Reducing Inequality in Academic Success for Incoming College Students: A Randomized Trial of Growth Mindset and Belonging Interventions

Light-touch social psychological interventions have gained considerable attention for their potential to improve academic outcomes for underrepresented and/or disadvantaged students in postsecondary education. While findings from previous interventions have demonstrated positive effects for racial and ethnic minority and first-generation students in small samples, few interventions have been implemented at a larger scale with more heterogeneous student populations. To address this research gap, 7,686 students, representing more than 90% of incoming first-year students at a large Midwestern public university, were randomly assigned to an online growth mindset intervention, social belonging intervention, or a comparison group. Results suggest that after the fall semester, the growth mindset intervention significantly improved grade point averages for Latino/a students by about .40 points. This represents a 72% reduction in the GPA gap between White and Latino/a students. Further, this effect was replicated for both spring semester GPA and cumulative GPA. These findings indicate that light-touch interventions may be a minimally invasive approach to improving academic outcomes for underrepresented students. Our findings also highlight the complexity of implementing customized belonging interventions in heterogeneous contexts.     

Location-based smartphone games in the context of environmental education and education for sustainable development: fostering connectedness to nature with Geogames

Abstract

Geogames are complex location-based games for smartphones and they are part of a critical discussion within the community of environmental education. The aim of the study is to asses if smartphone games are suitable to foster connectedness to nature and if there are differences between a complex Geogame and a less-demanding treasure hunt. For this purpose, two established scales are used in a pre-post-test-design: the inclusion of nature in self (INS) and the disposition to connect to nature (DCN). Furthermore, the game-related enjoyment was controlled. The results reveal a significant increase of the INS for both game formats, with the strongest effect for the former more nature distant subjects. The DCN-scale shows a similar tendency but not a significant gain. Between the game formats, no significant difference is detectable. So, the main effect seems to be the location-based activity in nature guided by smartphones, not the complexity of a Geogame.     

Kindergarten prevention of dyslexia: does training in phonological awareness work for everybody?

This study examined the effects of training in phonological awareness on kindergarten children. Comparisons of children at risk (i.e., children with initially low levels of metalinguistic ability) with initially average and advanced children revealed that training gains were similar for all of these groups. Furthermore, training had comparable long-term effects on reading and spelling in Grades 1 and 2 for each group. In fact, the trained children at risk showed better reading and spelling performance than a randomly selected control group. Although considerable individual differences in training effectiveness were found Within the group of at-risk children, there was clear evidence that the training program substantially reduced the risk of becoming dyslexic in school.     

Predicting Language Development in Children At Risk: The Effects of Quality and Frequency of Caregiver Reading

Reading to children has been advocated as a way to enhance language and literacy skills (A. G. Bus, M. H. van IJzendoorn, & A. D. Pellegrini, 1995). However, little is known about reading with children under age 3 (K. L. Fletcher & E. Reese, 2005), particularly in at-risk samples (A. van Kleeck, 2003). In the current study of 87 primary caregivers and their 24-month-old children enrolled in an early intervention program, we tested a theoretical model of the relations among 24-month-old children's language, caregivers' reported frequency of reading with children, and caregivers' reading strategies on children's language and attention using path models. Path models indicated that caregivers' use of expansions and questions with their 24-month-old children during reading was related to children's expressive language at 30 months. Caregivers' use of labeling, expansions, and questions was related to 24-month-old children's attention during reading. Although children's language skills at 24 months were associated with the reported frequency of caregiver reading in the home, only caregivers' use of questions had a relationship with frequency of reading. Reading practices that promote language development and engagement during reading observed in this at- risk sample have implications for reading intervention efforts with young children.     

Local knowledge, environmental politics, and the founding of ecology in the United States. Stephen Forbes and "The Lake as a Microcosm" (1887)

Stephen Forbes's "The Lake as a Microcosm" is one of the founding documents of the science of ecology in the United States. By tracing the connections between scientists and local fishermen underlying the research on floodplain lakes presented in "The Lake as a Microcosm," this essay shows how the birth of ecology was tied to local knowledge and the local politics of environmental transformation. Forbes and the other scientists of the Illinois Natural History Survey relied on fishermen for manual labor, expertise in catching fish, and knowledge of the natural history of the fishes. As Forbes and his colleagues worked in close contact with fishermen, they also adopted many of their political concerns over the privatization of the floodplain and became politically active in supporting their interests. The close connection between scientists and local knowledge forced the ecologists to reframe the boundaries of ecology as objective or political, pure or applied, local or scientific.     

Should students design or interact with models? Using the Bifocal Modelling Framework to investigate model construction in high school science

The Bifocal Modelling Framework (BMF) is an approach for science learning which links students’ physical experimentation with computer modelling in real time, focusing on the comparison of the two media. In this paper, we explore how a Bifocal Modelling implementation supported learning outcomes related to both content and metamodeling knowledge, focusing on the role of designing models. Our study consisted of three conditions implemented with a total of 69 9th grade high-school students. The first and second classes were assigned two implementation modes of BMF: with and without a model design module. The third condition, employed as a control, consisted of a class that received instruction in the school’s traditional approach. Our results indicate that students participating in both BMF implementations demonstrated improved content knowledge and a better understanding of metamodeling. However, only the ‘BMF-with-design’ group improved significantly in both content and metamodeling knowledge. Our qualitative analyses indicate that both BMF groups designed detailed models that included scientific explanations. However only students who engaged in the model design component: (1) completed a detailed model displaying molecular interaction; and (2) developed a critical perspective about models. We discuss the implications of those results for teaching scientific science concepts and metamodeling knowledge.     

Effects of different exercise intensities in the morning on football performance components in the afternoon

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of two different exercise interventions in the morning on football-specific components of performance in the afternoon under conditions simulating a competition day. In the morning on 3 experimental days, 12 football players (age 24.1?±?5.5 years) completed three different preload interventions that were applied in a counter-balanced order: (1) no intervention (NI); (2) moderate-intensive exercise (MI); and (3) high-intensive exercise (HI). The subjects performed the preload exercises, consisting of a small-sided game and repeated maximal sprints, from 10:00–11:00 a.m. At 3:00 p.m., the Bangsbo test (BT) was applied to examine the effects of the different morning interventions on football-specific endurance capacity. The results showed that the HI led to significantly higher blood-lactate concentrations (moderate to very large effect) and heart rates (very large to extremely large effect) compared to the MI. In addition, there was a significant measurement?×?intervention effect on concentrations of adrenalin and noradrenalin in the urine, which reached higher values immediately after the HI (very large effect) and MI (moderate effect) compared to NI. All effects disappeared by the time of the BT in the afternoon. During all trials, after the preload intervention, reaction time and critical flicker fusion frequency increased significantly compared to the baseline morning values (reaction time: small; critical flicker fusion: trivial to small effect), but no measurement?×?intervention interaction was found. During the BT, the mean total distance covered (trivial to small effect) and the pacing pattern did not differ significantly among the trials despite numerous small individual effects. We conclude that exercise interventions of various intensities in the morning have no general effect on football-specific components of performance in the afternoon despite significant metabolic, endocrinological and cognitive short-term effects. Coaches should consider individual preferences when prescribing competition-day procedures.     

The impact of metamemory and domain-specific knowledge on memory performance

This paper consists of two major parts. First, research exploring possible interactions between metamemory and domain-specific knowledge in influencing children’s text recall and comprehension is briefly summarized. Overall, the findings indicate that metacognitive knowledge does make a difference even in cases where domain-specific knowledge is rich. Second, a recent experiment conducted in our lab and investigating the generalizability of this conclusion for sort-recall tasks is described in more detail. Third — and fourth-grade soccer experts and novices were first given a comprehensive metamemory questionnaire and then administered a sort-recall tasks using two different picture lists: whereas one list included items from various semantical categories (e.g., animals, clothes), the other list was composed of soccer pictures that could be classified in several categories such as players, kicks, or equipment. The results showed that although domain-specific knowledge had a strong impact on recall of the soccer list, general metacognitive knowledge made an independent contribution, particularly for the group of soccer experts. More specifically, good metamemory positively affected the recall of experts but had no impact on novices’ memory performance.     

Isolation of target DNA using synergistic magnetic bead transport and electrokinetic flow

The advent and dissemination of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies such as Illumina''s sequencing platforms has brought forth vast reductions in the cost, time, and technical difficulties associated with DNA and RNA sequencing. Despite this trend, the workflow required to generate nucleic acid libraries for sequencing remains time-consuming and laborious. The following research proposes a method for simplifying and streamlining this process by replacing the manual washing steps of the common magnetic bead-based cleanup with a novel microfluidic method by integrating magnetic separation and electrokinetic purification (MSEP). Requiring no pumps, pipette mixing, vortexing, or centrifugation, MSEP relies on selective adsorption of target DNA onto the magnetic beads with subsequent transport of beads through a microchannel undergoing an antiparallel electroosmotic flow. The synergetic flow conditions were optimized using a simple electrohydrodynamic flow model. This work demonstrates that MSEP is as effective in eliminating adapter-dimers from the post-ligation library mix as the manual method while also greatly reducing the hands-on time and amount of pipetting required. Although MSEP has been applied specifically toward NGS library preparation at this time, it has the potential to be adapted and employed for any bead-based separation scheme, namely, solid phase extraction, sequence-specific hybridization, and immunoprecipitation on a microscale.