Learning through discussions

Students studying a third‐year e‐commerce subject experienced face‐to‐face and online discussions as an important part of their learning experience. The quality of the students' experiences of learning through those discussions is investigated in this study. This study uses qualitative approaches to investigate the variation in the students' understanding of what they were learning through discussions, and how they went about engaging in them. Quantitative analyses are used to investigate how the students' experience related to their performance. Key outcomes of the study include that the quality of the students' experience of learning through discussions is positively related to their performance and that face‐to‐face and online discussions have qualitatively different benefits for learning.     

New “Starting Points” for Resources by Subject

The objective of the Starting Points Web page series at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT HSC) Libraries is to provide specialized information resources in an organized online format. Highlighted resources include databases, journals, UT HSC campus information, funding sources, PubMed® RSS article feeds, and information about professional associations. This paper discusses the development process, planning, challenges, and outcomes of the Starting Points series.     

Sharing MedlinePlus®/MEDLINE® for Information Literacy Education (SMILE): A Dental Public Health Information Project

The SMILE project represented a partnership among the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Libraries, the Gateway Clinic in Laredo, and the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. The project focused on improving dental practitioners' access to reliable information resources and integrating the best evidence into public health dental practice. Through its training program, SMILE cultivated a set of “power information users” among the dentists, dental hygienists, and community health workers (promotores) who provided public health preventive care and oral health education. The dental public health practitioners gained information literacy skills and increased their knowledge about reliable sites such as blogs, PubMed®, and MedlinePlus®. This project fostered opportunities for expanded partnerships with public health personnel.     

App-Based Manipulatives and Explicit Instruction to Support Division with Remainders

ABSTRACT

In theory, both virtual manipulatives and explicit instruction are viable options to support students with disabilities as they learn mathematics. This study explored the effect of a treatment package—an app-based virtual manipulative (Cuisenaire® Rods) in conjunction with explicit instruction—on students’ acquisition and generalization of solving problems involving division of whole numbers with remainders. Three middle school students with disabilities participated in this multiple baseline, multiple probe across participants single case design study. Each of the students acquired the mathematical behavior of being able to solve division with remainders problems. In other words, a functional relation existed between the intervention package of explicit instruction and the Cuisenaire® Rods app-based manipulative and students’ accuracy in solving division with remainders problems. Yet, two students failed to generalize the skill without the explicit instruction and use of the app-based manipulative.     

Four year old children’s acquisition of print knowledge during electronic storybook reading

The experiment reported here explored the importance of engaging 4-year-old children’s interest in the print itself during storybook reading. We explored the effect of computer animation of the print in order to draw the child’s attention to each word as it was read. We also investigated the influence of illustrating that not all visual displays are readable print on the child’s print knowledge. The measures of interest were print concept knowledge and early reading skill. Results indicated that simply drawing children’s attention to the print during shared reading was insufficient to facilitate children’s learning of print conventions, but this attention to print while hearing stories read did improve children’s letter reading. The child’s active engagement with the print during shared story reading led to further improvements in written language skills, as illustrated by gains in knowledge about print concepts.     

Empirical assessment of college student-athletes' persistence in e-learning courses: A case study of a U.S. National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) institution

In recent years, the application of Information Technologies (IT) has fostered a tremendous growth in e-learning courses at colleges and universities in the United States. Subsequently, some colleges and universities have reported dropout rates of over 60% in e-learning courses. This research investigated persistence in e-learning courses of 187 college student-athletes. To predict the persistence of college student-athletes enrolled in e-learning courses, a conceptual model was proposed and assessed based on students' factors. The factors investigated included students' attitude toward computers, students' intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, students' perceived satisfaction, and students' previous academic performance measures (high school grade point average (GPA) and Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) score). These factors have previously shown tendencies toward persistence in e-learning courses. Results of this study indicate that students' high school GPA was a significant predictor of e-learning course persistence for college student-athletes.     

Emergence of a Unique German‐Israeli Academic Exchange Programme: Attributes and Dilemmas

This article describes a unique student exchange programme that has been operating for more than five years and which links students in the Department of Non-formal Education at Beit Berl College in Israel and students in the Department of Social Work at Fachhochschule Wiesbaden in Germany. The uniqueness of this programme lies not only in the co-operation between countries but mainly in the form of a professional study programme involving two educational institutions having different approaches and with different methods for the training of social workers that are embedded in different socio-cultural atmospheres and historical traditions. On top of these complexities, there was the need to cope with the question of how to rebuild relations between two societies loaded with the historical heritage of the Holocaust. The focus of this article is on the emergence and the development of the programme and on some of the dilemmas with which it was faced.     

Fluctuations of DNA mobility in nanofluidic entropic traps

We studied the mobility of DNA molecules driven by an electric field through a nanofluidic device containing a periodic array of deep and shallow regions termed entropic traps. The mobility of a group of DNA molecules was measured by fluorescent video microscopy. Since the depth of a shallow region is smaller than the DNA equilibrium size, DNA molecules are trapped for a characteristic time and must compress themselves to traverse the boundary between deep and shallow regions. Consistent with previous experimental results, we observed a nonlinear relationship between the mobility and electric field strength, and that longer DNA molecules have larger mobility. In repeated measurements under seemingly identical conditions, we measured fluctuations in the mobility significantly larger than expected from statistical variation. The variation was more pronounced for lower electric field strengths where the trapping time is considerable relative to the drift time. To determine the origin of these fluctuations, we investigated the dependence of the mobility on several variables: DNA concentration, ionic strength of the solvent, fluorescent dye staining ratio, electroosmotic flow, and electric field strength. The mobility fluctuations were moderately enhanced in conditions of reduced ionic strength and electroosmotic flow.     

Using the Internet in teaching: the views of practitioners (A survey of the views of secondary school teachers in Sheffield, UK)

A questionnaire was generated from the results of a series of interviews at The City School one of the 27 state secondary schools in Sheffield. In October 2002, it was sent out to 499 Heads of Department at the remaining 26 state secondary schools. Responses were received from 188 teachers, ranging in age from 24 to 60 years old. The purpose of the questionnaire was to gain information about teachers’ views of the Internet and its usefulness as an educational tool. Nearly 85% of teachers acquired their Internet skills informally (self‐taught, learned from friends/colleagues, etc), rather than on a taught course. Despite this, most of the respondents were confident of their ability to use the Internet, with the most confident users being young teachers of technical subjects. However, there was a widespread perception (particularly amongst women teachers) that students are more competent users of the Internet than are teachers. Older teachers were more likely to feel under pressure to use the Internet than their younger colleagues. Only about a third of teachers agreed with the statement “I often use the Internet with classes.” Responses varied significantly according to school and subject. There was strong support, however, for the suggestion that the Internet is a valuable source of learning and teaching materials.     

Consequences of learning about historical racism among European American and African American children

Knowledge about racism is a critical component of educational curricula and contemporary race relations. To examine children's responses to learning about racism, European American (Study 1; N= 48) and African American (Study 2; N= 69) elementary-aged children (ages 6-11) received history lessons that included information about racism experienced by African Americans (racism condition), or otherwise identical lessons that omitted this information (control condition). Children's racial attitudes and cognitive and affective responses to the lessons were assessed. Among European American children, racism condition participants showed less biased attitudes toward African Americans than control condition participants. Among African American children, attitudes did not vary by condition. Children in the two conditions showed several different cognitive and affective responses to the lessons.