The Future is Flexible,Extensible, and Community-Based: Stories of Successful Electronic Resources Management

Centralized Online Resources Acquisitions and Licensing (CORAL) is an open source electronic resources management system originally developed by the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Libraries. The CORAL system consists of five modules designed to manage the library electronic resources life-cycle, including licensing and contact information, procurement and activation workflow, usage statistics, and the storage of documentation. CORAL was designed as a flexible and customizable management system, with the ability to utilize each module independently or as a suite to maintain the electronic resources management needs of individual institutions. Scott Vieira of Rice University, Steve Oberg of Wheaton College, and Andrea Imre of Southern Illinois University Carbondale present on the functionality of CORAL and demonstrate the system’s flexibility and extensibility in managing library electronic resources.     

Developing and Validating a Novel Anonymous Method for Matching Longitudinal School-Based Data

Prospective longitudinal data collection is an important way for researchers and evaluators to assess change. In school-based settings, for low-risk and/or likely-beneficial interventions or surveys, data quality and ethical standards are both arguably stronger when using a waiver of parental consent—but doing so often requires the use of anonymous data collection methods. The standard solution to this problem has been the use of a self-generated identification code. However, such codes often incorporate personalized elements (e.g., birth month, middle initial) that, even when meeting the technical standard for anonymity, may raise concerns among both youth participants and their parents, potentially altering willingness to participate, response quality, or generating outrage. There may be value, therefore, in developing a self-generated identification code and matching approach that not only is technically anonymous but also appears anonymous to a research-naive individual. This article provides a proof of concept for a novel matching approach for school-based longitudinal data collection that potentially accomplishes this goal.     

Virtual Laboratories in Undergraduate Science and Engineering Courses: a Systematic Review, 2009–2019

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Current technology has the capacity for affording a virtual experience that challenges the notion of a teaching laboratory for undergraduate science...     

Event duration memory: The effects of delay-interval illumination and instructional cuing

The effect of interference treatments on pigeons’ working memory for event duration was investigated, using a successive matching-to-sample procedure. In three experiments, birds were trained to match different keylight durations (2 or 6 sec) to different comparison colors (red or green) following delays of 0 to 12 sec. The interfering effect of delay-interval illumination and illumination change was assessed in Experiments 1 and 2. It was found that the absolute levels of houselight illumination influenced delayed matching accuracy. Birds trained with houselight illumination showed larger decrements in matching accuracy with increasing delays than did birds trained with darkened delay intervals. In addition, increases in delay-interval illumination relative to baseline produced greater interference with delayed matching accuracy than did decreases in houselight illumination relative to baseline. In Experiment 3, the effect of interpolated instructional cues to remember or forget was examined. As in other directed forgetting experiments employing conventional modality characteristics as the samples to be remembered, it was found that instructional cues to forget, presented during the delay interval, reduced matching accuracy compared to instructional cues to remember. It was concluded that these findings support models of temporal memory that assume temporal information is coded into categorical information onto some nontime dimension over models that assume temporal information is remembered amodally as specific time durations.     

Exploring How a Study Abroad and International Service-Learning Project Shaped Preservice Teachers’ Understanding of Humanizing Pedagogy

In an attempt to better prepare future teachers to fight against social injustice, support their culturally and linguistically diverse students and wrestle with social and educational complexities around the globe, many education programs have increased the number of study abroad programs and international service learning projects. In this qualitative study, we explored seven preservice teachers’ experiences related to humanizing pedagogy after participating in a study abroad program combined with an international service-learning project in a South African rural community. Analyzing multiple data sources such as interviews and reflective journals, we discovered that the preservice teachers grappled with the political, social, economic, and educational differences they encountered during the international project and wrestled with conflicting ideas and beliefs about poverty and language. They identified their relationships with students as catalysts to address these educational issues and their need to reverse systemic inequities. They built caring relationships with students in the community and developed additive perspectives the focused on the students’ community cultural capital. The preservice teachers expressed deep critical reflection and a desire to promote a more fully human educational world where students have the opportunities to enact their agency, their creativity, and their language and culture.     

Race,school choice and transfers to opportunity: implications for educational stratification in South Africa

This study investigates the links between race, school choice and educational stratification in South Africa. It focuses on racial differences in families’ efforts to take advantage of choice by transferring to opportunity (i.e., transferring to a school perceived to offer students better access to educational opportunity than their current school) and explores the implications of those transfers for emerging patterns of racial stratification in access to high quality schools. Findings reveal significant racial variation in transfers to opportunity and suggest a complex link between race and the ways in which historically disadvantaged groups have engaged with the post-apartheid educational opportunity structure.     

Laminated microfluidic system for small sample protein analysis

We describe a technology based on lamination that allows for the production of highly integrated 3D devices suitable for performing a wide variety of microfluidic assays. This approach uses a suite of microfluidic coupons (“microfloupons”) that are intended to be stacked as needed to produce an assay of interest. Microfloupons may be manufactured in paper, plastic, gels, or other materials, in advance, by different manufacturers, then assembled by the assay designer as needed. To demonstrate this approach, we designed, assembled, and characterized a microfloupon device that performs sodium-dodecyl-sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis on a small sample of protein. This device allowed for the manipulation and transport of small amounts of protein sample, tight injection into a thin polyacrylamide gel, electrophoretic separation of the proteins into bands, and subsequent removal of the gel from the device for imaging and further analysis. The microfloupons are rugged enough to handle and can be easily aligned and laminated, allowing for a variety of different assays to be designed and configured by selecting appropriate microfloupons. This approach provides a convenient way to perform assays that have multiple steps, relieving the need to design highly sophisticated devices that incorporate all functions in a single unit, while still achieving the benefits of small sample size, automation, and high speed operation.     

Catalogers’ Perceptions and Use of Social Media and Conventional Information Sources for Professional Development

Many professional development information sources are available to catalogers, who may be constrained by limited time and money to devote to them. This article reports the results of a survey gathering information on six types of information sources: journal articles, conferences, electronic discussion lists, blogs, microblogs, and social networking sites. Catalogers rated these resources regarding their importance to filling professional development needs, the reliability of the information disseminated, and their usefulness for obtaining specific types of information. The results should help catalogers and their administrators decide where to focus their attention both as consumers and disseminators of continuing education information.