The role of student-generated externalizations in strategic multimedia learning and how current (web-)technology fails to support learner engagement

In two studies, we investigated how learning strategies can support learning from multimedia. In the first study, 112 students learned from a web-based learning environment. On the basis of a strategy, one group of students took typewritten notes. The second group of students wrote a summary. Producing typewritten notes did not benefit learning any more than writing a summary. In the second study, 100 students learned the same subject matter from print. On the basis of a strategy, the first group produced written notes, the second group highlighted, wrote notes, and produced sketches. The third group wrote a summary. The students who highlighted, wrote notes, and produced sketches outperformed the other students. The students who produced written notes only did not learn more successfully than those who wrote a summary. The results suggest that externalizations in general and sketches in particular may play an important role in multimedia learning.     

New physics searches at the BESIII experiment

The standard model (SM) of particle physics, comprised of the unified electroweak and quantum chromodynamic theories, accurately explains almost all experimental results related to the micro-world, and has made a number of predictions for previously unseen particles, most notably the Higgs scalar boson, that were subsequently discovered. As a result, the SM is currently universally accepted as the theory of the fundamental particles and their interactions. However, in spite of its numerous successes, the SM has a number of apparent shortcomings, including: many free parameters that must be supplied by experimental measurements; no mechanism to produce the dominance of matter over antimatter in the universe; and no explanations for gravity, the dark matter in the universe, neutrino masses, the number of particle generations, etc. Because of these shortcomings, there is considerable incentive to search for evidence for new, non-SM physics phenomena that might provide important clues about what a new, beyond the SM theory (BSM) might look like. Although the center-of-mass energies that BESIII can access are far below the energy frontier, searches for new, BSM physics are an important component of its research program. This report reviews some of the highlights from BESIII’s searches for signs of new, BSM physics by: measuring rates for processes that the SM predicts to be forbidden or very rare; searching for non-SM particles such as dark photons; performing precision tests of SM predictions; and looking for violations of the discrete symmetries C and CP in processes for which the SM expectations are immeasurably small.     

Bildungsexpansion und Bildungsbeteiligung

Die vorliegende Untersuchung ist ein Beitrag, die Frage zu kl?ren, warum in der westdeutschen Nachkriegszeit immer mehr Schulpflichtige nach Abschluss der Grundschule das Gymnasium besuchen. Ausgehend von einem entscheidungstheoretischen Modell der subjektiven Werterwartung werden Mechanismen der elterlichen Bildungsentscheidung aufgezeigt. Dabei wird davon ausgegangen, dass sowohl zunehmende Bildungsmotivationen als auch Ver?nderungen in der subjektiven Bewertung von Kosten und Nutzen für eine h?here Bildung wichtige Voraussetzungen für die zunehmende Bildungsbeteiligung, aber auch Folgen der Bildungsexpansion waren. Die empirischen Analysen für drei Zeitpunkte in den 60er, 70er und 80er Jahren best?tigen diese Annahmen weitgehend. Ebenso wurde empirisch belegt, welch wichtige Rolle neben den Bildungsintentionen von Eltern und dem vorhergehenden Bildungsverlauf ihrer Kinder auch strukturelle Momente der Bildungsexpansion und ihre Eigendynamik beim tats?chlichen Bildungsübergang spielen. Schlie?lich gibt es Hinweise dafür, dass die Persistenz klassenspezifischer Bildungsungleichheiten auf einer konstanten Balance von Nutzen und Kosten zwischen den sozialen Klassen basiert.     

Social and cognitive effects of professional communication on software usability

We designed and piloted a technical communication course for software engineering majors to take concurrently with their capstone project course in software design. In the pilot, one third of the capstone design course students jointly enrolled in the writing class. One goal of the collaborative courses was to use writing to improve the usability of students’ software. We studied the effects of writing on students’ user‐centered beliefs and design practices and on the usability of their product, using surveys, document analyses, expert reviews, and user test results. When possible, we compared the usability processes and products of teams who did and did not take the writing class. Our findings suggest that the synergy of this interdisciplinary approach effectively sensitized students to user‐centered design, instilled in them a commitment to it, and helped them develop usable products.     

Peripheral vision and simple catching: The screen paradigm revisted

The importance of effector visual feedback has previously been indicated using an opaque screen to prevent sight of the catching hand for the final 150–200 ms of a flight path of 850 ms in total. Attention was drawn to the finding that the ability to position the arm correctly in the line of flight of the ball deteriorated as a consequence of the number of trials without visual feedback. However, the use of only 20 test trials allows a possibility that the proprioceptive system may be able to re‐establish predominant control under conditions of prolonged visual decrement. In order to verify this notion, the number of experimental trials was quadrupled for 24 subjects of mixed sex in a replication of the initial paradigm.

The results provided preliminary support for the view that the positioning of the catching arm is more seriously affected by visual occlusion than the timing of the grasp phase. However, increments in accuracy of limb orientation were evidenced in all screen conditions, as the number of trials increased. The grasp component of one‐handed catching appeared to remain unaffected by the increase in experimental trials. The relative influence of skill level on catching errors was next addressed by comparing the performance of the six best and worst catchers in the group.

The results did not support previous research which found a relation between skill level and error type. The number of position, but not grasp, errors decreased as a function of task practice for both subgroups. Future investigations should, perhaps, focus on the developmental nature of movement control in one‐handed catching to obtain a clearer picture of this relation.     

General Mass Communication

Jack Temple Kirby's Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination. (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1978—$9.95)

Dan Nimmo's Political Communication and Public Opinion in America (Santa Monica, Calif.: Goodyear Publishing Co., 1978—price not given, but available in hard and paper editions)

Raymond G. Smith's The Message Measurement Inventory: A Profile for Communication Analysis (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1978—$12.50)

Fred Fedler's An Introduction to the Mass Media (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1978—price not given, paper)

Rolf Myller's Symbols and their Meaning (New York: Atheneum, 1978—$9.95)

William E. Francois, Mass Media Law and Regulation (Columbus, Ohio: Grid, Inc., 1978—price not given)

James Leigh and Claude R. Martin, Jr., Current Issues and Research in Advertising (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Michigan, 1978—$4.75, paper)

Philip Ward Burton's Advertising Copywriting (Columbus, Ohio: Grid, 1978—$12.95)

Postal and Allied Arenas–Research Task Specifications, Phase I: Arena Survey by John F. McLaughlin (October 1977, 39 pp., $10.90, paper, Working Paper W-77-9)

The Communications Act Policy Toward Competition: A Failure to Communicate by G. Hamilton Loeb (October 1977, 95 pp., $23.40, paper, Publication P-77-3)

Roland E. Wolseley's Careers in Religious Communications (Herald Press, Scottdale, Pa. 15683—$4.95, paper)

Roland Barthes' Image-Music- Text (New York: Hill & Wang, 1977—$8.95)

Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff's The Modern Researcher (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977—$6.95 in paper, and also available in hardback)