Higher Education Commons^™

The Value Of Academic Libraries: Library Services As A Predictor Of Student Retention, Ashley Ireland, Adam Murray, Jana Hackathorn

Jana Hackathorn

This study examined the predictive relationship between library use by individual students and their retention status in university settings. The methodology builds on a small number of previous studies to examine library use at the individual level to determine if use of specific library services is predictive of retention for freshmen and sophomores. Binary logistic regression yielded results that indicate a strong positive predictive relationship between library use of any kind with both freshmen and sophomore retention. These results suggest that academic libraries add value to institutional retention efforts.

To Go Or Not To Go: Graduate Study In Psychology, Talegria Brown, Kinsey Bolinder, Eric Barlow, Matthew Genuchi, R. Eric Landrum

R. Eric Landrum

Dissertation To Book: Successful Open Access Outreach To Graduate Students, Diane Gurman, Marta Brunner

Marta Brunner

No abstract provided.

Advancing Community Engaged Scholarship And Community Engagement At The University Of Massachusetts Boston: A Report Of The Working Group For An Urban Research-Based Action Initiative, Mark Warren, John Saltmarsh, Patricia Krueger-Henney, Lorna Rivera, Miren Uriarte, Donna Friedman, Richard Fleming, Diana Yadira-Salas, Luciano Ramos

Lorna Rivera

The University of Massachusetts Boston has a rich history of mission-driven commitments that engage the campus with local, state, regional, national, and global communities. In the context of a public urban research university, a mission of community engagement is most clearly expressed through community-engaged scholarship. The University is positioned to build upon its strengths in community engagement and strengthen its community-engaged scholarship to become an international model for community engagement.

Black Male College Achievers And Resistant Responses To Racist Stereotypes At Predominantly White Colleges And Universities, Shaun R. Harper, Ph.D.

Shaun R. Harper, Ph.D.

In this article, Shaun R. Harper investigates how Black undergraduate men respond to and resist the internalization of racist stereotypes at predominantly White colleges and universities. Prior studies consistently show that racial stereotypes are commonplace on many campuses, that their effects are usually psychologically and academically hazardous, and that Black undergraduate men are often among the most stereotyped populations in higher education and society. The threat of confirming stereotypes has been shown to undermine academic performance and persistence for Blacks and other minoritized students. To learn more about those who succeed in postsecondary contexts where they are routinely stereotyped, Harper …

Radical Academia: Beyond The Audit Culture Treadmill, Rowan Cahill, Terry Irving

Rowan Cahill

The pathos of radical academia: notes on the impact of neo-liberalism on the universities, especially the audit culture, the production-model, casualization, academic scholarship, academic writing, peer reviewing, and open access. The authors suggest ways scholars can be radical within, and outside, of neoliberal academia. Part I, 'Missing in Action' appeared as an Academia.edu session in May 2015, where it attracted many comments. Part II, 'What Can Be Done?' is the authors' response to these comments. The whole piece was posted on the Cahill/Irving blog 'Radical Sydney/Radical History' on 22 October 2015.

Missing In Action?, Rowan Cahill, Terry Irving

Rowan Cahill

The changing character of intellectual production: how university radicals have become vassals of global billion-dollar scholarly publishing empires; the necessity for radical scholars to break from this model; and the possibility of connecting with activism outside the university as one way of doing this.

The Effectiveness Of Diversity Initiatives At Suny Brockport Including Student Perceptions And Campus Climate, Kara Hiltz, Amanda Crowley, Marquia Westbrook

Kara M. Hiltz

This presentation preliminarily examines the effectiveness of campus-wide diversity initiatives through the Office of the Assistant Provost for Diversity at the College at Brockport, State University of New York. Effectiveness will be measured by survey item responses and institutional data. Student perception data was obtained through item responses on the 2008 and 2011 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) survey and SUNY Student Opinion Survey (SOS). The College's institutional research department collected the institutional data that is examined (e.g., enrollment diversity). Strengths, areas for improvement, and suggestions for future diversity initiatives will be presented. Keywords: diversity, initiatives, student enrollment, improvement, …

Chronic Pain: The Impact On Academic, Social, And Emotional Functioning, Jason Parkins, Susan Davies

Susan C. Davies

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Par Concussion App For Smartphones, Susan Davies, T. Sullivan, Sara Timms

Susan C. Davies

There has been an explosion in the number of health-related smartphone applications, or apps, available for download. These products nowinclude apps concerning concussion. From April to August 2011, at least seven concussion-related apps were released. The primary focus of these apps is assessment at the time of injury. One exception to this trend is Psychological Assessment Resources' (PAR) Concussion Recognition & Response: Coach & Parent Version.

PAR's Concussion Recognition & Response app provides a checklist of concussion signs/symptoms designed to help coaches and parents determine whether to remove a child from play and seek medical attention. Unlike its competitors, the …

Review Of 'Evidence-Based Interventions For Students With Learning And Behavioral Challenges', Susan Davies

Susan C. Davies

Review of the book Evidence-Based Interventions for Students with Learning and Behavioral Challenges, eds. Richard J. Morris and Nancy Mather.

New School Assignment? Tips For A Positive Start, Susan Davies

Susan C. Davies

No abstract provided.

Microblogging For Engaged Teaching And Learning, Thomas Menkhoff, Kok Siew Benjamin Gan, Charles Jason Woodard, Yue Wah Chay

C. Jason Woodard

In this paper, we report how we put a newly developed Twitter application to work in the context of a Knowledge Management course taught at the Singapore Management University (SMU) allowing students to post and view relevant tweets in an organized manner for the benefit of collaborative class discussions and learning. Innovative elements of the ongoing project include the explorative usage of social media such as Twitter in the higher education context, student participation in providing initial evidence and qualitative feedback that tweeting is pedagogically meaningful and a newly built-in feature which can resolve tweeting challenges which occurred in class …

Uganda And Dominican: The Evolution Of A Partnership, Leeann Bartolini, Sr. Carla Kovack

LeeAnn Bartolini

Teaching Better, Teaching Together: A Coordinated Student Exit Poll Across The States, Jennifer Kelkres Emery, Alison D. Howard, Jocelyn Evans

Alison Dana Howard

Faculty Writing Circles: Freedom To Explore And Flourish, Ludwika Goodson, Martha Coussement, Shannon Johnson

Shannon F Johnson

Asked to launch a faculty writing circle, our Center joined faculty to shape its mission and give members a “safe space,” a “source of accountability” (Nole, Hart, Soled, 2010), and writing support. We will report on milestones, resulting publications and presentations, library collaboration, and university wide writing initiatives showing the circle's evolution into a community of practice and how it has “harnessed the multiplier effects of collaborative processes...building upon informal networks within entities” (Nagy & Burch, 2009). By comparing this circle to those at other universities, we also will explore strategies and conditions that stimulate scholarly writing and benefit stakeholders. …

Evaluating Organizational Behavior Teaching Innovations: More Rigorous Designs, More Relevant Criteria, And An Example, James Shaw, Cynthia Fisher, Gregory Southey

James B Shaw

Evaluations of new methods of teaching Organizational Behavior (OB) usually rely on course ratings collected at the end of the semester. This article discusses the need for more rigorous designs for assessing teaching innovations, and proposes evaluating OB courses on the basis of change in self-ratings of managerial competencies. Self-ratings of managerial competencies and a more sophisticated evaluation design are used to compare the Practical Organizational Behavior Education (PROBE) method to the lecture/tutorial method of delivering of OB material. PROBE produces greater perceived managerial skill learning than lecture/tutorial delivery for females, younger students, students with little work experience, and students …

The Corporate University And Business Ethics Teaching, Stefano Harney, Amitabh Rai

Stephen Matthias Harney

No abstract provided.

Tone It Down A Bit!: Euphemism As A Colonial Device In Indigenous Studies, Colleen Mcgloin

Colleen McGloin

No abstract provided.

Transgender Individuals' Access To College Housing And Bathrooms: Findings From The National Transgender Discrimination Survey, Kristie Seelman

Kristie L Seelman

Within higher education settings, transgender people are at risk for discrimination and harassment within housing and bathrooms. Yet, few have examined this topic using quantitative data or compared the experiences of subgroups of transgender individuals to predict denial of access to these spaces. The current study utilizes the National Transgender Discrimination Survey to research this issue. Findings indicate that being transgender and having another marginalized identity matters for students’ access to housing and bathrooms. Trans women are at greater risk than gender non-conforming people for being denied access to school housing and bathrooms. Implications for practice and research are detailed.

Using Games To Make Something: Of Our Students, Our Pedagogies, Our Field. A Review Essay Of Gee & Hayes (2011), Squire (2011), Steinkuehler Et Al (2012), And Thomas & Brown (2011), Carly Finseth

Carly Finseth

If there’s one thing that writing instructors are known for it’s innovation. Compositionists, because of our connection between academia and industry, the humanistic and the technical, the creative and the practical, are often some of the first to explore and adopt new technologies. In this review essay, I introduce how games and digital technologies can help our students “make” new thing. Understanding how games can link with literary practices, multimodal composition, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, and more can help researchers in rhetoric and composition make important contributions to our field: Make games with the knowledge of what actually works …

Recommendations Of Transgender Students, Staff, And Faculty In The Usa For Improving College Campuses, Kristie Seelman

Kristie L Seelman

Research indicates that transgender individuals frequently experience marginalization and interpersonal victimization within college and university settings. Missing from the literature is a discussion of what can be done to address such patterns in higher education, based upon empirical data gathered from transgender and gender non-conforming students, staff, and faculty. The present study aims to fill this gap by reporting on solutions offered by a sample of 30 individuals in one U.S. state while integrating a lens of intersectionality. Five resulting themes include: (a) offer education, campus programming, and support for trans individuals; (b) improve university systems and procedures for recording …

Learning Through Experimentation: Creating An Authentic Experiment With Behavioral Economics Students, Stacie Bosley

Stacie Bosley

Black Women As Scholars And Social Agents: Standing In The Gap, Sherri Wallace, Sharon Moore, Carla Curtis

Sherri L. Wallace

Measuring The Community In Online Classes, Beth Rubin, Ron Fernandes

Beth Rubin

The paper proposes both theoretical and empirical approaches to differentiate the Community of Inquiry (CoI) in online classes at individual and group levels. Following the example of research on organizational climate, it assesses the strength of shared perceptions of teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence. The paper develops a theory of composition that relates isomorphic constructs of these presences at the individual and the class levels. Hypotheses are made about the agreement among students on the survey that is used to measure individual perceptions of the three presences of the CoI. These are tested through a set of statistics …

“There's No Participation In ‘Our’ Participatory-Action Research Project”: Overcoming Hierarchies In Service-Learning Partnerships, Julia Van Der Ryn, Omar Carrera

Julia van der Ryn

While strategic planning is widely recognized as a central component in the development of sustainable service-learning partnerships and university programs, institutions working to create organizational change often do not have a framework for how to address the power differentials among a diverse group of constituencies. Further, this framework should include all stakeholders in the analysis of the social, historical, and political contexts around service-learning partnerships.

In this study, participants in the service-learning program at Dominican University of California (DUC) explored the complexity of the social forces that influence communication and collaboration in service-learning. DUC faculty members designed a multiphase research …

Quasi-Experiment Examining Cafeteria-Style Grading In Social Work Education, Brandon Youker, Lyza Ingraham

Brandon W. Youker Ph.D

Cafeteria-style grading system is an individualized student assessment method whereby students choose their assignments from an expansive and diverse pool of assignments. In this study, students are non-randomly assigned to two sections of the same social work course. The first section received cafeteria-style assignments and grading system (i.e., experimental group) while the comparison section received the traditional method of grading. Students in both sections video record a demonstration exercise; the recordings are reviewed and scored by experts from a panel of social work professors. Preliminary results show an effect on student attendance but no effect on GPA or student performance.

Techno-Stress In The Higher Education Environment, Sonya Shepherd

Sonya S. Gaither

Publication is accepted and in press.

The Increasing Momentum Of Technological Change In Higher Education, Sonya Shepherd, Michael Richardson

Sonya S. Gaither

Publication is accepted and in press.

Understanding The Social Consequences Of Microblogging, L. Qiu, Angela K.-Y. Leung, N. Tang

Ka Yee Angela LEUNG

Microblogging has recently become a new form of communication that is rapidly changing everyone’s life. Through services such as Twitter, millions of people can broadcast short messages to their followers via instant messaging, SMS, or web interfaces. However, few studies have been conducted to understand the impact of these emerging phenomenons. In this study, we seek to understand the social consequences of microblogging. Further, we want to examine which aspects of microblogging are related to the consequences. We recruited 120 undergraduates and randomly assigned them to one of four groups (29 to 31 participants in each group). Each group was …