Enhancing Teaching and Learning: Libraries and Open Educational Resources in the Classroom

Academic libraries continually adjust services to adapt to the ever-changing landscape in higher education. In response to the broken textbook market, libraries are becoming actively involved in the open educational resources (OER) movement. Although there is not a formal program in place, librarians at Utah State University explored a collaborative approach to integrate OER in faculty members' courses. One goal of the effort was to work closely with faculty to consider course objectives and learning outcomes when evaluating and incorporating OER. This article identifies a streamlined process for targeting courses most suited for OER adoption and outlines a process of collaborating with teaching faculty to integrate relevant OER. The paper includes a detailed workflow that other libraries can easily adapt to make OER part of their faculty outreach toolkit.     

The submergence and re-emergence of gender in undergraduate accounts of university experience

Gender distinction has been shown to characterise both undergraduate experiences and outcomes. Yet research recounted in this article supports work that shows that young people are often unaware of such trends, subscribing instead to individualist perspectives that foreground equality of opportunity and agency. This article examines the gender continuities and divergences in 64 undergraduate students' accounts of their experiences, and constructions of peers and lecturers, in higher education. Concepts of heteroglossia and monoglossia are applied to gender to explain how students submerged ‘structure’ and inequality in their accounts, but how discourses that presented the genders as distinct (and in which the masculine is elevated over the feminine) nevertheless ‘bubbled up’ in their articulations. The students tended to reject the notion that gender and other structural differences impact their experiences and outcomes; yet their broader discussions frequently reflected (often stereotypical) monoglossic constructions of gender difference. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the sociology of education and for higher-education pedagogy.     

Initiating Cultural Shifts in Perceptions of Cataloging Units through Interaction Assessment

Points of contact formulate the culture of any organization and shape the perceptions of decision makers and colleagues alike. This research project investigated the interactions between Cataloging and Metadata Services staff and other library employees by analyzing interactions. This article summarizes the results of data gathered from interaction assessments and compares them with surveys about the current perceptions of the cataloging unit at the Utah State University Libraries. It discusses the ways these results have influenced existing unit workflows to enhance awareness of cataloging and metadata contributions to the library and posits possible ways to continue such initiatives moving forward.     

Individual differences in negative group work experiences in collaborative student learning

This paper reports the development of the Negative Group Work Experiences questionnaire (NGWE), an assessment tool for measuring negative experiences of group work. Study 1 involved two samples of undergraduate psychology students (second‐year sample n = 425; first‐year sample n = 443), who completed research modules incorporating substantial elements of assessed group work. Participants completed a 39‐item inventory designed to measure their negative experiences of group work as part of their general module evaluation. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of the second‐year sample indicated four interpretable and reliable factors: lack of group commitment, group fractionation, task disorganisation, and storming. Confirmatory factor analysis of the first‐year data set confirmed and cross‐validated the factor structure of the second‐year sample. Study 2 (n > 254) confirmed the criterion validity of the NGWE. The NGWE is proposed as a useful tool for evaluating group processes, especially in large group teaching which involves collaborative group work.     

The coming of the new distance educators in the United States: the telecommunications generation takes off

The progress of video telconferencing in American education offers striking evidence of some of the wider effects that telecommunications promises to have on distance education. The term ‘distance education’ itself is taking on broad new meanings that separate it from traditional correspondence study. The growing acceptance of video telecommunications foreshadows the coming of a new generation of distance educators who see themselves as having less in common with correspondence study professionals than with each other.

Video applications to education are galvanizing educational structures in the United States, bringing profound change to every level. The impetus for this proliferating activity and the transformation that it is bringing lies neither with traditional distance educators nor, for the most pan, with higher education as a whole. The forces driving these developments are highly fluid but can be traced to an array of societal demands and an emerging perception of learners' needs that is ushering the users of technology into roles formerly held by distance educators. Above all, these forces give every indication of insuring that the new image of distance education will not only be pervasive but will be reflected on a video screen.     

Differential effectiveness of alternative middle-school science sequences for students of different ethnicities

Learning Environments Research - For a sample of 367 middle-school students in the USA, learning environment criteria were used to evaluate two alternative science curriculum sequences...     

Science Career-Related Possible Selves of Adolescent Girls: A Longitudinal Study

This paper uses a possible selves theoretical framework to examine whether and how adolescent girls' images of themselves as future scientists change during their transition from high school to college. Forty-one female high school graduates from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, who had enrolled in an intensive math and science program while in high school, participated in interviews focused on their perceptions of factors that influenced their career plans over time. Participants suggested that career-related internships and intensive academic programs, especially those that yielded important mentoring relationships, were contexts in which they negotiated career-related possible selves and subsequent career plans.     

Book reviews

Post‐Secondary Distance Education in Canada: Policies, Practices, and Priorities. Edited by Robert Sweet. (Edmonton, Alberta: Athabasca University and the Canadian Society for Studies in Education, 1989, 272 pp., $15.95 Canadian.)

The Computer Revolution in Education: New Technologies for Distance Teaching. Edited by Ann Jones, Eileen Scanlon and Tim O'Shea. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. 282 pp. $37.50)     

Assessment of an iPad Loan Program in an Academic Medical Library: A Case Study

An academic medical library expanded its iPad loan service to multiple campus libraries and conducted an assessment of the service. iPads loaded with medical and educational apps were loaned for two-week checkouts from five library campus locations. Device circulation statistics were tracked and users were invited to complete an online survey about their experience. Data were gathered and analyzed for 11 months. The assessment informed the library on how best to adapt the service, including what resources to add to the iPads, and the decision to move devices to campuses with more frequent usage.