Book Reviews

Growth, creativity and collaboration: great visions on a Great Lake – proceedings of the North American Serials Interest Group, Inc. 19th annual conference, June 17–20, 2004, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 2005 Ed. P. S. French and M. Mering The Haworth Information Press, Binghamton, NY, ISBN 0‐7890‐2976‐6 US $34.95 Communicating in style by Yateendra Joshi The Energy and Resources Institute, India, 2003, 81 7993 016 5, £7.50 Bookmaking: Editing, Design, Production by Marshall Lee W. W. Norton & Co. Ltd., 2004, hardback, ISBN 0393730182 The Institutional Repository By Richard Jones, Theo Andrew and John MacColl Chandos Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1 84334 138 7, 237pp.     

Social media: How the next generation can practice argumentation

In this article the authors share how social media, paired with gaming and in-class supports, can facilitate the practice of scientific argumentation and report data that show how students can learn and practice argumentation through these highly interactive and engaging mediums. Social media will continue to evolve and fluctuate in popularity, but no matter the service or software, there will continue to be online spaces for communication, collaboration, learning, and future career growth. Since the role of education is to prepare students to be college and career ready, the use of social media as a component of schooling should be explored. This work has parsed out specific strategies and methods to support higher order thinking through gaming and social media.     

Contract cheating and assessment design: exploring the relationship

This paper reports on findings from a large Australian research project that explored the relationship between contract cheating and assessment design. Using survey responses from 14,086 students and 1147 educators at eight universities, a multivariate analysis examined the influence of a range of factors on the likelihood that different assessment types would prompt considerations of contract cheating in students. Perceptions of likelihood were highest among students who speak a language other than English at home. Perceptions of likelihood were also higher among students who reported there to be lots of opportunities to cheat, and amongst students who were dissatisfied with the teaching and learning environment. Perceptions of likelihood for certain assessment types were also higher in commerce and engineering than in any other discipline. Overall, four assessment types were perceived by students to be the least likely to be outsourced, however these are also the least likely to be set by educators. The analysis indicates that educators are more likely to use these assessment tasks when they report positively on organisational support for teaching and learning.     

Theory of Mind: Deaf and Hearing Children's Comprehension of Picture Stories and Judgments of Social Situations

We compared 20 prelingually profoundly deaf adolescents (age: 11-16 years) and 20 matched, hearing adolescents on a picture-sequencing task and on a social judgment test. In addition, we also tested 14 younger deaf children (age: 6-10 years) and compared their data with those from 20 hearing peers as well as those from the older deaf participants on the picture-sequencing task. The results from this study did not provide evidence for the hypothesis that deaf adolescents possess significantly poorer knowledge about social reasoning than age-matched hearing peers, but it did present further additional support for Peterson and Siegal's (1995) conversational hypothesis: a proposal that a deprivation in conversations about mental states leads to an impairment in the development of an awareness of mental states in the younger deaf children.     

Simple surface modification of poly(dimethylsiloxane) for DNA hybridization

Here, we present a simple chemical modification of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) by curing a mixture of 2 wt% undecylenic acid (UDA) in PDMS prepolymer on a gold-coated glass slide. This gold slide had been previously pretreated with a self-assembled hydrophilic monolayer of 3-mercaptopropionic acid (MPA). During curing of the UDA∕PDMS prepolymer, the hydrophilic UDA carboxyl moieties diffuses toward the hydrophilic MPA carboxyl moieties on the gold surface. This diffusion of the UDA within the PDMS prepolymer to the surface is a direct result of surface energy minimization. Once completely cured, the PDMS is peeled off the gold substrate, thereby exposing the interfacial carboxyl groups. These groups are then available for subsequent attachment of 5(')-amino terminated DNA oligonucleotides via amide linkages. Our results show that the covalently tethered oligonucleotides can successfully capture fluorescein-labeled complementary oligonucleotides via hybridization, which are visualized using fluorescence microscopy.