The Campus Credit Card Trap: A Survey of College Students and Credit Card Marketing

Based on in-person surveys at forty colleges and universities, analyzes how students pay for their education, how many use credit cards and in what way, and what their attitudes are toward on-campus credit card marketing and toward efforts to limit it

Three personal barriers to teaching transformation

The benefits of active learning over traditional teaching methods have been well known for over a decade. Yet, uptake in courses taught by lecturers not familiar with the literature is very slow. Existing research has highlighted several institutional and structural barriers to change, but few go into the personal experience of the lecturer undergoing this transformation. In 2021, a second-year course on quantum mechanics was transformed to a flipped classroom style course employing constructive alignment. The lecturer (Micolich) had taught the course with good student feedback for several years and was not previously experienced with modern teaching methods before collaborating with a Physics Education Research academic (Lindstrøm). All meetings were recorded, and all written communication and notes were collated, resulting in a large data set capturing the process. In this talk, we will focus on three clear barriers to transformation faced by the lecturer: 1) being convinced of the research evidence for active teaching methods; 2) being convinced that the research literature was relevant to the lecturer’s specific context; and 3) as a late career researcher accustomed to being the expert, fundamentally changing his teaching approach required moving outside his comfort zone and having the courage to be a novice again

L’urbanisation en Mélanésie

Dans les années 1970, les ethnographes Hal et Marlene Levine écrivaient que : « [ils] n’avaient que rarement entendu les Néo-Guinéens parler favorablement de leurs villes [et que ces derniers] se plaignaient du coût de la vie dans les villes, de la violence qui y régnait et des dangers et difficultés associés à la vie au milieu de tant d’étrangers » (Levine et Levine, 1979 : 1, notre traduction) Une décennie plus tôt, un résident de Port Moresby décrivait, de façon similaire, sa ville comme ..

Development of a Physics Goal Orientation survey

Together with cognitive processes, a key question in learning and teaching is: What motivates students to learn? In the second half of the 20th century “achievement goal theory” emerged as a key feature of the motivation literature. It focuses on what motivates students toward actions which will result in learning; students have particular goals and beliefs which orientate them to select particular strategies and ways of learning and planning their success. As motivation and goal orentations influence student learning outcomes, but no studies on goal orientations in university physics were found, this study focused on developing a goal orientation survey specific to university physics studies. A pilot study was undertaken in 2006 (Lindstrøm and Sharma 2008). This paper describes the continuation and conclusion of the study in 2007 and 2008 spanning five administrations, each with sample sizes between 162 and 360 students

L’urbanisation en Mélanésie

Dans les années 1970, les ethnographes Hal et Marlene Levine écrivaient que : « [ils] n’avaient que rarement entendu les Néo-Guinéens parler favorablement de leurs villes [et que ces derniers] se plaignaient du coût de la vie dans les villes, de la violence qui y régnait et des dangers et difficultés associés à la vie au milieu de tant d’étrangers » (Levine et Levine, 1979 : 1, notre traduction) Une décennie plus tôt, un résident de Port Moresby décrivait, de façon similaire, sa ville comme ..

Pedagogical behaviour in pre-service teachers drops with increasing content knowledge

We present the results of a novel study investigating the relationship between pre-service science teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical behaviour and how these evolve over time. Forty-one pre-service science teachers at the largest teacher education institution in Norway (Oslo Metropolitan University) were tested before and after a 12-hour module on astronomy at the end of the second and final physics course in the Bachelor of Teaching degree. Three free-response questions in the established Norwegian Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire (NIAQ) elicited astronomy knowledge and gave respondents an opportunity to engage in pedagogy. Student responses were analysed along two separate dimensionscontent knowledge and pedagogical behaviour (student-centred vs. teacher-centred)and interpreted in the framework of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). Overall, we find that the pre-service teachers become more knowledgeable after instruction (responses marked as ‘knowledgeable’ increased from 39% to 61%), even though a significant fraction remain disconcertingly ignorant. More notably, however, the pre-service teachers also displayed a strong trend of becoming less student-centred (from 36% to 11% of responses) as their content knowledge increased, merely stating the correct - or presumed correct - response without showing any concern for the hypothetical students in the question

Knowledge of astronomical scale: Measurement and evaluation

Having an appreciation for astronomical scale is essential for understanding the foundations of astronomy. However, a key obstacle in developing this understanding is the lack of direct ways to acquire this knowledge. Personal experience may even be detrimental, given that our direct experience is of the Earth as something extremely large, whereas stars, for example, appear as tiny pinpricks of light. As a first step to address this issue, it is necessary to assess people’s knowledge of astronomical scale to identify common misconceptions and evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions. Previous instruments have generally only included a few questions about scale—mostly through multiple choice—limiting the number of objects simultaneously probed to three and often not probing all possible rankings. To measure people’s knowledge of astronomical scale, we developed an instrument that allows for easy collection, analysis and presentation of data ranking multiple astronomical objects. I will present this instrument and the results from three different samples before and after astronomy instruction: middle school students (N = 922), pre-service science teachers (N = 41) and visitors to a public guided astronomy night viewing tour (N > 500)

Demonstration of a positron beam-driven hollow channel plasma wakefield accelerator

International audiencePlasma wakefield accelerators have been used to accelerate electron and positron particle beams with gradients that are orders of magnitude larger than those achieved in conventional accelerators. In addition to being accelerated by the plasma wakefield, the beam particles also experience strong transverse forces that may disrupt the beam quality. Hollow plasma channels have been proposed as a technique for generating accelerating fields without transverse forces. Here we demonstrate a method for creating an extended hollow plasma channel and measure the wakefields created by an ultrarelativistic positron beam as it propagates through the channel. The plasma channel is created by directing a high-intensity laser pulse with a spatially modulated profile into lithium vapour, which results in an annular region of ionization. A peak decelerating field of 230 MeV/m is inferred from changes in the beam energy spectrum, in good agreement with theory and particle-in-cell simulations

Sustaining modified behaviours learnt in a diabetes prevention program in regional Australia : the role of social context

BackgroundThe Greater Green Triangle diabetes prevention program was conducted in primary health care setting of Victoria and South Australia in 2004--2006. This program demonstrated significant reductions in diabetes risk factors which were largely sustained at 18 month follow-up. The theoretical model utilised in this program achieved its outcomes through improvements in coping self-efficacy and planning. Previous evaluations have concentrated on the behavioural components of the intervention. Other variables external to the main research design may have contributed to the success factors but have yet to be identified. The objective of this evaluation was to identify the extent to which participants in a diabetes prevention program sustained lifestyle changes several years after completing the program and to identify contextual factors that contributed to sustaining changes.MethodsA qualitative evaluation was conducted. Five focus groups were held with people who had completed a diabetes prevention program, several years later to assess the degree to which they had sustained program strategies and to identify contributing factors.ResultsParticipants value the recruitment strategy. Involvement in their own risk assessment was a strong motivator. Learning new skills gave participants a sense of empowerment. Receiving regular pathology reports was a means of self-assessment and a motivator to continue. Strong family and community support contributed to personal motivation and sustained practice.ConclusionsFamily and local community supports constitute the contextual variables reported to contribute to sustained motivation after the program was completed. Behaviour modification programs can incorporate strategies to ensure these factors are recognised and if necessary, strengthened at the local level.<br /

Widening of the genetic and clinical spectrum of Lamb-Shaffer syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder due to SOX5 haploinsufficiency

Purpose Lamb-Shaffer syndrome (LAMSHF) is a neurodevelopmental disorder described in just over two dozen patients with heterozygous genetic alterations involving SOX5, a gene encoding a transcription factor regulating cell fate and differentiation in neurogenesis and other discrete developmental processes. The genetic alterations described so far are mainly microdeletions. The present study was aimed at increasing our understanding of LAMSHF, its clinical and genetic spectrum, and the pathophysiological mechanisms involved. Methods Clinical and genetic data were collected through GeneMatcher and clinical or genetic networks for 41 novel patients harboring various types ofSOX5 alterations. Functional consequences of selected substitutions were investigated. Results Microdeletions and truncating variants occurred throughout SOX5. In contrast, most missense variants clustered in the pivotal SOX-specific high-mobility-group domain. The latter variants prevented SOX5 from binding DNA and promoting transactivation in vitro, whereas missense variants located outside the high-mobility-group domain did not. Clinical manifestations and severity varied among patients. No clear genotype-phenotype correlations were found, except that missense variants outside the high-mobility-group domain were generally better tolerated. Conclusions This study extends the clinical and genetic spectrum associated with LAMSHF and consolidates evidence that SOX5 haploinsufficiency leads to variable degrees of intellectual disability, language delay, and other clinical features