Building a bioinformatics community of practice through library education programs

This paper addresses the following questions:What makes the community of practice concept an intriguing framework for developing library services for bioinformatics? What is the campus context and setting? What has been the Health Sciences Library's role in bioinformatics at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill? What are the Health Sciences Library's goals? What services are currently offered? How will these services be evaluated and developed? How can libraries demonstrate their value? Providing library services for an emerging community such as bioinformatics and computational biology presents special challenges for libraries including understanding needs, defining and communicating the library's role, building relationships within the community, preparing staff, and securing funding. Like many academic health sciences libraries, the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library is addressing these challenges in the context of its overall mission and goals.     

Designing spatial visual tasks for research: the case of the filling task

This article focuses on the development and problematization of a task designed to foster spatial visual sense in prospective and practicing elementary and middle school teachers. We describe and analyse the cyclical stages of developing, testing, and modifying several “task drafts” related to ideas around dilation and proportion. Challenged by participant non-actions and non-responses, we as task designers identified and anticipated sources of difficulties, which motivated repeated modification of the task to further the intended learning goals. The task in its present form incorporates numerous considerations including choices around materials, wording of questions and prompts, and sequencing of experiences. It also reflects our enriched understanding of exploration strategies and the roles of manipulatives and technology in spatial visual tasks designed for adult learners.     

Honouring the incomparable: honours in Australian universities

The Honours undergraduate degree in Australia is unlike that in most other countries. It has taken on a particular significance as a qualification, as a pathway to and a pre-requisite for direct entry into doctoral programs. This paper explores the outcomes of a study that suggests that the aims, outcomes, curriculum, pedagogical practices, purposes and enrolment patterns of Honours vary substantially across disciplines and university types. It addresses the questions about the diverse nature of Honours programs and questions what this diversity means for Australian higher education in the context where global standardisation of awards is rapidly occurring. Honours is seen variously as a qualification, an experience, or a program. These variations are discussed and it is demonstrated that Honours globally has not one, but many meanings. These meanings are often poorly understood within, and outside the academy. These multiple meanings create confusion about what Honours stands for and inhibit communication about the role and purpose of Honours both within Australia and in a global context.     

MRSQ Informatics Education columns: past, present and future

This is the last Informatics Education column under the current editors. The outgoing editors identify six key themes that reflect the changes in informatics education over their seven-year tenure. The themes are picked from the 29 previous columns published under their editorship. The first and key theme is technology, and this one theme is the basis for the other five. The incoming editors project what they expect to see as key themes for future columns. Together, this column looks at the past, present, and future state of informatics education in the United States.     

Evaluating a Public Library Makerspace

ABSTRACT

This study explores how one public library assesses the outcomes of a makerspace and examines whether the approaches taken can be justified as appropriate. An increasing number of public libraries throughout the world are establishing makerspaces, and to date there is little literature on how outcomes of these services are assessed. This study explores the methods that are being used, making comparisons to best practice revealed in the literature. The project is a case-study of the Central City Library makerspace (Auckland Libraries, New Zealand). The study collected evidence from documents, archival records, and interviewees. The findings revealed that while efforts are being made to assess the outcomes of makerspaces, methods and techniques are primarily informal. Current formal reporting relies upon quantitative measurement, such as visitor or participant numbers, which fails to capture the effects of the service on users. The implication is that staff may develop more structured and formalized approaches to assessing the outcomes of makerspaces. Further research could include the design of a prototypical outcomes assessment model that is then tested on a public library makerspace to determine the practicality of the approach.     

Analyzing archives and finding facts: use and users of digital data records

This article focuses on use and users of data from the NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), U.S. Who is using archival electronic records, and why are they using them? It describes the changes in use and consequently user groups over the last 30 years. The changes in use are related to the evolution of reference services for electronic records at NARA, as well as to growth in the types of electronic records accessioned by NARA. The first user group consisted mainly of researchers with a social science background, who usually expected to handle the data themselves. The user community expanded when electronic records with personal value, like casualty records, were transferred to NARA, and broadened yet again when a selection of NARA’s electronic records became available online. Archivists trying to develop user services for electronic records will find that the needs and expectations of fact or information seeking data users are different from those of researchers using and analyzing data files.     

Determinants of PhD student satisfaction: the roles of supervisor,department, and peer qualities

Understanding the determinants of PhD student satisfaction is likely to become increasingly vital for universities as student satisfaction rankings already ubiquitous at undergraduate and master degree levels extend more broadly to the PhD level. Moreover, as PhD student populations and university competition become increasingly transnational, there is a growing need to understand cross-nationally common determinants of satisfaction. Building on prior research into PhD student satisfaction, and drawing upon relevant conceptual and metrical refinements in the measurement of satisfaction from cognate domains of psychology, we use cross-sectional data (N?=?409) from PhD candidates across the sciences, social sciences and humanities in 63 universities from 20 countries to examine how overall PhD student satisfaction is determined by, respectively and in combination, supervisor, department and peer-group, in terms of both their academic qualities and supportiveness. Taken together, we find that supervisor supportiveness is the greatest predictor of PhD student satisfaction, but that supervisor academic qualities have no significant effect. However, both the academic qualities and supportiveness of departments significantly predict PhD student satisfaction, suggesting university departments and PhD supervisors would ideally work jointly, and perhaps more closely than many currently do, to achieve competitive levels of PhD student satisfaction.     

A systems-based approach to industry classification

I propose an alternative approach to industry classification that reflects the way in which firms self-organize into industries and sectors. The systems-based approach to industry classification takes the sector as the primary unit of analysis, defines a sector on the basis of similarity in needs to which firms collectively respond, and disaggregates sectors into subsectors and industries on the basis of recursive hierarchical dependency. The result is an approach to industry classification that reflects industry structure, reduces egregious cases of between-class homogeneity and within-class heterogeneity, and accommodates changes in technology. The approach is illustrated in a communications equipment subsector application.     

A cross-cultural study of possible iatrogenic effects of gifted education programs: tenth graders’ perceptions of academically high performing classmates

Previous empirical studies have yielded inconclusive results about peer perceptions of academically high performing students. The purpose of this study was to investigate students’ perceptions of the intellectual ability, positive social qualities, and popularity of a hypothetical new high performing classmate. Participants were 1060 Vietnamese, South Korean, British, Australian, Peruvian, and Spanish boys and girls in 10th grade. The results revealed that the perceptions of academically high performing classmates differed by country group. Positive perceptions of intellectual ability and social qualities were commonly found in all countries except the two Asian countries (Vietnam and South Korea), where the students reported more neutral views of high performers. In conclusion, it is argued that there is no evidence for possible iatrogenic effects of gifted education programs aiming at high achievements