Digital Commons Network^™

Classics And Religious Studies Collection Development Policy, Kathleen Johnson

UNL Libraries: Collection Development Policies

The Classics and Religious Studies collections support the teaching, research, and service activities of the entire university community. The primary audience is the faculty and students of the Department of Classics & Religious Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. Its primary focus is support for the undergraduate and graduate curricula for Classics & Religious Studies. Research needs of faculty and students are supplemented through Interlibrary Loan. While the collection also benefits other citizens of the state of Nebraska, materials are not purchased with them in mind. While the collection focuses on works classified in Library of Congress call …

Special Education & Communication Disorders Collection Development Policy Statement, Rebecca Bernthal

UNL Libraries: Collection Development Policies

The Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders is part of the College of Education and Human Sciences. The department is housed in the Barkley Memorial Center, named in memory of William E and Edna M. Barkley, and is located on the East Campus of the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. The Barkleys established a trust to support making the University of Nebraska-Lincoln a center for the preparation of teachers and other professionals to educate children and adults with speech and hearing disabilities. Money from the trust funded construction of the original building in 1976 and the three additions in …

Philosophy Collection Development Policy, Kathleen Johnson

UNL Libraries: Collection Development Policies

The philosophy collection supports the teaching, research, and service activities of the entire university community. Its primary audience is the faculty and students of the Department of Philosophy in the College of Arts & Sciences. Its primary focus is support for the undergraduate and graduate curricula for philosophy. Research needs of faculty and students are supplemented through Interlibrary Loan. Although the collection also benefits other citizens of the state of Nebraska, materials are not purchased with them in mind. While the collection focuses on works classified in Library of Congress call numbers B, BC-BD, BH, and BJ, research support is …

December 2009 - Staff Meeting Minutes

ALEC Committee Minutes

No abstract provided.

Geography & Giscience Collection Development Policy, David C. Tyler

UNL Libraries: Collection Development Policies

The geography collection supports the teaching, research and service activities of the entire university community. Its primary audience is the faculty, staff, and students of the Faculty of Geography & GIScience in the School of Natural Resources. Its primary focus is support for the undergraduate and graduate curricula for geography. Specific and transient research needs of geography faculty and graduate students should be supplemented through Interlibrary Loan. Materials are not purchased for the general public, though they may benefit from the collection. While the collection focuses on works classified in Geography G through Human Ecology. Anthropogeography GF, curriculum and research …

Modern Languages And Literatures Collection Development Policy, Mary K. Bolin

UNL Libraries: Collection Development Policies

The modern languages collection supports the teaching, research and service activities of the university, but its primary audience is the faculty, staff, and students of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures in the College of Arts and Sciences, with a focus on support for the departmental curricula. Specific and transient research needs of department faculty and graduate students are supplemented through Interlibrary Loan. Materials are not purchased for the general public, although they may use the collection. The collection focuses on works classified in particular areas of the P classification, curriculum and research support are also provided by works …

Anthropology Collection Development Policy, David C. Tyler

UNL Libraries: Collection Development Policies

The anthropology collection supports the teaching, research and service activities of the entire university community. Its primary audience is the faculty, staff, and students of the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences (note: prior to 2009, the department was part of the conjoined Department of Anthropology & Geography). Its primary focus is support for the undergraduate and graduate curricula for anthropology. Narrowly specific and transient research needs of anthropology faculty and graduate students are supplemented through Interlibrary Loan. Materials are not purchased for the general public, though the public may benefit from the collection. The collection …

Summary Brief: Unl Libraries 2003/04 – 2007/08 Acquisitions: Performance Of Non-Serial Volumes Available For Checkout, David C. Tyler

UNL Libraries: White Papers

The activity of the included five years’ worth of receipts was analyzed for both degree of idleness and extent of use. Analyses were conducted upon the collection of receipts as a whole and upon the collection disaggregated into broad subject categories and into Library of Congress (LC) subclasses. When reading the report to follow, one should keep in mind that statistics may sometimes mask as much as they reveal, especially when one is dealing with non-discrete category data. For example, several LC subclasses (e.g., HC = Economic Theory and Demography) cover multiple topical areas, so analysis at the LC …

The Influence Of Departmental Affiliation And Pedagogical Training On Faculty Adoption Of Innovative Pedagogical Methods In Georgia Technical Colleges, Linda G. Grisham

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This quantitative study used factorial design and survey research to examine the influence of departmental affiliation and pedagogical training on full-time faculty members’ (n = 2193) working in the Technical College System of Georgia. The tool for data collections was a web-survey instrument, modified with permission from the Faculty Survey on Teaching, Learning and Assessment” (Matney, 2001).

Two independent variables (departmental affiliation and level of pedagogical training in active learning practices) and three dependent variables (participation in the scholarship of teaching and learning, introduction of new teaching techniques, and active learning practices) were measured by responses on a 5-point Likert-scale. …

Communicative Correlates Of Satisfaction, Family Identity, And Group Salience In Multiracial/Ethnic Families, Jordan Soliz, Allison R. Thorson, Christine E. Rittenour

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Guided by the Common Ingroup Identity Model (S. L. Gaertner & J. F. Dovidio, 2000) and Communication Accommodation Theory (C. Shepard, H. Giles, & B. A. LePoire, 2001), we examined the role of identity accommodation, supportive communication, and self-disclosure in predicting relational satisfaction, shared family identity, and group salience in multiracial/ ethnic families. Additionally, we analyzed the association between group salience and relational outcomes as well as the moderating roles of multiracial/ethnic identity and marital status. Individuals who have parents from different racial/ethnic groups were invited to complete questionnaires on their family experiences. Participants (N = 139) answered questions about …

Metadata: Implications For Academic Libraries, Israel Yañez

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Academic libraries will do well to embrace metadata and the project possibilities it brings. Digital initiatives, particularly in the form of institutional repositories, help raise the profile of the academic library across campus and in the community. Metadata librarians, with an understanding of both metadata schemes and traditional cataloging, play a significant role in an academic library’s digital initiatives. Metadata librarians in academic libraries are a prime example of the 21st century librarian. This paper surveys the literature available on metadata and its implications for academic libraries. Definitions of metadata are offered. Metadata schemes are presented, including the scheme most …

Segmented Professions: Further Considerations Of Theory And Practice In Lis And Librarianship, Andrew Carlin

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

How relevant are theories of information to practical library work? Using sociology and the philosophy of social sciences, this essay discusses how theoretical work defines an area of knowledge in relation to other fields, the identification of researchable phenomena, and how phenomena are established as its own subject matter. Theorizing is a generic activity, highlighting connections between theory and practice, profession and field. While proposing that theorizing is important, this paper explores the nature of theorizing in LIS, and suggests that its cognitivistic foundations impede theory development. Information is a linkage between theory and practice, and this paper argues that …

Book Review: Comanche Ethnography: Field Notes Of E. Adamson Hoebel, Waldo R. Wedel, Gustav G. Carlson, And Robert H. Lowie Compiled And Edited By Thomas W. Kavanagh, William C. Meadows

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

This work presents a body of edited ethnographic field notes on the Comanches, the majority of it from the field notes of the 1933 Santa Fe Laboratory of Anthropology “Field Training Course in Anthropological Field Methods,” popularly known as the “Field Party.” This party consisted of five male graduate students (Waldo R. Wedel, E. Adamson Hoebel, Gustav G. Carlson, James Nixon Hadley, and Henry C. Lockett) and two female graduate students (F. Gore Hoebel and Martha Chapman), under Dr. Ralph Linton who conducted six weeks of ethnographic fieldwork with eighteen Comanche elders in June and July of 1933. The surviving …

Understanding Human Services Utilization: Opportunities For Data Sharing Between Federally Funded Programs, Nancy C. Shank

Nancy Shank Publications

In communities across the United States, social service clients face uncoordinated systems of care and delays in services when their information cannot easily be shared among providers. Social service agencies face challenges in sharing information on clients and services between disparate information systems and inefficiencies when multiple, stand-alone systems are used to satisfy operational, funding, or reporting requirements.

This cataloging project arose from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) interest to document standards that may be of relevance to its community partners, particularly those partners working to support local homeless, housing, and community development activities and build …

Barriers And Bridges To Success: Factors For Retention Of Nontraditional Mexican American Students In Teacher Education, Gail Shroyer, Sally Yahnke, Amanda Morales, Cindi Dunn, Gayla Lohfink, Pedro Espinoza

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This paper discusses the findings of a qualitative, microethnographic case study of 15 nontraditional, Mexican American students as they completed their coursework in a 2+2 teacher education program in the Midwest. The theoretical frameworks that serve as the basis of this study are Tinto’s Model of Student Integration (Tinto, 1975, 1993), Bean’s attrition model (1980), and von Destinon’s empowerment model (1988). This integrated framework is an inclusive adaptation as it addresses the complex interaction among first-generation, Mexican American students’ backgrounds, geographical locations, and the institutions that serve them. The researchers identify characteristics of those students who persisted on to graduation, …

A Short Report: Word-Level Phonological And Lexical Characteristics Interact To Influence Phoneme Awareness, Tiffany Hogan

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

In this study, we examined the influence of word-level phonological and lexical characteristics on early phoneme awareness. Typically-developing children, ages 61-78 months, completed a phoneme-based, odd-one-out task that included consonant-vowel-consonant word sets (e.g., “chair-chain-ship”) that varied orthogonally by a phonological characteristic, sound-contrast similarity (similar vs. dissimilar), and a lexical characteristic, neighborhood density (dense vs. sparse). In a subsample of the participants – those with the highest vocabularies – results were in line with a predicted interactive effect of phonological and lexical characteristics on phoneme awareness performance: word sets contrasting similar sounds were less likely to yield correct responses in words …

China’S New New Youth, Alec Ash

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In 1915, in Shanghai, Chen Duxiu founded a magazine called qingnian zazhi (青年杂志), or Youth Magazine. Soon after, it was renamed xinqingnian (新青年): New Youth. Perhaps Chen came to feel that the youth of the times had something new to offer China, or that his writers had something new to offer China’s youth. Either way, the magazine and the name captured the spirit of the New Culture Movement which led to May 4th. New Youth aimed to call China out of its Confucian slumber with plain, angry writing by the likes of Lu Xun and essays promoting democracy. Later, it …

Vowel Recognition From Articulatory Position Time-Series Data, Jun Wang, Ashok Samal, Jordan R. Green, Tom D. Carrell

CSE Conference and Workshop Papers

A new approach of recognizing vowels from articulatory position time-series data was proposed and tested in this paper. This approach directly mapped articulatory position time-series data to vowels without extracting articulatory features such as mouth opening. The input time-series data were time-normalized and sampled to fixed-width vectors of articulatory positions. Three commonly used classifiers, Neural Network, Support Vector Machine and Decision Tree were used and their performances were compared on the vectors. A single speaker dataset of eight major English vowels acquired using Electromagnetic Articulograph (EMA) AG500 was used. Recognition rate using cross validation ranged from 76.07% to 91.32% for …

Vowel Recognition From Articulatory Position Time-Series Data, Jun Wang, Ashok Samal, Jordan R. Green, Tom D. Carrell

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

A new approach of recognizing vowels from articulatory position time-series data was proposed and tested in this paper. This approach directly mapped articulatory position time-series data to vowels without extracting articulatory features such as mouth opening. The input time-series data were time-normalized and sampled to fixed-width vectors of articulatory positions. Three commonly used classifiers, Neural Network, Support Vector Machine and Decision Tree were used and their performances were compared on the vectors. A single speaker dataset of eight major English vowels acquired using Electromagnetic Articulograph (EMA) AG500 was used. Recognition rate using cross validation ranged from 76.07% to 91.32% for …

Graduate Connections- August 2009

Graduate Connections: A Newsletter for UNL Graduate Students

In This Issue:

Click on links to navigate the newsletter

Navigating Graduate School......1

Ten Things to Do the First Ten Weeks of Graduate School

Career Talk: Learning the Lingo

Goo Practices in Graduate Education......................................4

Key Practices for Integrity in Research

Essential Connections..................6

Who Are Our Students

Syllabus Checklist

Teaching Tip .................................8

Creating a Positive Climate

Professional Development...........8

How to Read a Job Posting

Funding Opportunities...............11

Events..........................................13

Campuswide Workshops for Graduate Teaching Assistants

New Student Welcome

International Student Orientation

Graduation Information Sessions

Announcements..........................15

Health Insurance

Call for Graduate Award Nominations

Syllabus Policy

Interactions.................................17

GSA News

Calendar......................................18

Events

Degree Deadlines

Readers’ Corner.........................19 …

Understanding Foreign Language Teachers’ Beliefs And Classroom Practices: A Multiple-Case Study Of Four Teachers’ Experiences With Linguafolio, Gabriel E. Cote Parra

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this multiple-case study was to understand the beliefs, classroom practices and experiences of four foreign language teachers using LinguaFolio, a selfassessment tool that allows learners to reflect on their language knowledge and cultural experiences. This study involved four Spanish teachers in four Midwestern towns. Data were collected using different methods including in-depth interviews, observations, field notes, and document analysis.

Consistent with multiple case studies, after analyzing each case separately, a cross case analysis was performed to contrast and compare the themes across the four cases. As a result, three interrelated themes emerged: a facilitator role; fostering self-regulated …

Social Networks, Social Identities, And Mindset Of At-Risk College Students, Troy A. Romero

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Success in higher education is typically measured by retention and graduation, and traditionally the students who are least likely to succeed are at-risk students. At-risk students are characterized by one or more of the following: being from underrepresented ethnicities and cultures, having low socioeconomic status, being educated in poorly funded primary and secondary education systems, being first-generation college students, or being otherwise marginalized in society. This study was designed to test how at-risk students differ from other students in terms of the size of their academic social networks, the strength of their academic identities, and their mindset, and to what …

A Cultural Symbol Passes From The Scene: Ji Xianlin, Not Michael Jackson, Timothy B. Weston

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s been moving to watch the response in China to the July 11 death of renowned scholar, Ji Xianlin (1911-2009). While Ji’s unsurprising departure at the ripe old age of 98 has not brought quite the same flood tide of emotion and cultural stock taking in China as Michael Jackson’s completely unexpected death a few weeks earlier at age 50 has in the United States and around the world, the way the venerable scholar is being remembered in Beijing is nevertheless remarkable. Long lines of people wishing to pay their last respects waited for hours to gain entrance to a …

Race, Gender, And School Leadership In A State With Shifting Student Demographics, Liz Hollingworth, David Dude

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

This is an analysis of equity in Iowa educational leadership from the 1978-1979 school year through 2007-2008, and the extent to which rapidly changing stu- dent racial demographics are reflected in the schools. We found that male princi- pals continue to outnumber women 6: 1 in rural districts, but in urban schools the rate is closer to 1: 1. Female superintendents are now paid statistically the same as men, but women in every other educational position make on average less money than men. The data also reveal that the race of Iowa educators has not shifted to reflect the increasingly …

Therapy With Muslim Couples And Families: Basic Guidelines For Effective Practice, Paul R. Springer, Douglas A. Abbott, Allison M. J. Reisbig

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

Despite the growing numbers of Muslims in the United States, there is a scarcity of research dealing with mental health practitioners working with Muslim families. This lack of research may leave clinicians unprepared to adequately help Muslim patients and families faced with discrimination and misunderstanding, which may inadvertently lead to the perpetuation of biases in therapy. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is (a) to provide mental health practitioners with foundational information regarding the Islamic faith and the values of the traditional Muslim families and (b) to provide culturally sensitive guidelines for clinical practice.

Problems With Problem Solving: Assessing Written Solutions Of Mathematical Habits Of Mind Problems, Ali Arndt

Departament of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Master's of Arts in Teaching, Summative Projects

This paper explores a study of sixth grade mathematics students in a middle school setting. I investigated the effects of assigning Habits of Mind problems related to the curriculum, district standards and objectives to increase problem-solving opportunities and skills. I discovered integrating problem solving into the given curriculum allowed students to make connections to math in an opportune way that evoked communication on paper, interactions with partners or small groups, and presentations of solutions to the large group. Using the challenging Habits of Mind problems deliberately chosen to match specific content objectives within my district at the sixth grade level …

Forgetting To Remember: Formative Assessment In Sixth Grade Mathematics Classroom, Corie Lubash

Departament of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Master's of Arts in Teaching, Summative Projects

In this action research study of a sixth grade mathematics classroom, I investigated what would happen to the students’ understanding of mathematical concepts and what student learning would look like when multiple formative assessments were implemented and descriptive feedback was given by the teacher. I also examined how my own teaching would be affected when I utilized descriptive feedback on formative assessments in attempts to decrease the number of retakes needed on summative assessments. I discovered that my students were better prepared for summative assessments when multiple formative assessments were implemented and when I utilized information from the formative assessments …

An Inquiry Into Authorial Attribution, Sarah Potvin

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

At attempt to establish the authorship of several unsigned pieces that appeared in the Pittsburgh magazine Home Monthly circa 1896-­‐1897 using computational attribution techniques did not deliver robust results. The report that follows examines the computational methods advocated by professors David Hoover, Patrick Juola, and Matthew Jockers. It emphasizes the importance of contextualizing any statistical attribution results with traditional scholarship, as demonstrated by both Hoover and Jockers, and calls for collaboration between humanists and statisticians in interpreting and integrating statistical data.

Edition, Project, Database, Archive, Thematic Research Collection: What's In A Name?, Kenneth M. Price

Department of English: Faculty Publications

What are the implications of the terms we use to describe large-scale text-based electronic scholarship, especially undertakings that share some of the ambitions and methods of the traditional multi-volume scholarly edition? And how do the conceptions inherent in these choices of language frame and perhaps limit what we attempt? How do terms such as edition, project, database, archive, and thematic research collection relate to the past, present, and future of textual studies? Kenneth M. Price considers how current terms describing digital scholarship both clarify and obscure our collective enterprise. Price argues that the terms we use have more than expressive …

Oral Presentations: Exploring Presentations Of Homework Problems As An Alternative Assessment Tool, Michael Ford

Departament of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Master's of Arts in Teaching, Summative Projects

In this study of my fifth grade mathematics class, I investigated a method of assessing homework presentations as an alternative means of assessment from the more traditional approach of paper and pencil testing. By changing the number of daily problems assigned in my classroom to include shorter assignments and implementing longer, more difficult story problems, I found that students enjoyed mathematics more and had a deeper understanding of the concepts. Increased retention of material, enhanced abilities to communicate problem solving methods, and improved attitudes were all positive side-effects of this project. As a result of my study, I have changed …