Creating Provider-Neutral Records for E-Books

After boxes of uncataloged microforms were discovered at my library, we learned that many of the titles were available as free electronic books, so I added bibliographic records to the local catalog for the e-versions. Some bibliographic records existed in OCLC WorldCat for the electronic versions, but they were not always provider-neutral. I learned how to create the new provider-neutral record and want to share my experience. Other librarians may want to replicate my project at their institutions, weeding their microforms and supplanting those records with e-book bibliographic records, thereby providing instant online access to these resources for their patrons.     

Hope,optimism and loneliness among first-year college students with learning disabilities: a brief longitudinal study

The goals of the study were to examine personal resources and social distress during the first month in college among students with learning disabilities (LD) and to compare their experiences with non-LD peer. The sample consisted of 335 first-year undergraduate students falling into two groups: 85 students with LD and 250 non-LD students. Questionnaires assessed hope, dispositional optimism and loneliness. We hypothesised that, after participation in a single-session hope intervention workshop, the hope and optimism levels of both students with LD and without LD would increase, while their loneliness would decrease. However, after a month of facing the academic and social demands of their new college environment, we expected that the hope and optimism scores of students with LD would be lower than their peers without LD and that their loneliness scores would be higher. As hypothesised, both groups reported enhanced hope and optimism, as well as lower loneliness, immediately after the workshop. However, students with LD – but not their peers – returned to baseline levels of hope and loneliness after a month. Loneliness after a month predicted lower hope, after controlling predictors from the beginning of the year.     

Lexical decision with left,right and center visual field presentation: a comparison between dyslexic and regular readers by means of electrophysiological and behavioral measures

This study examined the differences in processing between regular and dyslexic readers in a lexical decision task in different visual field presentations (left, right, and center). The research utilized behavioral measures that provide information on accuracy and reaction time and electro-physiological measures that permit the examination of brain activity during cognitive processing. Two groups of university students, regular and dyslexic readers, were matched on age, gender, intelligence, socioeconomic status, and handedness. A lexical decision task was used in order to examine the processes during word recognition. Subjects were required to decide whether a sequence of letters constituted a real word existing in spoken language or whether the stimulus seen was not an accurate word. For the behavioral measures, it was found that the dyslexics read slower and with more errors than the regular readers. Moreover, the ERP components appeared later in dyslexics as compared to regular readers in this task. The performance of the dyslexics improved and even approached that of the regular readers when the stimuli were presented to the left visual field. Thus, it seems that the dyslexics were relying more on their right hemisphere for linguistic processing, whereas the regular readers were relying more on their language areas in the left hemisphere.     

Helpful components involved in the cognitive-experiential model of dream work

The purpose of the study was to examine the helpful components involved in the Hill’s cognitive-experiential dream work model. Participants were 27 volunteer clients from colleges and universities in northern and central parts of Taiwan. Each of the clients received 1–2 sessions of dream interpretations. The cognitive-experiential dream work model was applied to these clients by three therapists. The processes of the dream work were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. The transcribed data, which included a total of 38 sessions for the 27 clients, were analyzed by the Consensus Qualitative Research (CQR) approach to examine the helpful components of the dream work. The results indicated that the general and typical helpful components involved in the process of dream interpretation included four domains: waking-life association, parts of self exploration, gaining insight, and action ideas.     

Florida and Puerto Rico Secondary Science Teachers’ Knowledge and Teaching of Climate Change Science

Misconceptions about climate change science are pervasive among the US public. This study investigated the possibility that these misconceptions may be reflective of science teachers’ knowledge and teaching of climate change science. Florida and Puerto Rico secondary science teachers who claim to teach extensively about climate change were surveyed in regard to their conceptions of climate change science and the climate change-related topics they teach. Results show that many teachers hold naïve views about climate change (e.g. that ozone layer depletion is a primary cause of climate change) and climate change science (e.g. that it must be based on controlled experiments for it to be valid). In addition, teachers in both groups neglect crucial topics such as how evidence for climate change is developed and the social, political, and economic dimensions of climate change. Our results suggest the need for teachers to understand how to teach climate change and the nature of climate change science using authentic contexts that promote effective socioscientific decision-making and climate change mitigation.     

Processing procedural documents: A cognitive model for following written directions

This paper reviews empirical literature on how people use documents to perform tasks. We examine studies that have been published under the topics of: following written directions, reading maps, following instructions, using job performance aids, and processing procedural texts. Documents that contain a procedure, such as a set of directions, require transformation of information. Such transformation frequently requires converting a procedure represented verbally in a text into a procedure represented behaviorally in a performance. To accomplish this transformation, we propose that students must: (a) form a conceptual model of the performance; (b) encode procedures from the document; (c) engage in self-testing; and (d) conduct self-corrections to repair mistakes. We further propose that these operations are performed most efficiently with distinctive information resources. An overview of the task is likely to be most effective in facilitating conceptual model formation. Procedural information that emphasizes temporal characteristics of the performance will facilitate the encoding of procedures. A representation of the outcome (usually graphic) improves self-testing, and the comparison of the outcome with progress in the workspace leads to most effective self-correction. This process-resource interaction minimizes the number and complexity of transformations required to process procedural documents.     

Deboning the Fish: Hosting a Future Creating Workshop with Undergraduate Women in STEM

Innovative Higher Education - Despite the broad scope of literature on the topic of women in STEM, women in male-dominated spaces within academia are rarely given the opportunity to speak openly...     

The Construction of Social Class in Social Work Education: A Study of Introductory Textbooks

Social work introductory textbooks reflect myriad practical interests, pedagogical concerns, and theoretical considerations. However, they also present students with accepted views, dominant perspectives, and main discourses of knowledge. In light of this centrality, the present article examines the representation of the concept of “social class” in introductory textbooks as a way to look at the construction of the concept in social work education. Based on the content analysis study of 50 introductory textbooks, the article suggests that social work education has overlooked or even denied the relevance of social class. Class differences, as part of other categories of power such as race, ethnicity, and gender are crucial factors in explaining diversity and inequality. As social justice is one of the main premises of social work, the question of how to prepare students to deal with class issues as future practitioners seems to be very important, especially in light of increasing social class gaps.     

Personalizing twitter communication: an evaluation of ‘rotation-curation’ for enhancing social media engagement within higher education

Social media content generated by learning communities within universities is serving both pedagogical and marketing purposes. There is currently a dearth of literature related to social media use at the departmental level within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This study explores the multi-voiced interactions of a UK Psychology department’s ‘rotation curation’ approach to using Twitter. An in-depth analysis of a corpus of 4342 tweets by 58 curators (14 staff, 41 students, and 3 guest curators) was carried out using a combination of computer-assisted and manual techniques to generate a quantitative content analysis. The interactions received (e.g. retweets and favorites) and type of content posted (e.g. original tweets, retweets and replies) varied by curator type. Student curators were more likely to gain interactions from other students in comparison to staff. This paper discusses the benefits and potential limitations of a multi-voiced ‘rotation curation’ approach to social media management.