The Accessibility and Usability of College Websites: Is your Website Presenting Barriers to Potential Students?

Thirty community college websites were evaluated for compliance with federal web accessibility standards found in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. 794d). Two typical sites were tested for usability by individuals with visual impairments, individuals with reading-related learning disabilities (LD), and a control group of individuals without disabilities. Ten additional sites were selected for Simulated Target Group usability testing. Testing revealed that less than 1% of pages evaluated met Section 508 web accessibility standards. Over half of the users found the online admissions application process frustrating, and less than a third of all users could complete the online application without assistance. The Simulated Target Group usability testing encountered similar usability issues across the additional 10 community college websites examined. All four evaluation techniques found that community college websites fared poorly in both accessibility and usability. However, many of the issues could be addressed without significant effort.     

Planning Intercultural Interaction: Extending Anxiety/Uncertainty Management Theory

This article responds critically to a recent article by Lemieux and Tighe (Communication Research Reports, 21, 144–153, 2004) in which the authors conclude that recipients of comforting efforts prefer messages that exhibit a moderate rather than high level of person centeredness. It is argued that an erroneous assumption made by Lemieux and Tighe about the status of “receiver perspective” research on the comforting process led to faulty interpretations of the data and unwarranted conclusions about recipient preferences regarding comforting messages. Alternative interpretations of Lemieux and Tighe's data are presented; these are guided by the extensive previous research that has assessed evaluations and outcomes of comforting messages.     

“Why Is This Happening to Me?:” The Attributional Make-Up of Negative Emotions Experienced in Emotional Support Encounters

Weiner's (2000 Weiner , B. ( 2000 ). Intrapersonal and interpersonal theories of motivation from an attributional perspective . Educational Psychology Review , 12 , 1 – 14 . [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) attributional model of intrapersonal motivations suggests that attributions influence not only people's emotional experiences, but also their behavioral responses to the events that caused these emotions. The current study investigates the causal dimensions (i.e., stability, controllability, locus) of five emotions (i.e., sadness, helplessness, hurt, fear, anger) people commonly experience when they are distressed and in need of emotional support. Participants (N = 258) were asked to identify an upsetting event and subsequently talk about it with a confederate helper in a five-minute conversation. After the conversation, participants completed attribution and emotion indices scales. The events discussed were coded into nine categories (e.g., death of a relative, college performance/job problems, break-ups). Results suggested that the five emotions possess a unique attributional make-up and are uniquely tied to specific events that were discussed by participants. Implications of the results are discussed in the context of providing emotional support to people who experience distress.     

The specific relationship between disgust and interest: Relevance during biology class dissections and gender differences

This investigation examined trajectories of interest and disgust related to a biology dissection class. Three hundred and two secondary students completed ratings of disgust sensitivity and individual interest in the topic of the heart approximately one week before a dissection class. States of disgust and interest were recorded before, during, and after the dissection, and again four weeks later. Overall, girls expressed higher disgust sensitivity than boys, but showed similar levels of individual interest in the heart topic. Individual interest was negatively related to feelings of disgust prior to and during the dissection while feelings of disgust at the beginning of the class negatively predicted students’ interest during the dissection. These findings extend knowledge of the interactive influences of students’ affective experiences during a specific curriculum task and provide a complementary perspective to research findings on emotions relating to achievement outcomes.     

Computer‐based scaffolding to facilitate students' development of expertise in academic writing

Research on expert performance suggests that deliberate practice provides optimal opportunities for expertise development. This study examined whether the provision of computer‐based scaffolding (CBS) guiding deliberate practice facilitates students' development of writing expertise. A CBS environment escribo was designed to externally support expert writing activities, generate feedback and offer opportunities to practise corrected performance in academic writing. There were two testing times. First, the effects of practising writing with escribo were compared with the effects of a practice‐only situation without support. Second, a post‐test comprised composing an essay discussing an academic position without scaffolding. Results revealed that the escribo group at both testing times wrote essays of better comprehensibility than students in the practice‐only group. Furthermore, at both testing times the escribo group expended significantly more time on prewriting. These findings suggest that CBS guiding deliberate practice may be a promising means to facilitate the development of writing expertise.     

Expansion policy and the role of agricultural research in Nazi Germany

Agricultural science played a prominent role in Nazi research policy. During the Second World War, German science commandeered research results and materials from occupied Europe. This process advanced individual careers. It also had a decided influence on research practice and problem choice, both during and after the war. This essay explores the significance of wartime developments for an understanding of Nazi policy and the history of agricultural research.     

E-Book Collection Development: Formalizing a Policy for Smaller Libraries

Three librarians from two similar but unaffiliated state colleges—both members of larger university systems—discuss how they confronted similar e-book acquisition concerns. In this session, presenters described how they took two different approaches toward revising their collection development policies, economizing their processes and streamlining their workflows. The presenters discussed patron-driven acquisition e-book programs, as well as the importance of communication and collaboration among library personnel. By formalizing the purchasing decisions of electronic formats, libraries can provide the structure needed to support changing staff roles and shrinking resources, as well as address important related issues such as accessibility and timeliness.     

Friendship stability among students with and without special educational needs

Previous research has shown that students with special educational needs (SEN) have fewer friendships than their peers without SEN. In this longitudinal study, 545 students from primary and secondary schools, including 106 students with SEN, were surveyed at the beginning and the end of the school year. The results show that students with SEN generally have fewer reciprocal friendships and, proportionally, more often nominate students with SEN than students without SEN. The stability of friendships is lower for students with SEN than for students without SEN. Additionally, for students with SEN, same-SEN-status friendships were as stable as cross-SEN-status friendships, whereas for students without SEN friendships with peers without SEN were more stable than those with peers with SEN.