Round-robin presentations: Increasing opportunities for public speaking in large lectures and beyond

Courses: Large-lecture; public speaking, business, professional, and technical communication; sales and marketing courses; courses with team-based projects

Objectives: To provide opportunities to develop public speaking skills, especially in large-lecture courses; to improve public speaking endurance; to improve students’ abilities to give concise and focused presentations; to reduce public speaking anxiety.     

The Family Environment of “Quick-Witted” Persons: Birth Order,Family Communication Patterns,and Creative Facility

“Creative facility” refers to the ease, rapidity, or fluency with which people are able to formulate and produce novel, appropriate messages. Previous research indicates that people differ in this regard and that the phenomenon is linked to various personality and cognitive-style variables. This study aims to investigate whether aspects of family structure (i.e., birth order) and family processes (i.e., family communication patterns) are related to creative facility. Results indicated a significant interaction between birth order and family conversation orientation such that, for first-borns, higher levels of conversation orientation were associated with slower message production. No effects were observed for family conformity orientation. Among the implications of the findings is the need to assess birth order in studies of family communication patterns.     

A Comparison of Item Sampling Plans in the Application of Multiple Matrix Sampling

This study used a Monte Carlo approach to investigate the effect of item sampling by item stratification on parameter estimation when applying multiple matrix sampling to achievement data. From the results of this study it was concluded that the item sampling method and sampling plan which is a practical compromise in terms of precision and sample size is one based on item stratification by item discrimination and a sampling plan with a moderate number of subtests. This sampling condition provides reasonable precision of the mean and variance estimates but requires only a moderately sized sample.     

Finding common ground and inherent differences: Artist and community engagement in cultural material and contemporary art conservation

Comparisons are often made between the conservation of cultural material collections, often described as ethnographic, and contemporary art collections, and indeed there are significant parallels. The stewardship of both of these types of collections can challenge traditional tenets of conservation, requiring conservators to ask themselves ‘What are we preserving?’ as preservation extends beyond the physical. The work must be placed in a broader conceptual context and the conservator must seek out those who are deemed to have the most authority – whether it is the artist, the artist's assistants and estate or the source community – to establish this context. Engagement with constituents creates valuable reciprocal relationships, which can benefit the artist, community, and museum. The relationships and the parallel practice of two seemingly disparate fields are examined using examples from the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG). Conservators at NMAI, a living culture museum containing archeological, historic, and contemporary art collections, are in the unique position of working with community stakeholders with direct ties to historic collections and contemporary artists whose work is actively acquired by the museum. Conservators at YUAG, an encyclopedic museum with a pedagogical directive, are attempting to establish a more rigorous program of artist engagement to direct preservation and understanding of contemporary art collections.