The use of Facebook to build a community for distance learning students: a case study from the Open University

Social media platforms such as Facebook are commonplace throughout society. However, within higher education institutions such networking environments are still in the developmental stage. This paper describes and discusses case study data from the Open University’s Faculty of Social Science Facebook page. It starts by giving an overview of the literature surrounding social media in higher education before examining how the Social Sciences Faculty at the Open University has used Facebook to help build an academic community. Data includes numerical information on number of likes, demographic data on students who use the page, analysis on the type and nature of comments and more qualitative extracts from postings related to academic questions. It also discusses challenges and difficulties with using such social media tools in a university environment and suggests fruitful areas for future research.     

The rise and fall of the soviet underground press

Although samizdat (self‐publication) has existed since the days of Catherine the Great as the principal means by which banned works have been circulated in Russia, the most fertile period for the underground Soviet press was from 1968 through the early 1970s. A study of the content and contributors of two prominent samizdat publications, the Chronicle of Current Events and Supergirl Oktyabrina, reveals differences in the concerns of the dissidents and their relationship with the regime. The Chronicle's content was primarily literary and oriented toward the “human rights” movement. In contrast, Oktyabrina was satirical and comical, with no serious literary intent. An examination of the Soviet's handling of these two samizdat publications suggests that dissent in Russia is handled selectively, and that the Soviet authorities are not interested in eliminating all dissent, only the dissent that they find challenging to their rule.     

Are educational preschool apps designed to teach? An analysis of the app market

Over half of educational apps on mobile-app markets are for preschoolers, but little research has examined whether the designs of preschool apps are truly educational. Preschoolers process information differently from older learners (i.e., shorter attention spans), so app designs should be guided by developmental science. This content analysis of popular Apple and Android math and literacy preschool apps uses a developmental framework to code and analyze apps’ educational features. Findings show a wide variety of features apps used. However, few provided developmentally appropriate guidance, like scaffolded feedback. This study offers insights for improving apps to meaningfully teach preschoolers.     

Personality,Gender and Student Performance at a South African University

Abstract

This article reports on a study that tested theory predicting differences in personality endowments between first-year and second-year accounting students, as well as the potential influence of personality on academic performance in the context of a large South African university. Data from 1 380 first-year and second-year accounting students was used to test theory predicting gendered differences in the relationships between personality and both throughput and performance. Multiple linear regression and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) estimations were applied. The findings suggested that fewer students with openness and agreeableness continue to second-year accounting studies. While conscientiousness might not be a primary differentiator of performance at first year, at second year it dominates as a predictor of performance. The findings are expected to generalise to other contexts to the extent that such contexts share characteristics with the context under study.     

Early understanding and production of graphic symbols

Young children's ability to understand and produce graphic symbols within an environment of social communication was investigated in two experiments. Children aged 2, 3, and 4 years produced graphic symbols of simple objects on their own, used them in a social communicative game, and responded to experimenter's symbols. In Experiment 1 (N = 48), 2-year-olds did not effectively produce symbols or use the experimenter's symbols in the choice task, whereas 3- and 4-year-olds improved their drawings following the game and performed above chance with the experimenter's symbols. Ability to produce an effective graphic symbol was correlated with success on a task that measured understanding of the experimenter's symbols, supporting the claim that children's ability to produce a graphic symbol rests on the understanding of the symbolic function of pictures. In Experiment 2, 32 children aged 3 and 4 years improved their third set of drawings when they received feedback that their drawings were not effective communications. The results suggest that production and understanding of graphic symbols can be facilitated by the same social factors that improve verbal symbolic abilities, thereby raising the question of domain specificity in symbolic development.     

Data Journalism,Impartiality And Statistical Claims

The use of data is often viewed as a potentially powerful democratic force in journalism, promoting the flow of information sources and enriching debates in the public sphere. We explore a key feature of the relationship between data and journalism, drawing upon the largest ever study of statistical references in news reporting (N?=?4285) commissioned by the BBC Trust to examine how statistics inform coverage in a wide range of UK television, radio and online media (N?=?6916). Overall, our study provides a cautionary tale about the use of data to enlighten democratic debate. While we found that statistics were often referenced in news coverage, their role in storytelling was often vague, patchy and imprecise. Political and business elites were the main actors referencing statistics and interpreting them, but many of their claims were neither questioned nor interrogated further by journalists, with statistics often traded by opposing sides of an argument without independent analysis. In order to enhance the independent scrutiny of statistics, we argue a radical shift in newsgathering and journalistic interpretation is needed, which allows reporters to draw on a wider range of statistical sources and to adopt more critical judgements based on the weight of statistical evidence.