The impact of technology and a no remediation policy on non-traditional students

A Hunter College librarian, with public library experience, offered a series of drop-in workshops Saturday afternoons open to all students and questions regarding Web or Windows use in the academic year, 2000-2001. The intention of the workshops was to address the continuous needs of students lacking technological and informational literacy. The success of these workshops led to this investigation of the implications of 21st century technology on non-traditional students from the perspective of bibliographic instruction as well as reference desk service. The perspective is that of the urban educational environment of City University of New York and Hunter College. The histories of open admissions at CUNY and the current efforts to abolish remediation are examined.     

Starting with a clean slate: An analysis of member identification with a new sports team

Soccer in Australia underwent a series of changes following a Federal Government inquiry into its future. A report into the Structure, Governance and Management of Soccer in Australia (2003) recommended a process of structural change, aimed at repositioning and re-branding soccer as association football. The restructure yielded the replacement of the National Soccer League with the A-League, five new Australian teams and a concerted attempt to separate soccer from its ethnic ties in the antipodes. This paper examines member identification in relation to a specific A-League club’s members. Using the Sports Spectator Identity Scale (Wann & Branscombe, 1993) to measure sport fan identity in a new team context, a survey of club members of Sydney FC (n = 510), was undertaken. Survey findings indicated that members of Sydney FC reported relatively strong team identification in the first year of the new competition, with some nuanced differences based on age and income. The SSIS demonstrated a good level of fit in relation to a new sports team, although it is evident that rivalries and identification with a new team need time to develop fully.     

Promoting Cognitive Complexity in Graduate Written Work: Using Bloom's Taxonomy as a Pedagogical Tool to Improve Literature Reviews

The article applies Bloom's (B. S. Bloom, M. D. Engelhart, F. J. Furst, W. H. Hill, & D. R. Krathwohl, 1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain to the process of graduate‐level writing in counselor education. Bloom's Taxonomy is provided as a mechanism to help students develop and demonstrate cognitive complexity when writing comprehensive literature reviews. The article outlines common assumptions held by students operating at each level of the Taxonomy, typical organizational structure and content of papers at each level of the Taxonomy, and tips to move writing to more cognitively advanced levels.     

Influence Strategies in the Supervisory Dyad: An Investigation Into the Effects of Gender and Age

A content analysis of audiotapes from 42 counseling supervisory dyads examined the effects of supervisor and supervisee gender on the influence strategies used in the session. Gender of the supervisor was not related to influence strategy. Supervisors of both genders were significantly more likely to accept or build upon the ideas generated by female supervisees and asked for more opinions from male supervisees. Male supervisees gave significantly more suggestions than did female supervisees, and female supervisees praised their supervisors more often than did male supervisees. Also, age differences between supervisor and supervisee interacted with gender to affect influence strategies used in the supervisory dyad.     

Building a Better M.I.C.E. Trap: Using Virtual Focus Groups to Assess Subject Guides for Distance Education Students

ABSTRACT

Subject guides are often used as an alternative to in-person library instruction for distance education students. However, when students are not on-campus, it can be difficult to assess if they are getting all of the relevant information they need. In an organization that serves students located across the United States and even outside of the country, a method was needed to assess the effectiveness of library information provided to distance learners on specific topics. The William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration (Hotel College) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), offers a number of on-campus and distance education courses, including classes taught at a satellite campus in Singapore. With diverse course offerings via distance education, the conventions and exhibitions subject area was chosen as a case study. Often referred to as M.I.C.E., the study of meetings, incentives, conventions, and exhibitions in a hospitality context is a major subdiscipline within the Hotel College. After researching different approaches to studying the effectiveness of subject guides, a virtual focus group was chosen to gather feedback from students. This paper will demonstrate how focus groups can be created and how the information gathered can be used to increase effectiveness of subject guides. Readers will discover effective techniques and pitfalls for using virtual focus groups in conjunction with subject guides assessment.     

The relationship of supportive communication to sex discussion in the home

Supportive communication was examined as a component of mothers’ sex discussion with children. Results demonstrated that mothers who communicated supportively were more open and disclosing when discussing sex and were more likely to provide sons with birth control information and instruction than mothers who communicated nonsupportively. The study concludes by raising several issues for future research and sex education pro‐ams for parents.     

Family sex communication orientation

The United States leads all industrialized countries in unintended teenage pregnancies, teenage births, teenage abortions. Despite the seriousness of this problem, family communication researchers so far, for all practical purposes, have excluded it from the discipline's research agenda. Our study was designed to consolidate and examine a measure of children's attitudes toward family sex communication on the dimensions of comfort, information, and value — the Family Sex Communication Quotient scale (FSCQ) — and to test this orientation against other potential mediators of sex discussion in the family. Our tentative findings suggest: (1) family sex communication in general is infrequent and ineffective, (2) frequent and effective family sex communication may serve as a contextual model for children's communication patterns, (3) a strong family sex communication orientation, particularly as measured by the FSCQ which tested out to be a reliable measure and a significant and consistent mediator, seems to facilitate children's open discussion with dating partners and with parents and to develop responsible pre‐parenting attitudes, (4) discussing sex in the family does not promote an attitude of sexual license.