Student feedback in the college classroom: A technology solution

Technology in the university classrooms has made great strides in the area of presentation of materials. Ceiling-mounted projectors and media carts with projection capabilities have made the multimedia classroom presentation a routine event for much of the worl of higher education. Now there is technology that permits the instructor to solicit student responses during class via wireless keypads. This allows all students to respond simultaneously and the instructor to know the results immediately. This article reports the results of a pilot study on student reaction to a specific system (LearnStar). Students were uniformly positive in their appraisal of this technology as a teaching tool. The proposal for a classroom with LearnStar capability was funded by the Auburn University College of Liberal Arts. The College has a technology fund to encourage development of new and innovative technologies.     

Privatizing Benefit and Socializing Cost: Market Education as Rent Seeking

The current movement toward increasing privatization in general and market education in particular has been extensively examined in terms of its neoliberal roots and incompatibility with the aims of public, democratic education. This analysis presents a different critique, one that draws upon current economic theory and research to challenge the most fundamental assumptions and claims of market education. Contrary to presumed virtues of profit, competition and choice, we argue that the forces of rent seeking in the market model of education do not operate according to these principles and are exacerbating structures of inequality and segregation. We outline an alternative conceptual framework for understanding this model.     

Student evaluations of teaching: the impact of faculty procedures on response rates

In the last 10–15 years, many institutions of higher education have switched from paper-and-pencil methods to online methods of administering student evaluations of teaching (SETs). One consequence has been a significant reduction in the response rates to such instruments. The current study was conducted to identify whether offering in-class time to students to complete online SETs would increase response rates. A quasi-experiment (nonequivalent group design) was conducted in which one group of tenured faculty instructed students to bring electronic devices with internet capabilities on a specified day and offered in-class time to students to complete online SETs. A communication protocol for faculty members’ use was developed and implemented. A comparison group of tenured faculty who did not offer in-class time for SET completion was identified and the difference-in-differences method was used to compare the previous year’s response rates for the same instructor teaching the same course across the two groups. Response rates were substantially higher when faculty provided in-class time to students to complete SETs. These results indicate that high response rates can be obtained for online SETs submitted by students in face-to-face classes if faculty communicate the importance of SETs in both their words and actions.     

Disaster,civil society and education in China: A case study of an independent non-government organization working in the aftermath of the Wenchuan earthquake

In May 2008 nearly 90,000 people died in the most powerful earthquake in modern Chinese history. Many were students killed in substandard schools, creating a sensitive disaster zone inside a nation whose civil society organizations are beginning to flourish. This paper examines the education earthquake relief program of an international NGO, and the institutional environment the organization worked in. We argue that the restricted environment prevented implementation of high-impact programs in the most deprived places, but that the NGO needed to use the institutional opening created by the earthquake to establish a presence as an agent in China's development.     

Toxic Portraits: Resisting Multiple Invisibilities in the Environmental Justice Movement

This essay conceptualizes “toxic portraits,” close-up, in situ photographs of people in toxically assaulted places. Toxic portraits articulate the multiple invisibilities attending environmental injustice through a series of visible indexical signs. As a result, toxic portraits enable spectators to see the precariousness of life as dramatized in human relationships to the environments in which we live. Drawing on the “subjunctive voice of the visual” as a rhetorical heuristic, I conceptualize the productive space created by toxic portraits and ultimately argue that these images invite an ethically inflected response to the dangers of living in a polluted world.     

Difficult Interactions between IRBs and Investigators: Applications and Solutions

This essay describes efforts by the University of Iowa administration and Human Subjects Office to adapt review procedures and interpret federal regulations in ways that were appropriate to the distinctive methodologies of social science and humanistic research, including applied research. Two moments of significant change in those procedures are described and several recommendations are offered for addressing the difficulties institutional review boards and applied researchers encounter when they interact: ask questions and be prepared to respond to them, in person when necessary; be reasonable and accountable and assume the other side is too; recognize that human subjects protection is complicated and that real risks are posed by procedures sometimes assumed to be risk-free by nature. The importance of an adequately funded, well-trained staff is emphasized as the precursor to all of those measures.     

Background Noise Acceptance and Personality Factors Involved in Library Environment Choices by College Students

For decades, academic libraries made efforts to provide study environments differing in acoustic environment. The present study aimed to provide an evidence basis for this practice by comparing background noise acceptance and personality factors of two groups of college-aged students self identified as preferring quiet or background noise when performing cognitive tasks. Twenty young adult college students participated. Each participant completed background noise assessment (reading and listening) and personality assessment (five factor inventory, locus of control, and self-control). Results of the present study indicate that personality factors are not related to an individual's acoustic environment preference while studying; however, background noise acceptance measured while reading and while listening to speech was related to study environment choice. Findings of the present study indicate that students accurately self-assess their acoustic study environment needs. This evidence indicates that academic libraries should continue to offer multiple acoustic study environments for college students.