Creating a departmental culture for communication grants

Extramural funding to support communication research influences and is influenced by the culture of our discipline, universities, and departments. Both the National Communication Association and the International Communication Association have established closer ties to funding agencies and encouraged members' grant writing pursuits through mentorship and convention programs, newsletter columns, and publicity. Universities vary in how much support they have available as infrastructure to assist in the submission and administration of grants. Some institutions facilitate extramural funding endeavors through mentoring programs, university-wide research centers, sharing of indirect costs, and space. Department cultures, too, vary in the resources available to support grants. Departments in many ways have the most direct effects on grant-supporting cultures. In addition to activities indicated for the discipline and university, departments can build a grant culture by recognizing grant writing in their personnel practices, creating systems for rewarding and supporting grant activities, and having policies in place for the many related issues (e.g., release time, indirect cost sharing, research assistants). Finally, the interpersonal culture, whether colleagues recognize and support grants, plays a major role in individual pursuit of, and satisfaction with, seeking extramural funding to support communication research.     

Designing customizable reading modules for a high school literature classroom

This design case follows an ongoing collaboration between an instructional technologist and a high school literature teacher promoting reading comprehension through modules that provide visually interesting display of text on a computer screen along with cognitive tools. The modules were found to boost comprehension of specific content in even one use, and over time, overall reading skills were improved. Specific examples from the design and development process of this collaboration are shared here to illustrate decisions made in the face of common constraints—limited time, funding, and technical know-how—that emerged from theory and pilot studies. Teacher educators and their instructional-technology collaborators can use the information from this design and research process to harness the potential of ubiquitous software in affordable, replicable, and pedagogically sound ways.     

Software Design and the Future of the Virtual Classroom®

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the software functionality that has evolved over the past two decades of research in Computer Mediated Communications at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) to create a Virtual Classroom® to support distance education. Based upon many years of evaluating its effectiveness we also summarize our views about the software functionality needed for further improvement of this approach to distance education. This view of a future Virtual Classroom® allows the instructor complete control over the learning materials and the tools to easily to weave in the learners as co contributors to a growing web of course knowledge. Beyond the current basic tools of the Virtual Classroom® we discuss the future role for hypertext, gaming and simulation, animation and multimedia and the role of the educator as a facilitator of a collaborative learning process. Both the proper software and the proper pedagogical techniques are necessary in order to obtain maximum effectiveness in the asynchronous computer‐mediated environment     

Strategic Planning From the Bottom Up: A Unit Strategic Plan That Pushes Change

This article describes an example of a unit level strategic plan, its formation, and its effects in implementation. The argument is presented that unit level strategic plans can help libraries by giving individuals specific goals that are tailored to their strengths and make up for the unit's weaknesses.     

Determinants of Attraction,Retention and Completion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher Degree Research Students: A Systematic Review to Inform Future Research Directions

Expanding the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian (hereafter respectfully Indigenous) talent pool to undertake valuable roles in business, health, education, academia, government, policy development and community development is critical for addressing current disparities between Indigenous and other Australians. Parity of access and engagement with education plays a key role in facilitating participation in these roles but has not yet been attained. This article provides an initial systematic review of literature on the state of the evidence regarding access/attraction, retention and completions for Indigenous Higher Degree Research (HDR) students. This article identifies the quantity (number examined), nature (e.g. focus of study), quality (peer reviewed and evidence of methodological rigour) and characteristics (e.g. publication type, authorship) of the limited publications. Using specific search strings (words or phrases of relevance to the topic), a systematic review methodology was employed to search nine databases and grey (non-peer reviewed) literature from 1995 to 2015. The resultant 12 publications were mined with quality assessed and a predetermined framework used to extract and synthesise the characteristics from individual publications. This research contributes to existing literature about Indigenous Peoples in HDR programs internationally in identifying significant cultural and institutional barriers and highlighting institutional enablers which can contribute to attraction, retention and completion. Building on the prior limited research reported in the review, the article highlights the need for further research and provides an initial agenda of directions for universities and government to redress the disparity in entry and completion of Indigenous Peoples in HDR programs.

     

Temporal patterns of schedule-induced drinking and pawgrooming in rats exposed to periodic food

Five rats were exposed to fixed-time food schedules, ranging from 30 to 480 sec. Three rats displayed a postfood pattern of schedule-induced drinking, with short latencies from food delivery to drinking at all interfood interval durations. In contrast, drinking for the other 2 subjects tended to occur at lower overall levels, and drinking bouts frequently began in the middle of the interfood interval, such that the latency from food delivery to drinking increased dramatically as the interfood interval increased. Observation of these 2 subjects revealed that another form of licking-pawgrooming-occurred reliably after food delivery and before drinking bouts. A between subject comparison of the 3 postfood drinkers and the 2 pawgroomers revealed that, in addition to a common topography (repetitive licking), pawgrooming and drinking were similar with respect to their temporal locus, relation to the interfood interval, and extinction baseline levels. These similarities suggest that drinking and pawgrooming are induced by a common mechanism. Cohen, Looney, Campagnoni, and Lawler’s (1985) two-state model of reinforcer-induced motivation provides a useful framework for the interpretation of these results.