Learner Characteristics that Influence the Treatment Effectiveness of Early Literacy Interventions: A Meta‐Analytic Review

The purpose of this article was to systematically review the available research on learner characteristics that influence the treatment effectiveness of early literacy interventions. Meta‐analytic procedures were applied to a total of 30 studies that met the inclusionary and exclusionary criteria. Mean average effect sizes were computed for seven primary learner characteristic categories: (1) rapid naming, (2) alphabetic principle, (3) phonological awareness, (4) problem behavior, (5) memory, (6) IQ, and (7) demographic. The primary learner characteristics that influenced the treatment responsiveness of early literacy interventions were, in order of magnitude, rapid naming, problem behavior, phonological awareness, alphabetic principle, memory, IQ, and demographics. With the exception of the demographic category, the obtained effect sizes for the primary learner characteristics were moderately large. The demographic primary learner characteristic (i.e., disability, ethnicity, grade‐level status) of children was not statistically (p < 0.05) distinct from zero. The findings, limitations, and future research needs are discussed.     

More Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing

This article explores the basis of negative sentiments toward and current critiques of high-stakes student testing from within the education profession. To promote some balance for current policy debates, evidence for 10 unintended, unrecognized, or unarticulated positive consequences is provided. The article concludes with an examination of the relationship between high-stakes testing and accountability systems.     

Interlibrary loan and commercial document supply: Finding the right fit

This study examined the cost and performance of six commercial document suppliers accessible via OCLC, and comapared their service to that of traditional interlibrary loan (ILL). Results indicated that, while commercial firms cannot be recommended as a wholesale replacement for ILL, they can add much-needed flexibility to a library's overall plan for document delivery.     

Anonymous personalization in collaborative web search

We present an innovative approach to Web search, called collaborative search, that seeks to cope with the type of vague queries that are commonplace in Web search. We do this by leveraging the search behaviour of previous searchers to personalize future result-lists according to the implied preferences of a community of like-minded individuals. This technique is implemented in the I-SPY meta-search engine and we present the results of a live-user trial which indicates that I-SPY can offer improved search performance when compared to a benchmark search engine, across a variety of performance metrics. In addition, I-SPY achieves its level of personalization while preserving the anonymity of individual users, and we argue that this offers unique privacy benefits compared to alternative approaches to personalization.     

OER evaluation as a means of teaching information literacy in individual and small group settings

ABSTRACT

Open education resources represent a great opportunity to reduce textbook costs, but many of them have not been evaluated for quality. Librarians and former students in an introduction to engineering course collected and evaluated open education resources to supplement the course textbook in future semesters. Both searching for and evaluating these resources created opportunities for the librarians to evaluate information literacy skills of these students and to provide instruction to improve these skills.