Format Preferences of Performing Arts Students: A Multi-institution Study

The article describes a follow-up to Clark's 2012 examination of performing arts students' format preferences; it also explored their preferred sources for course-related information. This mixed-methods study was implemented at three institutions and included an online Qualtrics survey and focus groups. Results indicated a continued shift toward digital resources, with strong preferences for obtaining electronic journals and reference materials through the library. Print scores and books remained popular; however, students appeared more open to electronic options when compared to the 2012 results. Freely available online video and audio continued to enjoy popularity. Students want the libraries to acquire a mix of both physical and electronic resources, and they favor print books and scores.     

Identifying distinctive groups in a college applicant pool

In a time when most post-secondary educational institutions must distribute limited resources more efficiently, segmentation analysis affords a way to direct planning to yield strategic benefits. The Automatic Interaction Detector is recommended to the institutional research community as an analytical tool for effectively identifying distinctive subgroups within an educational market. In this application, AID is used to segment the Boston College applicant pool according to subgroups' relative probabilities of enrolling. The findings illustrate that AID can make a useful contribution to market research and that the technique has broader applicability—to other student groups and to other educational policy questions.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Twenty-First Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Minneapolis, May 1981.     

Women Who Teach Teachers

While conducting a wider ethnographic study into the job of educating teachers in one small college of higher education it became evident that structural differences existed between the men and women in the education department. Women were generally more experienced and better qualified than their male colleagues but tended to have less posts of responsibility and heavier teaching loads. However only two of the 10 women tutors in the department made any direct reference to the issue of gender in relation to their working lives. It seemed that the majority of the women tutors did not see or acknowledge any disadvantage. This paper investigates possible reasons why some women tutors do not recognise their situation as one of disadvantage. Some of the women tutors may not hold feminist views in relation to their working life. Some of the women tutors may believe that the fact of their own employment demonstrates that there are no bars to the employment of women but have not analysed the actuality of their working conditions further than issues of access. The paper argues that values of neutrality, impartiality and professionalism have served to disguise gendered power relations in teaching and teacher education and this influence will not always be recognised where the ‘common‐sense’ hegemony of male dominance is masked by a version of gender neutrality. The paper draws on interviews with three key informants, Nora, a senior manager and Susan and Monica, two grass roots tutors, who do recognise that their work is shaped by gendered regimes. Through their perspectives the paper illuminates some of the dilemmas which characterise what it is like being a woman doing the job of educating teachers.

     

The Rise of Storytelling as the New Marketing

More and more large and small brands are engaging in a marketing activity called content marketing: the idea that storytelling is key to attract and retain customers. Content marketing expert Joe Pulizzi details the history of content marketing, the opportunities, and six differences that separate good to great content marketers for publishers.