Being more human: rooting learning analytics through resistance and reconnection with the values of higher education

ABSTRACT

Universities are now compelled to attend to metrics that (re)shape our conceptualisation of the student experience. New technologies such as learning analytics (LA) promise the ability to target personalised support to profiled ‘at risk’ students through mapping large-scale historic student engagement data such as attendance, library use, and virtual learning environment activity as well as demographic information and typical student outcomes. Yet serious ethical and implementation issues remain. Data-driven labelling of students as ‘high risk’, ‘hard to reach’ or ‘vulnerable’ creates conflict between promoting personal growth and human flourishing and treating people merely as data points. This article argues that universities must resist the assumption that numbers and algorithms alone can solve the ‘problem’ of student retention and performance; rather, LA work must be underpinned by a reconnection with the agreed values relating to the purpose of higher education, including democratic engagement, recognition of diverse and individual experience, and processes of becoming. Such a reconnection, this article contends, is possible when LA work is designed and implemented in genuine collaboration and partnership with students.     

Health Sciences Patron Preference for Library Spaces: A Multisite Observational Study

Health sciences libraries are often challenged to make decisions regarding physical space allocation without quantitative data to support specific user preferences. This multisite, longitudinal study sought to answer the following questions related to academic health sciences libraries: (1) Which library spaces are popular with health sciences patrons? (2) How does time of day and allocated seating space affect patron choices? (3) What similarities and differences occur in space usage across four different health sciences libraries? Results suggest health sciences libraries must develop a nuanced understanding of their patrons’ preferences to best serve patrons’ needs regarding space allocation. Libraries can benefit from these types of methodological studies that target specific populations, supporting more informed space allocation decision making.     

#MeToo as networked collective: examining consciousness-raising on wild public networks

ABSTRACT

In 2017, the #MeToo movement swept across social media, making the pervasiveness of sexual assault visible to millions. People shared hashtags and stories often only told in intimate settings on a variety of platforms, exposing this issue to the multitudes. At its core, the #MeToo movement was a consciousness-raising effort, but it was occurring in a new mediascape that dramatically altered its spread, force, and impact. This paper examines #MeToo as it unfolded across wild public networks and, in doing so, resisted contemporary image practices, transformed the rhetor into what we term a rhizomatically networked collective, and expanded audiences.     

The transition to adulthood for autistic young people with additional learning needs: the views and experiences of education professionals in special schools

Education professionals (n = 41) in special schools were interviewed about supporting their autistic pupils transitioning to adulthood following the introduction of the Children and Families Act 2014. Our participants explained how they lacked the time to fully implement knowledge gained from training, leading to growing reliance on experiential expertise. While our participants reported employing a variety of methods to elicit the voices of pupils, they were uncertain how effective and ethical these were. Further, a lack of available opportunities meant that participants felt they could not always support young people in achieving their goals. Based on these findings, we recommend greater investment in the implementation of staff training, more flexibility for schools to be able to meaningfully elicit and act on pupils' voices, and better vocational opportunities for autistic young people with additional learning needs. This would enable the principles of the Act, which have been widely lauded, to become a closer reality.     

From Professional Development to Implementation: A District's Experience Implementing Mathematics Tiered Systems of Support

This article is about a school‐district‐initiated partnership with university faculty and their effort to implement a mathematics multi‐tiered system of support (MTSS). In addition to reporting research about MTSS implementation, we describe how this district translated research into practice. We also share the perceptions of key stakeholders about implementing mathematics MTSS in their district. We found that stakeholders identified time and human capacity as barriers to implementation, while the primary facilitator to implementation was identified as the acquisition of concrete strategies and tools supporting instruction. These stakeholder perceptions have implications for other districts with limited resources attempting to implement mathematics MTSS in their buildings through professional development and coaching.     

4Ps: A purposeful introduction

The 4Ps activity provides a unique approach to first-day class introductions and creates a positive classroom climate that encourages student engagement. The assignment generates initial self-disclosure that facilitates interpersonal and group communication throughout the semester. Additionally, the activity can be used as a unit activity with a follow-up assignment that introduces foundational public speaking concepts.

Courses: Public Speaking, Interpersonal, and other communication courses.

Objectives:

• To promote connectedness within the class from the first meeting forward

• To extend the usual “icebreaker” in a meaningful way by incorporating a public-speaking assignment

• To provide a basis for discussion of key communication concepts such as self-disclosure, relational development, and stereotyping.

  Materials: 4×6 note cards

     

Self-Plagiarism Research Literature in the Social Sciences: A Scoping Review

Self-plagiarism is a contentious issue in higher education, research and scholarly publishing contexts. The practice is problematic because it disrupts scientific publishing by over-emphasizing results, increasing journal publication costs, and artificially inflating journal impact, among other consequences. We hypothesized that there was a dearth of empirical studies on the topic of self-plagiarism, with an over-abundance of editorial and commentary articles based on anecdotal evidence. The research question was: What typologies of evidence characterize the literature on self-plagiarism in scholarly and research journals? We conducted a scoping review, using the search terms “self-plagiarism” and “self-plagiarism” (hyphenated), consulting five social sciences research databases, supplemented by a manual search for articles, resulting in over 5900 results. After removing duplicates and excluding non-scholarly sources, we arrived at a data set of 133 sources, with publication dates ranging from 1968 to 2017. With an interrater reliability of over 93% between two researchers, our typological analysis revealed 47 sources (34.3%) were editorials; 41 (29.9%) were conceptual research (including teaching cases); 16 (11.7%) were editorial responses; 12 (8.6%) were secondary research; and only 8 sources (5.8%) were primary research. There is little guidance in the available literature to graduate students or their professors about how to disentangle the complexities of self-plagiarism. With primary and secondary research combined accounting for 14.4% of overall contributions to the data set, and primary research constituting only 6% of overall contributions, we conclude with a call for more empirical evidence on the topic to support contributions to the scholarly dialogue.     

Designing research to inform sustainability and scalability of digital technology innovations

Educational technology research and development - Considerably more research needs to be done to understand how successful technological innovations and change processes are sustained and scaled to...     

Faithfully following,adapting, or rejecting mandated curriculum: teachers’ curricular enactments in elementary writing instruction

The qualitative study shows how 20 teachers from 4 districts in the same state enacted mandated school-wide writing curricula. Analyses of the observations and interviews revealed that 4 teachers were faithfully following the district-adopted curriculum, 4 rejected it, and 12 teachers adapted the curriculum to meet their students’ needs. The teachers who followed the curriculum had positive views of it but were inexperienced or uncomfortable teaching writing and had less access to professional development (PD) than teachers in other groups. Most of the teachers who adapted the curriculum were experienced teachers and felt supported in making changes due to the quality of PD. The teachers who rejected the curriculum were unhappy with the existing curriculum and drew from a number of different resources; however, their writing instruction lacked coherence and an underlying philosophy of writing. The findings show that factors such as policies, PD, and personal factors including previous writing experiences and philosophies influenced teachers’ enactments. While previous studies have found that overarching policies including NCLB increase pressure on teachers resulting in a lack of autonomy, our findings explore the ways that teachers were able to navigate their school contexts.