An Evaluation of the Spitz Student Response System in Teaching a Course in Logical and Mathematical Concepts

The problem of this study was the effect of teaching freshman mathematics with the Spitz Student Response System (SSRS) upon a student’s anxiety, attitude, and achievement. Subjects were seventy-three freshman men and women at a liberal arts college in the Southwest. A 2 x 2 factorial analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data. Several research hypotheses were formulated to be consistent with the purposes of this research problem. It was found that the use of the Spitz Student Response System did not significantly change a student’s achievement, anxiety, or attitude in mathematics. The statistical data of this study would tend to support the idea that the effect of attitude on achievement in independent of the method of instruction. Subjective evaluation by the students tends to support the use of the Spitz System.     

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CHURCH TO THE DEMOCRACY OF THE FUTURE

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of the relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Its implications for methods and materials in religious education are clear. Religious educators may well take advantage of every new finding in scientific research.

Each abstract or group is preceded by an evaluation and interpretative comment, which aims to guide the reader in understanding the research reported.

All of these abstracts are from PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS, and used by permission of that periodical. The abstract number is Volume 28, Number 9‐10, September‐October, 1954.     

Public Versus Private Colleges: Political Participation of College Graduates

Using data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:93/03) of College Graduates, we use structural equation modeling to model the relationships between college major, values held in college, collegiate community service participation, and the post-college political participation of college graduates by public versus private institutions. We use Holland’s Theory of person-environment fit as lens to understand differences in political participation across majors and institutional contexts. Over a 10-year period immediately after receiving the baccalaureate, we find that choice of major and individual values are differentially associated with post-college political participation for private institution graduates when compared to the counterparts at public institutions. We relate our findings to extant literature that highlights the differences in institutional characteristics between public and private colleges and socialization patterns of undergraduates that may inform differences in post-college political participation. Implications for future research are also offered.     

COIL on Wheels: A Library Professional Development Roadshow

Professional development for instruction librarians is in danger of coming to a standstill in difficult economic times. COIL on Wheels is a professional development roadshow developed by the Community of Oklahoma Instruction Librarians to allow librarians with budget and staffing issues to benefit from peer training. By matching member librarian interests with institutional needs, librarians can visit institutions in their geographic area to provide their colleagues with low-cost or free training. This article discusses the origins of and rationale for this program and describes a successful implementation of this traveling professional development project.     

We Ning-ed a Virtual Pre-Workshop: Now What?

In 2009, a group of instruction-minded librarians in Oklahoma added unconference-like elements to their usual workshop structure and agenda to make their workshop more participatory and attendee-driven. The result was a virtual pre-workshop hosted on a Ning social networking site. The virtual pre-workshop enhanced the actual physical workshop in several ways. The group's new challenge: where to host its new pre-workshop format without Ning and how to gear the new format to be more mobile friendly while not excluding non-mobile interested workshop participants.     

ASPECTS OF SUB-LITERATURE

The research community is continually trying to find the quickest method for evaluating the quality of a scholarly article. Today’s technological advancements and growing communication outlets complicate the meaning of a quality article. Altmetrics attempts to take the place of impact factor and citation counting by predicting the outcome of an article based on the previous behavior of statistics. Perhaps, the best way to evaluate the quality of an article is to look at all of the Altmetrics methods and their relationship to each other. Context explains every Altmetric and is more significant than an article’s popularity. Librarians should guide patrons and researchers alike through these statistics’ advantages and disadvantages.     

Exploring the Change in Motivations for Fantasy Sport Participation During the Life Cycle of a Sports Fan

A total of 529 respondents who had participated in fantasy sport in the past year completed a survey regarding their media consumption habits and motivations for play. Significant age divides were uncovered between players who were younger than age 35 as opposed to respondents who were 35 and older. Overall, younger participants consumed 4.2 more hours of sports media content per week and were more likely to participate in fantasy sport because of entertainment, enjoyment, and surveillance desires. In contrast, older participants were more likely to participate in fantasy sport to pass the time, even though consumption research indicates that they spent less time devoted to the activity than their younger counterparts. In addition, younger participants were more likely than older participants to exhibit a desire to establish and exhibit elements of personal sports knowledge. Implications for communication researchers interested in media and/or sport are articulated.     

Book reviews

Meheroo Jussawalla, Donald M. Lamberton, and Neil D. Karunaratne, eds., The Cost of Thinking: Information Economies of Ten Pacific Countries. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing, 1988. 272 pages, $29.50.

Vincent Mosco and Janet Wasko, eds., The Political Economy of Information. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. 368 pages, $40.

Robert G. Picard, James P. Winter, Maxwell McCombs, and Stephen Lacy, eds., Press Concentration and Monopoly: New Perspectives on Newspaper Ownership and Operation. Norwood, N. J.: Ablex Publishing, 1988. 231 pages, $39.50.     

The New Books

Raymond Spottiswoode's Focal Encyclopedia of Film and Television: Techniques (Hastings House, $37.50)

Eli L. Levitan's An Alphabetical Guide to Motion Picture, Television, and Videotape Production (McGraw-Hill, $24.50)

Ronald Brown's Telecommunications: The Booming Technology (Doubleday, $5.95)

Peter Hillson's Photography: A Study in Versatility (Doubleday, $6.95)

Dale Minor's The Information War (Hawthorne, $6.95)

Nicholas Johnson's, How to Talk Back to Your Television Set (Atlantic, $5.95)

Allen E. Koenig's Broadcasting and Bargaining (University of Wisconsin Press, $8.00)

Verne Edwards' Journalism in a Free Society (W.C. Brown, $6.95)