The University Experiences of Students with Learning Disabilities

To explore the university experiences of students with learning disabilities (LD), 63,802 responses to the 2014 Student Experience in the Research University Survey were analyzed. Compared to other students, those with self‐reported LD (5.96 percent) had difficulty with assignments and had more obstacles caused by nonacademic responsibilities and imposed by their skill levels. Students with self‐reported LD sensed more bias toward people with disabilities on campus, and they were less satisfied with their overall experience. Interactions between disability status and age suggested even more challenges for older students who self‐reported LD. Approximately one‐third of students who self‐reported LD received accommodations. The rate of accommodations was higher among individuals who were wealthy, who lived alone, and who were out‐of‐state students. Compared to students who self‐reported LD but reported no accommodations, those with accommodations had more contact with faculty and less difficulty with assignments.     

Blended learning in higher education: professional development in a Hong Kong university

ABSTRACT

Online learning has become a ubiquitous part of the educational landscape and how teachers are supported in developing approaches to teaching online is a fundamental aspect of the students’ learning experience. Based on the implementation of a professional development course on becoming an online teacher offered in a blended learning mode at one university in Hong Kong, this article proposes that offering this type of professional development in a blended mode is very effective in facilitating enhanced usage of the university’s learning management system. In a blended mode, teachers are actively engaged with blended learning and were found to make more extensive use of features/tools in Blackboard after they attended the professional development course. Results support that offering professional development in a blended mode provides teachers with an authentic student perspective, at the same time as they take guided steps in the teacher’s role in blended learning.     

Addressing the Persistence and Retention of Students with Disabilities in Higher Education: Incorporating Key Strategies and Supports on Campus

This article explores the key characteristics of postsecondary education programs that help youth and young adults with disabilities persist and remain in college. Student support factors include services that develop stronger self-determination skills, teach and support young adults' self-management skills, expose students to assistive technology, and promote career development by providing internships or other career-related experiences. In conjunction with student support services there are two professional development emphases for instructional faculty that contribute to the institutional support needed by college students with disabilities. Students benefit when faculty have an increased awareness and knowledge of the characteristics and needs of students with disabilities and when faculty incorporate concepts of universal design into their instruction and curriculum.     

The rhetorical force of “global archival memory”: (Re)Situating archives along the global memoryscape

ABSTRACT

This essay engages the possibilities and pitfalls of UNESCO’s Memory of the World program for fostering “global archival memory.” Archives function as rhetorical weapons for both political control and social justice within national and regional contexts. The constitution of global archival memory shifts archives’ borders beyond nation-bound contexts, creating space for contention, deliberation, and debate within a presentist transnational arena. Approaching archives as symbols capable of marshaling cross-cultural identifications furthers memory scholars’ conceptions of transnational memories and communities. It responds to rhetorical scholars’ calls to further engage archives, while drawing on archival studies, memory studies, and rhetorical theories of memory.     

Football and Urban Expansion in São Paulo,Brazil, 1880-1920

Football is central to Brazilian society, its way of imagining itself and its position in the world. Existing accounts of the origins of football in Brazil in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries tend towards mono-causal explanations, highlighting the role of British pioneers and Brazilian enthusiasm for the game. This article argues for a multi-causal explanation, using a mixed methodology of archival research in Brazil and the UK, combined with spatial analysis through the development of GIS maps. Building upon the existing interpretations, it shows how important the historical contexts of dynamics of urban expansion and transport infrastructure development – both with considerable British influence – were to the establishment of football as Brazil's national sport.     

New media: online fandom

Online media is a boon to fandom. It provides mountains of information for the devout follower, while it also provides the opportunity to create and share content. The internet allows fans to transcend geographical barriers to form communities that could not otherwise exist. One particular group of A.S. Roma fans show how fans can use the ‘placeless' internet to invigorate a connection to place. They use their website in conjunction with meeting at the stadium and at other places in real life. The website provides the glue to their geographically dispersed set of Romans. The web is another tool that serves the social needs of fans.     

Fan politics: dissent and control at the stadium

This essay delves into the theoretical and practical dimensions of political expression at the stadium. While previous chapters are organized around the form of media, this essay considers the breadth of media put to use to convey political sentiments. While the notion of sport as apolitical has surface appeal, the stadium has always been political, and provided that sport continues to aggregate tens of thousands of fans in an enclosed space, there is little hope of eliminating politics. The stadium offers the chance for average citizens to gain a voice and, I argue, the stadium is an important part of the public sphere. The chapter considers how the stadium is used for dissent in several contexts. In Italy, the stadium has long been a site of political expression while more recently, in Cairo and Istanbul, football fandom has provided the tools to directly confront the state.