Crowdfunding for Academic Libraries: Indiana Jones Meets Polka

Crowdfunding – or creatively presenting a case for funding to like-minded individuals – is becoming an effective development strategy for academic libraries. The crowdfunding projects described offer multiple approaches to consider, from an adventure-themed video to embracing polka music to entice donors to give. Social media, used in conjunction with the web and well-established email communication formed the basis of successful project promotion. Developing a robust communication plan ahead of campaign launch is critical for success. Thanking donors for their transformational gifts and follow up communication describing the impact of their participation six months later raises friends for the library potentially for many years to come. With proper planning, an active and enthusiastic committee and effective donor stewardship, crowdfunding campaigns will help libraries raise funds to support strategic initiatives.     

Diversity on U.S. Public and Commercial TV in Authorial and Executive-Produced Social-Issue Documentaries

Where are diverse makers and subjects most likely to be found in U.S. TV documentary? This study compares commercial and public TV series, and also anthology formats (“authorial” series) and executive-produced formats. A content analysis for characters and makers showed that public TV authorial series are more diverse than either commercial or other public TV series. Independent documentaries have diversity value both in commercial and public TV settings.     

Cultivating communities of care: A qualitative investigation of the communication of support among incarcerated women

In 2014, a female-only detention and re-entry facility was restructured to implement new rehabilitative philosophies rooted in strategies to prepare incarcerated women for successful transition into society. A specialized housing unit called incentive-based housing (IBH) was created within this facility to promote an environment of accountability and responsibility. Here, women are expected to be proactive in seeking and achieving successes through programming, all while offering support to one another. In this study, participant observations and interviews were used to understand how 12 incarcerated women living in IBH communicate support. This qualitative study revealed three forms of support being communicated: (a) accountability, (b) validation, and (c) compassion. This study also revealed forms of communication that complicate support, including (a) drama and (b) rivalry. Communication of support is important to consider as we devise new approaches to rehabilitation within America’s criminal justice system.     

Community College Counseling: Why Are Research Outcomes So Elusive?

This article focuses on counseling research in the community college context. The article suggests the need for a robust community college knowledge base, describes some limitations of the current community college literature, and suggests a framework for more effective work in this area. The authors’ own experiences and selected examples of published studies are used as illustrations of the hurdles encountered and solutions available when examining counseling theories, practices, and outcomes in 2‐year settings.     

Commemorative places,political spaces: Virginia Indians,the Jamestown Quadricentennial,and the quest for sovereignty

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the cross-cultural communication strategies deployed by a coalition of indigenous tribes in Virginia to leverage the Quadricentennial commemoration of the founding at Jamestown in support of their sovereignty campaign. The tensions between Jamestown’s mythos as the “birthplace of democracy” and the natives’ historical and contemporary lived experiences, combined with the national and international attention focused on the events, constructed the 400th anniversary “celebrations” as a compelling location for social action. The coalition employed intercultural communicative practices—particularly cross-cultural dialogue and negotiation—as means of mobilizing these tensions to renegotiate their relationship with the federal government, illustrating the intersection of intercultural communication, memory, and identity.     

Beyond educational attainment: The importance of skills and lifelong learning for social outcomes. Evidence for Europe from PIAAC

Empirical evidence suggests that educational attainment nurtures people's social outcomes and promotes active participation in society and stability. However, it is unclear to what extent other types of human capital also correlate with social outcomes. Hence, we explored the opportunity offered by the PIAAC survey through its provision of information on educational attainment, observed individual key skills proficiency, and participation in adult education and training (adult lifelong learning). We therefore studied the association between these human capital variables and social outcomes, and more specifically interpersonal trust and participation in volunteering activities. Results revealed that these social outcomes were affected not only by the formal qualification obtained, determined by the education variable, but also throughout the life‐cycle. Indeed, education and training when undertaken during adult life have a significant impact, especially on volunteering. The fact that the skill proficiency also plays a significant role is extremely relevant, as skills are more likely to change over the life‐cycle, either in a positive or negative way. Whilst the formal education received is constant after exiting the educational system, skills reflect competences more accurately: first, because those with the same level of education may have different skill levels because of differences in the quality of education or ability; second, because skills can vary over time. For example, they may increase with work experience or informal education, or decrease as a result of depreciation and ageing. These findings suggest that social outcomes are prone to be affected by many factors other than formal education, suggesting that policy makers can implement recommendations even after formal education has been completed.     

Collaborative Development and Evaluation of an Online Nursing Course

Institutions of higher education acknowledge that online learning represents a growing segment of the modern learning environment, and most students have mastered basic computer skills. However, reluctance to engage in online learning remains among both faculty and students. This article presents a case study of three schools of nursing that collaboratively developed and implemented an online undergraduate-nursing course. The article discusses the challenges that were encountered by faculty and students. The faculty used the distance education literature to address these challenges related to technological, institutional, and pedagogical aspects of online learning, as well as the recruitment and retention of online learners. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the course. The paper concludes with suggestions to overcome the challenges of online learning, such that faculty and students receive the inherent rewards.     

Reinstatement of postresponse stimuli prior to reward in delayed-reward discrimination learning by pigeons

Delayed-reward learning in pigeons was examined using a simultaneous red-green visual discrimination task in which the conditions during the delay interval were varied between groups. The nondifferential group received training in which the stimulus present during the 1-min delay was the same following a peck on the correct and incorrect colors. The other three groups received 1-min delay training in which different stimuli occurred in the delay interval following correct and incorrect choices. The differential group received continuous, differential stimuli during the delay. The reinstatement group received the differential stimuli in the 10 sec immediately following the choice and during the last 10 sec of the delay. The reversedcue group was treated in the same way, except that the 10-sec delay stimulus immediately following an incorrect response was also presented for 10 sec prior to reward on correct choices, and the stimulus following a correct response also occurred 10 sec before nonreward on incorrect choices. Nondifferential birds failed to learn the discrimination, while differential and reinstatement birds learned it readily. The reversed-cue birds learned to choose the incorrect stimulus. Differential and reinstatement birds showed no decrement in performance when the delay was increased to 2 min. These findings suggest that similarity of prereward and postresponse delay stimuli controls choice responding in long-delay learning, a finding compatible with both memorial and conditioned reinforcement interpretations.