First year undergraduate students in the hot seat: co-constructors of knowledge and inquiry in Higher Education

Research skills and inquiry promote independence and autonomy of the learner, yet these expectations of HE are not always made explicit to the student body. Informal discussions have recurring themes that reflect students are failing to read enough. While students in later stages of their study are indicating they wished that they had read more. In an effort to becoming increasingly ‘student-centered’, perhaps there has been an element of overlooking learner inquiry, engagement and ownership (Ramsden, 2001)

Collaborative Crop Research Program

For over 30 years, The McKnight Foundation's Collaborative Crop Research Program (CCRP) has explored solutions for sustainable local food systems through agricultural research. The program grew out of the Foundation's Plant Biology Program, which was founded in 1983, and reflects the Foundation's long-time commitment to place-based grantmaking and learning from those working on the ground. In 2014, the Foundation engaged The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI) to develop a historic overview of the CCRP to capture its origins and evolution over the last 30 years. To develop this narrative, TPI interviewed past and current Board members, staff, consultants and grantees who had been involved at various stages in the lifespan of the program, and reviewed existing documents, reports and meeting notes.The report that follows is to serve as part of the "institutional memory" of The McKnight Foundation's Collaborative Crop Research Program. Its heavy reliance on individual recollections may detract from its precision, but such reflections bring to life the program's three decades of commitment, collaboration, and adaptation in an effort to contribute to a world where all have access to nutritious food that is sustainably produced by local people. While not an evaluative document, key moments of influence and impacts are noted along the way

A protocol for co-creating research project lay summaries with stakeholders:Guideline development for Canada's AGE-WELL Network

Background Funding bodies increasingly require researchers to write lay summaries to communicate projects’ real-world relevance to the public in an accessible way. However, research proposals and findings are generally not easily readable or understandable by non-specialist readers. Many researchers find writing lay summaries difficult because they typically write for fellow subject specialists or academics rather than the general public or a non-specialist audience. The primary objective of our project is to develop guidelines for researchers in Canada’s AGE-WELL Network of Centres of Excellence, and ultimately various other disciplines, sectors, and institutions, to co-create lay summaries of research projects with stakeholders. To begin, we produced a protocol for co-creating a lay summary based on workshops we organized and facilitated for an AGE-WELL researcher. This paper presents the lay summary co-creation protocol that AGE-WELL researchers will be invited to use. Methods Eligible participants in this project will be 24 AgeTech project researchers who are funded by the AGE-WELL network in its Core Research Program 2020. If they agree to participate in this project, we will invite them to use our protocol to co-produce a lay summary of their respective projects with stakeholders. The protocol comprises six steps: Investigate principles of writing a good lay summary, identify the target readership, identify stakeholders to collaborate with, recruit the identified stakeholders to work on a lay summary, prepare for workshop sessions, and execute the sessions. To help participants through the process, we will provide them with a guide to developing an accessible, readable research lay summary, help them make decisions, and host, and facilitate if needed, their lay summary co-creation workshops. Discussion Public-facing research outputs, including lay summaries, are increasingly important knowledge translation strategies to promote the impact of research on real-world issues. To produce lay summaries that include information that will interest a non-specialist readership and that are written in accessible language, stakeholder engagement is key. Furthermore, both researchers and stakeholders benefit by participating in the co-creation process. We hope the protocol helps researchers collaborate with stakeholders effectively to co-produce lay summaries that meet the needs of both the public and project funders

@Egan 2013: What's new at the UAS William A. Egan Library

ScholarWorks@UA; UAS now part of Joint Library Catalog (JLC); OneSearch; Featured Collection; The Awesome Box; One Campus One Book 2013; Egan Library Weeding Party; Help your students learn how to find credible information fast!; Self-Service Study Room Reservation

Shifting themes, shifting roles: the development of research blogs

The study described in this paper investigated the use of research blogs by postgraduate students over a four-year period. An initial, one-year, pilot focused on the research blogs of three first-year doctoral students (Ferguson, Clough, & Hosein, 2007). Analysis indicated that blogs were used to promote a community where students were encouraged to reflect and share ideas, skills and stories of research life. The blogs also acted as memory repositories and encouraged collaboration. The main study followed the students’ blogs for another three years, as they completed their doctorates and took jobs as early-career researchers. It investigated changes in the use and content of research blogs during this period. All three students continued to make use of their blogs for reflection over this period, and the blogs’ use as a memory repository became increasingly important, especially during the period of writing up research. Once the students had made the transition to early-career researcher, the nature of their blog use changed and began to fragment. This was due, in part, to issues of confidentiality, and data protection associated with their employment. While they continued to use their original research blogs to promote community and collaboration, the constraints of their work meant that new posts were often posted in closed blogs, or were marked as protected. At the same time, they were required or encouraged to make use of project-related blogs as part of a planned communication strategy by their employers. The findings of this longitudinal study clarify the changing expectations and needs of learners, employers and society in relation to researchers’ blogs, and identify skills, awareness and knowledge needed to support the use of blogging by research students

Social media: a guide for researchers

This guide has been produced by the International Centre for Guidance Studies, and aims to provide the information needed to make an informed decision about using social media and select from the vast range of tools that are available. One of the most important things that researchers do is to find, use and disseminate information, and social media offers a range of tools which can facilitate this. The guide discusses the use of social media for research and academic purposes and will not be examining the many other uses that social media is put to across society. Social media can change the way in which you undertake research, and can also open up new forms of communication and dissemination. It has the power to enable researchers to engage in a wide range of dissemination in a highly efficient way.Research Information Networ

The Integral Role of Borough of Manhattan Community College in the Mathematics Preparation of Prospective Teachers

Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) of the City University of New York (CUNY) is the only two-year college on the island of Manhattan. This institution has a diverse population of approximately 17,000 students who attend day/evening/weekend classes. Over 1,000 students are enrolled in the Early Childhood Education (ECE) Program. Each year, approximately 300 new students select this area of concentration. The dropout rate is less than 14%. The ECE Program prepares students for elementary education programs at four-year institutions. The program also offers two career areas of study: Infant Toddler and Pre-School. This article will discuss how high quality teacher preparation at BMCC is promoted through mathematics coursework recommended by the NCTM and AMATYC for prospective elementary school teachers, the importance of technology in providing enriching pre-teaching experiences, collaboration with four-year institutions in teacher preparation efforts, and the importance of special teacher preparation of underrepresented populations for underrepresented populations of New York City