Nursing and Allied Health Resources–Patron Driven Acquisition,a Pilot at The University of Alabama Libraries

This article is a report of a session presented by Mangala Krishnamurthy and Connie Stovall (a contributor to the presentation) of the University of Alabama Libraries at the 2015 North American Serials Interest Group conference. A patron-driven acquisition (PDA) pilot project was initiated in fall 2013 at the University of Alabama (UA) Libraries mainly serving the Nursing and Allied Health subject areas. Since the Capstone College of Nursing at UA offers an online Doctor of Nursing Practice program and partners with two other schools in the UA system, UA Libraries collaborated with the other libraries in the University System. The project uses Rittenhouse’s R2 Digital Libraries’ PDA module as the basic platform. The Capstone College of Nursing liaison discussed in detail the selection, management, assessment, promotion, and communication part of the project in addition to second year plans for the project.     

Some Attitudes Associated with Sport Participation among Junior High School Females

This paper focuses on young female participants and their self-perceptions. The findings indicate that self-perceived characteristics of ambition, competition, strength, and speed were more evident for participants than nonparticipants. However, there was no significant difference between participants and nonparticipants concerning characteristics of happiness, affection, femininity, sensitivity, gentleness, and attractiveness. The data also indicated that the young female participants have not developed a highly professionalized orientation toward competition, yet they are more likely to be concerned about playing well than are nonparticipants. The findings suggest that even by early adolescence either selectivity and/or socialization differences are emerging between female participants and nonparticipants.     

Speaking personally—with Barbara A. White

This study examined the influence of group structures upon six groups of distributed graduate students as they pursued a six-week problem-based learning activity by communicating in an asynchronous computer conference. Henri and Rigault's (1996) content analysis framework and Howell-Richardson and Mellar's (1996) guidelines for interconnectedness of messages were used to analyze the messages. In addition, learners' perceptions of interdependence and intersubjectivity were gauged from a self-reported survey developed by the researcher. Overall comparisons revealed that group conferences with role assignment had higher levels of interconnected messages. Weekly comparisons also indicated higher perceptions of intersubjectivity and deep processing for the role assignment group during the initial weeks of the activity. Over time, however, these levels equalized across group structures.     

Cognitive skills and literacy performance of Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia

The present study sought to identify cognitive abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and to assess how these abilities were associated with Chinese word reading, word dictation, and reading comprehension. The cognitive skills of interest were morphological awareness, visual-orthographic knowledge, rapid naming, and verbal working memory. A total of 90 junior secondary school students, 30 dyslexic, 30 chronological age controls, and 30 reading level controls was tested on a range of cognitive and literacy tasks. Dyslexic students were less competent than the control students in all cognitive and literacy measures. The regression analyses also showed that verbal working memory, rapid naming, morphological awareness, and visual-orthographic knowledge were significantly associated with literacy performance. Findings underscore the importance of these cognitive skills for Chinese literacy acquisition. Overall, this study highlights the persistent difficulties of Chinese dyslexic adolescents who seem to have multiple causes for reading and spelling difficulties.     

Student contribution in asynchronous online discussion: a review of the research and empirical exploration

The increasingly prevalent use of Internet in schools and homes has resulted in asynchronous online discussion becoming an increasingly common means to facilitate dialogue between instructors and students, as well as students and students beyond the boundaries of their physical classrooms. This article is organized into two main sections. In the first section, we review 50 empirical studies in order to identify the factors leading to limited student contribution. Limited student contribution is defined as students making few or no postings, or students exhibiting surface-level thinking or low-level knowledge construction in online discussions. We then identify the various empirically based guidelines to address the factors. In the second section, we discuss three potential guideline dilemmas that educators may encounter: (a) use of grades, (b) use of number of posting guideline, and (c) instructor-facilitation. These are guidelines where previous empirical research shows mixed results when they are implemented. Acknowledging the dilemmas is essential for educators and researchers to make informed decisions about the discussion guidelines they are considering implementing. Finally, we report two exploratory case studies on student-facilitation that we conducted. Using students as facilitators may be an alternative solution to educators who wish to avoid the instructor-facilitation guideline dilemma.