Education Commons^™

Four Functions Of Statistical Significance Tests, Xinshu Zhao

Professor Xinshu ZHAO

Icils At A Glance: Highlights From The Full Australian Report – Australian Students’ Readiness For Study, Work And Life In The Digital Age, Lisa De Bortoli, Sarah Buckley, Catherine Underwood, Elizabeth O'Grady, Eveline Gebhardt

Elizabeth O'Grady

The International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) is the first international comparative study that examines students’ acquisition of computer and information literacy: ‘the ability to use computers to investigate, create and communicate in order to participate effectively at home, at school, in the workplace and in society'. This publication includes highlights from the full Australian report called ICILS 2013: Australian students’ readiness for study, work and life in the digital age which is available for download from http://research.acer.edu.au/ict_literacy/6/

Forging A New Path: Faculty Buy-In For The Institutional Repository And Open Access Publishing, Carol G. Hixson, Tina Neville, Deborah Henry

Deborah B. Henry

Many institutions with institutional repositories have had difficulty getting faculty buy-in to add their content to the institutional repository. The University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USFSP), a separately accredited institution within the USF System, has experienced significant buy-in from its faculty for depositing materials in the institutional repository, known as the USFSP Digital Archive. In a small institution of 5000 students, we have established collections for over one quarter of our faculty, with almost 1400 separate submissions in only two years. Faculty have also developed an understanding of and appreciation for open-access publishing and now consult with the library …

What's Going Wrong For Our Users? Analysing Zero Result Searches To Enhance The User Experience, Jessie Donaghey

Jessie Donaghey

No abstract provided.

Suit My Heart: Staging Foster Youth Narratives That Hit Home, Michelle Hayford

Michelle Hayford

While devising Suit My Heart, I relied upon my training in the ‘three A’s’ of performance studies conceived by my late mentor Dwight Conquergood as “artistry, analysis and activism” (2002: 152). With these ‘three A’s’ in mind, I set out to facilitate a devising process and create an artistic product that would positively serve all communities involved. The quality of the project would be determined not only by the efficacy of the play that we produced in the end, but by the personal growth of my students and the empowerment of our community partners throughout the process. Discovering the reach …

School Violence In China: A Multi-Level Analysis Of Student Victimization In Rural Middle Schools, Jennifer Adams, Emily C. Hannum

Emily C. Hannum

Archetypal Energies As The Creative Urges Behind The Evolution Of Humanistic Psychology And Positive Psychology (Archetypal_Energies_As_The_Creative_Urge.Pdf), Carroy U. Ferguson

Carroy U "Cuf" Ferguson, Ph.D.

Creative Tension: Turn The Challenges Of Learning Together Into Opportunities, Christina L. Dobbs, Jacy Ippolito, Megin Charner-Laird

Jacy Ippolito

Is It Scholarly? A Lesson Plan For Collaborative Chemistry Information Literacy, Barbara C. Harvey

Barbara C. Harvey

This chapter describes a lesson plan that incorporates information literacy into an introductory chemistry course. The learning outcomes of the activity include becoming familiar with the peer-review process, knowing how to locate original research articles based on “clues” in a general news article, and differentiating between popular and scholarly periodicals. Students work in small groups in a collaborative classroom setting. The activities of the lesson plan are mapped to the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The lesson plan is supported by a literature review outlining the importance of collaborative, active learning in STEM courses, and highlights the correlation …

Empowering Advisors To Facilitate Change, Melissa R. Shehane, Michael Baumhardt, Michael E. Shehane, Sherry Early Edd

Sherry Early

Advancing group dynamics is difficult. In order for students to learn, develop, and grow within an organization, they need to be empowered by their advisor to feel that their ideas and contributions are both important and valuable. This concept of empowerment means providing freedom for people to do successfully what they want to do, rather than getting them to do what you want them to do (Whetten & Cameron, 2011). As an advisor to a student-led organization, it is important to empower students to identify specific actions and strategies that facilitate change and achieve the outcomes of the organization.

Values-Based Ethical Leadership: Developing Leaders With Integrity, Sherry Early Edd, Kim Kushner

Sherry Early

Values-based leadership and ethical decision-making are hot topics. However, the expectations and frameworks surrounding these characteristics are often unclear. The purpose of this article is to analyze values-based, ethical leadership by defining values and ethics, summarizing values-based ethical decision-making frameworks, and examining how leadership educators (scholars and practitioners) can develop students who lead with integrity.

Language Analysis Skills Of Children With Mental Retardation, Hyla Rubin

Hyla Rubin

The ability of children with moderate mental retardation to analyze orally presented sentences into words and words into syllables and phonemes was studied. The subjects, ages 10 to 15, were grouped by method of reading instruction. All of them could analyze spoken sentences into words and words into syllables equally well. However, subjects receiving code-emphasis reading instruction performed significantly better on the more difficult phoneme manipulation tasks than did subjects receiving whole-word instruction. Results suggest that code-emphasis reading instruction for some subjects with mental retardation should be used. Further research on linguistic analysis skills and the use of code-emphasis reading …

Understanding Student Evaluations : A Black Faculty Perspective., Armon R. Perry, Sherri L. Wallace, Sharon E. Moore, Gwendolyn D. Perry-Burney

Sharon E. Moore

Student evaluations of faculty teaching are critical components to the evaluation of faculty performance. These evaluations are used to determine teaching effectiveness and they influence tenure and promotion decisions. Although they are designed as objective assessments of teaching performance, extraneous factors, including the instructors’ race, can affect the composition and educational atmosphere at colleges and universities. In this reflection, we briefly review some literature on the use and utility of student evaluations and present narratives from social work faculty in which students’ evaluation contained perceived racial bias.

Inclusive Teaching Circles : Mechanisms For Creating Welcoming Classrooms., Sharon E. Moore, Sherri L. Wallace, Gina Schack, M. Shelley Thomas, Linda Lewis, Linda Wilson, Shawnise Miller, Joan D'Antoni

Sharon E. Moore

This essay examines the Inclusive Teaching Circle (ITC) as a mechanism for faculty development in creating instructional tools that embrace an inclusive pedagogy reflecting diversity, cultural competence and social justice. We describe one group’s year-long participation in an ITC at a large, metropolitan research university in the south. Next, we share several members’ strategies for promoting more inclusive and equitable learning for students in our classrooms. Finally, we consider the implications of ITCs for its group participants and the professorate at large.

Inclusive Teaching Circles : Mechanisms For Creating Welcoming Classrooms., Sharon E. Moore, Sherri L. Wallace, Gina Schack, M. Shelley Thomas, Linda Lewis, Linda Wilson, Shawnise Miller, Joan D'Antoni

Sherri L. Wallace

This essay examines the Inclusive Teaching Circle (ITC) as a mechanism for faculty development in creating instructional tools that embrace an inclusive pedagogy reflecting diversity, cultural competence and social justice. We describe one group’s year-long participation in an ITC at a large, metropolitan research university in the south. Next, we share several members’ strategies for promoting more inclusive and equitable learning for students in our classrooms. Finally, we consider the implications of ITCs for its group participants and the professorate at large.

Understanding Student Evaluations : A Black Faculty Perspective., Armon R. Perry, Sherri L. Wallace, Sharon E. Moore, Gwendolyn D. Perry-Burney

Sherri L. Wallace

Student evaluations of faculty teaching are critical components to the evaluation of faculty performance. These evaluations are used to determine teaching effectiveness and they influence tenure and promotion decisions. Although they are designed as objective assessments of teaching performance, extraneous factors, including the instructors’ race, can affect the composition and educational atmosphere at colleges and universities. In this reflection, we briefly review some literature on the use and utility of student evaluations and present narratives from social work faculty in which students’ evaluation contained perceived racial bias.

From Commons To Classroom: The Evolution Of Learning Spaces In Academic Libraries, Vickie Marre Karasic

Vickie M Karasic

Over the past two decades, academic library spaces have evolved to meet the changing teaching and learning needs of diverse campus communities. The Information Commons combines the physical and virtual in an informal library space, whereas the recent Active Learning Classroom creates a more formal setting for collaboration. As scholarship has become increasingly digital and interactive, commons and classroom environments in academic libraries promote experimentation with new technology and accommodate millennial learning behaviors. The library, a centrally located and academically neutral campus space, provides an ideal place for classrooms and encourages interdisciplinary scholarship unbounded by specific academic departments.

Workplace Incivility And Bullying In The Library: Perception Or Reality?, Shin Freedman, Dawn L. Vreven

Shin Freedman

Articulation Of Identity In Black Undergraduate Women: Influences, Interactions, And Intersections, Christa J. Porter

Dr. Christa J Porter

No abstract provided.

Phonological Awareness: Normally Developing And Language Delayed Children, Hyla Rubin

Hyla Rubin

This study compared 15 nonnal and 13 language delayed fourand five-year-old children on a range of tasks of phonological awareness. The tasks differed in the degree of explicit linguistic analysis that was required. The language delayed group always performed below the level of the nonnal children, and there were significant group differences on several tasks. A significant interaction effect reflected the greater difficulty language delayed children experienced with tasks that required the most explicit analysis. The tasks used in this study could be used in intervention research with language delayed children. They can also be used in therapy and classroom …

Clinical Chatter: Every Nurse Informed, Carolyn Talbott, Lynn Watson, Matthew Sorenson, Joseph D. Tariman Phd

Joseph D Tariman PhD, RN, ANP-BC, FAAN

Govdocs Today: Not Your Grandma’S Ravioli, Vickie L. Mix

Vickie Mix

Strengthening The Introductory Communication Course: An Opportunity Through Better Alignment With Today’S Needs, Jon A. Hess

Jonathan A. Hess

More than a century after its inception in contemporary form, the discipline of Communication has encountered a tremendous opportunity—the chance to become an “essential discipline” in the academy, one like Math or English, which universities consider indispensable to the work they do. And yet, as a discipline, we have not sufficiently moved toward taking advantage of that opportunity. While such a move will require action in curriculum, scholarship, and service, one of the highest-impact areas in establishing the necessity of Communication is the introductory course. In order to understand the opportunity that lies before us, we have to understand how …

Student Learning Outcomes: Primary Drivers Of Course Design, Samuel P. Wallace

Samuel P. Wallace

Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) should be the core around which every college course is centered. As a result of taking this course: What should students know? What should they be able to do or to demonstrate? What should students value? Perhaps most important, How should students be changed or affected by taking this course? Effective course planning is made possible when these outcomes are focused and specific, and when the outcomes themselves are a high priority of the course. In spite of this maxim, student learning outcomes have not always been the primary driver of the design(s) of the basic …

A Model For The Development Of A Sustainable Basic Course In Communication, Samuel P. Wallace

Samuel P. Wallace

The purpose of this essay is to provide clarity and direction for developing and maintaining outcome-driven courses for inclusion in general education curricula. The focus is on the basic course in Communication, but the principles can be applied to nearly any course. The outcome-driven perspective changes many traditional conceptions of the basic communication course and provides an opportunity to integrate communication content into a student’s broader college education and subsequent career. A model is proposed that can provide guidance in the development of sustainable courses that emerged from the experience with course development and implementation.

Editor's Page, Joseph M. Valenzano Iii

Joseph M. Valenzano III

This year the National Communication Association (NCA) celebrates its centennial. NCA began over a dispute between speech teachers and English teachers over the perception of oral communication receiving less instructional attention, and for the last century communication experts have been the primary party responsible for communication instruction of college students. Over the years the basic course has largely been focused on public speaking as the course to deliver this instruction, though we developed, and still teach, interpersonal communication and hybrid courses that also include small group communication. There have been several different venues in which the basic communication course has …

Editor's Page, Joseph M. Valenzano Iii

Joseph M. Valenzano III

We are now in the 28th volume of the Basic Communication Course Annual, a testament to the dedication of those concerned with the introductory course in communication. Over the years these pages have been graced with significant work that has influenced the nature of the basic communication course, thereby impacting the lives of thousands of students across the country. That said, I am struck by the fact we have no “motto,” no phrase that captures our feeling about this important educational experience. I would like to muse about what might work as a motto for what we do and teach.

Editor's Page, Joseph M. Valenzano Iii

Joseph M. Valenzano III

Despite its nom de guerre, there is nothing “basic” about the basic communication course in colleges and universities. It has served as a locus for research into communication skills, instructional technology, speech anxiety, instructional design and pedagogical practices. All of the research on these topics impacts more than just the basic course, as it is often relevant to instruction in other courses. The work done in the basic communication course is complex and important for both our students and the discipline.

In this, the 27th volume of the Basic Communication Course Annual, there continue to appear studies that examine the …

Directing The Winds Of Change: The Basic Course And General Education, Joseph M. Valenzano Iii

Joseph M. Valenzano III

Communication departments remain heavily reliant on the inclusion of an introductory communication course in their institution’s general education program. For this reason it is essential for Basic Course Directors (BCDs) to educate themselves on general education. In doing so they will find a new iteration of change to general education where the required course and distribution model are disappearing in favor of an interdisciplinary outcomes-driven approach. Such a shift can have dramatic repercussions on the basic course and communication programs if the course is not further connected with other areas of general education. In this essay, I argue for Basic …

Communication And The Common Core: Disciplinary Opportunities, Joesph M. Valenzano

Joseph M. Valenzano III

The subject of how to strengthen primary and secondary education in the United States is widely discussed in news and popular media. While an extensive range of opinions have been expressed, the common thread is that these issues are normally situated in the domain of politicians and K-12 teachers. Primary and secondary education are rarely addressed by scholars who publish in Communication Education. This divide between Communication researchers in higher education and K-12 practitioners reflects generally weak connections between the two domains. As seems fitting for our changing times, that situation is also ripe for change. In tandem with the …