Development and Validation of the College Campus Environment Scale (CCES): Promoting Positive College Experiences

One of the essential factors related to student success and satisfaction with a higher education experience is the college environment in which learning takes place. The purpose of this study was to develop a scale, the College Campus Environment Scale (CCES), to measure characteristics of college campus environments valued by students. A model emerged with the following six factors: Academic and Career Expectations, Athletics, Health, Role Models and Mentors, Safety, and Social and Extracurricular Activities. The CCES demonstrates good evidence of reliability and validity and can be utilized by researchers and college personnel to promote positive college experiences for students.     

Exploring a Personal Social Knowledge Network (PSKN) to aid the observation of connectivist interaction for high- and low-performing learners in connectivist massive open online courses

This study adds a new perspective to the observations about connectivist interaction behavior in cMOOCs by extending the notion of network building from the perspective of individuals. We explore the possibility of building a learning network named Personal Social Knowledge Network (PSKN) to support in the monitoring of learning performance and interaction in cMOOCs. The sample in this study included 284 preservice teachers and their learning lasted approximately 12 weeks. Data were primarily gathered by PSKN graphs. The results revealed a correlation between connectivist interaction measured by the PSKN (including density structure) and learning performance. The results also revealed differences in connectivist interaction behavior and patterns, indicated by PSKN (densities and structures), for high- and low-performing learners in cMOOCs. The high-performing learners show deeper knowledge interaction and social communication in addition to simple knowledge sharing and social communication. Additionally, as time passed and the PSKN of high-performing learners extended further, their interaction behavior became more complex and their role had gradually changed from “learning” to “teaching” as well as from knowledge acceptance to knowledge creation in cMOOCs.     

The demand for higher education facing an individual institution

The purpose of this paper is to provide an estimate of the elasticity and cros-selasticities of demand for higher education facing an individual institution. The utility which a high school graduate derives from each educational option open to him is assumed to be a stochastic function of the attributes of that option. For certain types of utility functions the maximization of utility results in the logit probability model. This model is used to analyze the choices made by a sample of high school graduates in Hawaii. Estimates of the price elasticity and the cross-price elasticities of demand for enrollment at the University of Hawaii are obtained. It is found that the demand is quite inelastic with respect to both tuition and total cost of education. These estimates imply that changes in tuition will not affect enrollment appreciably.The authors wish to express their appreciation to Arthur S. Goldberger, H. Laurence Miller, and Pan A. Yotopoulos for their comments on earlier drafts of the paper.     

Making Learning Visible

Almost two million children in more than 40 countries around the world have received a One Laptop per Child (OLPC) XO netbook computer. These netbooks represent the commitment of politicians, community leaders, and educators to implement disruptive, large‐scale education reform initiatives that will advance their countries into the 21st century and prepare their children for interconnected, global, creative, and knowledge economies. Expectations for the success of these initiatives are high, and local stakeholders as well as numerous international organizations look to these experiments with cautious optimism. These programs hold the promise to expand the learning and creative potentials of broad populations. As such, arguably, one of the greatest challenges facing these initiatives is designing and implementing mechanisms that help make the outcomes visible, understandable, and actionable by all audiences. In this article, we discuss initiatives being developed by OLPC at different levels of scale: at the meta level to understand impact across nations and learn about the emerging developments in the different programs; at the mezzo level to allow stakeholders to understand the development of the program in their countries and their schools; and at the micro level to help teachers and students understand emerging learning by children over a given period of time. We present some examples of student work to illustrate how some children are making creative contributions to OLPC. Inspired in the collaboration and work by Project Zero and Reggio Children, this article was given the name “Making Learning Visible.” Beyond the title, the work presented in this article recognizes the child both as an individual and a group learner; recognizes the acts as well as the products of learning; and above all, values the children's reflections and approaches to make their learning visible.     

Mobiles for literacy in developing countries: An effectiveness framework

In recent years, the advent of low-cost digital and mobile devices has led to a strong expansion of social interventions, including those that try to improve student learning and literacy outcomes. Many of these are focused on improving reading in low-income countries, and particularly among the most disadvantaged. Some of these early efforts have been called successful, but little credible evidence exists for those claims. Drawing on a robust sample of projects in the domain of mobiles for literacy, this article introduces a design solution framework that combines intervention purposes with devices, end users, and local contexts. In combination with a suggested set of purpose-driven methods for monitoring and evaluation, this new framework provides useful parameters for measuring effectiveness in the domain of mobiles for literacy.     

Promoting early literacy through the professional development of preschool teachers

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a professional learning program on the emergent literacy skills of preschool children. Building Blocks for Literacy^® is a program consisting of training supported by mentoring designed to teach early childcare providers how to promote the development of early literacy skills. A previous investigation found positive effects of the program on the pre-literacy skills of children in Vermont. The current study extended their work by replicating the training for Head Start teachers (n?=?27) in another state. Teachers were divided into three groups. One group received the training and live mentoring; a second group received training and distance mentoring; and a third group of teachers served as controls. The results indicate that children (n?=?97) served by teachers who received the training (n?=?18) made higher gains on a measure of early literacy skills than those children (n?=?36) served by control teachers. The gains made by children in the treatment groups were consistent for teachers who received either live or distance mentoring. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Humor ability,unwillingness to communicate,loneliness, and perceived stress: Testing a security theory

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a theory of the laughter‐humor link in interpersonal communication. The basic premise of the theory is that a sense of security underlies the ability to encode humor in everyday conversation. It was hypothesized that communication‐related security (i.e., willingness to communicate) predicts humor ability, which in turn negatively predicts loneliness and perceived stress. Undergraduates completed a survey including the following scales: Unwillingness‐ to‐Communicate, Humor Orientation, Coping Humor, revised UCLA Loneliness, and Perceived Stress. Regression analyses confirm that willingness to communicate predicted humor orientation, while humor orientation mediated the relationship between willingness to communicate and coping humor. Humor orientation negatively predicted loneliness and perceived stress, although in both cases willingness to communicate mediated the relationships. The discussion highlights methodological limitations (e.g., use of self‐report) and reiterates the need for interaction‐ and context‐based studies of the laughter‐humor relationship.     

Book of the Month

Walter S. Baer's Cable Television: A Handbook for Decisionmaking (Santa Monica, Cal.: Rand Corporation, 1973 — $5.00, paper)     

Motion Pictures

Richard Bunce's Television in the Corporate Interest (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1976—price not given, but about $15.00).

Ralph M. Jennings and Veronica M. Jefferson's Television Station Employment Practices, 1975: The Status of Minorities and Women (New York: Office of Communication, United Church of Christ, 1976—price not given, but about $10.00, paper)

Horace Newcomb's Television: The Critical View (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976—$4.00, paper)

Asa Berger's The TV-Guided American (New York: Walker, 1976—$8.95)

Vincent Mosco's The Regulation of Innovations in the Broadcasting Market (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Program on Information Technologies and Public Policy, 1975—$3.00, paper)

James D. Scott's Cable Television: Strategy for Penetrating Key Urban Markets (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Graduate School of Business Administration, 1976—$5.50, paper)

R.W. Chandler's Sparks at Sea: The Experiences of a Ship's Radio Officer (North Pomfret, Vt.: David and Charles, 1973, but only recently released in the U.S.—$9.50)