Effect of U-Pace Instruction on Academic Success,Learning, and Perceptions in Younger and Older Undergraduates

A randomized controlled trial was conducted to determine the efficacy of U-Pace instruction for older undergraduates, ages 25 and older, and younger undergraduates, ages 18 to 24. Additionally, change in learner perceptions across the semester, an outcome not reported in the literature on U-Pace instruction, was investigated. In both younger and older undergraduates U-Pace instruction produced greater learning, greater academic success, and sustained or improved students’ perceptions of themselves as learners compared with Face-to-Face instruction. The findings provide strong support for the efficacy of U-Pace instruction in younger and older students and highlight a possible mechanism underlying U-Pace instruction’s effects on learning and academic success.     

Stasis in Space! Viewing Definitional Conflicts Surrounding the James Webb Space Telescope Funding Debate

During 2010 and 2011, debate ensued over funding for National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This article uses stasis theory to analyze reports and statements produced by NASA, politicians, and scientists. The analysis reveals that an official report addresses stasis questions and guides further action. Additionally, varying perspectives on the telescope suggest that definitions play a crucial role in technology funding debates. This analysis demonstrates that stasis theory provides a productive tool for analyzing technology policy debates.     

Student difficulty in constructing proofs: The need for strategic knowledge

The ability to construct proofs is an important skill for all mathematicians. Despite its importance, students have great difficulty with this task. In this paper, I first demonstrate that undergraduates often are aware of and able to apply the facts required to prove a statement but still fail to prove it. They thus fail to construct a proof because they could not use the syntactic knowledge that they had. By comparing doctoral students and undergraduates constructing proofs in abstract algebra, I have hypothesized four types of `strategic knowledge' – knowledge of how to choose which facts and theorems to apply – which the doctoral students appeared to possess and undergraduates did not. The doctoral students appeared to know the powerful proof techniques in abstract algebra, which theorems are most important, when particular facts and theorems are likely to be useful, and when one should or should not try and prove theorems using symbol manipulation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Output-sensitive autocompletion search

We consider the following autocompletion search scenario: imagine a user of a search engine typing a query; then with every keystroke display those completions of the last query word that would lead to the best hits, and also display the best such hits. The following problem is at the core of this feature: for a fixed document collection, given a set D of documents, and an alphabetical range W of words, compute the set of all word-in-document pairs (w, d) from the collection such that w ∈ W and d ∈ D. We present a new data structure with the help of which such autocompletion queries can be processed, on the average, in time linear in the input plus output size, independent of the size of the underlying document collection. At the same time, our data structure uses no more space than an inverted index. Actual query processing times on a large test collection correlate almost perfectly with our theoretical bound.

The Impact of Relational Characteristics and Reasons for Topic Avoidance on Relational Closeness

Although research suggests that the act of topic avoidance itself has consequences for romantic partners, it seems equally likely that the antecedent conditions underlying these decisions to avoid certain topics also lead to important relational outcomes. Framed by communication boundary management theory, relationship characteristics, motivation for topic avoidance, and implications for relational closeness were examined. Findings indicate that relational commitment characteristics and individuals' reported rationale for topic avoidance are related to perceptions of relational closeness. These results illustrate the importance of understanding the underlying factors that motivate the decision to engage in topic avoidance and their impact on romantic relationships.     

The relationships of trait verbal aggressiveness and frequency of viewing and enjoyment of television sitcoms

Verbal aggressiveness is the tendency to attack the self‐concept of another person with the intent to inflict psychological pain (Infante & Wigley, 1986). This study focused on how low and high verbally aggressives differ in the television sitcoms they watch and how enjoyable they find those shows. Participants (N = 555) first completed the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale. Then they were asked how often they watch particular television sitcoms and if they watched a given sitcom, how entertaining they found that show to be. The sitcoms included in this study were those that were televised in April 1996. Of the 33 shows included in the analyses, low verbal aggressives differed from high verbal aggressives on 8 shows for frequency of watching and on 11 shows for entertainment value.     

Communcating emotional support and its relationship to feelings of being understood,trust, and self‐disclosure

The communicating of emotional support would seem to be an aspect of any successful relationship. Additionally, it would seem to reason that how one communicates emotional support would be an aspect of a relationship pertinent to communication research. Unfortunately, there is very little empirical evidence that illuminates how this is related to other relational outcomes such as trust. Weber and Patterson (1996) first developed a measure that taps into how much emotional support one receives from a specific other. In their initial scale development piece the authors validate the Communication Based Emotional Support Scale (CBESS) by finding positive correlations with both relationship solidarity and relationship satisfaction. This current study aimed to further validate the CBESS by exploring its relationship to trust, self‐disclosure, and feelings of being understood.