A Review of “RDA Vocabularies for a Twenty-First-Century Data Environment”

Automation and economic cutbacks are forcing many large libraries to alter traditional organizational structures. This paper describes the reorganization of technical and public service activities in the University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign. The decentralization of original cataloging functions is examined, particularly as implemented in the Education and Social Science Library (ESSL), and the effect on management of original cataloging activities and cataloging norms is discussed.     

Technology and science education: Starting points,research programs,and trends

Over the past 25 years, information and communication technologies have had a convoluted but ultimately advantageous impact on science teaching and learning. To highlight the past, present, and future of technology in science education, this paper explores the trajectories in five areas: science texts and lectures; science discussions and collaboration; data collection and representation; science visualization; and science simulation and modeling. These trajectories reflect two overall trends in technological advance. First, designers have tailored general tools to specific disciplines, offering users features specific to the topic or task. For example, developers target visualization tools to molecules, crystals, earth structures, or chemical reactions. Second, new technologies generally support user customization, enabling individuals to personalize their modeling tool, Internet portal, or discussion board. In science education, designers have tailored instructional resources based on advances in understanding of the learner. More recently, designers have created ways for teachers and students to customize learning tools to specific courses, geological formations, interests, or learning preferences.     

OBE: Some Answers for the Uninitiated

In this article, leaders of the North Carolina Writing Project explore whether students of teachers who attended Writing Project summer institutes out-performed other teachers' students on state writing tests. The authors accordingly developed a test to compare the writing of those students with the writing of students of non-writing project teachers. The test, however, produced no significant difference in the writing of the two groups. Seventeen years later, the authors compared the longevity of writing project teachers with that of comparable non-writing project teachers to see if the institutes infused a spirit of professionalism and self-efficacy in participants that other teachers did not possess. This comparison affirmed the authors' beliefs: writing project teachers had greater staying power than comparable teachers.     

Advancing intercultural competency: Canadian engineering employers’ experiences with immigrant engineers

This paper explores Canadian engineering employers’ perceptions of and experiences with internationally educated engineers (recent immigrants to Canada) employed in their organisations for varying lengths of time. Qualitative data were collected from employers using focus group methodology. Findings reflected employers’ observations of culturally different behaviours and characteristics in their internationally educated employees, employers’ reactions to cultural differences ranging from negative attributions to tolerance, and the implementation of largely ad hoc intra-organisational strategies for managing cultural differences in employer–employee relationships. Findings exposed the lack of corporate intercultural competency in the Canadian engineering profession. Equity and gatekeeping implications are discussed.     

Education for Interdisciplinary Community Collaboration and Development: The Components of a Core Curriculum by Community Practitioners

Social workers are actively engaging in the practice of interdisciplinary community collaboration (ICC) with the goal of bringing diverse groups together to improve the conditions of communities and enhance the quality of life of population groups. Yet, collaborations are challenging and require great skill and commitment. The pedagogy and the content of curricula have become a more prominent part of teaching to macro practice students and practitioners the art of effectively convening and moving collaborative efforts forward. This article adds to the literature on the content and methods of teaching students and novice practitioners the competencies embedded in ICC. It provides empirical data from six focus groups of experienced community practitioners (social workers and others) in New York City who identified components of a core curriculum for this work. Eight months later, these 33 community practitioners were asked to reprioritize the topics and concepts that they had collectively identified at the earlier time. Skills such as the ability to share power, manage differences, include the constituency and diplomacy are among those discussed. Core curriculum themes, the pedagogy and process, and the attributes and values necessary for training an ICC practitioner are presented.     

Self-evaluation, social reinforcement, and academic achievement of black and white schoolchildren.

Black and white male schoolchildren covertly evaluated their own performance at a verbal task administered by black and white male experimenters. It was hypothesized that academically successful children would be predisposed to appraise themselves favorably, whereas relatively unsuccessful pupils would be biased toward self-criticism. The covert self-evaluations were assumed to represent at internalization of early experiences of predominantly positive or negative social reinforcement from adult socializing agents. The predicition for self-criticism was upheld in the white experimenter condition but not in the black experimenter condition. Relationships consistent with the theory were found between subjects' self-appraisals and their retrospective reports of positive and negative reinforcements received from parents and teachers in various typical situations. These relationships were more evident for black subjects than for white subjects. The extent to which children's self-praise and self-criticism mediated affect was assessed by means of a color conditioning technique. Contrary to predicition, possibly due to the easy nature of the experimental task.     

Using initial,derived, and terminal credibility to help students understand how they are perceived by others

Courses: Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication, Introduction to Communication Studies, Business Communication

Objectives: The goal for this activity is not only to provide students with an understanding of their initial, derived, and terminal credibility when relating a personal, edifying story but also to understand how they are initially perceived by their fellow students.