Building the mobile hub: mobile literacies and the construction of a complex academic text

This paper contributes a definition of mobile literacy. This is worthwhile because although mobile, internet‐enabled devices are increasingly prevalent in many people's lives, mobile literacy appears to be under‐theorised and lacking definition. After giving an overview of the scale and nature of mobile device use, the paper develops the definition through building on an existing body of work which seeks to define literacies, digital literacies and mobile learning. The definition takes account of the mobility of technology, of learners, and of learning. A systematic multimodal analysis of a complex undergraduate text, in the form of a conference‐style poster, is then undertaken in order to exemplify the definition offered. The analysis attends to both the semiotic resources exploited by the text's author and the wider context the text is created within. Interview data complements that constructed through analysis of the text itself. Combining these two data sources reveals the ideational, interpersonal and textual/organisational meanings communicated by the text, and how mobility is a contextual factor which is fundamental to the literacy practices employed by the author to convey these meanings.     

Co‐operative Learning for Children with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Mainstream and Special Class Settings: An exploratory study

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a cooperative learning (CL) intervention on the levels of social and task engagement of a child with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) conducted in a mainstream class setting and a child with ASD implemented in a special needs class setting. The target children were two 8‐year‐old boys diagnosed with high functioning autism. Both children were placed in CL groups which included three typically developing peers, one male and two females. Four baseline sessions taught in a traditional teaching format and seven CL intervention sessions based on a “learning together/conceptual approach” took place. All sessions were recorded for video analysis. CL was found to be successful in substantially increasing the level of social engagement for both the child in the special needs class and the child in the mainstream class. CL was not found to facilitate task engagement. Active task engagement was found to remain relatively stable and passive task engagement was found to decrease for one child and remain stable for the other. Teacher concerns and issues relating to the practical implementation of CL in both settings are discussed.     

Age Differences in Imagery Abilities

Age differences were examined in 4 aspects of visual mental imagery, namely, image generation, maintenance, scanning, and rotation. The results suggested that one or more distinct processes are used to carry out each aspect of imagery, and that this is true for 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, 14-year-olds, and adults. There was no evidence that younger children have fewer processing components, which become differentiated into more specialized subsystems over age. In addition, the results suggested that younger children are relatively poor at scanning, rotating, and generating objects in images, but are relatively good at maintaining images.     

Analysis of predatory emails in early career academia and attempts at prevention

Predatory publishers—those who do not adhere to rigorous standards of academic practice such as peer review—are increasingly infiltrating biomedical databases, to the detriment of the wider scientific community. These publishers frequently send unsolicited ‘spam’ emails to generate submission to their journals, with early career researchers (ECR) particularly susceptible to these practices because of pressures such as securing employment and promotion. This analysis sought to record and characterize the emails received over the course of a PhD and post-doctoral position (~8 years), as well as attempts to unsubscribe from such emails, using a progressive and step-wise manner. A total of 1,280 emails identified as academic spam were received (990 journal invitations, 220 conference invitations, 70 ‘other’). The first email was received 3 months after registration for an international conference. Attempts at unsubscribing were somewhat effective, whereby implications of reporting to respective authorities resulted in a 43% decrease in emails, although did not eliminate them completely, and therefore alternative approaches to eliminating academic spam may be needed. Ongoing education about predatory publishers, as well as action by key academic stakeholders, should look to reduce the impact these predatory publishers have upon the wider literature base.