Maximizing and assessing a one-shot information literacy session: A case study

This case study describes collaboration between an instructor and business librarian to maximize a one-shot information literacy session for a required marketing class for business majors. It includes an active-learning exercise where groups use three key business databases to conduct a company and industry analysis and an environmental scan for a company. The instructor then guides them in developing a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis. This session prepares students for the SWOT analysis they will have to submit for their actual projects. This article includes assessment of groups' in-class exercises as well as citation analysis of the assignments they turned in for their actual projects.     

An interview study of why parents conduct intensive ABA home training for their child with autism spectrum disorder. An analysis from the lens of the dialectical disability model

The number of parents undertaking an intensive home training programme of children with disabilities (e.g. Applied Behavioural Analysis) has increased. It reveals a paradox in current disability research and policies. On the one hand, policies in general are aimed at inclusion through movement of social barriers for participation, grounded in the social model of disability. On the other hand, intensive home training is based on the aim of rehabilitation through intensive training of individual cognitive and social skills, an approach grounded in a bio-medical model. Intensive home training programmes are supported by political legislation that enables parents to partake the training and hire the necessary helpers. How is this paradox viewed from the perspective of the parents? From the departure of the dialectical model of disability – and its central concepts of developmental incongruence, developmental time and social agency – two mothers practising home training with their children with autism disorder were interviewed about their motives for home training and subsequent experience with their child. Results showed that the motive to home training was to create a local congruence that allowed the child to thrive. Intensive home training also restored the mothers’ sense of agency vis-à-vis their child’s development. However, home training might not abolish the need for adaptations of the child’s social practices outside the family. It is discussed how societal support to home training risks to hinder higher order reorganisation of developmental opportunities that are necessary to actualise policy statements of inclusion.     

Do Teachers Consider Advice? On the Acceptance of Computerized Expert Models

The literature suggests that simple expert (mathematical) models can improve the quality of decisions, but people are not always eager to accept and endorse such models. We ran three online experiments to test the receptiveness to advice from computerized expert models. Middle- and high-school teachers (N = 435) evaluated student profiles that varied in several personal and task relevant factors. They were offered (Studies I and II), or could ask for (Study III), advice from either expert models or human advisors. Overall, teachers requested and followed advice of expert models less frequently than advice from humans. Task-relevant factors (task difficulty) seem to be more salient than personal factors for teachers’ willingness to receive advice.     

A Multilevel Mixture IRT Framework for Modeling Response Times as Predictors or Indicators of Response Engagement in IRT Models

Disengaged item responses pose a threat to the validity of the results provided by large-scale assessments. Several procedures for identifying disengaged responses on the basis of observed response times have been suggested, and item response theory (IRT) models for response engagement have been proposed. We outline that response time-based procedures for classifying response engagement and IRT models for response engagement are based on common ideas, and we propose the distinction between independent and dependent latent class IRT models. In all IRT models considered, response engagement is represented by an item-level latent class variable, but the models assume that response times either reflect or predict engagement. We summarize existing IRT models that belong to each group and extend them to increase their flexibility. Furthermore, we propose a flexible multilevel mixture IRT framework in which all IRT models can be estimated by means of marginal maximum likelihood. The framework is based on the widespread Mplus software, thereby making the procedure accessible to a broad audience. The procedures are illustrated on the basis of publicly available large-scale data. Our results show that the different IRT models for response engagement provided slightly different adjustments of item parameters of individuals’ proficiency estimates relative to a conventional IRT model.