The university's statement of goals

The need for universities and colleges to clarify their goals is discussed in light of current financial constraint. Reasons are provided supporting goal-definition including management techniques borrowed from the business world. Goal formulation strategies and techniques of the Institutional Goals Inventory (IGI) and the Delphi technique are addressed with specific attention paid to the application of the IGI at the University of Ottawa.     

The Lack of Fidelity Between Cognitively Complex Constructs and Conventional Test Development Practice

Do current test development practices align well with the cognitively complex constructs being called for in the educational reform movement? What types of test development practices are needed to develop measures of cognitively complex constructs?     

Trends in the crowdfunding of educational technology startups

This article presents an analysis of active crowdfunding campaigns posted on ten crowdfunding platforms in May 2013 to provide a glimpse of the recent trends in the crowdfunding of educational technology startups. We describe the characteristics of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in educational technology and identify the most popular crowdfunding platforms. This research provides important implications for educational technology entrepreneurs. Top performing educational technology fund raisers tend to a) request a modest but reasonable amount for each phase of the project, b) focus on the informal, out-of-school, rather than formal contexts of learning, c) attract supporters with a tiered system of rewards, and d) communicate with supporters and inform the public of the status of the project through periodic updates and progress reports. Directions for future research include conducting an in-depth content analysis of archived data and exploring the perspectives of successful educational technology entrepreneurs using qualitative interviews.     

Emotion Labeling Among Young Children in Foster Care

Research Findings: Emotion knowledge is a core developmental process that has a documented relation to other aspects of social-emotional functioning, including social competence, emotion regulation, and behavior problems. Children who are maltreated have been found to have compromised emotion knowledge skills as well as higher levels of behavior problems. The current study was designed to add to the small literature on emotion knowledge in children who have been maltreated and are in foster care, with an examination of child and family processes that contributed to their emotion labeling skills. Young children in foster care were administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the Affect Knowledge Task while their foster mothers completed a background questionnaire during a data collection home visit. Findings revealed that participant children's verbal ability contributed greatly to their capacity to accurately label emotions. Family processes also contributed to this skill above and beyond verbal ability. Practice or Policy: Parenting interventions for foster parents should be designed to address core developmental processes of early childhood, such as emotion knowledge.     

Teacher Learning of Technology Enhanced Formative Assessment

This study examined the integration of technology enhanced formative assessment (FA) into teachers’ practice. Participants were high school physics teachers interested in improving their use of a classroom response system (CRS) to promote FA. Data were collected using interviews, direct classroom observations, and collaborative discussions. The physics teachers engaged in collaborative action research (AR) to learn how to use FA and CRS to promote student and teacher learning. Data were analyzed using open coding, cross-case analysis, and content analysis. Results from data analysis allowed researchers to construct a model for knowledge skills necessary for the integration of technology enhanced FA into teachers’ practice. The model is as a set of four technologies: hardware and software; methods for constructing FA items; pedagogical methods; and curriculum integration. The model is grounded in the idea that teachers must develop these respective technologies as they interact with the CRS (i.e., hardware and software, item construction) and their existing practice (i.e., pedagogical methods, curriculum). Implications are that for teachers to make FA an integral part of their practice using CRS, they must: 1) engage in the four technologies; 2) understand the nature of FA; and 3) collaborate with other interested teachers through AR.     

Otitis Media and the Social Behavior of Day-Care-Attending Children

Research has suggested that young children who experience chronic middle ear disease (otitis media) in early childhood may display some initial developmental delays in language development as well as later problems in school. This association between otitis media and developmental problems is hypothesized to be linked to the hearing loss that accompanies frequent or long bouts of otitis media. Recent interest has focused on whether otitis media may be linked to behavioral changes in children, making them less responsive to the environment even when well. This study examined the relation between early otitis media in day-care-attending children and their subsequent behavior in the day-care classroom when the children were well. Findings suggest that day-care-attending children with chronic otitis media in the first 3 years of life play more often alone and have fewer positive and fewer negative verbal interactions with peers than nonchronic children in day-care. There were no differences between chronic and nonchronic otitis media children in their nonverbal behavior. Results may also contribute to our understanding of the development of the socially withdrawn child.     

Web tutorials: bibliographic instruction in a new medium

Libraries are adding electronic resources of all kinds at an increasing pace to provide service to users outside the library and around the world. To meet this new demand, libraries are turning more and more to the use of online tutorials as a valuable means of providing instruction on how to access and use important resources. This article describes the Health Sciences Library and Biocommunications Center's work and experiences while creating tutorials, the ideas used, and ways the work was evaluated.