Career readiness: An analysis of text complexity for occupational reading materials

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the broader college and career readiness agenda encourage educators, researchers, and other stakeholders to focus on preparing students for life after high school. A key emphasis is literacy, as the ability to read and comprehend written language is critical to success in college and careers. Understanding the level of reading comprehension needed for college and careers has important instructional implications. This study examined text complexity levels of various career texts using the Reading Maturity Metric and compared them to expectations in the CCSS. Text samples were selected for jobs from the five job zones in the Occupational Information Network database. Text complexity demands for all careers were generally in the CCSS range of college and career readiness and increased as job zone and required preparation increased. Results could provide specific career-related targets to make the CCSS reading requirements more relevant for students.     

Relationship quality in higher education marketing: the role of social media engagement

The landscape in consumer marketing is changing due to the rise in popularity of social media. This shift has also affected how higher education institutions build relationships with their stakeholders. This study explores how social media engagement impacts relationship quality between the university and one of its key stakeholder groups, students. Data were collected via an online survey and analyzed using the Mann–Whitney U test, regression and the Kruskal–Wallis test. Results indicated a positive association between students following a university via social media and the perception of having a high-quality relationship with their university, and that following a university on multiple social media sites leads to an even higher perception of relationship quality. The results provide important and timely implications for both universities and higher education marketers. Our findings suggest that higher education marketers should invest resources in social media communications to form high-quality relationships with their stakeholders.     

Teaching socio-cultural impacts of technology in advanced technical courses: a case study

ABSTRACT

Engineering education has traditionally focused on the development of technical skills and knowledge. Nowadays, the need for educating engineers in non-technical skills, such as reflective thinking, is being recognised internationally. This paper proposes that socio-cultural impacts of technology be studied together with the technology itself through the integration of social awareness modules into advanced technical courses, providing a venue for students to exercise their reflective thinking skills in the context of technologies that are of interest to them. The paper presents an exploratory study of the essays of senior year engineering students on the socio-cultural impacts of computer vision technologies. It provides insights on the themes that are of interest to the students and on the students’ strengths and weaknesses relating to their reflective thinking abilities. Similar modules would apply well to other advanced courses in the engineering curriculum, to help contextualise technology and enhance the reflective abilities of engineering graduates.     

Revisiting five decades of educational technology research: A content and authorship analysis of the British Journal of Educational Technology

Reflecting on 50 years of educational technology research, a content and authorship analysis was conducted of 1777 research article titles and abstracts, published in the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET) from 1970 to Issue 3, 2018. A text-mining tool (Leximancer) was used to identify key concepts and themes emerging throughout each of the five decades, which were then compared to those found in a previous analysis of Computers & Education, as well as the most cited BJET publications in each decade. The framework of West and Rich (2012) was then used to provide guidance on BJET’s rigour, impact and prestige. Common themes in BJET throughout the past 50 years have included the evolution of teaching and learning in distance education, the emergence of instructional design, misunderstanding between practitioners and learning designers, issues of pre and in-service teacher education and technology uptake by educators and students, including the confidence to do so, the technology skills of educators and students, as well as a lack of institutional support to provide space and time for training and integration to occur. The authorship analysis revealed an encouraging increase in international identity over time, with 60% of articles in BJET published by an author outside of the UK over the past 50 years, and 79% in the past decade. Despite this, contributions from South America, the Middle East and Africa are vastly underrepresented, and authors from these regions need further support from the field. Suggested future research areas include finding alternative models of educator professional development, further exploration of the role of theory and policy, as well as the rise of co-authorship and collaborative research.     

Context matters: Multilingual learners on public speaking courses

This study assessed whether L1 (English as first language), L2 (English as second language, recent transition to the United States), and Generation 1.5 (English as second language, years of United States–based education) students are able to grow and perform similarly in a public speaking course on measures of public speaking anxiety, information literacy, and several types of learning assessments. Results show no differences between L1, L2, and Generation 1.5 students. This study also assessed whether L2 students are more successful in integrated or protected section, and had mixed findings.     

Implementation of a project-based molecular biology laboratory emphasizing protein structure-function relationships in a large introductory biology laboratory course

In introductory laboratory courses, many universities are turning from traditional laboratories with predictable outcomes to inquiry-inspired, project-based laboratory curricula. In these labs, students are allowed to design at least some portion of their own experiment and interpret new, undiscovered data. We have redesigned the introductory biology laboratory course at Brandeis University into a semester-long project-based laboratory that emphasizes concepts and contains an element of scientific inquiry. In this laboratory, students perform a site-directed mutagenesis experiment on the gene encoding human γD crystallin, a human eye lens protein implicated in cataracts, and assess the stability of their newly created protein with respect to wild-type crystallin. This laboratory utilizes basic techniques in molecular biology to emphasize the importance of connections between DNA and protein. This project lab has helped engage students in their own learning, has improved students' skills in critical thinking and analysis, and has promoted interest in basic research in biology.     

THE PRACTICALITY OF IMPLEMENTING CONNECTED CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGY IN SECONDARY MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE CLASSROOMS

Connected classroom technology (CCT) is a member of a broad class of interactive assessment devices that facilitate communication between students and teachers and allow for the rapid aggregation and display of student learning data. Technology innovations such as CCT have been demonstrated to positively impact student achievement when integrated into a variety of classroom contexts. However, teachers are unlikely to implement a new instructional practice unless they perceive the practical value of the reform. Practicality consists of three constructs: congruence with teacher’s values and practice; instrumentality—compatibility with the existing school structures; and cost/benefits—whether the reward is worth the effort. This study uses practicality as a framework for understanding CCT implementation in secondary classrooms. The experiences of three science teachers in their first year implementing CCT are compared with matched-pair mathematics teachers. Findings suggest that despite some differences in specific uses and purposes for CCT, the integration of CCT into regular classroom practice is quite similar in mathematics and science classrooms. These findings highlight important considerations for the implementation of educational technology.     

Contextualizing Nonprofits’ Use of Links on Twitter During the West African Ebola Virus Epidemic

This study investigates how nonprofit organizations use hyperlinks embedded in tweets for strategic communication during global health crises. Within the 1,494 links included in tweets about Ebola, organizations shared owned and earned media, including news stories directly or indirectly referencing their work and positive mentions from others on social media. Links allowed organizations to raise awareness about Ebola in West Africa, promote their work, and highlight endorsements from news media and influential users. Raising awareness and building trust are key steps in becoming credible sources during highly uncertain crises.