Learning Neuroscience: An Interactive Case-Based Online Network (ICON)

We have developed an interactive case-based online network (ICON) that provides a new learning environment and integrates the student's thinking across the different concentration tracks of one of Harvard's interfaculty science initiatives. ICON takes advantage of this cross-disciplinary, undergraduate curriculum as a model system to bring a compelling, integrative focus to bear on reshaping how Harvard students learn neuroscience. ICON contains 9 learning modules specific to each case: Case, Working Papers, Blackboard, Neuroimaging, Research Programs and Trials, Decision Tree, Learning Objectives, Virtual Contact, and Brainstorm. Modules allow the student to get away from interpreting vast amounts of available information, move toward selecting useful information, recognize discriminating findings, and build a conceptual understanding of real and meaningful problems in neuroscience. The result is that ICON introduces a new landscape within the academic curriculum where the active participation of faculty and students effectively intersects and captures an immediate, integrative learning experience for the student. The benchmark of ICON is the time spent by students and faculty to create a user-defined learning network that engages faculty to participate in the students' learning and transforms the way the student thinks.     

Gender Microaggressions and Learning Environments: The Role of Physical Space in Teaching Pedagogy and Communication

Career and technical education (CTE) programs account for a large proportion of student enrollments in community colleges each year. While women tend to dominate CTE enrollments overall, they remain concentrated in historically feminized fields contrary to nontraditional occupations in which less than 25% of workers are females. Drawing on the emerging research on microaggressions and classroom learning environments, this classroom observation research project of more than 80 hours of observations with supplemental student interviews sought to further an understanding of why women are underrepresented in specific CTE fields. The findings of this study indicated two distinct aspects of the classroom environment that helped stew a culture of gender microaggressions: the instructor pedagogy and communication style, and the impact of physical space. Physical structure, instructor pedagogy, and communication create an environment that often emphasizes and perpetuates social norms connecting men and masculinity to CTE and science, technology, engineering, and math education (STEM), which historically have been male-dominated environments. Results from this study extend the research on microaggressions and learning environments and fill a significant gap on gender and CTE.     

Modeling Secondary Students’ Genetics Learning in a Game-Based Environment: Integrating the Expectancy-Value Theory of Achievement Motivation and Flow Theory

Journal of Science Education and Technology - This study examined students’ genetics learning in a game-based environment by exploring the connections between the expectancy-value theory of...     

How politicized studies enforce conformity: Interviews with Lulius Lester and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

Editor's Note: At Emory University, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese built a women's studies program notable for its ideological openness and high standards. In February 1992, Prof. Fox-Genovese resigned as chair of that program, in response to irresistible pressures for a more ideologically defined program. This reminded us of the earlier case of Julius Lester, who left Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1988 under pressure after he accused certain black leaders of antisemitism. In the following interviews we asked Professors Lester and Fox-Genovese for their assessment of those events.     

Challenges of Implementing Contract Policies for University Academics in Malawi: A Case of Mzuzu University

Utilising critical theory, we explored the causes of the conflict that arose between academic staff on fixed-term renewable contracts and university administrators at Mzuzu University in Malawi in order to draw lessons. We collected data using semi-structured, in-depth interviews and document analysis. Ten university employees were purposively selected for interviews. The results showed that the causes of the conflict were, in the view of the respondents a mixture of: 1) a mutually antagonistic relationship between academics and university administrators; 2) less-than-effective administration of contracts by the university leadership; 3) dispute with respect to the university council’s views over the age of staff on contract; and 4) the university leadership’s negative response to a group of academics who criticised the administration. We argue that these results suggest leadership skills were less-than-satisfactory on the part of university senior management. We offer suggestions that could improve such leadership skills.     

Effects of marijuana use during pregnancy on newborn cry

The effects of maternal marijuana use on the newborn cry were studied in Jamaica, where it was possible to rule out confounding factors such as the use of other substances and demographic variables that have clouded previous studies and where higher dosages may make the effects more visible. The acoustic characteristics of the cries of 20 infants of marijuana users and 20 controls were analyzed. The cries of the infants of marijuana users were shorter, had a higher percentage of dysphonation, a higher and more variable fundamental frequency, and a lower first formant than controls. There was also a dose response relation between the first formant and marijuana use. We suggest that heavy marijuana use affects the neurophysiological integrity of the infant.     

Film Screenwriting

Rolando Giustini, The Film Script: A Writer's Guide (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice- Hall, 1980 -- $6.95 paper).

Tom Stempel, Screenwriter: The Life and Times of Nunnally Johnson (San biego: A. S. Barnes, 1980 -- $12.00 hardcover).

Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980 -- $12.50 hardcover).

David Lees and Stan Berkowitz, The Movie Business (New York: Vintage, 1981 -- $4.95).

Film & Literature

Gene D. Phillips, Hemingway and Film (New York: Ungar, 1981 $9.95/$4.95).

Jeffrey Egan Welch, Literature and Film: An Annotated Bibliography, 1909-1977 (New York: Garland, 1981 -- $40.00).