Meeting Students Where They Are: Just in Time Embedded Delivery of Information and Digital Literacy Skills

Abstract

At the University of Wollongong (UOW) Library we have been exploring ways to deliver information and digital literacy resources at point of need for students. Aligned with the University’s strategic direction, the Future Ready Library Strategy points to a digital first mindset and its application to services and resources offered to the UOW community. Combined with the need to embrace the real life challenges faced by higher education students in Australia today, this has led us to develop a suite of digital learning objects in collaboration with teaching academics that can be delivered at scale, enabling a sustainable way to target student needs. In this article, we discuss the drivers that have brought UOW Library to this point and outline the model for learning and teaching support for our academic community into the future.     

Exploring self-talk and affective states in sport.

In this study, we examined (1) the relationship between self-talk and affect and (2) the nature of motivating self-talk. Ninety high-school athletes completed the Affect Grid and the Self-Talk Grid before practice and competition. Significant positive second-order partial correlations of low to moderate strength offered support for a relationship between self-talk and affect. In addition, significant positive second-order partial correlations of moderate strength were found for a relationship between negative-positive self-talk and demotivating-motivating self-talk. An examination of scatter plots indicated that some athletes rated their self-talk as negative as well as being motivational. These findings lend support to the suggestion that negative self-talk may motivate some athletes.     

Discovery,Management, and Preservation of Geospatial Data Using Hydra

As a growing number of disciplines adopt geospatial technologies in their research, the need for access to geospatial data, in a variety of formats, has grown dramatically. For librarians to meet this demand, we also need to provide preservation, curation, metadata, and discovery services. GeoHydra, our open source toolkit and set of practices, provides these services for Stanford's libraries. We incorporate a variety of geospatial content types from raster imagery to scientific vector data to georeferenced scanned maps, and provide a data model for repositories. We demonstrate the potential of a new architecture and practice for librarianship for geospatial data using the Hydra framework. The digitization and georeferencing of historic map collections, streamlining the acquisition and cataloging of vendor-supplied data, shared cataloging of geographic resources, and citation of geospatial research data are all examples of use cases that GeoHydra serves. Our metadata creation and management strategies implement the ISO (International Standards Organization) suite of geographic standards, and a specialized metadata schema for discovery. We developed XSLT transformations, auto-generation of core elements, unique URIs for place names, and cross-institutional data sharing. With these metadata we built a novel geoportal, EarthWorks, to provide end-user discovery for geospatial data layers using GeoBlacklight technology.     

The effects of anxiety upon psychomotor performance

This paper describes an experiment which examined the effects of anxiety on choice reaction time and movement time. A balanced repeated measures design was adopted in which eight female subjects performed a six-choice visual reaction task in 'no anxiety' and 'anxiety' conditions. The anxiety condition required subjects to jump from a balcony 15 feet (4.57 m) into a foam-filled pit below. Subjects in the anxiety condition demonstrated significantly higher levels of cognitive anxiety and longer reaction times than those in the no anxiety condition. The analysis of the reaction time data also revealed a significant interaction between anxiety and block. No significant effects emerged in the case of movement time.     

Sprockets and Shutters

Charles Thomas Samuels, “Movie Theater Without Walls,” New York Times Book Review, Paperbacks in Review (February 13, 1972)

Forsyth Hardy (ed.) Grierson on Documentary (New York: Praeger, 1972—$5.50, paper)

Roger Manvell's Shakespeare and the Film (New York: Praeger, 1972—$10.00)

Fitzhugh Green's The Film Finds Its Tongue (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1971—$13.50)

George Eells' Hedda and Louella: A Dual Biography of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons (New York: Putnam, 1972—$7.95)     

Student-Generated Content: Enhancing learning through sharing multiple-choice questions

The relationship between students' use of PeerWise, an online tool that facilitates peer learning through student-generated content in the form of multiple-choice questions (MCQs), and achievement, as measured by their performance in the end-of-module examinations, was investigated in 5 large early-years science modules (in physics, chemistry and biology) across 3 research-intensive UK universities. A complex pattern was observed in terms of which type of activity (writing, answering or commenting on questions) was most beneficial for students; however, there was some evidence that students of lower intermediate ability may have gained particular benefit. In all modules, a modest but statistically significant positive correlation was found between students' PeerWise activity and their examination performance, after taking prior ability into account. This suggests that engaging with the production and discussion of student-generated content in the form of MCQs can support student learning in a way that is not critically dependent on course, institution, instructor or student.     

Graduate Curriculums in Sport Management: The Need for a Business Orientation

The graduate level sport management cumculum must go beyond the level of providing technical competencies—it must also orient graduates to using competencies in the fulfillment of management tasks. The sport management curriculum should also emphasize the unusual and sometimes unique aspects of managing a sport organization. Sport should be studied in relation to other industries. An ideal curriculum revolves around four components of knowledge: core knowledge, functional applications across segments, supplemental electives, and segment specializations, including internships. Graduate level sport management curricula should produce managers, not entry-level technicians.     

Bildung and educational action research: resources for hope in neoliberal times

This paper draws upon empirical research to provide insights into current teacher learning practices under broader neoliberal conditions, and how the latter might be resisted. The paper contrasts neoliberal approaches to teachers’ learning with the Nordic tradition of educational action research and ‘Bildung’ as alternative resources to guide teachers’ and principals’ collective learning practices in schools, and draws upon empirical research to provide evidence of the benefits and challenges of doing so. The paper draws upon research into the learning practices of primary teachers in Australia, early childhood teachers in Sweden, and principals in Finland. The research reveals the influence of more Bildung-informed conceptions of educational action research, even as these are challenged by existing administrative cultures, and neoliberal pressures. The research presents ‘resources for hope’ to promote collective learning based on democratic values, not in an idealized or abstract manner, but in a way which is simultaneously cognizant of empirical realities.