First-Year Engineering Students’ Portrayal of Engineering in a Proposed Museum Exhibit for Middle School Students

Students’ perceptions of engineering have been documented through studies involving interviews, surveys, and word associations that take a direct approach to asking students about various aspects of their understanding of engineering. Research on perceptions of engineering rarely focuses on how students would portray engineering to others. First-year engineering student teams proposed a museum exhibit, targeted to middle school students, to explore the question “What is engineering?” The proposals took the form of a poster. The overarching research question focuses on how these students would portray engineering to middle school students as seen through their museum exhibit proposals. A preliminary analysis was done on 357 posters to determine the overall engineering themes for the proposed museum exhibits. Forty of these posters were selected and, using open coding, more thoroughly analyzed to learn what artifacts/objects, concepts, and skills student teams associate with engineering. These posters were also analyzed to determine if there were any differences by gender composition of the student teams. Building, designing, and teamwork are skills the first-year engineering students link to engineering. Regarding artifacts, students mentioned those related to transportation and structures most often. All-male teams were more likely to focus on the idea of space and to mention teamwork and designing as engineering skills; equal-gender teams were more likely to focus on the multidisciplinary aspect of engineering. This analysis of student teams’ proposals provides baseline data, positioning instructors to develop and assess instructional interventions that stretch students’ self-exploration of engineering.     

The differential impact of observational learning and practice-based learning on the development of oral presentation skills in higher education

The present study focuses on the design and evaluation of an innovative instructional approach to developing oral presentation skills. The intervention builds on the observational learning theoretical perspective. This perspective is contrasted with the traditional training and practice approach. Two sequencing approaches – learners starting with observational learning versus learners starting with practice opportunities only – were compared. It was hypothesised that learners starting with observational learning would outperform learners in the practice only condition. The results suggest a significant differential impact on development of oral presentation skills. This impact of the observational learning training approach is only found in a limited number of evaluation criteria. Results additionally suggest that students are highly motivated to learn this type of skill. Interaction effects between student characteristics and instructional interventions were not significant.     

Library Services to Multicultural Communities: Russian Best Practice

Russia is a very diverse country with many ethnic groups, religions, and languages, including not only indigenous groups but also migrants and refugees. The author, chair of the Russian Library Association's roundtable Library Services to Multicultural Populations, writes about how Russian libraries are working to serve these populations, following guidelines issued by IFLA and UNESCO. She particularly singles out the Sverdlovskaia oblastnaia mezhnatsional'naia biblioteka [Sverdlovsk Oblast Inter-Nation Library] in Ekaterinburg, capital of the Ural Federal District. It seeks to preserve and develop the cultures of the Urals peoples and has become a cultural, educational, and methodological center for multicultural issues for other Ural libraries.     

Priming Welfare Queens and Other Stereotypes: The Transference of Media Images into Interpersonal Contexts A previous version of this manuscript was presented at the 48th annual meeting of the International Communication Association,San Diego (2004).

Specific stereotype portrayals of African American women were hypothesized to produce stereotype-consistent judgments made of a different African American woman. Participants (N?=?76) observed a mammy, jezebel or welfare queen video-segment. Then they observed an African American woman in a mock job interview and rated the interviewee. Participants who observed a specific stereotype associated the interviewee more quickly with stereotype-consistent adjectives than with stereotype-inconsistent adjectives for all three stereotypes. For measures of how suitable the woman was for jobs that were related to the stereotypes, only the welfare queen prime produced significant effects.     

Mates or Married? Implications of Gender Composition and Physical Intimacy on Evaluation of Images Tested for Advertising

Drawing upon the theoretical framework of social identity theory and literature on physical intimacy, consumer neuroscience, and social cognitive and affective neuroscience, responses to images featuring same-gender and other-gender pairs are explored through examination of self-reported attitudes and neural activity associated with attention, memory, and emotion. Under the pretense of pretesting the effectiveness of images to be used in a national advertising campaign, participants viewed still images while neuroelectric brain responses were recorded. Each image featured two women, two men, or a man and a woman presented in positions of physical intimacy. Results indicated that event-related brain potentials (ERPs) associated with attention did not differ overall based on couple composition. However, ERPs associated with working memory and emotion were enhanced when processing images with two men. Preference for these images was reflected in self-reported attitudes.     

Exploring Online and Blended Course Delivery in Social Group Work

Agency group work has increased, but opportunities for social work group practice in educational settings have not kept pace. One option in response is technology-based learning, and students appear to have positive perceptions of online group project work. Online courses appear to have outcomes comparable to those that occur with in-person groups but require careful monitoring of group processes and group-based technologies. The authors discuss the factors involved in developing and implementing online and blended course delivery in teaching group work.     

What Do You Know about Alternative Energy? Development and Use of a Diagnostic Instrument for Upper Secondary School Science

The need for renewable and non-fossil fuels is now recognised by nations throughout the world. Consequently, an understanding of alternative energy is needed both in schools and in everyday life-long learning situations. This study developed a two-tier instrument to diagnose students' understanding and alternative conceptions about alternative energy in terms of: sources of alternative energy, greenhouse gas emission, as well as advantages, and disadvantages. Results obtained with Years 10 and 11 students (n?=?491) using the 12-item two-tier instrument (α?=?0.61) showed that students' understanding of alternative energy was low (M?=?7.03; SD?=?3.90). The 23 alternative conceptions about alternative energy sources that could be identified from the instrument are reported. The implications for teaching and learning about alternative energy and suggestions for further development and improvement of the instrument are presented.     

Conceptualising the knowledge work of digital professionals through Knorr Cetina's ideas of macro-epistemics and information knowledge

The problem addressed in this paper is the need for analytical resources to theorise the nature of knowledge work and, in the light of a practice turn in social sciences, to consider how knowledge is generated and circulated. The aim of the paper is to contribute to a practice-based rethinking of how to investigate professional knowledge, relating its considerations to a case of digital workers. It suggests that Knorr Cetina's ideas of macro-epistemics and information knowledge offer analytical resources for theorising knowledge as practised. The paper's considerations are drawn from an empirical study of 10 localisers who were digital workers from continental Europe, Ireland, the UK and South America and whose work entailed the linguistic, cultural and software adaptation of digital products to support global communication. The paper first presents localisers and explains their knowledge work, second, it positions its considerations in the field of practice theory, exploring Knorr Cetina's concepts of macro-epistemics and information knowledge. Lastly, it draws on localiser data to consider how these concepts offer analytical resources for researching adults' knowledge. The paper will be relevant to educationalists interested in the implications of new theoretical developments for understanding the generation and circulation of professional knowledge.