A Process Evaluation of an Online BSW Program: Getting the Student Perspective

This paper reviews the student perspectives of an online BSW program. The structure of this program is presented, along with findings from a mixed-method evaluation of four matched BSW courses where each instructor taught both the online and face-to-face sections. Although there are no identified differences in performance, grades, or retention, students report differences in developing instructor and classmate relationships and in overall course satisfaction. Qualitative findings highlight the advantages of the flexibility of online education, tempered by challenges in making connections and fewer spontaneous interactions. Implications for online course development are discussed.     

Concept mapping: How should it be introduced, and is there evidence for long term benefit?

A naturalistic study, with two cycles of intervention, was carried out to investigate the effects of two methods of introducing concept mapping to students taking introductory subjects in genetics in an Australian university. Some of these students' views relating to concept mapping were also investigated in the years following its introduction. The results of this study suggest that the method of introduction can influence students' perception of concept mapping, and its potential benefit. Although most students taking introductory subjects had taken part in the project, and many had realised the benefits of concept mapping, retrospective views of students indicated that almost none had adopted it as a regular part of study strategies. This outcome raises several questions in regard to introducing learning tools to students and, in particular, the reasons for doing so.     

Expanding horizons for GIS services in academic libraries

During the past five years, libraries engaged in GIS services have encountered challenges and opportunities related to partnerships, staffing and management, user education, and data access.Many avenues exists for expanding both the scope and depth of these services to meet the user community's needs.     

Warm,sunny days

Each change in the seasons brings a certain sense of excitement. Perhaps, after a long, cold winter, the most pleasant change of all is when the signs of Spring begin to appear: warm, windy weather; tiny shoots of green peeking through the melting snow; budding trees and bushes; the first robin; rainstorms and puddles; and a chance to go outside to fly a kite or throw a paper glider into the air.... Then, finally,warm, sunny days to let us know that Spring is really here!     

Statistics in High School Science

Exploratory date analysis provides powerful numerical and graphical tools with which to summarise and interpret data. In this article the authors describe their work with students who were given the opportunity to engage in the solution of a real problem in the physics laboratory which requried statistical techniques.     

The mathematical discourse of 13-year-old partnered problem solving and its relation to the mathematics that emerges

This paper, written within a discursive perspective, explores the co-shaping of public and private discourse, and some of the circumstances under which one occasions the other, in the evolution of mathematical thinking by pairs of 13-year-olds. The discourse of six pairs of students, engaged in interpreting and graphing problem situations involving rational functions, was analyzed by means of recently developed methodological tools. The nature of the mathematics that emerged for each pair was found to be related to several factors that included the characteristics of the interpersonal object-level utterances both before and after the solution path had been generated, the degree of activity of the personal channels of the interlocutors, and the extent to which the thoughts of participants were made explicit in the public discourse. The analysis of the discursive interactions provided evidence that adolescents within novel problem situations can experience some difficulty in making their emergent thinking available to their partners in such a way that the interaction be highly mathematically productive for both of them. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.