The Flattening of Literacy: Community Colleges and Skills Training

Community colleges occupy a contradictory position in the rise of globalization. They are at once both local and global institutions. This essay examines the complicated location of community colleges in local economies through the developing community college system in Indiana. In particular, it highlights the horizontal transitions of a growing number of students through community colleges and the impact of such transitions on the framing of literacy education.     

Walking the walk and the impact of space and place on new media art

This paper looks at the implications of the loss of site illustrated by three diverse, site-specific new media art case studies: Taking Pictures by Janet Cardiff, Rio Videowall by Dara Birnbaum, and net.flag by Mark Napier. Focus will be placed on the challenges to permanence of new media art by exploring the impact of the expansion of the Saint Louis Art Museum and changes to geography of the surrounding park on Taking Pictures. The preservation of Taking Pictures is considered in the context of the other two case studies in terms of physical site-specificity vs. mediated site-specificity. The impact of new media technology, artist intent, and participant's interactions are considered in terms of the functionality, viability, and preservation of site-specific new media art.     

Active Families in the Great Outdoors: a program to promote family outdoor physical activity

This study evaluated a 4-week program to increase the time families spent engaging in outdoor activity. Parents were provided strategies to increase family outdoor activity and locations to be active. Sixteen families completed the program. Duration and number of family outdoor activity bouts per week, type of activities, locations, and family member attendance were measured using logs. Pre/post surveys were conducted to determine the usefulness of providing educational resources and maps. Compared to baseline (216.1±127.3 min/week), family outdoor activity for weeks 1 (316.1±180.2 min/week), 2 (351.1±209.1 min/week), and 4 (317.5±186.8 min/week) were significantly greater at follow-up. At follow-up, parents reported increased regular exercise and encouragement for their child to be active. Children reported adults engaged in physical activity with them and increased transportation to places to be active. This novel program increased family outdoor activity levels and contributes to limited research on strategies to increase outdoor activity in youth.     

Using evaluation in the development of open learning for YTS

In this article Lorna Unwin (School of Education, Open University), Hillary Read (Project Manager, Oxfordshire Programme for Training, Instruction and Supervision), and Ian Haffenden (Surrey University) describe the development of a national project seeking to create flexible open learning strategies in the two‐year Youth Training Schemes, incorporating evaluation at each stage. An account of the way in which participative workshops have been run with practitioners demonstrates how the user can act as evaluator and directly influence the outcomes of the project. In this way, a structured evaluation strategy is shown to play a crucial part in the development of open learning approaches linked to the needs expressed by the learners.     

Developing and evaluating instructionally sensitive assessments in science

The purpose of this article is to address a major gap in the instructional sensitivity literature on how to develop instructionally sensitive assessments. We propose an approach to developing and evaluating instructionally sensitive assessments in science and test this approach with one elementary life‐science module. The assessment we developed was administered to 125 students in seven classrooms. The development approach considered three dimensions of instructional sensitivity; that is, assessment items should: represent the curriculum content, reflect the quality of instruction, and have formative value for teaching. Focusing solely on the first dimension, representation of the curriculum content, this study was guided by the following research questions: (1) What science module characteristics can be systematically manipulated to develop items that prove to be instructionally sensitive? and (2) Are the instructionally sensitive assessments developed sufficiently valid to make inferences about the impact of instruction on students' performance? In this article, we describe our item development approach and provide empirical evidence to support validity arguments about the developed instructionally sensitive items. Results indicated that: (1) manipulations of the items at different proximities to vary their sensitivity were aligned with the rules for item development and also corresponded with pre‐to‐post gains; and (2) the items developed at different distances from the science module showed a pattern of pre‐to‐post gain consistent with their instructional sensitivity, that is, the closer the items were to the science module, the larger the observed gains and effect sizes. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 691–712, 2012     

Digitised,digital and static archives and the struggles in the Middle East and North Africa

This paper examines the differences between archived material that was always a digital record and hard-copy archives that were subsequently digitised. It considers the rationales behind the digitisation of archives in established western democracies as digitised collections and ad-hoc files are made available online. It compares this with how the archives of regimes in the Middle East and North Africa that collapsed between 1990 and 2011 were digitised. Overt political expediency determined the circumstances under which documents were released and recalled from public view. It examines the digitisation of archival material after the wars in Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and its political implications . Then it examines material that has always been digital: the record of social media exchanges on the day when Colonel Qaddafi was killed in Libya in October 2011 and how the archived digital form reflects the origins and purposes under which it was produced. In both cases the electronic format is not simply a question of ease of distribution, both have become a record because they were assembled for particular purposes. Like ‘traditional’ archived documents, they were never intended to satisfy the needs of later historians but they became a source by being brought together.     

How to Market Your Library’s Electronic Resources

In her presentation titled “How to Market Your Library’s Electronic Resources” at the Mississippi State University Libraries’ eResource &; Emerging Technologies Summit in August 2013, Marie Kennedy provided research, strategies, and applications that answer the question, “How … do librarians best connect their patrons to appropriate electronic resources?” While librarians typically may resist the application of marketing strategies and terminology to library operations, we all have in common the challenge to connect patrons to the resources available to them. Kennedy presented her nine components to the marketing cycle and explicated cross-disciplinary techniques, evidence-based approaches, and experiments with crowd sourcing in pursuit of effective marketing.     

Assessing Deception Detection Accuracy with Dichotomous Truth–Lie Judgments and Continuous Scaling: Are People Really More Accurate When Honesty Is Scaled?

Deception detection experiments consistently find that people are only slightly better than chance at distinguishing truths from lies. Interpersonal deception theory research, however, claims that people can accurately detect deception when honesty is assessed with continuous scaling. This article reports an experiment (N = 140) directly testing if the type of measurement meaningfully impacts accuracy results and conclusions. The findings suggest that the difference is largely illusory, and that the differences that are observed are attributable to differential variances in the measures. Substantively, both methods yield similar conclusions including slightly better-than-chance accuracy, persistent truth bias, and a robust veracity effect.     

A review and new framework for instructional design practice variation research

This article reviews practice variation in the field of instructional design. First, it compares instructional designer practice as reported or observed in several classic research studies. This analysis is framed by the standards established by the International Board for Training, Performance, and Instruction competencies for planning and analysis, design and development, implementation, and management. Although no certain causal linkages exist, we briefly review some of the reasons posited in the literature to explain instructional design practice variation (lack of time and resources, control in decision making, the designer's perception of a task, underlying philosophical beliefs, and designer expertise). Limitations of the literature base are explored, followed by a proposal for an alternative view of instructional design practice variation and recommendations.     

Ground reaction forces, kinematics, and muscle activations during the windmill softball pitch

The aims of the present study were to examine quantitatively ground reaction forces, kinematics, and muscle activations during the windmill softball pitch, and to determine relationships between knee valgus and muscle activations, ball velocity and muscle activation as well as ball velocity and ground reaction forces. It was hypothesized that there would be an inverse relationship between degree of knee valgus and muscle activation, a direct relationship between ground reaction forces and ball velocity, and non-stride leg muscle activations and ball velocity. Ten female windmill softball pitchers (age 17.6 ± 3.47 years, stature 1.67 ± 0.07 m, weight 67.4 ± 12.2 kg) participated. Dependent variables were ball velocity, surface electromyographic (sEMG), kinematic, and kinetic data while the participant was the independent variable. Stride foot contact reported peak vertical forces of 179% body weight. There were positive relationships between ball velocity and ground reaction force (r = 0.758, n = 10, P = 0.029) as well as ball velocity and non-stride leg gluteus maximus (r = 0.851, n = 10, P = 0.007) and medius (r = 0.760, n = 10, P = 0.029) muscle activity, while there was no notable relationship between knee valgus and muscle activation. As the windmill softball pitcher increased ball velocity, her vertical ground reaction forces also increased. Proper conditioning of the lumbopelvic-hip complex, including the gluteals, is essential for injury prevention. From the data presented, it is evident that bilateral strength and conditioning of the gluteal muscle group is salient in the windmill softball pitch as an attempt to decrease incidence of injury.