Pandemics,leadership, and social ethics

PROSPECTS - This Viewpoint argues that the absence of worldwide social ethics is at the root of our present social, political, and economic crises. More to the point, the current COVID-19...     

Librarians as Research Partners: Their Contribution to the Scholarly Endeavour Beyond Library and Information Science

Academic libraries are increasingly called upon to demonstrate their value to their home institutions. Research collaboration with faculty resulting in the co-authorship of scholarly output is one possible way to demonstrate the alignment of the library with the institutional mission. Involvement in research also improves librarians' skills in offering research support services. This study explores the contribution of librarians to scholarly journals in fields other than Library and Information Science (LIS) as well as their collaboration practices with researchers in those fields. Results show an increasing number of papers published by library-affiliated authors in non-LIS journals between 2006 and 2015. The papers fall broadly into four areas: articles on topics related to LIS published in non-LIS journals; higher education and information literacy; systematic reviews and meta-analysis; and research collaboration in the faculty's areas of expertise. The study is limited by the difficulty in properly retrieving the scholarly output of librarians from bibliographic databases and the difficulty in ascertaining their contributions to published articles.     

Collaborative action research between schools,a continuing professional development centre for teachers and the university: a case study in Spain

This article describes a collaborative action research project developed over the course of the 2011/12 academic year in the Faculty of Education at Cordoba University (Spain). The RIECU school–continuing professional development centre for teachers–university learning network is part of this research process. The aim is to create and consolidate a community of practice made up of continuing professional development advisers to teachers, infant education teachers, university students who are training to become infant education teachers and university teaching staff. The most relevant findings, which respond to the questions raised, are: the action research conducted indicates that teamwork between teacher, adviser, researcher and university student is an effective strategy to facilitate the acquisition of professional competences among student teachers; and student-teachers involved in the case study have evolved in their conception and approach to childhood and have had the opportunity to learn by modelling the professional conduct of their mentor teachers.     

How Journalists and Social Media Users Perceive Online Fact-Checking and Verification Services

While services for fact-checking and verification to counter fake news in social media have increased, little research has investigated how journalists and the public perceive such services. This study reflects the outcomes of REVEAL, a three-year European Union research project investigating the use and impact of services for fact-checking and verification. Based on interviews with 32 young journalists and content analysis of social media users’ online conversations, we contribute new knowledge about the ways that journalists and social media users perceive online fact-checking and verification services. The findings suggest that, while young journalists were largely unfamiliar with or ambivalent about such services, they judged them as potentially useful in the investigative journalistic process. Yet, they were unwilling to rely exclusively on these tools for fact-checking and verification. A comparison of journalists’ perceptions with those of social media users reveals social media users are similarly ambivalent. Some accentuated the usefulness of such services, while others expressed strong distrust. However, the journalists displayed a more nuanced perspective, both seeing these services as potentially useful and being reluctant to blindly trust a single service. Design strategies to make online fact-checking and verification services more useful and trustworthy are suggested.     

Legacy and Native News Brands Online: Do They Show Different News Consumption Patterns?

The distinction between legacy media and digital media has frequently been used to analyze the journalistic and commercial contrast between traditional media (offline) and new media (online). However, little research has been carried out on the degree to which legacy brands differ from digital native brands in the digital environment. Are legacy and digital native news brands associated with similar news consumption patterns, or do those patterns differ substantially? This work intends to give an answer to this question, taking as a reference the Spanish case. The underlying assumption of this study is the idea that legacy brands carry over into the digital world some of the consumption characteristics of their old products, which could differ greatly from those associated with new digital native products. While not in the manner initially planned, the study confirms the existence of small differences in those characteristics between groups of brands, but mostly related to journalistic factors, not marketing ones. These findings have important consequences for the branding of legacy and native news brands.     

Supporting Blended-Learning: tool requirements and solutions with OWLish

Currently, most of the educational approaches applied to higher education combine face-to-face (F2F) and computer-mediated instruction in a Blended-Learning (B-Learning) approach. One of the main challenges of these approaches is fully integrating the traditional brick-and-mortar classes with online learning environments in an efficient and flexible way. In this paper, we present a set of requirements to be met by a computer system in order to adequately support both students and teachers in a B-Learning context. Then, it defines a suitable conceptual architecture to meet the requirements, and the multi-agent implementation of the architecture. Next, it presents the evaluation of the functionality implemented. Finally some conclusions are drawn.     

Spanish validation of the Basic Psychological Needs at Work Scale: A measure to predict teachers’ well-being in the workplace

The present study aimed to validate a Spanish-version of the Basic Psychological Needs at Work Scale (BPNWS-Sp) and to examine the associations between needs satisfaction and engagement and burnout in secondary education teachers. Using a sample of 584 secondary education teachers, the results supported the three-factor model, composite reliability, measurement invariance, and nomological validity of the BPNWS-Sp. This study contributes to validating the first instrument in Spanish to measure the satisfaction of the three BPNs separately in secondary education teachers. The measurement of teachers’ BPNs could effectively provide guidance for school policies to improve teaching and learning.     

Learning from human cadaveric prosections: Examining anxiety in speech therapy students

Human anatomy education often utilizes the essential practices of cadaver dissection and examination of prosected specimens. However, these exposures to human cadavers and confronting death can be stressful and anxiety‐inducing for students. This study aims to understand the attitudes, reactions, fears, and states of anxiety that speech therapy students experience in the dissection room. To that end, a before‐and‐after cross‐sectional analysis was conducted with speech therapy students undertaking a dissection course for the first time. An anonymous questionnaire was administered before and after the exercise to understand students' feelings and emotions. State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory questionnaires (STAI‐S and STAI‐T) were used to evaluate anxiety levels. The results of the study revealed that baseline anxiety levels measured using the STAI‐T remained stable and unchanged during the dissection room experience (P > 0.05). Levels of emotional anxiety measured using the STAI‐S decreased, from 15.3 to 11.1 points (P < 0.05). In the initial phase of the study, before any contact with the dissection room environment, 17% of students experienced anxiety, and this rate remained unchanged by end of the session (P > 0.05). A total of 63.4% of students described having thoughts about life and death. After the session, 100% of students recommended the dissection exercise, giving it a mean score of 9.1/10 points. Anatomy is an important subject for students in the health sciences, and dissection and prosection exercises frequently involve a series of uncomfortable and stressful experiences. Experiences in the dissection room may challenge some students' emotional equilibria. However, students consider the exercise to be very useful in their education and recommend it. Anat Sci Educ 10: 487–494. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.