Voice in Digital Education: The Impact of Instructor's Perceived Age and Gender on Student Learning and Evaluation

Instructor evaluations are influenced by implicit age and gender bias, with lower ratings and negative feedback given to instructors believed to stray from stereotypical age and gender norms. Female instructors exhibiting typically male-associated qualities such as leadership and authority, are often negatively impacted. Implicit bias also influences evaluation of digital resources and instructors, regardless of students' positive learning outcomes. As digital learning resources become the norm in education, it is crucial to explore the impact of implicit bias at various educational levels. In this study, undergraduate and graduate students were randomly exposed to one of five digital tutorials; four experimental tutorials presenting identical anatomy content with narrators of different gender and age, and a control tutorial featuring origami (paper folding) instructions without audio. Learning outcomes were measured by pre-quiz vs. post-quiz comparisons using repeated measures MANOVA. Implicit bias was analyzed by evaluation response comparisons using repeated measures MANOVA and three-way MANOVA. Post-quiz scores increased significantly in the four experimental groups (P < 0.05) but not in the control (P = 0.99). The increased performance was not statistically different across the four experimental groups (P > 0.26), suggesting that learning occurred irrespective of the instructor gender and age. Students' evaluations were consistently higher for the experimental resources than the control. There was no significant difference in evaluations across the four experimental groups but compared to the control, younger male and younger female narrators received significantly higher ratings for approachability, acceptance, inclusivity, and care for student learning. The study highlights important considerations for digital resources development and interpretation of student evaluations.     

Researching graduate destinations using LinkedIn: an exploratory analysis of South African chemical engineering graduates

Surveys of graduate destinations typically suffer from relatively low response rates and therefore this study sought to develop a new methodology for tracking graduate destinations using LinkedIn. Research in this area with engineering graduates has also been limited, and thus this study, focusing on chemical engineering graduates from the University of Cape Town, brings new insights to a debate usually characterised by untested assumptions. Following the graduating cohorts from 2006 to 2012, it was shown that about a quarter go on to postgraduate studies. Of those that proceed to the workplace, the vast majority go into traditional graduate chemical engineering jobs in operations, mostly in the petrochemical and mining sectors in this South African context. The study sought to determine the potential impact of the 2008 recession on these graduate destinations but the results are inconclusive in that regard.     

Leveraging sport events for tourism gain in host cities: a regime perspective

ABSTRACT

Proponents often claim that bidding for and hosting sport events have an overall capacity to generate a variety of benefits for cities and regions. Despite limited empirical evidence to support these assertions, cities continue to vie for hosting rights. In an effort to maximise the benefits of hosting, host cities have adopted a strategic approach to event planning and management referred to as event leveraging. A critical concern raised in the leveraging literature is how event-related strategies fit with the broader tourism development agenda of cities and regions, and how they are implemented. This paper uses Urban Regime Theory (URT) to understand how and why cities seek to host events, and how the process of leveraging is undertaken to maximise the benefits of hosting. Viewing events and strategies in the context of regimes, highlights why some cities and regions have been successful in leveraging sport events for tourism gain over time and, importantly, why some have not. This paper synthesises the existing body of work on tourism-based sport event leveraging, identifies three ways academic research has explored leveraging, and uses regime theory as a lens to further our understanding of the leverage process in host cities.     

Is That Even Checkable? An Experimental Study in Identifying Checkable Statements in Political Discourse

The first step in journalistic fact-checking of political discourse is identifying whether statements contain “checkable facts” (i.e., not opinions). This randomized controlled experiment investigated how different demographic factors (age, gender, education, profession, and political affiliation) are associated with the ability to discern if statements contained checkable or noncheckable facts, as well as what impact training in identifying checkable facts can have on overall outcomes. A total of 3,357 participants identified checkable and noncheckable statements from a fictional political speech extract containing eight statements. Overall, participants were able to correctly identify an average of 69% of statements. Specific demographic factors (being male, young, and university educated) were positively associated with increased performance as well as working in professions that commonly analyze data, such as research. Participating in a short training session significantly increased participants’ performance. Initial political affiliation slightly reduces the ability to assess whether statements made by named politicians contained checkable facts.     

Information-seeking behavior of basic science researchers: implications for library services

Objectives:

This study examined the information-seeking behaviors of basic science researchers to inform the development of customized library services.

Methods:

A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews was conducted on a sample of basic science researchers employed at a university medical school.

Results:

The basic science researchers used a variety of information resources ranging from popular Internet search engines to highly technical databases. They generally relied on basic keyword searching, using the simplest interface of a database or search engine. They were highly collegial, interacting primarily with coworkers in their laboratories and colleagues employed at other institutions. They made little use of traditional library services and instead performed many traditional library functions internally.

Conclusions:

Although the basic science researchers expressed a positive attitude toward the library, they did not view its resources or services as integral to their work. To maximize their use by researchers, library resources must be accessible via departmental websites. Use of library services may be increased by cultivating relationships with key departmental administrative personnel. Despite their self-sufficiency, subjects expressed a desire for centralized information about ongoing research on campus and shared resources, suggesting a role for the library in creating and managing an institutional repository.

Highlights

• Basic science researchers rely on a small network of individuals in their institution and at other institutions to satisfy their information needs.
• Basic science researchers tend to ignore institutional boundaries when searching for information and do not necessarily view the library as the primary source of scholarly information.
• Basic science researchers use the interlibrary loan service regularly but otherwise rarely use traditional library services such as mediated literature searching and instruction.

Implications

• The library must establish a presence in researchers'' work environments, rather than expect them to seek out library resources and services.
• The increased emphasis by funding agencies on clinical translational science may impact the information needs of basic science researchers in the future.
• Libraries have an opportunity to capitalize on their positive reputation and basic scientists'' desire for more centralized information to create new information resources and services such as institutional repositories.

     

Jo Handelsman

Note from the Editor

Educator Highlights for CBE-LSE show how professors at different kinds of institutions educate students in life sciences with inspiration and panache. If you have a particularly creative teaching portfolio yourself, or if you wish to nominate an inspiring colleague to be profiled, please e-mail Laura Hoopes at lhoopes@pomona.edu.LH: You are deeply involved with the HHMI Teaching Fellows Program at Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching (Pfund et al., 2009 ), and you''ve coauthored a book about scientific teaching (Handelsman et al., 2006 ). How do you teach people to teach in your summer institutes?Handelsman: The HHMI Graduate Teaching Fellows Program teaches graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to apply theories of learning to classroom practice. The fellows set learning goals and assess whether they''re achieved. It''s theory, then practice.LH: Can you explain a little more about how it works?Handelsman: The program starts with eight weeks of a course, “Teaching Biology” in which the fellows learn about education principles and then practice on each other applying those principles. Then they go on to design their own materials, and finally, in the second semester, use that material in teaching students. In our qualitative and quantitative analysis of their teaching philosophy, we see little change after the first semester. But there is radical improvement after they put their ideas into practice in the second part. People learn by doing.LH: How about a specific example of how the fellows develop materials.Handelsman: There''s a choice of venues, but let''s say one picks the honors biology course. They identify a technical problem, such as explaining Southern, Northern, and Western blotting. Our fellows then develop active-learning materials to address a challenging concept and test them in the classroom, often in multiple sections of a class. They refine and retest them. Another fellow might choose “Microbes Rule,” a course developed by fellows, which teaches about bacteria, viruses, and fungi. That fellow develops learning goals about antibiotic resistance, flu, or contaminated peanut butter, and designs classroom materials to achieve these goals.Open in a separate windowJo Handelsman, HHMI Professor, Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI.LH: Do the teaching fellows find the work difficult?Handelsman: It''s a challenge for them to narrow down to a workable subtopic. We work with them to focus on the learning goals, asking “The students will know and be able to do what at the end of this unit?”LH: Did you learn this method of focusing on goals when you were being trained?Handelsman: No, most of us were never taught to consider goals for learning. So in training our fellows, we direct them to focus on that over and over, and ask how their plans relate to the goals. It''s backward design—think about what you want to achieve, then think about how to get there.LH: Assessment is becoming more important at universities and colleges all over the country. How do you teach the fellows to use it?Handelsman: Students design their own instruments. They develop skills to determine whether their goals are being met. We go over the tools with them repeatedly, identify potential downfalls, let them implement, and then review the results to see if they obtained the information needed to determine whether their teaching worked.LH: What kind of questions do they tend to use for assessment?Handelsman: Exam-type questions are important, whether taken as an examination or in a questionnaire. Videos of student presentations with reviewers who score on effectiveness are also useful. We ask how the fellows know if the students understood the material, and how the evidence relates to each of their learning goals.LH: How do they evaluate and incorporate input from past assessment?Handelsman: Before using an instrument for assessment, the fellows develop a rubric to score the quality of the answers. Often they decide to share this rubric with the students. They want to show the students what goal the assessment is addressing, what is an adequate answer, what is an outstanding answer. Then they discuss with their peers how to use this feedback to improve their teaching.LH: I''ve heard faculty members at other places saying that they do lots of assessment but don''t know what to do with it after they are forced to collect the information.Handelsman: I''d suggest that they do less and use it more! Not using assessment results is like designing a new experiment but ignoring your earlier results. If we have the information to improve our teaching, we should use it.LH: A lot of interviews for faculty positions ask for a teaching philosophy. It sounds like your fellows are well-positioned to answer these questions.Handelsman: Yes, they have to write their teaching philosophy several times, discuss it with the other fellows, and rewrite. The fellows have been very successful in obtaining positions.LH: Have you had undergraduate research students?Handelsman: Yes, it''s one of the most important academic activities in which students take part—anything hands-on is good, but undergraduate research is the best because it incorporates inquiry, discovery, real scientific processes. It plays into curiosity. It''s such a rewarding process to watch a student in the research lab! It''s a powerful thing to see them learn and grow into scientists over the course of a semester or two.LH: What motivated you to take on undergraduate research students at the start?Handelsman: I started undergraduate research myself in my first year of college—I walked into a lab and asked to do experiments. The difference between doing research and reading about it is so dramatic. I''ve always assumed that part of the structure of an academic lab is undergraduate involvement. Interestingly, I sometimes give the undergraduates riskier projects than the graduate students, who have more to lose if their projects fail.LH: Thanks for sharing your insights into teaching with CBE-LSE.     

Ron Hoy

Note from the Editor