Digital culture clash: “massive” education in the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC

While education has been both open and online, the sizeable enrolment numbers associated with massive open online courses (MOOCs) are somewhat unprecedented. In order to gauge the significance of education at scale, this article analyses specific examples of massive participation derived from E-learning and Digital Cultures, a MOOC from the University of Edinburgh in partnership with Coursera. Student-created content, user statistics, and survey data are illustrated to examine the experiences and repercussions of engaging with educational activity where participants number in the tens of thousands. This activity is shown to mirror established instructionist or constructivist approaches to pedagogy. However, rather than working with “massiveness,” these positions are suggested to oppose large participant numbers. Concluding remarks propose an irreducible diversity of participation, rather than a generalised categorisation of “student,” and call for future considerations of the MOOC to move beyond individualism and self-interest.     

The relationship between the developmental level of persuasive strategies and their effectiveness

Research on the development of persuasive communication skills has described the emergence of four basic strategies in persuasive messages. This study includes two experiments to assess the role these strategies play in the process of gaining compliance. In both, college students received messages requesting they volunteer for an experiment and advocating compliance. Messages differed in the level of strategic adaptation of the compliance‐gaining appeal they offered. In general, form of request (supported versus unsupported) and content of specific message appeals influenced compliance, but level of strategic adaptation made little or no contribution to message effectiveness.     

Anxiety,construct differentiation,and message production

Neuliep and Hazleton have reported a significant negative relationship between a general measure of trait anxiety and interpersonal construct differentiation. The study reported in this paper failed to find a significant relationship between a more specific measure of interpersonal trait anxiety and interpersonal construct differentiation, and also found no significant relationships between state anxiety and construct differentiation, or either interpersonal trait or state anxiety and the production of messages considered more or less competent by constructivist conceptions in an anxiety‐producing interpersonal context. The study did find a significant positive relationship between interpersonal construct differentiation and the production of such messages. These results are discussed with particular emphasis on the lack of conceptual relation between notions of anxiety and construct differentiation.     

Communication as influence: Definitional exclusion

Persuasion, influence, and power have traditionally been defined as the fundamental features of rhetoric, communication, and discourse. This tradition of definition exhibits a masculine bias that has tended to exclude and negate a feminine view of communication as relational responsibility. This essay calls for the development of a transcendent definition of communication that will include and affirm both masculine and feminine views, leading to more favorable pragmatic, theoretic, and research consequences.     

Cable Television

CABLE PROGRAMMING RESOURCE DIRECTORY 1987 edited by Gregory Epler-Wood and Paul D'ari (Washington, DC: Broadcasting Publications, 1987—$34.95, paper)

SYMPOSIUM: CABLE TELEVISION by the editors of the Federal Communications Law Journal (UCLA School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, 90024—price not given, paper)     

An Examination of Aggression and Adaption Traits with Moral Foundation

ABSTRACT

Moral Foundation Theory forwards that morality is a traitlike disposition that guides one's behaviors, attitudes, and communication. This study examined the relationship between participants' moral foundations and their aggressive and adaptation communication traits. Results of this study suggest that the foundations that concern others (i.e., harm/care and fairness/reciprocity) were associated negatively to verbal aggressiveness, argumentativeness, and Machiavellianism and associated positively with responsiveness, assertiveness, and cognitive flexibility. The foundations that concern socially binding constructs (i.e., in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity) were negatively related to Machiavellianism and cognitive flexibility.     

Provo City Library: Building across a Century

The public library in Provo City, Utah, has undergone significant changes since the founding of the original 1906 building that was funded by Andrew Carnegie. The library has changed according to the needs of the community as it has adapted from its pioneer heritage to a modern service-information organization. As it has adapted, however, the Provo Library has maintained its focus on community service with its physical facilities, collection development, community outreach, and quality staffing.     

Complexity of Secondary Scientific Data Sources and Students’ Argumentative Discourse

This study examined the learning opportunities provided to students through the use of complex geological data supporting scientific inquiry. Through analysis of argumentative discourse in a high school Earth science classroom, uses of US Geological Survey (USGS) data were contrasted with uses of geoscience textbook data. To examine these differences, we conducted a review of frameworks for argumentation analysis, and through adaptation to the research foci of this study, developed a new analytic approach. Applying this approach to student classroom discourse revealed the affordances and constraints of both the complex USGS datasets and the filtered textbook data sources. The challenges of teaching with complex data are presented.     

Curriculum change: a study of the implementation of General National Vocational Qualifications

This article focuses on curriculum change, in particular on course team responses to the introduction of a new curriculum and on the implications of empirical findings for our understanding of curriculum implementation and change. The case discussed is that of the second version of GNVQ. The discussion is based on an analysis of data collected across twenty-two course teams in ten schools and colleges over a two-year period as part of an ESRC-funded project. The model of comprehensive assessment of the second version of the GNVQ is one in which the curriculum reinforcement role of assessment related to the coverage and standards of the qualification but not to the design of courses. Theoretically, significant scope was accorded to course teams to develop and provide courses that responded to local contexts. The article explores how patterns of difference and similarity in course team responses to the introduction of this curriculum might be explained and indicates three broad approaches: implementation, adaptation and assimilation, relating these responses to the existing experience and expertise of members of the various course teams. The article draws on concepts from the field of linguistics to put forward the notions of ‘curricular fields’ and ‘sub-curricular fields’ and suggests that curriculum implementation needs to take greater account of the sub-curricular fields of course teams.