, we explore the issues and challenges involved in supporting students’ learning to discern relevant and critical aspects of determining oxidation states of atoms in complex molecules. We present a detailed case of an interaction between three students and a tutor during a problem-solving class, using the analytical tool of practical epistemology analysis (PEA). The results show that the ability to make relevant distinctions between the different parts of a molecule for solving the problem, even with the guidance of the tutor, seemed to be challenging for students. These shifts were connected to both purposes that were specific for solving the problem at hand, and additional purposes for general learning of the subject matter, in this case how to assign oxidation states in molecules. The students sometimes could not follow the additional purposes introduced by the tutor, which made the related distinctions more confusing. Our results indicate that in order to provide adequate support and guidance for students the tutor needs to consider how to sequence, move between, and productively connect the different purposes introduced in a tutor-student interaction. One way of doing that is by first pursuing the purposes for solving the problem and then successively introduce additional, more general purposes for developing students’ learning of the subject matter studied. Further recommendations drawn from this study are discussed as well.     

Bibliographic control in Sierra Leone

Bibliographic control is crucial for library and information work and librarians are sensitive to the importance of maintaining their country's national lists. Its importance is premised on the fact that knowledge of a country's literature is of vital importance to the scholars involved in the study of particular disciplines that deal with distinct historical and geographical areas. In parallel, bibliographic control facilitates specialization in the location, collection and retrieval of information, thus providing a basis for inter-library cooperation. Albeit, this article explores bibliographic activities in Sierra Leone. It highlights the country's publishing activities, legal deposit Act, and bibliographic activities and the problems associated with these activities in the country.     

Google docs for higher education: Evaluating online interaction and reflective writing using content analysis approach

Education and Information Technologies - This study explores the types of online interaction used and levels of reflection achieved by undergraduate students, including the influence of the former...     

Patterns and purposes in the uses and misuses of the term ‘critical thinking’ in the social sciences

This article analyses the uses and representations of the term “critical thinking” in the social science literature, based on a qualitative content analysis of titles, abstracts and keywords retrieved from the SCOPUS database for Germany, France and Russia over the last two decades. Our analysis focuses on how the use of the term “critical thinking” has increased over time, in which contexts the term is used and in which part of article texts it is used. Our findings are counterintuitive on several levels. First, the term “critical thinking” is seldom used in a pluri-disciplinary context. More commonly, it is used within specific discourses—notably education. Second, we found that it is mainly used instrumentally, rather than analytically. Third, most of the articles that use the term do not engage in actual critical analysis. There are also important geographic variation in the use of the term. In articles from Germany and Russia the term is used in similar ways—and differently in France. These nuances are difficult to analyse however, due to the different topics addressed, as well as author preferences. The use of the term “critical thinking” is diverse; indeed, at times weak and paradoxical. Finally, we discuss how editorial policy in academic journals possibly influences the discourse on critical thinking.     

Understanding the emergence of females as leaders in academia: The intersections of gender stereotypes,status and emotion

Drawing on the expectation state theory, this paper seeks to analyse the social cognitive process of the impacts of gender stereotypes along with their culturally derived schemas of status belief, status characteristics and emotion at the early stage of women's endeavour to emerge as leaders in academia. Employing a convenience sampling and interviews held with five women academic participants from three public and private universities in the western region of Indonesia, this research reveals that two social cognitive practices affect women's endeavour to emerge as leaders; (1) the incongruities of cultural and cognitive expected status belief and status characteristics about females with the expected performance of leadership. The pervasive effect of these can be mitigated when women adopt a strategy of neglection, coupled with a strategy of networking both via their own networks and their husband's networks; (2) the incongruities of cultural and cognitive expected ways of emotional expression on women with the expected performance of leadership. This impacts the status conferral that shapes the worthiness of females to emerge as leaders, leading female leaders in our study to build a protective shield of emotion display to keep them perceived as worthy individuals for leadership roles.     

Convection-radiation from a continuously moving fin of variable thermal conductivity

The homotopy analysis method (HAM) is applied to generate an analytic solution for heat transfer in a moving fin of variable thermal conductivity which is losing heat by simultaneous convection and radiation to its surroundings. The accuracy of the analytic solution is validated by comparing it with the direct numerical solution of the problem. The analytic solution is found to be accurate to at least three places of decimal for a wide range of values of the parameters that are commonly encountered in thermal processing application. Graphs displaying the results are interpreted in physical terms.     

Determinants of library's effectiveness and efficiency: A study of collection development, organization and services of Maulana Azad Library, AMU (India)

The study is focused on users' opinion as regards the adequacy of library collection and analyzes the level of users' satisfaction about library collection, organization, facilities and services both traditional as well as, IT enabled services. A well structured questionnaire was administered to faculty members, research scholars and students of the AMU to collect data regarding the adequacy of library collection and analyze the level of users' satisfaction. The survey reveals that the library collection in the AMU library is adequate enough for their users. AMU library users were also satisfied with the existing infrastructure of library and organization of their collections. The researcher observed that the overall satisfaction levels of the users regarding the AMU library is good.     

Knowledge sharing practices: A case study at Malaysia’s healthcare research institutes

The main objective of this study was to investigate the perception of the researchers and officers within the National Institutes of Health Malaysia (NIH) about their understanding of knowledge sharing practices in their respective environment. Questions included: what are the perceptions of the respondents with regard to the knowledge sharing practices in their respective institutions? What are the benefits for knowledge sharing practices as perceived by them? What are their perceived organisational knowledge sharing practices motivating factors? Also, what are the hindering factors? The survey of the researchers and officers of the NIH was distributed to 400 respondents from the six research institutes under NIH: Institute for Medical Research (IMR), Institute for Public Health (IPH), Network for Clinical Research Centres (CRC), Institute for Health Management (IHM), Institute for Health Systems Research (IHSR) and Institute for Health Promotion (IHP). The responses indicated that knowledge sharing depends on the context of encouraging and rewarding the practices of organisational knowledge sharing. The findings suggest four factors – Environment and Infrastructure, Management Support, Culture and Technology – as significant determinants in influencing the organisational knowledge sharing practices among the employees. The study was limited to the perceptual aspect of the issue, specifically from the individuals’ opinions and sentiments.     

Undergraduate Students' Problems with Citing References

This study explored the problems undergraduate students are faced with in citing references in their academic work. The study revealed that undergraduate students face difficulties in citing references in their academic work and that they are inconsistent in the way they cite. The article suggests ways in which faculty and library staff can work together to address this problem.