Education Commons^™

Mobile Information Literacy: Supporting Students’ Research And Information Needs In A Mobile World, Stefanie Havelka

Publications and Research

Mobile devices have changed everyday life and they have had a great impact in higher education. This article describes a pilot project in which an academic librarian at Lehman College, City University of New York, taught information literacy exclusively via mobile devices. The concept of mobile information literacy is also reviewed, and its role in current and future teaching practices is evaluated. Lessons learned from this project tell us that mobile information literacy, albeit in its infancy, could play an essential part in students’ learning, and therefore academic librarians could incorporate it as part of their practice.

An Argument And Plan For Promoting The Teaching And Learning Of Neglected Tropical Diseases, Kevin M. Bonney

Publications and Research

Neglected tropical diseases constitute a significant public health burden, affecting over one billion people globally, yet this group of diseases is underrepresented in the appropriation of both monetary and intellectual capital for developing improved therapies and public health campaigns. The topic of neglected tropical diseases has been similarly marginalized in the biology classrooms of our nation’s high schools and colleges, despite offering an opportunity to teach and learn about a diverse area of microbiology with far-reaching public health, social, and economic implications. Discussed herein is an argument for increasing the representation of neglected tropical diseases in microbiology education as a …

Knowledge Studies, Jay Bernstein

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Cuny Librarians And Reassignment Time: What Is It? How Do I Get It?, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Although librarians in CUNY had achieved Faculty Status by 1946 and Faculty Rank in 1965, they were still never put on the Faculty Calendar with the Summer (or its equivalent) off. Professional Reassignment leave for library faculty was added to the contract in 1978 as a two-week research leave, and it has since expanded to a maximum of six weeks. However, as Professional Reassignment leave increased, the amount of annual leave for new librarians decreased.

Brooklyn's Waterfront As A Living Laboratory, Anne E. Leonard

Publications and Research

Fellows in the college’s Living Lab seminar develop general education learning outcomes using high-impact learning practices, especially place-based learning. Capitalizing on City Tech’s greatest asset, proximity to Brooklyn’s historic post-industrial waterfront, fellows participate in a walking tour, enhanced by a mobile website on the OpenLab. As this activity is integrated into coursework, students use the site to assess their learning.

How I Teach Gender In History (Of Technology), Geoff Zylstra

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

A Primer For Mathematical Modeling, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

With the implementation of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics recommendations and the adoption of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, modeling has moved to the forefront of K-12 education. Modeling activities not only reinforce purposeful problem-solving skills, they also connect the mathematics students learn in school with the mathematics they will use outside of school. Instructors have found mathematical modeling difficult to teach. To successfully incorporate modeling activities I believe that curricular changes should be accompanied by professional development for curriculum developers, classroom teachers, and higher education professionals. This article serves as an introduction to modeling by …

Queer Pedagogical Desire: A Study Guide, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

This essay explores the queer pedagogical desires that attended my writing of the Study Guide for the documentary film United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (Jim Hubbard, 2012). The analysis takes up Robyn Wiegman’s central question in Object Lessons, “What is it we expect our relationship to our objects of study to do?”, which is of particular importance to the discipline of queer studies insofar as the field is oriented around the desire to meld social justice with critical pedagogy. The queer professor’s desire in the case of the Study Guide-as-object was to create a text that …

Students' Immersion Experiences In Study Abroad, Federica Goldoni

Publications and Research

Data show that a larger number of students than ever are participating in learning experiences abroad. However, such programs are not always as immersive and intensive as participants, faculty, program directors, and administrators would wish. This study examines the ways in which students created sustained opportunities to interact with members of the host community as well as episodes of cultural clash, miscommunication, and misunderstanding experienced at the intersection of two cultures that led to diminishing willingness to interact with members of the host community. The article concludes with recommendations for pre-departure experiences that are designed to help students become more …

Toward A Broader Dialectic: Joining Marxism With Mailer To Forge A Multilectics That Advances Teaching And Learning, Gene Fellner

Publications and Research

I contrast the lenses that Norman Mailer, Herbert Marcuse, and Karl Marx bring to their analyses of social life, exploring the contributions and limits of their respective approaches. I then propose what I call a “multilectical” theoretical lens that encompasses the strengths of all three and leans on the insights of post-Marxist theorists. The multilectical lens is then applied to an event that transpired in a severely underperforming middle school.

Standards In Research And Academia: The Role Of Standards In Teaching Professional Skills At The City University Of New York, Angelo Lampousis

Publications and Research

Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) are pairing up with academia to continue to break the barriers to standards education at the undergraduate level. In addition, SDOs are working with the research facilities of academic institutions in a public-private partnership to maintain standards technological relevancy and to find new opportunities to provide standardization to industry and government. This session provides several examples of relationships between SDOs, government, academic institutions, and SES, and describes the advances made from these relationships.

A New Polemic: Libraries, Moocs, And The Pedagogical Landscape, Nora Almeida

Publications and Research

The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has emerged in the past few years as the poster child of the online higher education revolution. Lauded and derided, MOOCs (depending on who you ask) represent the democratization of education on a global scale, an overblown trend, or the beginning of the end of the traditional academic institution. MOOCs have gained so much critical traction because they have succeeded in unmooring educational exchanges and setting them adrift in the sea of the internet. Although the MOOC is a new and evolving platform, it has already upended facets of education in which librarians are …

The Intellectual And Curricular Spaces Of Knowledge Studies, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

The words “knowledge” and “information” are sometimes used interchangeably, but the connection between them is complex and problematic. Knowledge is a mental product gained from engaging with information. All educational subjects, scholarly disciplines, occupations, and activities produce knowledge as well as information. Because libraries encompass potentially all subjects, professional vision in librarianship would benefit from an examination of knowledge that transcends the methods and topical concerns of individual disciplines. An interdisciplinary (or transdisciplinary) framework in which to view knowledge was pioneered in the post-Sputnik age by Fritz Machlup and Michael Polanyi. Their insights have stimulated scholars to develop research, publications, …

Library Facelift: Syncing Library Signage With A College’S New Brand, Mark Aaron Polger, Amy F. Stempler

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Restoring College Education To The Nation's Prisons, Jeremy Travis

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Educational Uses For The Ipad, Philip G. Swan Jr.

Publications and Research

These are bullet points of a talk regarding iPad apps suitable for use in higher education.

Cuny Librarians And Faculty Status, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Although the libraries in what were then known as the City Colleges of New York were made academic departments in 1938, all of the librarians did not have faculty status until 1946, and faculty rank did not come until 1965.

The Impact Of Demographics On 21st Century Education, Norman Eng

Publications and Research

Do all students need STEM education or should it be focused primarily on the mathematically and scientifically inclined? Here, demographics may hold the key to such questions from which a 21st century education model should be based on.

Friendship, Education, And Justice Teaching: The Professional Development Of Two Teacher-Friends, Debbie Sonu

Publications and Research

This paper discusses the distinct nature of friendship between teachers. Using literature on both the philosophical study of friendship and that of professional development, I present data from a qualitative study with two elementary school teachers in New York City in order to explore how the benefits of friendship might deepen an understanding of one's work with students. While literature on professional development tends to focus on effectively designed and structured activity, this article highlights the importance of teacher amity in (a) staving off negative judgments about teacher work, (b) harnessing the freedom to create and err, and (c) cultivating …

Create Cornerstone: Introduction To Scientific Thinking, A New Course For Stem-Interested Freshmen, Demystifies Scientific Thinking Through Analysis Of Scientific Literature, Alan J. Gottesman, Sally G. Hoskins

Publications and Research

The Consider, Read, Elucidate hypotheses, Analyze and interpret data, Think of the next Experiment (CREATE) strategy for teaching and learning uses intensive analysis of primary literature to improve students’ critical-thinking and content integration abilities, as well as their self-rated science attitudes, understanding, and confidence. CREATE also supports maturation of undergraduates’ epistemological beliefs about science. This approach, originally tested with upper-level students, has been adapted in Introduction to Scientific Thinking, a new course for freshmen. Results fromthis course’s initial semesters indicate that freshmen in a one-semester introductory course that uses a narrowly focused set of readings to promote development of analytical …

Searching Mindfully: Are Libraries Up To The Challenge Of Competing With Google Books?, Amrita Dhawan

Publications and Research

Traditional research tools used by libraries, such as encyclopedias and catalogs (OPACs) were created in an age of print and information scarcity. They have not kept up with changes in the information world which assume an abundance of online information in different formats and interdisciplinary topics which attempt to solve ‘real world’ messy problems and not traditional theoretical questions. The traditional tools rest on an unwieldy and somewhat outdated collaboration between OCLC, LOC, private aggregators, librarians and faculty. The search results they deliver offer excessive information with very little guidance on how to systematically sift through them. This makes the …

Cuban Scientist Discusses Exchange With Siue, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Beyond Physical Space: Implementing A Virtual Learning Commons At An Urban Community College, Heba Elsayed, Carlos Guevara, Rebecca Hoda-Kearse, Isabel Li, Kate Lyons, George Rosa, Varun Sehgal

Publications and Research

The administration, faculty, and staff at Hostos Community College strive to improve students’ computer and information literacy skills while meeting the distinct needs of Millennials. In 2007, Hostos initiated a project to reconfigure physical spaces throughout the campus (areas in the Library, Academic Learning Center, Educational Technology Office, and Academic Computing Center) and establish a unified virtual space, creating a cross-divisional entity: the Information Learning Commons (ILC).

This case discusses the formation of the ILC Committee, the group that envisions and manages physical ILC spaces’ renovation and also develops virtual spaces; the planning and implementation of physical learning commons spaces; …

Making Higher Education More Affordable, One Course Reading At A Time: Academic Libraries As Key Advocates For Open Access Textbooks And Educational Resources, Karen Okamoto

Publications and Research

Open access textbooks (OATs) and educational resources (OERs) are being lauded as a viable alternative to costly print textbooks. Some academic libraries are joining the OER movement by creating guides to open repositories. Others are promoting OATs and OERs, reviewing them, and even helping to create them. This article analyzes how academic libraries are currently engaged in open access textbook and OER initiatives. By drawing on examples of library initiatives across the United States, the author illustrates how libraries are facilitating the adoption and implementation of these affordable resources.

Stage As Street: Representation At The Juncture Of The Arts And Justice, E. Gabriel Dattatreyan, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

Arts educators working with court-involved youth face a set of complex and imbricated challenges. First, how do we gain the interest of the young people we would have participate in what we imagine are col-laborative and mutually generative projects? Second, how do we mediate representational tensions when the project is not solely therapeutic but has a broader public pedagogical purpose—to disrupt the simplistic and pathologizing discourses of poverty and violence that so often capture young men and women of color in the United States? (Bourgois, 2002; Noguera, 2008). Third, and not least, how do we navigate the institutional settings where …

Alchemy And Inquiry: Reflections On An Inside-Out Research Roundtable, Sarah Allred, Angela Bryant, Simone Weil Davis, Kurt Fowler, Phil Goodman, Jim Nolan, Lori Pompa, Barbara Sherr Roswell, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

In 2008, The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program convened a Research Committee to (1) facilitate a collective, critical, and professional consciousness about social justice, crime, and incarceration through the exploration of the Inside-Out program pedagogy, impact, and effectiveness; (2) develop and encourage proposals for various types of research that focus on The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program; and (3) establish ethical guidelines for inquiry that would meet and exceed the federal human subjects guidelines in research practices. In fall 2012, Research Committee members Sarah Allred, Angela Bryant, Phil Goodman, Kurt Fowler, Jim Nolan, Lori Pompa, and Dan Stageman joined with Simone Davis …

Particularizing Universal Education In Postcolonial Sierra Leone, Grace Pai

Publications and Research

This paper presents a vertical case study of the history of universalizing education in postcolonial Sierra Leone from the early 1950s to 1990 to highlight how there has never been a universal conception of universal education. In order to unite a nation behind a universal ideal of schooling, education needed to be adapted to different subpopulations, as the Bunumbu Project did for rural Sierra Leoneans in the 1970s to 1980s. While the idea of “localizing” education was sound, early program success was undermined by a lack of clarity behind terms like “rural” or “community.” This was exacerbated by a change …

Panel Sees Esl As Topic Of Hope, Despair, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Former Estl Mayor Gives Back To Alma Mater, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Professor Teaches Science Teachers To Teach, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.