Using peer and teacher-student exemplar dialogues to unpack assessment standards: challenges and possibilities

Dialogic use of exemplars is effective in developing student understanding of assessment standards. However, limited studies have investigated how exemplar dialogues are conducted in the post-secondary context. To fill the gap, this teacher-research explores the characteristics of peer and teacher–student exemplar talk in three post-secondary classrooms and the challenges in the dialogic process. The participants involved 69 first-year post-secondary students, a critical friend and a teacher-researcher. Data analysis on selected dialogue excerpts, an open-ended survey, focus group interviews with the students, critical friend’s commentary and a teacher-researcher reflective journal indicated two major issues: (i) students’ lack of capacities to resolve socio-cognitive conflict in the peer dialogue; (ii) the dilemma of addressing students’ immediate assessment needs and developing their long-term evaluative judgements in the teacher–student dialogue. Recommendations are made to tackle the challenges and to orchestrate productive exemplar dialogues.     

Direct and indirect calorimetry of lactate oxidation: implications for whole-body energy expenditure

Whole-body energy expenditure for heavy/severe exercise is currently accounted for by either: (1) anaerobic and oxygen uptake measures during exercise where recovery energy expenditure is omitted; or (2) oxygen uptake during, and an EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption), measure following exercise where substrate level phosphorylation during exercise is considered part of EPOC. Simultaneous direct/indirect calorimetry enabled us to determine if a thermodynamic reversal (i.e. heat consumption) takes place as the highly exothermic pyruvate to lactate reaction proceeds in the opposite direction. Reversibility implies that oxygen uptake (e.g. EPOC) can indeed account for rapid glycolytic ATP production regardless if lactate is formed or not (e.g. 1.2 g glucose catabolism = 20.9 kJ x l O2(-1)). Cultured hybrid cells and mouse cardiac muscle fibres were utilized in simultaneous calorimetry and respirometry experiments where pyruvate or lactate was predominantly oxidized. The calorimetric to respiratory ratio was determined using heat flux (pW x cell(-1)) and oxygen flux (pmol x s(-1) cell(-1)) measures. Ten cell experiments gave calorimetric to respiratory ratios that showed no statistical difference (P= 0.97) whether cells respired predominantly on lactate (-516+/-53 kJ x mol O2(-1)) or pyruvate (- 517+/-89 kJ x mol O2(-1)). In three cardiac preparations, the calorimetric to respiratory ratio was -502+/-15 kJ x mol O2(-1) for lactate and -506+/-47 kJ x mol O2(-1) for pyruvate, again a non-significant difference (P= 0.91). Heat consumption did not occur during lactate oxidation. These results suggest that rapid glycolytic ATP and lactate production, and lactate oxidation, are both independently associated with heat production and thus represent separate and additive components to the measurement of total energy expenditure for exercise and recovery.     

Faculty–library collaborations in digital history: A case study of the travel journal of Cornelius B. Gold

ABSTRACT

In this article, the authors present a case study on a teaching and learning initiative in digital humanities at Connecticut College. The article outlines a project in which students in a midlevel history course collaborated with library staff and faculty to develop a digital exhibition on a nineteenth-century journal in the College's collection. The cooperative approach and institutional support that the team received provided an effective and flexible means for achieving common goals. As students applied emergent technologies to college collections, they were able to conduct meaningful research and bring archival resources to new audiences.     

Against the tyranny of musical form: glitch music,affect, and the sound of digital malfunction

This essay provides a model of how to critically read non-representational sound by attending carefully to its material elements. It presents a novel conceptualization of glitch music, an experimental medium of digital art comprised of the unpleasant sounds of technology malfunctioning. The analysis examines the representative songs of glitch artists Oval and their sonic articulation of the regenerative possibilities of failure. Although Oval largely considers conventional musical form to be tyrannical, its sound art simulates traditional musical elements such as rhythm, phrasing, and instrumentation, and transforms them into their respective glitch equivalents of metrical dissonance, repeated sound textures, and timbral experimentation, thereby altering digital malfunctions of sound into a sensual affective experience. Although music is theorized elsewhere to be persuasive because of its mobilization of emotions within the listener, the glitch art of Oval is suasory because it generates affective intensities that operate at an intercorporeal level of matter-energy. The songs of Oval update the modern directive of the Futurist sound movement to train the listener to accept a life surrounded by the sound of digital technology.     

“Guns Don’t Kill People … Selfies Do”: rethinking narcissism as exhibitionism in selfie-related deaths

This work explores how the Narcissus myth has been inaccurately adopted by media, specifically in the reporting of selfie-related deaths. Narcissus, a boy in love with his own image, loved himself so much he would not share his image with others. Considering sharing is an integral part of the selfie phenomenon, this work seeks to dismantle the narcissism misuse in media coverage of selfie-related deaths. Through critical textual analysis of six major newspapers, I argue that exhibitionism is a more accurate critique of the selfie. Furthermore, it is a critique that fits more in line with the digital age, as opposed to the analog nature of narcissism.     

Do pediatric chief residents recognize details of prepubertal female genital anatomy: a national survey

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate how well a group of recently trained pediatric chief residents could label anatomic structures on two different photographs of female prepubertal genitalia. Additionally, the study sought to explore aspects of pediatric training in sexual abuse and clinical practice issues surrounding the routine genital examination. METHOD: A 38-item questionnaire was mailed to pediatric chief residents at all of the officially listed pediatric residency-training programs in the continental US. Comparisons were made between this study and the responses to two previous surveys, which asked a more heterogeneous group of physicians to label one of the photographs used in the study. The second photograph was added because of its improved clarity of each anatomic structure when compared to the first photograph used in the previous studies. The study also asked about clinical practice issues surrounding the prepubertal genital examination. RESULTS: An overall response rate of 73% was achieved and analysis was done on 139 respondents. One-half of chief residents thought that their training during residency on sexual abuse was inadequate for practice. Sixty-four percent of chief residents correctly labeled the hymen on the photograph used in the previous studies, which was not significantly different from the 62% and 59% of physicians who correctly labeled the hymen in the previous surveys. In the second photograph, which more clearly displayed the various anatomic structures, 71% correctly labeled the hymen. CONCLUSION: Pediatric chief residents reported variable amounts of training on issues pertaining to child sexual abuse during residency, think that this time was inadequate, and, while doing slightly better than a more diverse group of previously studied physicians, did not achieve 100% accuracy in identifying basic genital structures correctly on two different photographs.     

From Comprehensive to Singular: A Latent Class Analysis of College Teaching Practices

While decades of research on college teaching has investigated several forms of classroom practices, much of this research approaches teaching as falling into mutually exclusive paradigms (e.g., active learning vs. lecturing). This paper enters inside the college classroom using external raters to understand patterns of pedagogical practices embedded in heterogeneous groups of courses. The study used quantitative observation and draws on data from a multi-institutional study of 587 courses across nine institutions to understand the patterns of teaching practices within courses. Latent class analyses demonstrated that there were five patterns of seven course practices that cluster around active learning, lecturing, and cognitively responsive practices: Comprehensive, Traditional Lecture, Active Lecture, Integrative Discussion, and Active Only.