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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Engaging New Partners In Transportation Research: Integrating Publishing, Archiving, And Indexing Of Technical Literature Into The Research Process, Mark P. Newton, Darcy M. Bullock, Charles Watkinson, Paul J. Bracke, Deborah K. Horton Nov 2011

Engaging New Partners In Transportation Research: Integrating Publishing, Archiving, And Indexing Of Technical Literature Into The Research Process, Mark P. Newton, Darcy M. Bullock, Charles Watkinson, Paul J. Bracke, Deborah K. Horton

Libraries Research Publications

transportation research. The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) annually invests approximately $180 million in State Planning and Research (SPR) and University Transportation Centers (UTC). This investment generates an extensive portfolio of “grey literature” that is not yet uniformly cataloged or accessible, despite the best efforts of the National Technical Information Service, the Transportation Research Board, and the National Transportation Library. This paper reports on a review of publishing and archiving practices for transportation research technical reports, summarizes best practices, and recommends that UTC and SPR research programs seek and strengthen partnerships with libraries to facilitate improved production, stewardship and …


Stereoscopic Vision's Impact On Spatial Ability Testing, George Takahashi Jul 2011

Stereoscopic Vision's Impact On Spatial Ability Testing, George Takahashi

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

A look into spatial ability testing tools and the variations that past researchers made to focus on key factors that affect test scores, will demonstrate the need for tuning traditional testing methods to accommodate a wider demographic and provide more accurate results. Due to technological limitations of the time, a large variety of past spatial tests were developed by hand-drawings. Within this research, the addition of stereoscopic vision is analyzed to determine the value of said changes on human perception of spatial entities.


Lifelong Learning And Information Literacy Skills And The First Year Engineering Undergraduate: Report Of A Self-Assessment, Meagan Ross, Michael Fosmire, Ruth Eh Wertz, Monica Cardella, Senay Purzer Jan 2011

Lifelong Learning And Information Literacy Skills And The First Year Engineering Undergraduate: Report Of A Self-Assessment, Meagan Ross, Michael Fosmire, Ruth Eh Wertz, Monica Cardella, Senay Purzer

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

ABET accreditation requires engineering students to attain ‘a recognition of the need for and an ability to engage in lifelong learning.” (Outcome 3.i) However, there are few standard tools that attempt to assess the skills and techniques students need in order to achieve those outcomes. Focusing on the problem articulation and information literacy skills embedded in lifelong learning competencies, the authors constructed a standardized assessment to measure student self-perceptions of how often they employ those skills. The criteria for these competencies were based on the Information Search Process of Carol Kuhlthau, engineering design process characteristics, and the authors’ own analysis …


Do Students Gather Information To Inform Design Decisions? Assessment With An Authentic Design Task In First-Year Engineering, Ruth Eh Wertz, Meagan Ross, Michael Fosmire, Monica Cardella, Senay Purzer Jan 2011

Do Students Gather Information To Inform Design Decisions? Assessment With An Authentic Design Task In First-Year Engineering, Ruth Eh Wertz, Meagan Ross, Michael Fosmire, Monica Cardella, Senay Purzer

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Information gathering is a very important aspect of the design process, one that is used continuously throughout the project to make informed design decisions. This study reports the development of an authentic instrument used to assess skills related to information gathering in first-year engineering students. Existing assessment tools, such as the scenario-based Self- Knowledge Inventory of Lifelong Learning (SKILLS), developed by Conti & Fellenz, or the Self- Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS), developed by Guglielmino, were evaluated. While these have the advantage of being very easy to administer and analyze, one significant disadvantage is that they are self-reported and thus …


Assessing Engineering Students' Information Literacy Skills: An Alpha Version Of A Multiple-Choice Instrument, Ruth Eh Wertz, Meagan Ross, Senay Purzer, Michael Fosmire, Monica Cardella Jan 2011

Assessing Engineering Students' Information Literacy Skills: An Alpha Version Of A Multiple-Choice Instrument, Ruth Eh Wertz, Meagan Ross, Senay Purzer, Michael Fosmire, Monica Cardella

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Information literacy is crucial component of developing life-long learning skills. However, few standard and easily gradable assessment tools exist to assess the information literacy competencies of learners. In this paper, we discuss the development of a multiple choice instrument designed to measure these competencies in an efficient and expedient manner, and we present results of data collected from 366 first-year engineering students. The instrument requires students to first read a technical memo and, based on the memo‟s arguments, answer eight multiple choice and two open-ended response questions. The mean score on the multiple choice portion was only 3.46 out of …