EBSCO's Communication & Mass Media Complete: An Appreciable Improvement Over Previous Communication Studies Indexing?

ABSTRACT

In a prior edition of this study, we examined whether the established online communication studies indexes—Communication Abstracts, ComIndex, and ComAbstracts—provided a good avenue of access to the journal literature that researchers in the field cite and whether, where the current journal literature was concerned, that avenue of access might be equal or superior to that provided by large, multisubject online indexes. In this iteration of the study, we similarly address EBSCO's new product for communication studies, Communication & Mass Media Complete.     

More human than human? Artificial intelligence in the archive

ABSTRACT

Not a day appears to go by without breaking news of some Artificial Intelligence (AI) advance that seemingly has the potential to transform our lives. As recordkeeping professionals, we can very well ask, ‘What about us?’ Where is the AI or automation to help us with our classification, appraisal and disposal work? If we are to meet the challenges of managing records in the digital age, such technology – together with appropriate skills and knowledge – will be necessary. How can AI automate our digital recordkeeping and archive work? In this article, the authors provide a snapshot of the practice of AI in Australian recordkeeping. What is the reality versus the hype of such technology, and what is actually being done now? In answering these questions, they first provide a brief introduction into AI techniques and their characteristics in relation to recordkeeping work. They then introduce four case studies from Australian archival and government institutions that have embarked on AI initiatives. In each case, they provide an overview of the project in terms of requirements, activities to date, outcomes and futures. The article concludes with a discussion of the lessons learnt, issues and implications of AI in the archive.     

Multiple software review: Drawing path diagrams

Amos Draw v3.51. SmallWaters Inc., 1507 East 53rd Street, Suite 452, Chicago, IL. MS® Windows® 3.x, 95, NT.

Chartist v1.7. NovaGraph, Inc., P. O. Box 80115, Richardson, TX. MS® Windows® 3.x, 95, NT.

Microsoft PowerPoint v7. Microsoft Corp., One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052–6399. MS® Windows® 3.x, 95, NT.

EQS v5.3. Multivariate Software, Inc., 4924 Balboa Boulevard, #368, Encino, CA. Windows® 3.x, 95, NT; Mac® OS 7.0 (and above).

MS Paint. (Packaged with Windows® 3.x, 95).

Visio v1.0. Visio Corp., 520 Pike Street, Suite 1800, Seattle, WA 98101. MS® Windows® 3.x, 95, NT.     

A sociocultural analysis of mandated curriculum change: the implementation of a new senior physics curriculum in New Zealand schools

We analyse the implementation of a new New Zealand physics curriculum from a socio‐cultural perspective. We explore the development of the curriculum document and examine the obstacles to its implementation. Change was compromised by the lack of any intersubjective linkage between teachers and the curriculum designers. The teachers’ own community of practice was most influential in how implementation occurred.

Curriculum change processes and discourses must be made transparent so that teachers can have a framework for ‘dereification’ of a curriculum document into their classroom practices. Without planning for teachers’ participation in the negotiation of curriculum meanings, curriculum developers themselves become marginalized, and the cultural objects they have developed will be adopted in unanticipated ways.     

Learning design in diverse institutional and cultural contexts: suggestions from a participatory workshop with higher education professionals in Africa

Learning design approaches, such as those adopted by the Open University, provide a set of tools and resources for purposefully-designing modules with a focus on student experiences. However, many of the current learning design strategies have been situated within specific institutions in Europe and North America. This means that there are several issues worth considering around if and how established learning design approaches make sense in diverse institutional and cultural contexts. To critically assess the relevance and appropriateness of learning design strategies in new contexts, this article describes an in-depth participatory workshop with 34 education professionals from five African countries. Altogether, 10 suggestions for learning design practices were derived from the consensus of workshop participants, which provide a foundation for the development of learning design practices moving forward.     

When writers visit schools: A symposium

Betty Miles, a member of the U.S. Editorial Board ofCle, asked eight other writers to reflect along with her on what it is like to talk with their readers in schools.The brief essays below are as varied as their authors' styles, but one theme runs through all of them: the importance of face-to-face encounters to writers, as well as to their young readers. These first-hand reports suggest, both explicitly and implicitly, ways of enriching author visits so that children's interaction with a real live author can enhance their interest in reading, and in writing.Betty Miles has written many picture books for young children and six novels for older readers, most recentlyMaudie and Me and The Dirty Book andThe Trouble with Thirteen. She and her husband live in Tappan, New York, where her three grown children went to school.     

The Development of Process Indicators to Estimate Student Gains Associated with Good Practices in Undergraduate Education

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the development of psychometrically sound process indicators of student performance is described. Second, the results are reported of a test of the utility of these indicators with six samples of men and women students (n = 911 in each group) from 19 baccalaureate, 27 master's, and 29 doctoral-granting institutions. Process indicators represent behaviors associated with desired outcomes of college and estimate the extent to which students are engaged in these activities. Selected items from the College Student Experiences Questionnaire were used to create measures of three good educational practices: faculty-student contact, cooperation among students, and active learning. Active learning and cooperation among students in that order were the best predictors of gains for both women and men at all three types of institutions. Student background characteristics had only trivial influences on educational gains. Implications are discussed for institutional policy and further research.     

Assessing Multimedia Influences on Student Responses Using a Personal Response System

To date, research to date on personal response systems (clickers) has focused on external issues pertaining to the implementation of this technology or broadly measured student learning gains rather than investigating differences in the responses themselves. Multimedia learning makes use of both words and pictures, and research from cognitive psychology suggests that using both words and illustrations improves student learning. This study analyzed student response data from 561 students taking an introductory earth science course to determine whether including an illustration in a clicker question resulted in a higher percentage of correct responses than questions that did not include a corresponding illustration. Questions on topics pertaining to the solid earth were categorized as illustrated questions if they contained a picture, or graph and text-only if the question only contained text. For each type of question, we calculated the percentage of correct responses for each student and compared the results to student ACT-reading, math, and science scores. A within-groups, repeated measures analysis of covariance with instructor as the covariate yielded no significant differences between the percentage of correct responses to either the text-only or the illustrated questions. Similar non-significant differences were obtained when students were grouped into quartiles according to their ACT-reading, -math, and -science scores. These results suggest that the way in which a conceptest question is written does not affect student responses and supports the claim that conceptest questions are a valid formative assessment tool.