General Education Teachers in the United Arab Emirates and Their Acceptance of the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities

In this article, Dr Emad M. Alghazo and Dr Eman El. Naggar Gaad, both assistant professors at the Department of Special Education in the United Arab Emirates University, report on their research into the attitudes of mainstream teachers towards the inclusion of students with disabilities. The research took place in the Emirate of Abu-Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and set out to explore the extent to which general education teachers there accept the inclusion of students with disabilities in mainstream classrooms. The research process incorporated a questionnaire survey, analysed quantitatively, and a series of interviews with teachers to follow up on a range of issues. The analysis of the results takes account of a number of variables, including the gender of the respondents; number of years' experience as a teacher; and type of learner disability. Emad Alghazo and Eman Naggar Gaad report that there is more work to be done on the development of an 'inclusion culture' among teachers in the United Arab Emirates. They close their article by making a series of recommendations for future practice focusing on initial teacher education, continuing professional development and attitudinal change.     

Equity theory and students' commitment to their college

The present study tested the power of equity measures to predict students' commitment to college. Different patterns of results were observed across three academic disciplines (physics, economics, and political science), which are characterized by different levels of environmental uncertainty. Equity was found to be a more relevant predictor of students' behavior and attitudes in fields with a high level of paradigm development. In political science, the major predictor of students' commitment was the comparison of one's group with another. The dominant independent variable in economics was the comparison within the membership group, while in physics the main predictor was the internal standard. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

An On-Demand and Cloud-Based Digital Scholarship Applications Dashboard

Building on the findings of a 2013 NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up funded project, in early 2016 we began working on an IMLS Sparks! funded project: Digital Scholarship Applications Dashboard. The project is a collaborative initiative between University IT and the Library's Center for Digital Scholarship. We are currently evaluating an efficient and user-friendly dashboard solution that will allow faculty and student to easily choose, configure, deploy, and evaluate any of a set of common web applications in a shared and virtual hosting environment. The service is similar to those offered by commercial hosting providers for deployment of popular web applications, but our Scholars Dashboard service will focus on tools more relevant to digital scholarship and digital humanities. The prototype leverages OpenNebula, an open source cloud-computing platform for managing distributed data center environments, and Amazon Web Services for deploying virtual machines. In this article, we will describe the work we have done in the last year and further discuss the role of digital scholarship teams within academic libraries in providing cloud-based infrastructure for digital scholarship and research.     

A Survey of the Value of Library Employment to the Undergraduate Experience

When exploring the overall impact of the academic library on the undergraduate experience library student workers are a unique group to consider. As both direct users and providers of library services to their peers, student workers enable libraries to gain an understanding of the general undergraduate population. The objective of this article is to present the findings of a study of undergraduate students employed at a university research library. A questionnaire distributed to 350 student workers gathered information about who they are and how they engage with their communities. This article will look at the value working in an academic library brings to undergraduates' lives. It will consider whether working in the library promotes student success, builds community, and provides them with valuable opportunities to engage in peer networking.     

Integrating social activity theory and critical discourse analysis: a multilayered methodological model for examining knowledge mediation in mentoring

This study suggests an integrative qualitative methodological framework for capturing complexity in mentoring activity. Specifically, the model examines how historical developments of a discipline direct mentors’ mediation of professional knowledge through the language that they use. The model integrates social activity theory and a framework of critical discourse analysis to guide the data collection, analysis and interpretation processes. Drawing on the case of mentoring in Arts Education, we describe and discuss the discursive character of the interactions between content and pedagogy in mentoring activity, as they grow out of the larger historical groundings of participants’ practice.     

Determinants of students' satisfaction with course work: An international comparison between two universities

The present study attempts to develop a scale of students' general satisfaction with college instruction, to empirically assess the dimensions behind the scale, and to examine four predictors (sex, major, school year, and academic performance) which may affect the various factors of student's satisfaction with instruction. The study was conducted in two universities, one in Israel and one in the United States. The findings of this study indicate that the concept of students' satisfaction is composed of four factors and that each of these factors is best predicted by a different combination of the independent variables. However, academic performance is a dominant predictor of all four factors. The pattern of the findings is similar for both countries.The policy implications of these findings for university decision making and institutional research are discussed and elaborated.     

A Mixed-Method Study of Undergraduate and First Year Librarian Positions in Academic Libraries in the United States

The aim of this study is to better understand the prevalence, scope, and unique challenges of undergraduate and first year librarians over the last decade, through the use of quantitative and qualitative data from job listings, online surveys, and phone interviews. The findings indicate that there is very little consensus about what the undergraduate librarian does, how the work is structured on a daily basis, and how its goals are negotiated and assessed. Further, undergraduate librarians face a number of issues, including navigating vaguely defined responsibilities, establishing their professional credibility, and communicating their role within the library and to the university. Survey participants reported experiencing tension between the traditional (reference, instruction, collection development) and undergraduate-specific aspects of their duties, indicating that it is difficult for them to prioritize engagement and outreach. While the literature on blended librarianship anticipates some of these issues, undergraduate librarians are unique because they provide an intersection between broader higher education priorities and the academic library. The author stipulates that the lack of definition, strain, and the perception of undergraduate librarianship as an entry-level position is incongruent with the importance colleges and universities place on undergraduate student success.     

文本到底是什么？

文本在计算机上的表示方式影响着文本创作者与其他用户使用文本的方式。现有的电子文档模型还有很多不足和局限。笔者认为文本最好的表示模型是有序的分层内容对象模型(OHCO),这种模型揭示了文本到底是什么这一根本问题。OHCO 模型符合 SGML 等新兴标准,且有利于作者、出版商、研究者等不同用户。本文介绍了该层次模型以及未来如何将文档作为一种数据库、超文本、网络来加以利用和重用。