How Science Teachers DiALoG Classrooms: Towards a Practical and Responsive Formative Assessment of Oral Argumentation

Journal of Science Education and Technology - We present lessons learned from an ongoing attempt to conceptualize, develop, and refine a way for teachers to gather formative assessment evidence...     

Membrane-integrated microfluidic device for high-resolution live cell imaging

The design and fabrication of a membrane-integrated microfluidic cell culture device (five layers,≤500 μm total thickness) developed for high resolution microscopy is reported here. The multi-layer device was constructed to enable membrane separated cell culture for tissue mimetic in vitro model applications and pharmacodynamic evaluation studies. The microdevice was developed via a unique combination of low profile fluidic interconnect design, substrate transfer methodology, and wet silane bonding. To demonstrate the unique high resolution imaging capability of this device, we used oil immersion microscopy to image stained nuclei and mitochondria in primary hepatocytes adhered to the incorporated membrane     

Technical Training Evaluation Practices in the United States

Surveys have consistently shown that training evaluation is not as widely utilized as many think it should be. This study sought to determine the extent to which technical training, which is often thought to be easier to evaluate but has not been studied, utilizes accepted evaluation techniques. A survey was sent to a random sample of 334 members of the ASTD Technical and Skills Training Professional Practice Area, resulting in a usable response rate of 35%. Data were gathered on the types and methods of evaluation used, reasons for not evaluating, organizational training practices, and selected demographic information. The results showed that technical training evaluation practices were essentially the same as those reported for training in general. Furthermore, an examination of historical benchmarks showed that evaluation practices have not changed much in the last forty years. These findings suggest the need for a new research agenda on organizational training decision‐making processes.     

A framework for implementing and teaching the social and ethical impact of computing

This article describes the work of Project ImpactCS, which was initiated to define the core content and pedagogical objectives for integrating social impact and ethics into the computer science (CS) curriculum. Over a three year period the project will address three major problems that hamper the implementation of across-the-board curriculum change: the lack of a well-specified definition of what the core content and learning objectives should include, the lack of a strategy for adapting and adopting existing materials that address the core topics into the existing CS curriculum, and the lack of awareness and expertise on the part of most CS faculties regarding the need and methodology for presenting such material in their courses. This report provides the conceptual frame-work and describes the learning objectives, called knowledge units, for defining a new content area in the computer science curriculum. It also discusses strategies and innovative pedagogical techniques for implementing the knowledge units into the curriculum.     

The Project Physics Course,Then and Now

Science &; Education -     

Assessing community college transfer performance

Transfer education is one of the most important, most criticized, and most difficult to measure of the functions performed by community colleges. If the performance of community colleges is to be properly assessed, problems of measuring and analyzing the transfer function must be solved. This paper seeks to answer several basic questions about community colleges' transfer performance, using California as a case example, and to show that useful conclusions may be reached even in the absence of perfect information. Many criticisms of the transfer function focus on the decline in numbers of students transferring from community colleges to four-year institutions that began in the late 1970s. This paper suggests that criticism about the transfer function, insofar as it stems from the number or rate of students transferring (as most of the criticism does), is unfounded. Until there is more precise information on students, research on particular problems like minority underrepresentation, students' course selection and outside employment, and the reverse transfer should prove more fruitful than looking simply at transfer numbers.     

Telling and Retelling Our Stories on the Professional Knowledge Landscape

Drawing on a 3-year study focusing on the shaping influences of the professional knowledge landscape on the personal practical knowledge of experienced teachers, we first explore how stories are shaped as they are told and responded to in different places and, second, explore whether or not this sharing leads to imagining new possibilities for retelling and reliving stories. By sharing and exploring a story of a disagreement between a parent and a teacher, we focus on what we do when we tell stories in schools and what we do when we tell stories off the school landscape. In making meaning from this story, we show that both in the teacher's living of the story with the parent and in her numerous recountings of the story to others on the school landscape, she did not have opportunities to figure out new ways to relive the story. In our research group, she shared her story again. In this telling, we asked her to focus on who she, the mother, and the principal are in the story, and we inquire into what plotlines each were living. We ask questions about how they were positioned as characters in relation to one another. Re-searching the story in this way enabled us to understand the embodied nature of the teacher's knowing and how this knowledge shaped the events of the story as they were lived out, particularly how the teacher's living of a relational story countered the story of teacher and principal as positioned above parent. By drawing on Nelson's work on 'found' and 'chosen' communities, we imagine ways in which schools could become chosen communities where the story of school might be one of fostering the living out of multiple stories. We imagine the stories emerging from such communities might significantly shape the landscape of schools by opening up new possibilities for living in relation with others.