The Development and Application of Distance Learning Courses on the Internet

This paper presents the methodology, results and difficulties encountered in the development and delivery of a course through the Internet. The course, which is about the application of information technology to education, is being delivered using the AulaNet environment, which is groupware for the creation, participation and maintenance of Web-based courses. A model for group work is provided. This paper also shows how this kind of environment can be used to provide support, and to facilitate and manage cooperative learning.     

From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultural Conversation

Increasing commercial industry concern about corporate underwriting of public television productions has focused attention again on the overall funding situation in public broadcasting. Here the author, a doctoral student at Temple University's School of Communications and Theater, provides a broad introduction to the background, problems, and prospects for foundation support of non‐commercial broadcasting in the U.S. In a forthcoming second part of this article, she will focus specifically on the commanding role of the Ford Foundation, biggest giver in the field.     

Design Decisions in Developing Learning Trajectories–Based Assessments in Mathematics: A Case Study

This article analyzes the design decisions of a team developing diagnostic assessments for a learning trajectory focused on rational number reasoning. The analysis focuses on the design rationale for key decisions about how to develop the cognitive assessments and related validity arguments within a fluid state and national policy context. The study draws on ethnographic methods adapted from science, technology, and society studies to document key rationales for decisions. For this team, concerns about the validity of both the assessments and the hypothetical trajectory, anticipated uses of the assessments, and the available distribution of resources and expertise to different project activities were all considerations for significant design decisions throughout the project. The study findings suggest that success in the design of trajectories-based assessments depends on teams’ attention to balancing core design activities with engagement in the external policy environment, balancing precision with utility for diagnosis in defining the levels of a trajectory, and balancing the goals of supporting and assessing student learning.     

Teacher Scaffolding in Small-Group Work: An Intervention Study

Adapting support contingently to student needs by first diagnosing their current understanding, that is, scaffolding, is considered a key aspect of excellent teaching. The use of classroom scaffolding is rare, however. We therefore investigated the benefits to teachers of a professional development program that was based upon a model of contingent teaching (MCT) with the following 4 steps: diagnostic strategies, checking of diagnoses, giving contingent support, and checking of student learning. In our experimental study, 17 of 30 teachers participated in this program. All of the teachers (prevocational education; teaching social studies) taught the same 5-lesson project on the European Union. The frequency and quality of their use of the 4 steps from the MCT were then compared. The teachers who worked with the MCT increased their teaching quality more than the teachers who did not participate, especially with regard to the steps of contingent teaching. They also showed more complete cycles of contingent teaching at postmeasurement than the other teachers. Less successful teachers showed a tendency to provide less support because they mistakenly thought that prompting was not part of scaffolding. Future scaffolding research and professional development efforts aimed at promoting scaffolding can benefit from the MCT, provided that teachers’ understanding of scaffolding is closely monitored.     

RESEARCH AND LEARNING INFORMATION RESOURCES: BOOK REVIEWS

The integrity of Career and Technical programs in Mississippi has increased in large part due to the implementation of research-based practices in both the curriculum and assessment processes. The use of standard measures has increased the likelihood that postsecondary instructors and administrators accept articulated credit, and secondary instructors are more comfortable using a standard for students across the state. Beginning with only a handful of courses has been positive because problems and other issues can be addressed quickly and easily. Both secondary and postsecondary instructors are included on the curriculum writing and revision teams, which has improved communication. Another benefit of this process has been the ease of transition for students from secondary to postsecondary in program areas. Although articulation is still a “work in progress” in Mississippi, consistency and communication has improved the development process and the benefits to students.     

Current Issues and the Veterinary Medical Library

Special Libraries, Special Challenges is a column dedicated to exploring the unique public services challenges that arise in libraries that specialize in a particular subject, such as law, medicine, business, and so forth. In each column, the author will discuss public service dilemmas and solutions that arise specifically in given subject libraries, while drawing links to how such issues affect librarianship in general. Special or subject-matter librarians interested in authoring a piece for this column are invited to contact Melissa K. Aho at aho@umn.edu

André J. Nault has been the head of the Veterinary Medical Library at the University of Minnesota since 2005 and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences. He has a background in wildlife research and veterinary practice management. His current research interests include veterinary informatics and open access. André holds a MLIS from the University of Rhode Island and can be reached at naulta@umn.edu

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Institutional and country collaboration in an online service of scientific profiles: Google Scholar Citations

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and describe the topological properties of the institutional and national collaboration network from the profiles extracted from Google Scholar Citations (GSC). 19,912 unique profiles with “co-authors” were obtained from a web crawl performed in March 2012. Several statistical and network analysis techniques were used to map and analyse these collaboration relationships at the country and institution level. Results show that The United States dominates the world scientific map and that every research institution is grouped by national, geographical and cultural criteria. A clustering phenomenon based on the self-similarity and fractal properties of scale-free networks is also observed. We conclude that GSC is a suitable tool for collaboration studies only at macro level between countries and institutions.     

Internal branding in higher education: dialectical tensions underlying the discursive legitimation of a new brand of student diversity

ABSTRACT

Most studies on branding in higher education focus on external branding or image-building towards external stakeholders such as students. Internal branding is an underexplored topic, even though it should be considered as important as external branding. Internal branding is about achieving the necessary internal support for the external brand. Drawing on the theoretical concept of discursive legitimation, we explore the strategies that contribute to an internally supported new brand with student diversity as brand value. We conducted a case study of a Flemish university college that has (largely) succeeded in achieving internal support for its new external brand of student diversity. Analyzing the case from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis, we specifically zoomed in on the dialectical tensions underlying the discursive legitimation of this new brand. We identified three specific tensions, which illustrate the inherent complexity of the internal branding process: authorization as (dis)empowerment, normalization as (dis)empowerment and moralization as (dis)empowerment.     

Parental beliefs about child development and parental inferences about actions during child-rearing episodes

The way parents’ beliefs on child development support the elaboration of practical inferences during everyday child-rearing episodes was examined. We contrasted two models based respectively on the classical and the connectionist view of schema approaches. According to the classical view, parents activate preformed packages of beliefs in order to produce inferences whereas under the connectionist view, they activate the network of interconnected episodic traces that better fits the information provided by the situation. In the former case, the quality of the inferences depends on the activation of the proper schema whereas in the latter case it depends on the structure of the information given. Two experiments were designed in which parents holding a particular global belief about child development (either constructivism or environmentalism), were presented with a target couple with similar or different views with respect to them. In Experiment 1, constructivist parents bearing in mind the couple’s belief had to judge a set of words describing the couple’s image as parents, their educational goals as well as a number of sentences describing the couple’s child-rearing practices during hypothetical episodes. In Experiment 2, environmentalist parents had to judge the couple’s practices and the amount of information presented about the couple’s ideas as well as its plausibility were manipulated. The results indicate that the accuracy and speed in the production of inferences depends on the information presented in the task. When the information is embedded in episodes and a full, plausible and distinctive account of the couple’s belief are provided, then the production of inferences is performed faster and with more accuracy. The results are discussed in terms of the classical and connectionist views of schema approaches.