Assessing Library Customer Interactions and Staff Satisfaction

In 2016, two service departments–the office of information technology (OIT) and the academic resource center (ARC) at the college–physically relocated into the library. To ensure consistent customer service and staffing for the ARC, OIT, and library, the departments collaborated to discuss the implications for their new shared space. They decided to use a common online customer service form in Qualtrics to track and assess library customer interactions and staff satisfaction.     

Impacts of grants and contracts on academic researchers’ interactions with industry

Based on a representative national sample of 1564 academic researchers, we investigate the impacts of research grants and contracts on the nature and extent of faculty research and technology activities with industry. A particular focus is on understanding the independent contributions of industry and government grant sources on levels of industrial involvement. In addition to examining the source of grants, the study controls for a number of independent factors including: scientific field, research center affiliation, tenure status, and gender. Results suggest independent effects of grants and contracts on industrial activities. Grants and contracts from industry have a significant effect on academic researchers’ propensity to work with industry, as measured by an “industrial involvement scale.” Federally-sponsored grants also have an impact in increasing work with industry, but a more moderate one. Further, those with more grants and contracts (of each type) have a greater propensity for industrial involvement than those who have such contracts but fewer. This holds even when proxies for productivity and career stage are introduced in regression equations. The analysis also considers whether provision of grants and contracts is best viewed as a predictor of industrial involvement or just another type of industrial involvement using factor analysis and nested multivariate modeling to compare effects.     

Working from Home: How We Managed Our Team Remotely with Technology

Abstract

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the College’s library and the office of institutional research & training (OIRT), along with all departments of our college, shifted to working from home (WFH) overnight. This column shares examples from the literature regarding experiences and lessons learned from both the corporate world and academic libraries’ experiences managing teams remotely with technology. Finally, we share how the College’s academic library and OIRT transitioned to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic with the variety of online tools we already used, but further enhanced during this experience, to communicate and collaborate effectively with our team members.     

Religious education in state primary schools: the case of Catalonia (Spain)

In a pluricultural and multi-religious world, with high levels of social secularisation, the role of religious education in schools (especially in state-funded schools) has inundated political and academic debate throughout Europe, which is becoming increasingly more committed to integrating, non-confessional models. In this context, it is essential to analyse how religious education is managed in countries whose relationship between state and religion is still firmly rooted (as is the case of Spain), and what the action of schools and families is in contexts where confessional religion is maintained in schools. Based on a quantitative study of 380 representatives of primary school management teams, it is seen that one in four schools does not teach any type of religion, either due to a lack of demand from families or because the school chooses not to do so. In addition, the study shows the practical limitations of the confessional model to provide a response to the religious and secular diversity of our time, as the implementation of minority confessions is very scant while there is a primacy of the catholic confession in the religion subject.     

Teaching and learning birth: "help all to know"

This guest editorial explores the idea that our worldview, regardless of education, influences our childbirth practices, sometimes interfering with achieving the goals of our discipline. Over time, we have lost our ability to support women through the process of childbirth so that they emerge as strong, healthy women. The high road ahead is to teach everyone, including ourselves, that we need to provide optimal, evidence-based care. Pursuing this path will take courage and commitment.     

Bottom Lines and Deadlines: Examining Local Digital News Startups’ Content Across Different Revenue-earning Sites

This study examines independent news startups with self-reported revenue earnings in high-, middle-, and low-income categories and compares them in the areas of news content creation. The findings, based on a content analysis of 704 articles, reveal that low-revenue earners publish fewer stories than middle- and high-revenue earning sites. For-profit sites publish significantly more in low- and mid-revenue earning categories but non-profits publish significantly more in high-revenue earning sites. Most stories are still covered by editorial staff, including articles in the field of entertainment, lifestyle/health and community events about people, usually considered the domain of citizen reporters. The discussion section contextualizes these findings and recommends future research could consider examining these sites separately rather than clubbing them under the umbrella of “digital local independent startups.”     

Occupational interests of Barbadian adolescents

A sample of 850 adolescents in the Caribbean island of Barbados indicated their general interest in 90 locally available occupations which were designated male, female or either sex in accordance with judgements of present employment of the sexes in these positions, and named up to three jobs for which they had particular preference. Results showed sex to have a pervasive influence on both general interest and particular job choice, although both males and females were most strongly attracted to modern sector, mid/high status managerial positions. Implications for career guidance in schools, and for further research, are discussed.     

Children's knowledge of thematic and taxonomic relations at two years of age

An interesting conflict exists in the developmental literature concerning the strength of thematic versus taxonomic associations. "Dog-doghouse" is a thematic match, while "dog-horse" is a taxonomic match. This study compared the ability of children to identify both types of associations at 2 points during the third year of life: 26 months (N = 15) and 34 months (N = 24). A reinforced match-to-sample technique was used in which half of the matches were thematic and the other half were taxonomic. Both age groups were able to identify thematic matches, although children near 3 years of age were able to recognize a wider range of thematic associations than children near 2 years of age. The 26-month-olds were unable to identify taxonomic matches that had no perceptual basis, but the 34-month-olds were successful at this task; the 34-month-olds appeared to have a more general understanding of categories that was less tied to perceptual features.     

Singing about soldiers in German schools,from 1890 to 1945

Abstract

A crucial historical intersection of war and education asks how schooling contributed to convincing people to fight and to sacrifice their own lives, and those of their loved ones, in wars. This article addresses this question by asking how primary schools, in one country, namely Germany, over several tumultuous generations, used songs to teach children about soldiers’ lives and deaths. Songs, because they are short, often repeated, and laden with emotion, merit attention in studies of education for war. Examination of school songbooks and curricula shows that songs commonly taught in German primary schools from the late German Empire, through the First World War and the Weimar Republic, and into the Third Reich and Second World War consistently exalted sacrificial death for fatherland. The routine presence of these songs contributed to presenting death for the fatherland as a holy cause, and making sacrificial death in battle imaginable. Wartime sources suggest that songs learned at school also went to war. Engaging with scholarship concerning continuity and change in the history of German education, as well as with work concerning sacrificial death in the construction of the nation, this article compares older soldier songs with songs introduced by the Nazis, showing how National Socialism appropriated older songs, while imposing its own more expansive, less personalised conception of war and resulting death.