Issues and problems of the urban university

The concept of the urban university attuned to the needs of the metropolitan area in which it lives and dedicated to serving that population has existed for some time. Yet, many unresolved feeling and issues about affiliation with this type of institution still exist for some university officials and faculty members. To fulfill its mission as an urban university, an institution must be willing to evaluate its existing operational procedures and programs. Special emphasis in the evaluation process needs to focus upon instructional activities, faculty concerns, student services, and public service to the community. Special attention to these areas will produce an urban university with the potential of exerting a tremendous positive impact on both the student and the community it serves.     

Preenrollment variables and academic performance as predictors of freshman year persistence,early withdrawal,and stopout behavior in an urban,nonresidential university

Multiple group discriminant analysis was employed to determine the utility of preenrollment traits and academic performance in identifying freshman students who persisted, stopped out, or withdrew early from an urban, nonresidential university. An equation based on nine preenrollment variables significantly discriminated among the three groups and correctly identified 48.1% of an independent validation sample (p<.001 for the hypothesis that overall correct classification was a significant improvement on chance). The clearest separation based on preenrollment traits was between stopouts on the one hand and both persisters and withdrawals on the other. It was only after first-quarter academic performance was added to preenrollment traits that a sharp discrimination was found between persisters and early voluntary withdrawals.     

SUCCESS IN COLLEGE MATHEMATICS: Comparisons Between Remedial and Nonremedial First-Year College Students

Recent international comparisons show that themathematics achievement of American students is belowthe international average. In response to thissituation, the present study compared first-year college students enrolled in remedial-type mathematicscourses with their counterparts enrolled in nonremedialcoursework. Findings include that students enrolled innonremedial mathematics courses enter the institution with many advantages over students enrolled inremedial mathematics. Tests of a path analytic modelconfirmed that background variables play a major role indetermining success in college mathematics.     

Adaptation of a computer programming course to the ESHE requirements: evaluation five years later

In the academic year 2010–2011, Spain finished the process of introducing the regulatory changes derived from the Bologna Declaration and the new European Space for Higher Education (ESHE). These changes have implied the updating of university degrees’ structure as well as the inclusion of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). This paper describes the process of adaptation of two basic first-semester core subjects of computer engineering to one of the basic aspects of the ESHE, the adoption of the ECTS. The process described in the paper was developed in the framework of the pilot plan undertaken by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona between 2005 and 2010. The proposed course design implies a better coordination and integration of the contents of two different subjects that students follow simultaneously, and it is based on the combination of project-based learning and cooperative learning. After the experience finished, an extended quantitative and qualitative analysis of the academic results over the five-year period has shown an improvement in the students’ learning outcomes.     

The expression of localism: Local TV news coverage in the new video marketplace

The emergence of a new video marketplace raises questions about the commitment of local TV news organizations to the FCC localism doctrine. Local news coverage at ten Pennsylvania stations in 1992 was content analyzed and compared with 1976 data collected by Adams (1980). Results indicate that stations devoted more coverage to outlying market areas in 1992 than in 1976, but emphasized sensationalism/human interest stories at the expense of local public affairs issues.     

The effects of instruction on situation model construction: an eye fixation study on text comprehension in primary school children

This study examined whether the formation of a situation model can be encouraged by a situation‐focused instruction in primary school children. To achieve this, the standard reading‐for‐comprehension instruction was adapted so that it would emphasise the importance of imagination in narrative text comprehension. The results showed that the situational instruction enhanced the situation model construction abilities in good comprehenders in such a way that it improved not only their memory for the situation model but also the ease with which they filled in the gaps in time and space that appeared in the narratives. In poor comprehenders, the situational instruction led to a redistribution of attentional resources allocated to textbase‐ and situation‐level processing. It was suggested that this caused them to go beyond encoding the explicit text and instead construct a situation model from it, and that they did so without enriching the model with general‐knowledge inferences as much as good comprehenders.     

Reevaluation of von Willebrand disease diagnosis in a Croatian paediatric cohort combining bleeding scores,phenotypic laboratory assays and next generation sequencing: a pilot study

IntroductionThis study reevaluated von Willebrand disease (vWD) diagnosis in a Croatian paediatric cohort by combining bleeding scores (BS), phenotypic laboratory testing, and next-generation sequencing (NGS).Materials and methodsA total of 25 children (11 males and 14 females, median age 10 years, from 2 to 17) previously diagnosed with vWD were included. BS were calculated using an online bleeding assessment tool. Phenotypic laboratory analyses included platelet count, platelet function analyser closure times, prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time, von Willebrand factor antigen (vWF:Ag), vWF gain-of-function mutant glycoprotein Ib binding activity (vWF:GPIbM), vWF collagen binding activity (vWF:CBA), factor VIII activity (FVIII:C) and multimeric analysis. Next-generation sequencing covered regions of both vWF and FVIII genes and was performed on MiSeq (Illumina, San Diego, USA).ResultsDisease-associated variants identified in 15 patients comprised 11 distinct heterozygous vWF gene variants in 13 patients and one novel FVIII gene variant (p.Glu2085Lys) in two male siblings. Four vWF variants were novel (p.Gln499Pro, p.Asp1277Tyr, p.Asp1277His, p.Lys1491Glu). Three patients without distinctive variants had vWF:GPIbM between 30 and 50%. Patients with identified vWF gene variants had statistically significant lower values of vWF:GPIbM (P = 0.002), vWF:Ag (P = 0.007), vWF:CBA (P < 0.001) and FVIII:C (P = 0.002), compared to those without. Correlations between BS and phenotypic laboratory test results were not statistically significant for either of the tests.ConclusionThe applied diagnostic approach confirmed the diagnosis of vWD in 13 patients and mild haemophilia A in two. Limited utility of BS in the paediatric population was evidenced.     

CAI - multimedia approach to farm tractor and machinery safety certification

Research was conducted at Purdue University with the primary goal to compare a newly developed self-instructional CAI/multimedia computer program with traditional instructional methods for use by youth enrolled in a farm tractor and machinery safety program. Seventy-two subjects selected from three 8th and 9th grade agricultural education classes and one group of middle school-aged youth (grades 6–19) involved in a 4-H tractor and machinery-related program were randomly divided, with half of each group receiving traditional instructor-based training using printed materials, videos, and demonstrations, and the other half receiving self-instruction with a computer program. A pretest and post test evaluation revealed that there was not a statistical difference in knowledge gained between the two instructional strategies. However, an analysis of low, middle and high achievement youth, based on knowledge gain, did reveal significant difference between the two instructional strategies. Subjects from the computer-based instructional method dominated both high and low achievement groups, while the traditional instructional method subjects tended to fall into the middle achievement group.