First Experiences with Reading Primary Literature by Undergraduate Life Science Students

Learning to read and understand research articles (primary literature) is an important step in the enculturation of higher education students into the scientific community. We presume, based on ideas from the field of genre analysis, that it is important for the development of reading skills to become conscious of the rhetorical structures in research articles. So, we determined how well science students are able to identify 2 important elements of this rhetorical structure: conclusions and grounds. First-year undergraduate life science students who followed a course called ‘Biomedical Research’ made assignments in which they had to identify these 2 elements. We analysed the answers of 20 students in detail and compared their answers with 2 expert readers. Furthermore, we conducted task-based interviews with 4 students to gain more insight into their reading strategies and to determine how they identify conclusions and grounds. Our results show that students and experts defined conclusions and grounds in different ways. Students and experts agreed on the most important conclusion of the articles. However, students identified a wide range of sentences which were not seen as conclusions by the experts. The grounds students mentioned mostly matched their conclusions. Students sometimes failed to mention important grounds for a particular conclusion. In conclusion, our study shows the differences between student and expert readers of primary literature. Based on our results, we formulated criteria for the design of a teaching strategy that aims to improve students' skills for reading primary literature.     

Attitudes Towards the Elderly Among German Adolescents

Many societies are encountering significant changes in their population structure as the number of older people is increasing while children and adolescents become fewer. This study examines pupils' attitudes towards elderly people in Germany. A total of 935 pupils (458 boys, 477 girls) participated in this study. Grade distribution was as follows: 192 (5th grade), 148 (6th grade), 208 (7th grade), 219 (8th grade), and 168 (9th grade). We provide evidence for two underlying latent factors, “prejudice” and “appreciation.” The “prejudice” factor contained prejudices and negative attitudes towards old people, and the “appreciation” factor contained items that were positively related to old people. On average, pupils valued old people. Based on a multivariate general linear model, we found a significant influence of gender, grade, and distance to grandparents. Girls valued old people higher, thus rating them higher on the appreciation scale. However, effect size was comparably low. No differences existed concerning the prejudice scale. Grade effects showed that prejudice increases and appreciation declines with increasing age. Distance to their grandparents significantly influenced the attitudes. Pupils with grandparents in the near vicinity valued old people more than pupils with their grandparents farther away. We suggest implementing intergenerational educational programs in primary school and in 5th and 6th grade in Germany.     

Design and evaluation of a widget-based dashboard for awareness support in Research Networks

In this article, we describe the rationale, design and evaluation of a widget-based dashboard to support scholars’ awareness of their Research Networks. We introduce the concept of a Research Network and discuss Personal Research Environments that are built of as a development parallel to Personal Learning Environments. Based on the results of an international interview study, we report on the design of a paper prototype of an awareness dashboard (AWESOME). Research in the Internet age has changed; the dashboard is tailor-made for use in modern research. We compared existing scholarly toolsets with our paper prototype. The evaluation of the user tests shows that, on all tested items, AWESOME performs better than the existing toolsets: it is easier to use, less time-consuming, more user-friendly, more supportive with regards to technology and awareness and, finally, helps researchers to carry out their tasks more effectively.     

Book reviews

Publishing Research Quarterly -     

Optimal dispersion of R&D activities in multinational corporations with a genetic algorithm

This paper presents a new communication-economic network model to predict the allocation of R&D activities in MNCs. While traditional models examine the influencing factors of R&D internationalization separately for each country and come to a one-dimensional result, this multi-dimensional approach integrates the influencing factors in a way that allows to identify an efficient configuration of the entire R&D subsystem in many countries at a time. It captures the information flows and employs a genetic algorithm to find a dispersion of R&D activities in which the problems of international communication have the least negative impact. The model is tested with data from seven MNCs covering a range of 48 countries as potential R&D locations.     

Effects of Expressive Writing Effects on Disgust and Anxiety in a Subsequent Dissection

Emotions influence motivation and achievement, but negative emotions have rarely been assessed in science education. In this study, we assessed the influence of two different expressive writing assignments on disgust and anxiety in university students prior to the dissection of a trout. We randomly assigned students to one of two expressive writing tasks and measured specific state disgust and state anxiety after writing and after the dissection. Specific state disgust was measured a third time after 3 weeks. One writing task was concerned with the dissection, and the other was related to behavioral experiments with mice. We used two general linear models with repeated measures. In the first model, specific state disgust (pre, post, and follow-up) was used as the dependent repeated measure and experimental group as the independent variable. In the second model, state anxiety was used as the dependent repeated measure (pre, post) with experimental group as the independent variable. The repeated testing showed a highly significant effect of experimental group on the repeated measures of disgust. Writing about worries and emotions concerning the dissection leads to higher disgust scores compared to writing about mice. These higher scores persisted even 3 weeks later in the follow-up test. Concerning anxiety, there was a clear influence of the repeated measure of state anxiety, but anxiety was not influenced by the experimental group. We suggest that positive writing should be used in educational contexts to reduce disgust.     

Learning Achievement and Motivation in an Out-of-School Setting—Visiting Amphibians and Reptiles in a Zoo Is More Effective than a Lesson at School

Interventions in out-of-school settings have been shown in previous studies to be effectively increase students’ science knowledge and motivation, with mixed results on whether they are more effective than teaching at school. In this study, we compared an out-of-school setting in a reptile and amphibian zoo (Landau, Germany) with a sequence of classroom teaching and a control group without teaching on the topic. We compared learning at school (School) and out-of-school learning (Reptilium), which were tested in a randomized field setting with a focus on knowledge and motivation. Sixty-five elementary students participated in either the School group, Reptilium group or control group. We measured knowledge on the topics reptiles and amphibians with a newly developed two-factorial test, calibrated with item response theory, before the intervention, immediately afterwards (posttest) and 2 weeks later (follow-up). Motivation was measured immediately after the intervention. Data analyses were performed using SPSS and Mplus. We conclude that the two interventions appeared highly superior to the control group and that the out-of-school setting in the Reptilium was more effective than the school-only program. Concerning motivation, perception of choice was higher in the Reptilium than in the School group. There were gender-by-treatment interaction effects for knowledge in the posttest and follow-up, for perceived competence and for pressure/tension. Concerning knowledge, boys performed better in the School group than girls but this gender gap was not significant in the Reptilium group. Boys perceived themselves as more competent in the School group while girls reported less pressure/tension in the Reptilium group. In conclusion, encountering living animals in a formal zoo learning arrangement is encouraged in primary school since it supports self-determination (free choice), leads to higher achievement and closes gender disparities in achievement.     

Does schooling affect health behavior? Evidence from the educational expansion in Western Germany

During the postwar period German states pursued policies to increase the share of young Germans obtaining a university entrance diploma (Abitur) by building more academic track schools, but the timing of educational expansion differed between states. This creates exogenous variation in the availability of upper secondary schooling, which allows estimating the causal effect of education on health behaviors. Using the number of academic track schools in a state as an instrumental variable for years of schooling, we investigate the causal effect of schooling on health behavior such as smoking and related outcomes such as obesity. We find large and robust negative effects of education on smoking for women. These effects can mostly be attributed to reductions in starting rates rather than increases in quitting rates. We also find large negative effects of education on smoking for men. However, the precision of these is not robust to sample specification changes and results for men should thus be interpreted with caution. We find no causal effect of education on reduced overweight and obesity.     

Lessons learnt from applying action research to support strategy formation processes in long-term care networks

This study demonstrates how action research (AR) that is aimed at scaling-up experiments can be applied to support a strategy formation process (SFP) in a subsidized long-term care network. Previous research has developed numerous AR frameworks to support experiments in various domains, but has failed to explain how to apply AR and action learning (AL) on the strategic level of organizational networks. Given this situation, we used a generic AR framework to explore its usefulness in supporting SFPs. The framework consists of four steps: (1) identifying the problem situation, (2) planning a solution, (3) taking action, and (4) reflecting on the action. The results show that utilizing AL in AR helps actors to reflect on and understand the challenges in forming a joint strategy in a network. We demonstrate that it can help to visualize the process and to create a common ground for discussion, to create a shared vision as well as commitment to scaling-up experiments. These insights should be used in future SFPs in networks. However, the results also show that the key barrier, the lack of executive commitment, was only identified at a late stage. This paper constitutes a first step toward a more sophisticated AR framework for strategy research. The mistakes highlighted here should help others avoid them in the future.