“May god have mercy on your soul!” Exploring and teaching a course on the death penalty

Teaching a course with emotive content presents faculty with a number of challenges. This article reflects on the lessons learned when teaching a semester-long course on the death penalty at a liberal arts university in the U.S. South. The course explored cultural, religious, historical, national, and international perspectives on the nature of punishment and the right to execute, the methods used in the death penalty, the efficacy of the death penalty, and future directions. The organization, presentation and teaching aids employed throughout this course sought to ensure an objective stance and focused on improving critical thinking among students.     

The Teacher as Creative Artist: Harold O. Rugg: 1886‐1960

IN AN AGE OF MASS CONSUMPTION In our age of mass consumption, the ubiquity of commodification's many forms establishes and constitutes a significant fact of our everyday existence. A Starbucks on every corner. Between supermarket and superstore, supply almost never a problem. So much merchandise just a mouse click away. Nearly everything having its price. A product for every imaginable problem.     

A Cross-Linguistic Investigation of English Language Learners' Reading Comprehension in English and Spanish

This study investigated the associations of oral language and reading skills with a sample of 282 Spanish-speaking English language learners across 3 years of elementary school. In the 3rd grade, the English and Spanish decoding measures formed two distinct but highly related factors, and the English and Spanish oral language measures formed two factors that showed a small positive correlation between them. The decoding and oral language factors were used to predict the sample's English and Spanish reading comprehension in the 6th grade. The decoding and oral language factors were both significant predictors of reading comprehension in both languages. The within-language effects were larger than the cross-language effects and the cross-language effects were not significant after accounting for the within-language effects.     

亲爱的父亲们,节日快乐!

Hi Brad, The Father's Day is coming.I am always too shy to express my feeling to my father as he,in my eyes,is so serious.Maybe his action has said all for him,and there's so little left to the words.Brad,do you also prefer to have actions instead of words to say everything for you? Please tell me more about your story of being a father.     

你好,夏威夷!

半年不见的Brad又回来了!喜欢旅行和爱好广泛的他,似乎永远都会为我们带来不同的精彩故事和见闻。那让我们依旧跟随他的文字和图片,穿越空间上的距离,一同享受那游走在世界的美丽心情!     

面对不喜欢的团队活动

不少单位和集体都会组织一些团队建设活动,以增强同事间的了解和公司的凝聚力,这些活动常常也是一个职场新人融入新团队的最好时机之一。但是有时候你并不想参加这样的活动,心里会暗自盘算着去还是不去的利弊,那正好来听听有着丰富职场经验的Brad的忠实建议。     

A Guide to Analyzing Message–Response Sequences and Group Interaction Patterns in Computer‐mediated Communication

This paper proposes a set of methods and a framework for evaluating, modeling, and predicting group interactions in computer‐mediated communication. The method of sequential analysis is described along with specific software tools and techniques to facilitate the analysis of message–response sequences. In addition, the Dialogic Theory and its assumptions are presented to establish a theoretical framework and guide to using sequential analysis in computer‐mediated communication research. Step‐by‐step instructions are presented to illustrate how sequential analysis can be used to measure the way latent variables (e.g., message function, response latency, communication style) and exogenous variables (e.g., gender, discourse rules, context) affect how likely a message is to elicit a response, the types of responses elicited by the message, and whether or not the elicited sequence of responses (e.g., claim → challenge → explain) mirror the processes that support group decision‐making, problem‐solving, and learning.