Community Engagement at an Emerging Academic Medical Library: A Three-Pronged Outreach Model

The Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine’s (OUWB) service-oriented mission and vision is reflected in all aspects of the school including its culture, curriculum, research, community engagement, and the OUWB Medical Library. Though starting informally, the OUWB Medical Library’s outreach program has matured and now sustains a wide array of activities each year. This outreach program has blossomed into a three-pronged model that is inclusive of activities and endeavors engaging the institution and local community: integrate, partner, and create. Among its successes and challenges, the library’s ongoing outreach efforts have showcased the value of libraries in promoting community health and meaningfully contributing to the institutional mission.     

Concentric left ventricular morphology in aerobically trained kayak canoeists

The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that upper body aerobically trained athletes (kayak canoeists) would have greater left ventricular wall thickness, but similar left ventricular diastolic chamber dimensions, compared with recreationally active and sedentary men. Ultrasound echocardiography was used to determine cardiac structure and function in highly trained kayak canoeists (n?=?10), moderately active (n?=?10) and sedentary men (n?=?10). The septal and posterior left ventricular walls were ～0.2?cm thicker in kayak canoeists (P?<?0.05), and left ventricular mass was 51% and 32% greater (P?<?0.05) in canoeists than in the sedentary and moderately trained participants, respectively. There were no differences in left ventricular chamber dimension, suggesting that the kayak canoeists had a concentric pattern of left ventricular adaptation to aerobic upper body training. Scaling the data to body composition indices had no effect on the outcome of the statistical analysis. There were no differences in resting Doppler left ventricular diastolic or systolic function among the groups. Ejection fraction was lower in the kayak canoeists, but the magnitude of the difference was within the normal variability for this measurement. Thus aerobically upper body trained athletes demonstrated a concentric pattern of cardiac enlargement, but resting left ventricle function was not different between athletes, moderately active and sedentary individuals.     

Converting between estimates of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity derived from raw accelerations measured at the wrist and from ActiGraph counts measured at the hip: the Rosetta Stone

The ability to compare published group-level estimates of objectively measured moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) across studies continues to increase in difficulty. The objective of this study was to develop conversion equations and demonstrate their utility to compare estimates of MVPA derived from the wrist and hip. Three studies of youth (N = 232, 9-12yrs, 50% boys) concurrently wore a hip-worn ActiGraph and a wrist-worn GENEActiv for 7-days. ActiGraph hip count data were reduced using four established cutpoints. Wrist accelerations were reduced using the Hildebrand MVPA 200 mg threshold. Conversion equations were developed on a randomly selected subsample of 132 youth. Equations were cross-validated and absolute error, absolute percent error, and modified Bland-Altman plots were evaluated for conversion accuracy. Across equations R²_adj was 0.51–0.56 with individual-level absolute error in minutes ranging from 7 (wrist-to-hip Puyau) to 14.5 minutes (wrist-to-hip Freedson 3MET) and absolute percent differences ranging from 13.9%-24.5%. Group-level cross-validation to convert hip-to-wrist MVPA resulted in average absolute percent errors ranging from 3.1%-4.9%. Conversion of wrist-to-hip MVPA resulted in average absolute percent errors ranging from 3.0%-10.0%. We recommend the use of these equations to compare published estimates of MVPA between the wear-site cut-point combinations presented.     

From “truth” to “invented reality”: A discourse analysis of high school physics students' talk about scientific knowledge

Students' views of the nature of scientific knowledge have been recognized as an important component of science learning environments. In this study, we analyze an extensive data base consisting of 23 students' written and oral discourse about ontology, epistemology, and sociology of scientific knowledge collected over a 15-month period in the context of two consecutive junior- and senior-level physics courses. Over a 2-month period at the beginning of the second year, students read, reflected on, and talked about a text which discusses epistemology in the context of physics. Our study shows that students drew on nine types of discursive resources to support their ontological, epistemological, and sociological claims. Toward the end of the study, the range and number of supportive statements had increased. Simultaneously, few students changed their ontological and sociological claims, but a considerable number changed their epistemological claims. Two case studies illustrate the development of student discourse in the course of the study. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 34 : 145–179, 1997.     

Facebook and classroom group work: A trial study involving University of Botswana Advanced Oral Presentation students

In the 21st century, the use of information technology in the classroom is advancing rapidly, especially in higher education. The Internet, through social networking, has made it possible for students to learn and teachers to teach outside the classroom walls. Facebook in particular has made it possible for students to interact and communicate with their teachers and among themselves about their progress and about the problems they encounter in learning. Yet, limited research exists on the use of Facebook in education in Sub‐Saharan Africa more especially in Botswana. This is in spite of the observation that Sub‐Saharan Africa is the fastest growing Internet population with a growth of more than 2500% between 2000 and 2011. This study therefore set out to examine (1) the students' interest in using Facebook to facilitate group work activities in the Advanced Oral Presentation Skills course; (2) whether the students interact and communicate using Facebook on matters relating to the Advanced Oral Presentations course; (3) whether the students benefitted from using Facebook for learning advanced oral presentation skills; and (4) what challenges the students encountered when using Facebook in the Advanced Oral Presentations course. In this trial study, students were allocated groups and assigned to conduct their group activities via Facebook. Although this was optional, more than 80% of the groups opted for Facebook and less than 20% chose to do their group work traditionally. A follow‐up evaluation of the experiment was done through a questionnaire and interviews. The findings suggest that Facebook could facilitate student communication and interaction about group assignments.     

Perceptions and experiences of K-12 educational leaders in response to the 27 April 2011 tornadoes

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to capture first-hand accounts of K-12 educational leaders whose school districts were directly affected by the deadly 27 April 2011 tornadoes in rural Alabama, USA. This study was framed by the literature base of leadership; specifically crisis leadership and resilience theory. Findings are organised under the headings of crisis management, crisis leadership characteristics, post-crisis support and crisis preparation. In this study, educational leaders demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity and took decisive steps to rebuild not only their schools but also their communities as well. Additionally, leaders expressed the importance of sharing their stories with others so that the lessons they learned in response to the tornadoes would not soon be forgotten. The study concludes with reflections about crisis planning and implications for future research as well as a call to action to improve crisis management in K-12 educational settings.     

The documentation of distance education: a personal view

Following a brief account of the work of the Open University International Documentation Centre on Distance Learning, different forms of documentation in distance education: books, materials produced in connection with distance teaching programmes, journals and journal articles, and report literature, are identified and described. The central focus of the article is a critique of the treatment of the literature of distance education by two ERIC international bibliographical services. Proposals are made to survey existing bibliographical provision worldwide.     

Components of phonological awareness

The factorial structure underlying different types of tasks within the domain of phonological awareness was examined in two studies. Large sample sizes allowed for sensitive differentiation of constructs. In the first study, 128 preschool children without any experience of formal reading instruction were tested with a battery of tasks intended to tap various aspects of phonological awareness: rhyme recognition, syllable counting, initial-phoneme matching, initial-phoneme deletion, phoneme blending, and phoneme counting. Three basic components were extracted in a principal component analysis: a phoneme factor, a syllable factor and a rhyme factor. Cross-tabulations indicated considerable dissociation between performance on phoneme, syllable, and rhyme tasks. The structural relationships were replicated on a much larger sample (n=1509) in the second study. Subjects in this study were one year older and were attending grade 1 thus providing an opportunity to test their reading achievement. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that the phonemic factor was by far the most potent predictor. However, the rhyming factor made an independent (although small) contribution to explaining the reading variance. Among the phonemic tasks, phoneme identification proved to be the most powerful predictor.     

Perspectives of UK Vice-Chancellors on Leading Universities in a Knowledge-Based Economy

This paper draws upon the experiences and perceptions of ten university vice-chancellors in the United Kingdom on the challenges they face in providing leadership and strategic direction for their institutions into the twenty-first century. The paper reveals the perceptions and spoken words of these leaders as they identify the key challenges shaping higher education, their strategies for addressing these challenges, their struggle to maintain the core mission of universities and finally, implications for the future of higher education.     

The relationship of interest to internal and external motivation

This study was conducted to examine the relationship between student interest and motivation. Previous studies have shown that measures of interest have attained positive relationships with global measures of motivation (Frymier, Shulman & Houser, 1996; Weber & Patterson, 2000). Additionally, even though a number of instructional researchers have speculated that interest is related to motivation through intrinsic means (Brophy, 1983; Mitchell, 1993; Schiefele, 1991; Schraw, Brunning & Svoboda, 1995; Stipiek, 1996; Tobias, 1994), there has been no systematic effort to provide any empirical evidence to these claims. Results indicate that interest is significantly related to intrinsic, but not extrinsic, motivation.