Center Stage: Performing a Needs Assessment of Campus Research Centers and Institutes

Outreach to research centers and institutes is often overlooked in academic libraries. This article discusses a needs assessment conducted by the Liaison Services Department at the University of Houston Libraries that reviewed library services to centers and institutes at the University of Houston's main campus. The assessment was conducted for two purposes: to build collaborations with centers and to determine how the libraries might create new services and/or market existing services to meet the centers and institutes' growing research needs.     

Reading Instruction for English Learners in the Middle Grades: a Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis synthesizes the last two decades of experimental and quasi-experimental research on reading instruction across academic contexts (e.g., social studies, science, mathematics, English language arts) for English learners (ELs) in grades 4 through 8, to determine (a) the overall effectiveness of reading instruction for upper elementary and middle school students who are ELs and (b) how the magnitude of the effect varies based on student, instructional, and study characteristics. The analysis included a total of 11 studies with 46 individual effect sizes and yielded a mean effect size of g?=?0.35 across all (i.e., standardized and unstandardized) reading measures, g?=?0.01 across standardized reading measures, and g?=?0.43 across unstandardized reading measures. For all reading, unstandardized reading, all vocabulary, and unstandardized vocabulary measures, results suggest that higher quality studies tended to have smaller effects, and these effects were even more evident for unstandardized measures (i.e., one unit increase in study quality was associated with decreased effects: g?=?0.21, g?=?0.30, g?=?0.24, g?=?0.30, respectively). For all comprehension measures, effects were larger for instruction that included both vocabulary and comprehension (g?=?0.39) than for instruction that focused on vocabulary alone (g?=?0.08). Results suggest the benefit of developing and refining high-impact approaches to reading instruction for ELs that can be delivered across content areas and grades.     

Creating Connections: Using a Narrative Approach in Career Group Counseling With College Students From Diverse Cultural Backgrounds

Changes in the world of work as well as demographic shifts toward a more diverse college population and workforce require changes in the way career counseling is provided on college campuses. The authors propose using a narrative group counseling approach to serve college and university students from various cultural backgrounds. Through this approach, students develop their own career/life stories, incorporating their cultural values, family and community considerations, and life roles.     

First-Year College Students’ Conflict with Religion and Science

This study took place during a First Year Seminar course where 20 incoming college freshmen studied the central topic of the nature of science within the context of biological evolution. The instructor researched students’ understandings in the nature of science as they progressed through the course by examining a variety of qualitative and quantitative data including class writings, pre- and post-test selected items from the VOSTS (Views on Science-Technology-Society), and interviews. The intended outcomes of the course were to reduce the number of student misconceptions in the nature of science and to ease student apprehension when learning about evolution. Data were analyzed to determine whether students were moving toward a more generally accepted idea of the nature of science or toward another type of misconception.     

Effect of acquisition rates on off‐task behavior of kindergarten students while learning sight words

Assessing a student's acquisition rates (ARs) is a reliable way to determine how many new words should be taught in one lesson without reducing retention. Exceeding a student's AR can result in frustration and problem behaviors. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of AR on the off‐task behavior of kindergarten students while participating in a commonly used sight‐word instruction video. Participants included 39 kindergarten students whose ARs were assessed before showing the sight‐word video. Behavior was measured as on‐ and off‐task using momentary time‐sampling with 10‐s intervals. Results indicated that students' time off task increased after exceeding their ARs, with a noticeable immediate increase. The implications and limitations of these results are discussed.     

The Experiences of International and Local Students at Three Australian Universities

In 1992 international fee‐paying and local students currently enrolled at the three tertiary institutions in South Australia were surveyed by a common questionnaire on students’ study‐related and personal experiences, and issues related to students’ choice and subsequent evaluation of their institution. The breadth of the student sample and the comparative data the questionnaire generated present an overarching view of the experiences and evaluations of a diverse range of university students.

The results of the survey show that while international students experience more problems, and experience them to a more serious degree than their Australian counterparts, the nature of the issues which are of most concern are generally shared. These are concerns about financial issues such as access to Austudy for local students, and the level of fees for international students and the ability to find part‐time work for both groups. The other broad group of issues of concern was study related: workload, fear of failure, loss of motivation, doubts about academic ability, nervousness and tension. Notably, in spite of the differences ‐between the three institutions – the University of Adelaide representing a ‘traditional’ university, Flinders University of South Australia, a ‘1960s’ university and the University of South Australia a ‘post‐1987’ university – the student responses across the three institutions were remarkably similar.

In terms of student evaluations of the quality of the education and services provided, Australian students were consistently more likely to rate aspects of teaching more positively than their international counterparts, but for both groups it was evident, particularly in their comments, that aspects of teaching such as the quality of lectures, accessibility of staff, availability of resources and staff: student ratios were of major concern.

The findings lead to the recommendations that universities could improve both local and international student experience by providing clear information about courses and course expectations, by the provision of effective feedback on assignments, by embedding the teaching of academic skills within courses, by increasing course flexibility to enable students to balance study and earning demands, and by ensuring that student support services are adequately resourced.