Are students really connected? Predicting college adjustment from social network usage

The rapid growth in popularity of social networking sites has spurred research exploring the impact of usage in a variety of areas. The current study furthered this line of research by examining the relationships between social network usage and adjustment to college in the academic, social, personal-emotional and university affiliation domains. Realising the number of students with social networking accounts, some universities have developed strategic plans for social media. Thus, this study also compared two universities, one with a social media strategic plan and one without, to determine if the planning process had an influence on students. Results indicated that social network usage was related to college adjustment. Specifically, those students who reported higher rates of social media use reported lower levels of adjustment to college in all domains. However, there were no differences between the two universities, indicating that having a social media strategic plan does not influence students in the area of college adjustment. These results are discussed in light of retention rates and changing practices within higher education.     

Children's literacy interest and its relation to parents’ literacy‐promoting practices

This study examined how children's literacy interests related to parent literacy‐promoting practices across time. Using a sample of 909 preschool‐age children and the newly developed Child Activities Preference Checklist, literacy interest appeared to be a complex construct, not easily captured by a single measure. In a subsample of 230 children with longitudinal data, parent literacy practices and child literacy interests related concurrently and across time. Parent literacy practices were more stable than child literacy interests, with children's literacy interest continuing to develop over the preschool year. Parent practices of exposing children to literacy and teaching them literacy concepts appeared to be distinct constructs. Exposure to literacy was especially important in the growth of literacy interests and the hypothesis that exposure has a negative effect on children with little initial interest was not fully supported.     

Composing Film: Multimodality and Production in Elementary Classrooms

Despite the proliferation of technology in contemporary lives, many elementary schools often do not account for other technologically-mediated ways of constructing meaning in their daily curriculum, including film. This article presents insights from 2 filmmaking projects with elementary-aged students illustrating how film allowed students to engage in collaborative, as well as multimodal, literacy practices. Greater instructional flexibility and possibility for nonlinear production are identified as positive benefits in approaching text production situated in filmmaking. Our investigation highlights how technology integration can bolster existing writing practices in the elementary classroom and can benefit students in ways that maximize flexible thinking and include diverse student perspectives.     

Reducing Risk for Substance Use by Economically Disadvantaged Young Men: Positive Family Environments and Pathways to Educational Attainment

Using prospective, longitudinal data spanning 10 years (age = 10–20) from a study of 295 economically disadvantaged males, the current investigation evaluated a developmental model that links early family environment and later educational aspirations, extracurricular activities, and educational attainment to substance use in early adulthood. The results indicate that a positive family environment during adolescence (low family conflict, high family warmth, and effective child management) predicted educational involvements during adolescence that promoted educational attainment during early adulthood. Finally, higher levels of educational attainment were associated with less substance use in early adulthood, even after controlling for adolescent substance use. These findings suggest that positive parenting promotes educational achievements that increase resilience to substance use for economically disadvantaged males.     

Development of Category‐Based Induction and Semantic Knowledge

Category‐based induction is a hallmark of mature cognition; however, little is known about its origins. This study evaluated the hypothesis that category‐based induction is related to semantic development. Computational studies suggest that early on there is little differentiation among concepts, but learning and development lead to increased differentiation based on taxonomic relatedness. This study reports findings from a new task aimed to (a) examine this putative increase in semantic differentiation and (b) test whether individual differences in semantic differentiation are related to category‐based induction in 4‐ to 7‐year‐old children (N = 85). The results provide the first empirical evidence of an age‐related increase in differentiation of representations of animal concepts and suggest that category‐based induction is related to increased semantic differentiation.     

Genetic and Environmental Etiologies of the Longitudinal Relations Between Prereading Skills and Reading

The present study explored the environmental and genetic etiologies of the longitudinal relations between prereading skills and reading and spelling. Twin pairs (n = 489) were assessed before kindergarten (M = 4.9 years), post‐first grade (M = 7.4 years), and post‐fourth grade (M = 10.4 years). Genetic influences on five prereading skills (print knowledge, rapid naming, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and verbal memory) were primarily responsible for relations with word reading and spelling. However, relations with post‐fourth‐grade reading comprehension were due to both genetic and shared environmental influences. Genetic and shared environmental influences that were common among the prereading variables covaried with reading and spelling, as did genetic influences unique to verbal memory (only post‐fourth‐grade comprehension), print knowledge, and rapid naming.     

Predictors of Adult Education Program Satisfaction in Urban Community-Dwelling Older Adults

Lifelong learning is receiving greater attention due to population aging in modern societies. Lifelong learning benefits individuals by supporting their physical, psychological, social, and economic well-being. However, older adults generally have lower motivation for learning than younger adults, and facilitating long-term participation in learning activities is still challenging. Previous studies mainly identified negative factors such as barriers and obstacles to individuals’ initial participation in lifelong learning programs. As such, less is known about positive factors that promote long-term participation. To address this gap, data were collected from 330 older adults who participated in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute program in an urban community in the United States. Results from proportional odds ordinal logistic regression analysis demonstrated that gender, number of household members, income, religious affiliation, self-rated health, and number of courses taken were associated with satisfaction with the program. In hopes to promote true lifelong learning, possible explanations about the findings are explored and several recommendations for existing lifelong learning programs are derived in this study.     

Coursework versus examinations in end-of-module assessment: a literature review

In the UK and other countries, the use of end-of-module assessment by coursework in higher education has increased over the last 40?years. This has been justified by various pedagogical arguments. In addition, students themselves prefer to be assessed either by coursework alone or by a mixture of coursework and examinations than by examinations alone. Assessment by coursework alone or by a mixture of coursework and examinations tends to yield higher marks than assessment by examinations alone. The increased adoption of assessment by coursework has contributed to an increase over time in the marks on individual modules and in the proportion of good degrees across entire programmes. Assessment by coursework appears to attenuate the negative effect of class size on student attainment. The difference between coursework marks and examination marks tends to be greater in some disciplines than others, but it appears to be similar in men and women and in students from different ethnic groups. Collusion, plagiarism and personation (especially ‘contract cheating’ through the use of bespoke essays) are potential problems with coursework assessment. Nevertheless, the increased use of assessment by coursework has generally been seen as uncontentious, with only isolated voices expressing concerns regarding possible risks to academic standards.     

Using methodological triangulation to examine the effectiveness of a mentoring program for online instructors

In this quasi-experimental mixed methods study, we examined the effectiveness of a faculty-to-faculty mentoring program to increase student success rates in online courses at an American university. Over one semester, 24 faculty mentees worked with 6 faculty mentors on improving course organization and implementing student engagement techniques. Using methodological triangulation, we found positive results for two of our effectiveness measures (i.e., mentor and mentee feedback and mentors’ ratings of mentees’ courses). However, in terms of our third measure (i.e., student learning data), although institutional data showed that there was a 4.1% aggregate increase in online student success after the intervention, the intervention group made no significantly greater gains than two control groups. Our findings highlight some benefits and shortcomings of these types of university initiatives and also emphasize the importance of using triangulation to integrate participant feedback with formal measures of student success.