Where Students Start and What They Do When They Get Stuck: A Qualitative Inquiry into Academic Information-Seeking and Help-Seeking Practices

This study investigates two questions key to academic library resources and services: Which sources are students most likely to use to begin their academic work? Whom do students tend to consult for research assistance? In-depth interviews conducted with 15 undergraduate and graduate students were thematically analyzed through a three-step process. The findings indicate that students are most likely to consult faculty and peers for assistance and are largely unaware of librarians' roles, while they tend to begin research using library databases and do not necessarily start with Google. In addition, student use of small study groups as learning networks and reliance upon alternate sites to conduct research emerged as unanticipated themes.     

Reaction Cards as a Formative Evaluation Tool: Students' perceptions of how their use impacted classes

This article explores students' perceptions of how their input on 'reaction cards' affected their classes. Reaction cards - index cards upon which each student writes remarks related to each day's class activities - were used in 10 classes across seven disciplines as a means of formative evaluation. Open-ended survey questions about the reaction cards were completed anonymously by 195 students at mid-term and by 184 students at the end of the semester. Faculty also reported on how they used the cards and their perceptions of how the cards impacted their classes. At mid-semester, students indicated that the cards had a positive impact on their classes. The cards improved communication, increased students' involvement in the course, and improved their connection to the material. At the end of the semester there were some negative comments related to the tedium of filling out the cards in each class. Reaction cards can provide a simple but powerful tool for gathering data that can be used to modify and improve courses as they progress.     

The Effect of Economic Recession on Institutional Support for Tenure-Track Librarians in ARL Institutions

The objective of this study was to reveal how the national economic recession has affected the nature and extent of support for tenure track librarians at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions. The authors surveyed 43 ARL Deans and University Librarians to discover the criteria for achieving tenure and the current institutional support for tenure-related activities. All of the responding libraries reported experiencing at least moderate reductions in their overall budgets, with the majority indicating increased workloads for faculty and reductions to monetary support for professional development. Despite this adversity, the survey indicated that the expectations for achieving tenure for librarians in the areas of research and service have not changed.     

Are professional young rugby league players eating enough? Energy intake,expenditure and balance during a pre-season

Abstract

Due to the unique energetic demands of professional young collision sport athletes, accurate assessment of energy balance is required. Consequently, this is the first study to simultaneously investigate the energy intake, expenditure and balance of professional young rugby league players across a pre-season period. The total energy expenditure of six professional young male rugby league players was measured via doubly labelled water over a fourteen-day assessment period. Resting metabolic rate was measured and physical activity level calculated. Dietary intake was reported via Snap-N-Send over a non-consecutive ten-day assessment period, alongside changes in fasted body mass and hydration status. Accordingly, energy balance was inferred. The mean (standard deviation) difference between total energy intake (16.73 (1.32) MJ^.day^?1) and total energy expenditure (18.36 (3.05) MJ^.day^?1) measured over the non-consecutive ten-day period was unclear (?1.63 (1.73) MJ^.day^?1; ES?=?0.91?±?1.28; p?=?0.221). This corresponded in a most likely trivial decrease in body mass (?0.65 (0.78) kg; ES?=?0.04?±?0.03; p?=?0.097). Resting metabolic rate and physical activity level across the fourteen-day pre-season period was 11.20 (2.16) MJ^.day^?1 and 1.7 (0.2), respectively. For the first time, this study utilises gold standard assessment techniques to elucidate the distinctly large energy expenditures of professional young rugby league players across a pre-season period, emphasising a requirement for equally large energy intakes to achieve targeted body mass and composition adaptations. Accordingly, it is imperative that practitioners regularly assess the energy balance of professional young collision-sport athletes to ensure their unique energetic requirements are achieved.     

Personal autonomy in the travel panopticon

I argue in this paper that the development and convergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) is creating a global network of surveillance capabilities which affect the traveler. These surveillance capabilities are reminiscent of 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, and as such the emerging global surveillance network has been referred to as the travel panopticon. I argue that the travel panopticon is corrosive of personal autonomy, and in doing so I describe and analyse various philosophical approaches to personal autonomy.     

Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States: Findings Related to Research and Evaluation

The Panel on Educational Technology was organized in April 1995 under the auspices of the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) to provide advice to the President on matters related to the application of information technologies to K–12 education in the United States. Its findings and recommendations were set forth in March 1997 in the Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States. This report was based on a review of the research literature and on written submissions and oral briefings from a number of academic and industrial researchers, practicing educators, software developers, governmental agencies, and professional and industry organizations involved in various ways with the application of technology to education. Its most important finding is that a large-scale program of rigorous, systematic research on education in general and educational technology in particular will ultimately prove necessary to ensure both the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of technology use within our nation's K–12 schools. Finding that less than 0.1 percent of our nation's expenditures for elementary and secondary education are currently invested to determine which educational techniques actually work, and to find ways to improve them—an extremely low level relative to comparable ratios within the private sector—the Panel recommended that this figure be increased over a period of several years to at least 0.5 percent, and sustained at that level on an ongoing basis. Further, because no one state, municipality, or private firm could hope to capture more than a small fraction of the benefits associated with a significant advance in our understanding of how best to educate K–12 students, the Panel concluded that such funding will have to be provided largely at the federal level in order to avoid a systematic underinvestment (attributable to a classical form of economic externality) relative to the level that would be optimal for the nation as a whole. This paper originally appeared as Section 8 of the report.     

Tying Television Comedies to Information Literacy: A Mixed-Methods Investigation

Many components of Information Literacy (IL) are too massive to be addressed in a single instruction session, yet an introduction to these concepts is essential for students' academic careers and intellectual development. This study evaluates the impact of applying excerpts from television comedies that illustrate ACRL's Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education to library instruction sessions for first-year students. Pre- and posttest results from 193 subjects and interview data from two focus groups indicate that television comedies can be integrated into one-shot instruction sessions to demonstrate IL concepts in an accessible and dialogue-provoking manner.     

Voices from the Ground Up: Transfer of Learning within the Context of Research and Study Activities

A mid-sized university library system conducted a large-scale mixed-methods research project intended to understand better the student library experience and ways to enhance it. One aspect of the project included a detailed and iterative analysis of interview data. Using a grounded theory (GT) approach, researchers analyzed empirical data from student interviews and identified patterns of behavior. The results of data analyses suggested that students used knowledge and interactions from library class to inform them of how to study academic content and complete non-research tasks and vice versa. As a result, researchers generated an inductive (emerging from the data) theory that asserts that some research and study activities are mutually informative. The article describes the approach used to develop the theoretical construct in hopes that it will provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between research and studying behaviors and how academic libraries contribute to the greater academic landscape in ways not previously recognized.