The local TV station as an organizational self: Promoting corporate image via Instagram

Television stations are increasingly using social media platforms for a variety of reasons. This study examined more than 4,300 visuals posted to the Instagram sites of 383 local TV stations in the United States. The analysis found that news and promotion were the top themes of the posts. Using Goffman’s (1959) presentation of self as a theoretical foundation, this study found that visuals coded as frontstage received more likes and comments than backstage visuals. Small market stations featured more promotion visuals than large and medium markets. Large market stations featured more lifestyle, community, and news posts than the other market sizes.     

The many pathways of academic coordination

Faculties, departments, chairs and other operating segments of academic systems are organized around a large number of disparate specialties. The parts are weakly interdependent, since the task structure generates systems in which operations are loosely coupled. Coordination then becomes an unusual problem. Order may be more emergent than planned, and stabilized by emotional and symbolic bonds as much as by administrative structure. Various groups and processes not normally studied as a part of deliberate coordination are involved in the ordering of academic activities and actions. This paper details four major pathways of coordination: by bureaucracy, profession, politics, and the market. All four are involved in all national academic systems, but in widely varying strengths and combinations. The bureaucratic means are well-known, reflected in the formal administrative structures of institutions and systems. Professional coordination is rooted in subject expertise and in the group relations and devices that allow professors to rule at various levels. Political coordination has many sub-forms, with the struggle of interest groups expressed particularly in the actions of regular officials of regimes and parties, the corporatist relations of external groups to government, and the organized efforts of strata within academic systems to act politically. Market coordination also has a variety of sub-forms, operating particularly by means of a consumer market, a labor market, and an institutional market. Various compounds of these four major types are evident, including the linkage of such opposites as bureaucracy and market. The many tasks and interests inherent in academic systems are reflected increasingly in the struggle of corresponding ministries, departments, bureaus, and divisions against one another within government itself. This struggle, too, is a form of coordination. Since each of the major pathways of coordination performs needed functions, policy becomes a matter of balance and mutual adjustment among the many ways by which academic activities are concerted.Edited version of a plenary address given at the Fourth International Conference on Higher Education, University of Lancaster, 29th August–1st September, 1978. I am indebted to my colleagues in the Yale Higher Education Research Group for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Imposed-inquiry Information-seeking Self-efficacy and Performance of College Students: A Review of the Literature

Information literacy is a constellation of skills related to information use, one of which is information seeking. Proficiency in information seeking alone is not sufficient, though, because having the procedural knowledge necessary to complete a task is irrelevant without the confidence to act on that knowledge. Despite its importance, researchers have only begun investigating information-seeking self-efficacy in the last few decades, and multiple studies have demonstrated the importance of information literacy instruction in developing self-efficacy. How and why self-efficacy changes are key questions in this line of research, and both require a reliable and valid method of measuring self-efficacy, as well as an objective, quantitative measure of performance. Multiple researchers have addressed this issue in their research, often in relationship with another topic, including the efficacy of different pedagogical approaches, the relationship between self-efficacy and performance, human-computer interaction with search systems, and the interrelationships between self-efficacy and multiple other variables. Although progress has been made, a great deal of research is required to properly understand the relationship between self-efficacy and performance, and the complex interrelationships with other factors, which would allow for the development of better information literacy instruction.     

Correction to: Balancing the Environment: Computational Models as Interactive Participants in a STEM Classroom

Journal of Science Education and Technology - The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The citation and bibliographic information of this reference is missing in the...     

The Relationship of Content Characteristics of GRE Analytical Reasoning Items to Their Difficulties and Discriminations

In actual test development practice, the number o f test items that must be developed and pretested is typically greater, and sometimes much greater, than the number that is eventually judged suitable for use in operational test forms. This has proven to be especially true for one item type–analytical reasoning-that currently forms the bulk of the analytical ability measure of the GRE General Test. This study involved coding the content characteristics of some 1,400 GRE analytical reasoning items. These characteristics were correlated with indices of item difficulty and discrimination. Several item characteristics were predictive of the difficulty of analytical reasoning items. Generally, these same variables also predicted item discrimination, but to a lesser degree. The results suggest several content characteristics that could be considered in extending the current specifications for analytical reasoning items. The use of these item features may also contribute to greater efficiency in developing such items. Finally, the influence of these various characteristics also provides a better understanding of the construct validity of the analytical reasoning item type.     

Impact of intervening learning on resurgence in humans with Autism Spectrum Disorders

In the present study, we investigated the degree to which responding would resurge in children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) following an intervening training period comprising different schedules of reinforcement. Twenty-four children of the ages 7–15, with a diagnosis of an ASD, were taught a play a sequence on a variable ratio- (VR) 3 schedule of reinforcement, during a 30-min session. The play sequence was then extinguished before the participants were taught a second play sequence, using a VR-4 schedule for 30 min, a VR-4 schedule for 60 min, or a VR-2 schedule for 30 min. A 5-min extinction session was then conducted to determine the impact that the intervening schedules had on the resurgence of the original behavior. The original sequence resurged to a greater extent for Group VR-4 30 min than it did for the other two groups. The results provide evidence that the length of time between initial training and testing is not a prime determinant of the level of resurgence, but that the amount of conditioning may play a stronger role: The greater the number of reinforcers received, the smaller the resurgence effect.     

From opportunity to reality: transition into engineering education,trauma or transformation?

ABSTRACT

Transition into university can prove to be a challenging time for young people entering engineering education, irrespective of previous educational experience or demographic background. It is such challenges that this article considers. Commencing by looking at the pragmatic issues associated with transition, the question of whether starting university is a time of transformation or trauma for new engineering students is discussed. Following this, a conceptual framework grounded in the authors previous work depicts a tripartite approach to transition, identifying three interlinked phases that new students typically encounter. The conclusion suggests that through the introduction of realistic and socially relevant engineering activities, transition into engineering education is the ideal time to turn opportunity into reality for new students.