Different underlying motivations and abilities predict student versus teacher persistence in an online course

Free online courses, including Massively Open Online Courses, have great potential to increase the inclusiveness of education, but suffer from very high course dropout rates. A study of 172 K-12 students and 114 K-12 teachers taking the same free, online, summertime programming course finds that student and teacher populations have different underlying motivational models that predict rates of persistence in the course despite having generally similar motivational levels. Student persistence is predicted by prior programming knowledge, intrinsic interest in the subject matter, and mastery approach goals. By contrast, teacher persistence is similarly predicted by intrinsic interest, but then also by self-identity as a programmer, performance approach goals, and negatively by performance avoidance goals. This sub-population discrepancy in predictive factors is novel, and may be reflective of differing environmental conditions or internal mechanisms between students and teachers. Future design of free choice learning environments can take these factors into account to increase rates of user persistence for different target user populations.     

Curricular Changes in Legal Research Instruction: An Empirical Study

This article examines components of curricular design of a legal research class as impacting student performance. Expertise of instructor and use of the inverted, or flipped, classroom are specifically explored. Eight years of exam performance on an oral legal research midterm is used to measure student performance and success of various components of curricular design.     

The Role of Motor Competences in Predicting Working Memory Maintenance and Preparatory Processing

The purpose of the study was the examination of the longitudinal association between motor competences and changes in preparatory processing during a task requiring working memory maintenance. At baseline, 52 Caucasian children aged 10–12 years completed the MOBAK-5 test battery and a Sternberg task, whereas the cue-P300 and the initial contingent negative variation (iCNV) were recorded via electroencephalography. After 9 months, the Sternberg task was administered again to assess changes in these neurophysiological indices and behavioral performance. Path analyses revealed that motor competences predicted the change in cue-P300 and iCNV from baseline to follow-up. The present findings indicate that the cognitive control strategy during a task demanding working memory maintenance changes as a function of children's baseline motor competences.     

An overview of 45 published database resources for complementary and alternative medicine

Background: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has succeeded to implement itself in the academic context of universities. In order to get information on CAM, clinicians, researchers and healthcare professionals as well as the lay public are increasingly turning to online portals and databases, which disseminate relevant resources. One specific type of online information retrieval systems, namely the database, is being reviewed in this article. Question: This overview aims at systematically retrieving and describing all databases covering the field of CAM. One of the requirements for inclusion was that the database would also have to be published in a medical journal. Data sources: The databases amed , CAMbase , embase , and medline /Pub Med were searched between December 2008 and December 2009 for publications relevant to CAM databases. The authors’ specialist library was also searched for grey literature to be included. Study selection: All included databases were then visited online and information on the context, structure and volume of the database was extracted. Main results: Forty‐five databases were included in this overview. Databases covered herbal therapies (n = 11), traditional Chinese medicine (n = 9) and some dealt with a vast number of CAM modalities (n = 9), amongst others. The amount of time the databases had been in existence ranged from 4 to 53 years. Countries of origin included the USA (n = 14), UK (n = 7) and Germany (n = 6), amongst others. The main language in 42 of 45 databases was English. Conclusions: Although this overview is quite comprehensive with respect to the field of CAM, certain CAM practices such as chiropractic, massage, reflexology, meditation or yoga may not have been covered adequately. A more detailed assessment of the quality of the included databases might give additional insights into the listed resources. The creation of a personalised meta‐search engine is suggested, towards which this overview could be seen as a first step.     

The importance of socio-cultural context for understanding students’ meaning making in the study of genetics

In this rejoinder to Ann Kindfield and Grady Venville’s comments on our article “Reconsidering conceptual change from a socio-cultural perspective: Analyzing students’ meaning making in genetics in collaborative learning activities,” we elaborate on some of the critical issues they raise. Their comments make apparent some of the crucial differences between a socio-cultural and a socio-cognitive approach towards conceptual change. We have selected some issues that are addressed, either implicitly or explicitly, in their comments. The main issues discussed are talk and interaction as data, the significance of context in interaction studies, the feasibility of generic claims in small-scale interaction studies, and the difference between studying students’ understanding of science concepts as opposed to studying the construction of meaning.

Vimentin networks at tunable ion-concentration in microfluidic drops

The structure and function of biological systems, for example, cells and proteins, depend strongly on their chemical environment. To investigate such dependence, we design a polydimethylsiloxane-based microfluidic device to encapsulate biological systems in picoliter-sized drops. The content of each individual drop is tuned in a defined manner. As a key feature of our method, the individual chemical composition is determined and related to the drop content. In our case, the drop content is imaged using microscopy methods, while the drops are immobilized to allow for long-time studies. As an application of our device, we study the influence of divalent ions on vimentin intermediate filament networks in a quantitative way by tuning the magnesium concentration from drop to drop. This way we are able to directly image the effect of magnesium on the fluorescently tagged protein in a few hundreds of drops. Our study shows that with increasing magnesium concentration in the drops, the compaction of the networks becomes more pronounced. The degree of compaction is characterized by different morphologies; freely fluctuating networks are observed at comparatively low magnesium concentrations of 5–10 mM, while with increasing magnesium concentration reaching 16 mM they develop into fully aggregated networks. Our approach demonstrates how a systematic study of interactions in biological systems can benefit from the exceptional controllability of microfluidic methods.     

Leadership Practice in Service of Homeless Students: An Examination of Community Perceptions

This qualitative study examines the collaboration and leadership practice that influences the education of homeless students in a large Mid-Atlantic city. The perspectives of administrators and staff members from three homeless shelters are analyzed with insights from Spillane’s (Distributed leadership, 2006) distributed leadership theory. Findings from the study indicate that differences in shelter and school structures and cultures present significant obstacles to productive communication that would facilitate homeless children’s schooling. Several structural and programmatic recommendations are made towards developing more effective leadership practice among schools and shelters.

The contribution of children's advocacy centers to felony prosecutions of child sexual abuse

ObjectiveTo describe trends of felony sexual abuse prosecutions between 1992 and 2002 for two districts of a large urban city that differed primarily in their use of children's advocacy centers (CACs) for sexual abuse evaluations in children.MethodsAggregate data for two districts of a large urban city were provided from 1992 to 2002 from the district attorney's office, child protective services (CPS) agency, and all CACs serving both districts. Summary statistics were calculated over time and compared between both districts for ecologic trends using negative binomial regression.ResultsOver the time period of the study, substantiated reports of child sexual abuse declined: District 1 experienced a 59% decrease in the incidence of reports, while District 2 experienced a 49% decrease in the incidence of reports. Despite this decrease, felony prosecutions of child sexual abuse increased in District 1 (from 56.6 to 93.0 prosecutions/100,000 children, rate ratio 1.64, 95% CI 1.38–1.95), but did not significantly increase in District 2 (from 58.0 to 54.9 prosecutions/100,000 children, rate ratio 0.94, 95% CI 0.73–1.23); by 2002, the rate of felony prosecutions in District 1 was 69% greater (95% CI 37–109%) than the rate in District 2. In 1992, CACs in District 1 evaluated approximately 400 children, increasing to 1,187 children by 2002. The number of children evaluated by CACs in District 2 increased modestly from nearly 800 in 1992 to 1,000 in 2002.ConclusionFelony prosecutions of child sexual abuse doubled in a district where the use of CACs nearly tripled, while no increase in felony prosecutions of child sexual abuse was found in a neighboring district, where the use of CACs remained fairly constant over time.Practice implicationsThough many limitations exist when bringing together ecological data from different agencies, the strength of the association we observed between increased CAC use and increased felony prosecutions, and the stepwise fashion in which it occurred should support future research to confirm our findings and to delineate which attributes of CAC performance might impact the likelihood of prosecution of child sexual abuse.