What Went Wrong: Reflections on a Teaching with Technology Failure

When functioning properly, interactive learning modules are great for student engagement, but when the technology falls short, precious class time is wasted and learning objectives may go unmet. This speaker will tell the story of how a clerical error resulted in a technological meltdown during library instruction. She will share how she came to view the incident as a useful failure because she learned to: Accept that not every problem can be anticipated; always have a Plan B; and be patient with tech support. More than that, she came to realize that testing web-based learning modules in class is a prudent step to take before using these tools to flip the classroom or teach online

Integrating the Framework into General Education Revision

Do you perceive an opportunity to incorporate the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy across a new or updated General Education curriculum? Whether your institution is in the process of revisiting or overhauling its General Education program and regardless of where you are in the process, join our presenters for a discussion of Framework integration during General Education revision. Our presenters will describe the steps that they took with campus stakeholders to: 1. Map the Framework\u27s threshold concepts to the learning outcomes of two first year experience courses; 2. Pilot with faculty; 3. Pass a formal proposal through the Committee on General Education; 4. Participate in faculty professional development; 5. Co-develop a student self-assessment tool for use in all first year seminar courses; and 6. Teach selected threshold concepts from the Framework in first year seminar courses during the Fall 2022 semester. As key takeaways, attendees will be presented with a relatable plan for integrating the Framework during curricular revision and will be asked to consider actionable steps that might be taken at their own institutions. Our presenters care deeply about students and are committed to institutional change, including curricular revision, that supports an inclusive, diverse, and equitable College community. They work together at a public regional college serving approximately 5,700 undergraduate and graduate students as of Fall 2022. Over 85% of undergraduate students reside in state and nearly half are first generation and Pell eligible. Students identifying as BIPOC comprise about 45% of the student body. Hispanic and LatinX students are the largest and fastest growing demographic representing more than 25% of total students. The College recently received federal recognition as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI)

Boot Camp: Preparing Teacher Candidates for the Discipline

Colleges and universities commonly implement orientation courses to help freshmen and transfer students adjust to the academic demands and social challenges of higher education. This article examines one university’s implementation of a similar concept for teacher candidates transitioning from general to professional studies. The seminar, known as Boot Camp, is designed to prepare students for the rigor of coursework/clinical responsibilities and the teaching profession. Through a pre-post seminar questionnaire, participants showed growth in their perceptions and understandings of seminar topics. A faculty questionnaire indicated positive student outcomes from the seminar as observed through coursework and daily interactions with teacher candidates

Distant Reading as Library Pedagogy: Lessons for the Literary Studies Classroom

The review of literature is a common feature of academic research and writing across the disciplines. In the humanities, it takes many forms, including but not limited to narrative reviews, bibliographic essays, historiographic essays, and reception history. I have observed through my experiences as a teaching librarian that these kinds of projects can leave undergraduate students feeling overwhelmed. My purpose in this chapter is to share a cooperative classroom approach, based on applications of the distant reading method, for engaging students in the difficult work of surveying the literature. I present conceptual background as well as practical examples of how to perform distant reading with bibliographic information provided by JSTOR and the MLA International Bibliography. The included lessons were created to help students see how their own ideas fit into the larger picture of scholarship on a topic. They may also help students identify perspectives that are absent from the literature. Equally important, distant reading can foster critical thinking about information resources, surfacing questions about the production and limits of bibliographic tools and underscoring the need for a plurality of resources during the research process. Finally, I argue that distant reading promotes learning about academic research in ways that are both enjoyable and supportive of pedagogical goals

Power of Produce: Farmers\u27 Market Incentive Program Targeting Eating Behaviors of Children

The Power of Produce (PoP) Club is a farmers\u27 market incentive program for children aged 5–12. The purpose of the summative evaluation described in this article was to determine the impact of the PoP Club on improving family and child behavior at a Minnesota farmers\u27 market as well as child fruit and vegetable (F&V) consumption. Results from a self-reported retrospective survey completed by parents suggest that the PoP Club is a valuable program, with participating parents reporting increased family attendance and child engagement at the farmers\u27 market and increased F&V consumption by children at home

Variables in the Southern Polar Region Evryscope 2016 Dataset

The regions around the celestial poles offer the ability to find and characterize long-term variables from ground-based observatories. We used multi-year Evryscope data to search for high-amplitude (~5% or greater) variable objects among 160,000 bright stars (Mv < 14.5) near the South Celestial Pole. We developed a machine learning based spectral classifier to identify eclipse and transit candidates with M-dwarf or K-dwarf host stars - and potential low-mass secondary stars or gas giant planets. The large amplitude transit signals from low-mass companions of smaller dwarf host stars lessens the photometric precision and systematics removal requirements necessary for detection, and increases the discoveries from long-term observations with modest light curve precision. The Evryscope is a robotic telescope array that observes the Southern sky continuously at 2-minute cadence, searching for stellar variability, transients, transits around exotic stars and other observationally challenging astrophysical variables. In this study, covering all stars 9 < Mv < 14.5, in declinations -75 to -90 deg, we recover 346 known variables and discover 303 new variables, including 168 eclipsing binaries. We characterize the discoveries and provide the amplitudes, periods, and variability type. A 1.7 Jupiter radius planet candidate with a late K-dwarf primary was found and the transit signal was verified with the PROMPT telescope network. Further followup revealed this object to be a likely grazing eclipsing binary system with nearly identical primary and secondary K5 stars. Radial velocity measurements from the Goodman Spectrograph on the 4.1 meter SOAR telescope of the likely-lowest-mass targets reveal that six of the eclipsing binary discoveries are low-mass (.06 - .37 solar mass) secondaries with K-dwarf primaries, strong candidates for precision mass-radius measurements.Comment: 32 pages, 17 figures, accepted to PAS

Acoustic differentiation of Shiho- and Naisa-type short-finned pilot whales in the Pacific Ocean

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 114 (2017): 737–748, doi: 10.1121/1.4974858.Divergence in acoustic signals used by different populations of marine mammals can be caused by a variety of environmental, hereditary, or social factors, and can indicate isolation between those populations. Two types of genetically and morphologically distinct short-finned pilot whales, called the Naisa- and Shiho-types when first described off Japan, have been identified in the Pacific Ocean. Acoustic differentiation between these types would support their designation as sub-species or species, and improve the understanding of their distribution in areas where genetic samples are difficult to obtain. Calls from two regions representing the two types were analyzed using 24 recordings from Hawai‘i (Naisa-type) and 12 recordings from the eastern Pacific Ocean (Shiho-type). Calls from the two types were significantly differentiated in median start frequency, frequency range, and duration, and were significantly differentiated in the cumulative distribution of start frequency, frequency range, and duration. Gaussian mixture models were used to classify calls from the two different regions with 74% accuracy, which was significantly greater than chance. The results of these analyses indicate that the two types are acoustically distinct, which supports the hypothesis that the two types may be separate sub-species.Funding for Hawaiian data collection was provided by grants from the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center and Office of Naval Research, as well as Commander, Pacific Fleet. The SoundTrap was purchased with funding from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography/National Science Foundation Interdisciplinary Graduate Education in Research Techniques fellowship program. DMON data collection and portions of the analysis were funded by the Office of Naval Research [Grant Nos. N000141110612 (T.A.M. and R.W.B.) and N00014-15-1-2299 (M.A.R.); Program Manager Michael J. Weise], and WHOI Marine Mammal Center and the Sawyer and Penzance Endowed Funds to T.A.M

An Extremely Bright Echo Associated With SN 2002hh

We present new, very late-time optical photometry and spectroscopy of the interesting Type II-P supernova, SN 2002hh, in NGC 6946. Gemini/GMOS-N has been used to acquire visible spectra at six epochs between 2004 August and 2006 July, following the evolution of the SN from age 661 to 1358 days. Few optical spectra of Type II supernovae with ages greater than one year exist. In addition, g'r'i' images were acquired at all six epochs. The spectral and photometric evolution of SN 2002hh has been very unusual. Measures of the brightness of this SN, both in the R and I bands as well as in the H-alpha emission flux, show no significant fading over an interval of nearly two years. The most straightforward explanation for this behavior is that the light being measured comes not only from the SN itself but also from an echo off of nearby dust. Echoes have been detected previously around several SNe but these echoes, at their brightest, were ~8 mag below the maximum brightness of the SN. At V~21 mag, the putative echo dominates the light of SN 2002hh and is only ~4 mag below the outburst's peak brightness. There is an estimated 6 magnitudes of total extinction in V towards SN 2002hh. The proposed explanation of a differential echo/SN absorption is inconsistent with the observed BVRI colors.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in the Ap

Understanding the lives of separating and separated families in the UK: what evidence do we need?

This study was designed to address three broad questions: What are the evidence – and data – needs around family separation in the UK? How far are these needs met by administrative, survey and other research data that currently exist or are in the process of being developed? What additional data are required, and how would these best be collected