Digitisation of the WA Welcome Wall collection: a case study

This article is focused on the partnership between the WA Museum Maritime History Department and Curtin University’s Information Studies Department on a retrospective digitisation project in 2012. The aim was to digitise the Welcome Wall project’s paper records and link these records to the museum’s online maritime history collection. The paper outlines and discusses the key business process questions that were considered prior and during the embarkation on the digitisation project. The conclusion shares lessons learnt from the project.     

The Role of Extended Time on the SAT® for Students with Learning Disabilities and/or Attention‐Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Accommodation policymaking and practice should be guided by empirical research and informed clinical judgment. Findings from our study can provide information to test users about the validity of inferences that can be made from scores obtained from accommodated test administrations for students with disabilities. The factor structure of the newly revised Scholastic Aptitude Reasoning Test (SAT®, 2005) was examined across two groups of students (students without disabilities tested under standard time conditions, and students with disabilities tested with extended time) to determine whether the test measures the same construct for both groups. Invariance across the two groups was supported for all parameters of interest, suggesting that the scores on the Critical Reading, Math, and Writing sections of the SAT Reasoning Test can be interpreted in the same way when students have an extended‐time administration as opposed to the standard‐time administration.     

The rhetoric of political newscasting

Television has become the major source of news for most Americans. Therefore, it seems important to consider television's rhetorical potential to influence the public's understanding of political affairs. The purpose of this essay is to explore some of the ways television news reporting, documentaries and docu‐dramas may lead us to know and judge political events, political leadership and political institutions.     

Digital Module 17: Data Visualizations: Effective Evidence-Based Practices https://ncme.elevate.commpartners.com

In this digital ITEMS module, Nikole Gregg and Dr. Brian Leventhal discuss strategies to ensure data visualizations achieve graphical excellence. Data visualizations are commonly used by measurement professionals to communicate results to examinees, the public, educators, and other stakeholders. To do so effectively, it is important that these visualizations communicate data efficiently and accurately. These visualizations can achieve graphical excellence when they simultaneously display data effectively, efficiently, and accurately. Unfortunately, measurement and statistical software default graphics typically fail to uphold these standards and are therefore not suitable for publication or presentation to the public. To illustrate best practices, the instructors provide an introduction to the graphical template language in SAS and show how elementary components can be used to make efficient, effective, and accurate graphics for a variety of audiences. The module contains audio-narrated slides, embedded illustrative videos, quiz questions with diagnostic feedback, a glossary, sample SAS code, and other learning resources.     

Core values brand building in sport: Stakeholder attitudes towards intercollegiate athletics and university brand congruency

The purpose of this case study was to investigate stakeholder attitudes toward athletic department behavioral congruency with the stated core values of a major BCS¹ university located in the Southwestern portion of the United States. Research has indicated that positive and negative attitudes toward intercollegiate athletics can contribute to the perceptions of congruency with the established university mission and values. Over time, however, the increase in negative attitudes attributed to athletic department behavior brings into question their congruency with the university core values. Document analysis and personal interviews (N = 13) were conducted with individuals from each of six university internal and external stakeholder groups. Findings revealed four primary themes: (a) Excellence Equals Winning, (b) For Public Relations Purposes Only, (c) Separation and Isolation of the Athletic Department, and (d) Lack of Leadership from the Top-Down. Implications and future research concerning university brand image and core value accountability are discussed.     

Discourse complexity of college writers with and without disabilities: a multidimensional analysis

The purpose of this study was to examine specific word- and sentence-level features most frequently used in the expository writing of four groups of college writers. Three groups were writers who demonstrated disabilities. Group 1 students (n = 87) demonstrated learning disabilities (LD); Group 2 (n = 50), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); and Group 3 (n = 58), combined LD and ADHD. Group 4 consisted of writers with no history of a documented disability (n = 92). Computer-based analysis and structural equation modeling were used to group specific linguistic features identified in the expository essays across all four groups. The frequency of linguistic features, not errors, was analyzed. Four communication dimensions (factors) were identified for the four groups of writers, but the factor loadings and correlations were significantly different across groups. Furthermore, the relationships of specific linguistic features were studied as to their impact on the verbosity, quality, and lexical complexity of students' expository essays. It is interesting to note that very high correlations were found between verbosity, quality, and lexical complexity, suggesting that these constructs are not as separate in their functioning as might be supposed. Implications for assessment and instruction are provided.     

Written sentence production error patterns of college writers with learning disabilities

Utilizing a controlled stimulus passage to control for verbosity and topic selection, this research investigated the written syntax of 81 (60 males, 21 females) collegeable individuals demonstrating a specific learning disability. Four models of speech production disturbance (i.e., syntactical, lexical, monitoring, control) were evaluated in light of the errors identified in the rewrite paragraphs of this population. The data from this research supports the control impairment hypothesis, predicting that sentence production errors will be of the same kind as found in the language of writers demonstrating no handicapping conditions. In addition, the study investigated the correlation of specific cognitive and achievement variables to syntactical competence and error type.