Oral Communication Skills in Higher Education: Using a Performance-Based Evaluation Rubric to Assess Communication Skills

This study used The Competent Speaker, a rubric developed by the National Communication Association (S. P. Morreale, M. R. Moore, K. P. Taylor, D. Surges-Tatum, & R. Hulbert-Johnson, 1993), to evaluate student performance in general education public speaking courses as a case study of student skills and programmatic assessment. Results indicate that students taking the general education public speaking course are below satisfactory standards on five of the eight competencies defined by the National Communication Association and are above satisfactory standards on two of the eight competencies. Implications for this particular program, other communication departments, and communication across the curriculum in general education are discussed. We also offer suggestions for those in other disciplines or educational settings in the use of performance evaluation rubrics for assessing other student skills/knowledge and for training new teachers.

Using Web-Based Key Character and Classification Instruction for Teaching Undergraduate Students Insect Identification

The purpose of the study was to determine whether undergraduate students receiving web-based instruction based on traditional, key character, or classification instruction differed in their performance of insect identification tasks. All groups showed a significant improvement in insect identifications on pre- and post-two-dimensional picture specimen quizzes. The study also determined student performance on insect identification tasks was not as good as for family-level identification as compared to broader insect orders and arthropod classification identification tasks. Finally, students erred significantly more by misidentification than misspelling specimen names on prepared specimen quizzes. Results of this study support that short web-based insect identification exercises can improve insect identification performance. Also included is a discussion of how these results can be used in teaching and future research on biological identification.     

Third-Party Funding and Counselling in New Zealand: Implications for Counselling Services and Professional Autonomy

When, in New Zealand, a new third-party government funding arrangement was introduced for sexual abuse counselling, counsellors experienced challenges to their work practice and professional autonomy. There are some parallels between this experience and the influence of Managed Care on counselling in the United States. This article interprets the ways in which the development of counselling in New Zealand, and the New Zealand Association of Counsellors (NZAC) interacted with the government agency, the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC). responsible for the funding. The resulting funding arrangements, while initially mutually beneficial to government and counsellors, are now being questioned by counsellors and the NZAC. Possible responses to this situation by New Zealand counsellors are explored and discussed in the context of wider international responses to third-party funding issues.     

Inhibitory Control Across the Preschool Years: Developmental Changes and Associations with Parenting

The normative developmental course of inhibitory control between 2.5 and 6.5 years, and associations with maternal and paternal sensitivity and intrusiveness were tested. The sample consisted of 383 children (52.5% boys). During four annual waves, mothers and fathers reported on their children’s inhibitory control using the Children's Behavior Questionnaire. During the first wave, mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity and intrusiveness were observed and coded with the Emotional Availability Scales. Inhibitory control exhibited partial scalar invariance over time, and increased in a decelerating rate. For both mothers and fathers, higher levels of sensitivity were associated with a higher initial level of children's inhibitory control, whereas higher levels of intrusiveness predicted a slower increase in children's inhibitory control.     

Serial anticipation and pattern extrapolation in rats as a function of element discriminability

In Experiment 1, three groups of rats were trained on one of three serial patterns consisting of different numbers of .045-g food pellets, either the simple strong monotonie pattern 14-7-3-1-0 (Group SM) or one of two complex weak monotonie patterns, 14-5-5-1-0 (Group 5-5) or 14-9-1-1-0 (Group 1-1). Learning to anticipate the terminal 0-pellet element occurred faster in Group 1-1 than in Group SM, which in turn learned faster than Group 5-5. In Experiment 2, Groups SM, 5-5, and 1-1 were trained on the first four elements of the patterns experienced by their Experiment 1 counterparts and then were tested for their ability to extrapolate the series to include the addition of a 0-pellet element in the fifth position. Extrapolation behavior was better in Group 1-1 than in Group SM, which in turn performed better than Group 5-5. The results were shown to be consistent with a memory-discrimination model of serial learning and inconsistent with a rule-learning model based on pattern complexity.