Text Mining 101: What You Should Know

ABSTRACT

Scholars increasingly use text and data mining (TDM) methods to discover trends and relationships within complex digital data sets. In order to support this development in scholarly communication, librarians and publishers need to be knowledgeable about TDM methods, build partnerships with TDM researchers, and address challenges related to licensing and access to large document sets. The presenters of this NASIG session shared their experiences of supporting TDM as a library subject liaison, acquisitions librarian, and publisher representatives. Audience members discussed issues involving TDM of data from multiple publishers, local hosting of data sets and TDM activity by undergraduate students.     

Finding the diamond in the rough: Exploring communication and platform in crowdsourcing performance

Ideas that rise to the top in crowdsourcing platforms are assumed to succeed because they are perceived to be the best ideas, but questions about the factors that influence the outperformance of one solution over another remain underexplored. The Peer Vetted Ideas model is proposed as an explanation of elements that affect performance in crowdsourcing for creative ideation solutions. Using content analysis and hierarchical multiple regression, the study examined the relationship between performance in a public sector crowdsourcing competition and (a) design concepts, (b) communication about the designs, and (c) platform context. Results indicate that crowdsourcing is not always a meritocratic process to produce the objective “best” ideas, but rather also depends on subjective communicative, temporal, and platform factors.     

When style obscures substance: Visual attention to display appropriateness in the 2012 presidential debates

As with the first televised debates in 1960, the 2012 US presidential debates accentuated the importance of nonverbal behavior in political competition, with President Obama receiving widespread criticism for his disengaged and arguably inappropriate communication style in the first debate. To investigate the perceptual impact of such nonverbal expectancy violations, this study first employs an experimental design to examine the consequence of inappropriate leader displays, operationalized as nonverbal behaviors that are incongruent with the rhetorical setting. Theoretical explanations about the evaluative consequences of inappropriate leader displays are described in light of expectancy violations theory. Results of a repeated measures eye-tracking experiment find support for the prediction that inappropriate facial expressions increase visual attention on the source of violation, prompt critical scrutiny, and elicit negative evaluations. These findings are further explored with qualitative analysis of focus group responses to key moments from the first and third presidential debates. The discussion considers the broader implications of nonverbal communication in politics and how expressive leader displays serve as meaningful cues for citizens when making sense of televised political encounters.     

The prediction of academic and clinical performance in medical school

Prior studies have suggested the importance of distinguishing between performance in the earlier and later years of medical education. Factor analysis of grades by year and faculty ratings of clinical and general medical competence for 661 medical students identified two uncorrelated factors clearly reflecting this distinction. The clinical performance factor, accounting for 48% of the communality of the matrix, was more or less unpredictable from aptitude and premedical academic achievement indices; it was marginally predictable from scales on the Adjective Check List. The academic performance factor, accounting for 31% of the variance among criteria, was forecast with acceptable accuracy (cross-validated R=0.43) by equations based on the Medical College Admission Test and premedical grade point average. Future study should stress the clinical performance factor; this criterion appears to be more important than academic attainment, and it is also less accurately predicted by current measures.     

Assessment for Learning with Diverse Learners in a Digital World

We have the ability to capture data from students' interactions with digital environments as they engage in learning activity. This provides the potential for a reimagining of assessment to one in which assessment become part of our natural education activity and can be used to support learning. These new data allow us to more closely examine the processes learners use to solve problems, not just their final solutions, so educators can be more targeted in their intervention. New capabilities may address some of the consistent criticisms of assessment, but they also present new dangers, particularly for diverse learners. Systems are in danger of replicating the biases from our non-digital world in our digital tasks and in the creation of the scoring tools that accompany them.     

Open admissions does not kill colleges

This article establishes an understanding of social cohesion in general and discusses organizations and activities that are known to promote social cohesion before introducing organizations that claim to work toward social cohesion as one of their main priorities. The Council of Europe's Directorate General of Social Cohesion represents a political organization seeking to promote social cohesion. The Jaboya Project and Field Band Foundation are social organizations with social cohesion as a priority. Although these organizations are likely to contribute to it, they cannot achieve social cohesion directly; rather, they work toward establishing conditions that are favorable to building social cohesion and anticipate the probable long-term effects of their work.     

The Educational Film Week 1975-Munich-April 14–18.

The ICEM Educational Film Week has, until 1975, always been held in Belgium — it grew up there and it is regarded as the home ground. The 1975 Film Week was held 14–18 April in the Institut für Film und Bild, Grunwald, Munich.