Revisiting Zhang’s scale of transactional distance: refinement and validation using structural equation modeling

Transactional distance has been defined as barriers to students’ engagement with learning in the online environment. This research updates Zhang’s (2003) scale of transactional distance, which quantified the extent of the barriers, in light of the massive changes in today’s web-based learning environment. The resulting revised scale of transactional distance (RSTD) is a parsimonious version with 12 elements (compared to 31 original) that measure the transactional distance between student and teacher, student and student, and student and content. The RSTD has excellent factorial validity and reliability, yields better fit statistics, and is easier and less time-consuming to apply. The transactional distance values are unique predictors of student satisfaction, which is correlated to learning and persistence (a major concern with massive open online courses). This information can form the basis for a systematic approach to improving the design of today’s contemporary open, flexible, distance education courses and thus serve as a valuable tool for researchers and educators alike.     

A Classroom Exercise to Examine the Trade‐off between Mission Capacity and Life Cycle Cost

This article presents a classroom exercise, centered on a simulation that has been used for 4 years in an MBA program to help students develop an understanding of the trade‐offs involved in managing capital assets in the public sector. Though often ignored in business schools, mission is a key criterion that must be considered when managing such assets, and acts as a surrogate for profit. The case presents a rich environment in which the impact of cost reductions (or additional investments) on mission can be quantified, and trade‐offs can be assessed and discussed. It gives students a chance to develop creative ideas for process improvement, and provides sufficient data for them to analyze the impact of their suggestions in a rigorous way.     

A defensive mindset: A pattern of social information processing that develops early and predicts life course outcomes

The hypothesis was tested that some children develop a defensive mindset that subsumes individual social information processing (SIP) steps, grows from early experiences, and guides long-term outcomes. In Study 1 (Fast Track [FT]), 463 age-5 children (45% girls; 43% Black) were first assessed in 1991 and followed through age 32 (83% retention). In Study 2 (Child Development Project [CDP]), 585 age-5 children (48% girls, 17% Black) were first assessed in 1987 and followed through age 34 (78% retention). In both studies, measures were collected of early adverse experiences, defensive mindset and SIP, and adult outcomes. Across both studies, a robust latent construct of school-age defensive mindset was validated empirically (comparative fit index = .99 in each study) and found to mediate the impact of early child abuse (38% in FT and 29% in CDP of total effect) and peer social rejection (14% in FT and 7% in CDP of total effect) on adult incarceration.     

Light emitting diodes and the lighting revolution: The emergence of a solid-state lighting industry

Emergence of new industries from evolving technologies is critical to the global economy, yet has been relatively understudied due to the paucity of available data. This study draws lessons on industry emergence, by analyzing how a solid-state lighting (SSL) industry grew out of light emitting diode (LED) technologies that evolved for half a century, with participation by tens of thousands of researchers in universities, national laboratories, and firms. Using data on publications, patents, and firms combined with business history we trace the evolution of SSL through a succession of market niches. At times a few researchers with unorthodox research approaches made breakthroughs that greatly advanced particular technology trajectories and pushed LED research in unexpected directions. A succession of LED market niches advanced the technology and provided profits to incentivize continuing research while reducing cost and improving efficacy of LEDs. Innovating firms developed a thicket of patents and captured substantial profit, but were embroiled in extensive litigation that was ultimately resolved through cross-licensing. A major new generation of lighting products is now disrupting the traditional lighting industry. Although the leading incumbent lighting firms all invested early and heavily in SSL, the industry's future leadership is uncertain.     

Design-Based Research Within the Constraints of Practice: AlgebraByExample

Superintendents from districts in the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN) challenged the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) to identify an approach to narrowing the minority student achievement gap in Algebra 1 without isolating minority students for intervention. SERP partnered with 8 MSAN districts and researchers from 3 universities to design and rigorously test AlgebraByExample, a set of 42 Algebra 1 assignments with interleaved worked examples that target common misconceptions and errors. In a year-long random-assignment study, students who received AlgebraByExample assignments had an average 7 percentage point boost on a posttest containing released items from state assessments, and students in the bottom half of the performance distribution where minority students are disproportionately concentrated had an average 10 percentage point boost on a researcher-designed assessment of conceptual understanding. AlgebraByExample is easily incorporated into any existing curriculum, and naturally serves as a launch point for mathematically rich discussion.     

Transportation of AIE-visualized nanoliposomes is dominated by the protein corona

Liposomes, especially cationic liposomes, are the most common and well-investigated nanocarriers for biomedical applications, such as drug and gene delivery. Like other types of nanomaterials, once liposomes are incubated in a biological milieu, their surface can be immediately cloaked by biological components to form a protein corona, which confers a new ‘biological identity’ and modulates downstream interactions with cells. However, it remains unclear how the protein corona affects the transportation mechanism after liposomes interact with cells. Here, we employed home-made aggregation-induced-emission-visualized nanoliposomes TR4@Lipo as a model to investigate transportation with or without the protein corona by optical imaging techniques. The results show that the protein corona can change the cellular transportation mechanism of TR4@Lipo from energy-independent membrane fusion to energy-dependent endocytosis. The protein corona also modulates the intracellular distribution of loaded cargoes. This knowledge furthers our understanding of bio-nano interactions and is important for the efficient use of cationic liposomes.     

Validity extension of the Course-Faculty Instrument (CFI)

The Course-Faculty Instrument (CFI) demonstrates similar measurement properties with student populations at four diverse institutions. These students agree about the nature and extent to which course and instructor attributes relate to their learning. The results suggest that: (1) a perceived learning criterion may have general relevance to students, and (2) validity extension research is an economically feasible alternative to full-scale instrument development and validation efforts. Since validity extension is practical and facilitates cross-institutional comparisons, it appears to be a more viable strategy for researching and instituting student evaluation systems than is suggested by its current usage.     

Changes in the prevalence of child sexual abuse, its risk factors, and their associations as a function of age cohort in a Finnish population sample

Objective

We examined (1) the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) experiences as a function of cohort and gender, (2) the prevalence of factors associated with CSA as a function of cohort and whether the association of these factors with CSA remained the same irrespective of cohort, and (3) whether any cohort differences could be explainable by cohort differences in reporting bias.

Method

We used the responses of 4,561 men (M = 29, SD = 7 years) and 8,361 female (M = 29, SD = 7 years) Finnish participants who responded to the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form as well as questions regarding family structure.

Results

The prevalence of CSA experiences varied between 0.7-4.6% for men and 1.8-7.5% for women depending on the item. Younger cohorts reported less CSA as well as less of the risk factors (physical neglect and abuse, emotional neglect and abuse, parental substances abuse, not growing up with both biological parents) that were positively associated with the likelihood of CSA. The effects of these risk factors did not vary as a function of the cohort. Also, the declining trend was not explainable by social desirability being higher in the younger cohorts.

Conclusions

The results suggest that there is a real decline in the prevalence of CSA and it is associated with a simultaneous decline in factors associated with CSA.