2013 Nonprofit Needs Assessment: A Profile of Michigan's Most Crucial Professional Development Needs

A new study from Grand Valley State University's School of Public, Nonprofit and Health Administration, and the Johnson Center for Philanthropy reveals trends in the kind of professional development programming nonprofit organizations in Michigan need.There are over 48,000 nonprofits operating in the state Michigan, employing over 375,000 nonprofit workers. While many industries are struggling in Michigan,the nonprofit sector continues to grow at a rate of 1.3 percent per year. The demand for nonprofit services is also rising and nonprofit workers must work longer hours and take on additional responsibilities to meet increasing demands.Nonprofit and philanthropic employers are recognizing that in order to reduce employee burnout and turnover as well as maintain positive employee morale, they must provide professional development opportunities to their staff. These opportunities can take place internal or external to the organization. Wherever the professional development takes place, it provides many positive benefits to employees, volunteers and organizations

Communicating learning: evaluating the learning experience of distance learning students

Drawing upon research into students’ perceptions of their learning experience as distance learners, this paper explores what works well and what doesn’t. How to more effectively support the learning process through better directive and interactive communication emerges as a key theme

Artful social engagement :long-term interaction design within an international women's community

PhD ThesisLong-term commitments, a rich understanding of- and sensitivity towards identities are considered of value for researchers working within technology design to support community participation. However, few studies have explicitly discussed how researcher relationships are built and how communities negotiate their technology use around identities over time. This thesis presents the findings and insights from a three-year long, in-depth participatory project at an international women’s centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. The thesis contributes to interaction design research, and experience-centred design more specifically within social care communities. The research demonstrates how interdisciplinary approaches, combining critical methodological perspectives from feminist postcolonial studies with narrative inquiry and speculative design, can be used constructively in complex and sensitive community contexts. The thesis outlines how such approaches contribute opportunities for the negotiation and celebration of diverse community identities using technology. This is achieved through exploring how ‘dialogical aesthetics’, as articulated through socially engaged arts, can sustain conceptual resources and practical approaches to reflexively inquire into personal identities within communities. Through ‘space-making’ workshops, involving digital portraits and digital story making and through the design and use of a speculative photo-sharing device, the thesis provides insights into exploring and responding to identities, while engendering inspiration and resonance for sustainable future technical practices within a culturally diverse social care community

Parental Attitudes, Beliefs and Behaviors about Caries Prevention among Black Preschool Children

Tooth decay is one of the most common chronic conditions that affect children in the U.S. Non-Hispanic Blacks are among the children facing the greatest racial and ethnic disparities in caries experience and treatment. Parents play a significant role in ensuring the success of preventative measures aimed at reducing prevalence of early childhood caries. It is therefore important for public health professionals to understand the oral health, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of Black parents in order to effectively design and tailor interventions for caries prevention among preschool children. The twofold purpose of this study was to: (a) determine whether attitudes, beliefs of Black parents predict behaviors about preventative measures against caries for their preschool children, and (b) determine whether the attitudes and beliefs about caries preventive behaviors vary between different ethnic groups of Blacks in Miami-Dade County. The cross sectional study utilized an oral health survey comprised of a modified version of the CDHQ, and the Nutrition Questionnaire for Children to examine attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of Black parents. The study sample included 192 African American, Haitian, and Afro-Caribbean parents of 3-5 year-old children in Miami-Dade County. Logistic regression and Chi Square analysis were used to answer the research questions and hypotheses. Perceived seriousness of decay, parental efficacy to brush child’s teeth, and chance control are significant predictors of children using toothpaste and parents brushing children’s teeth twice a day (pp Health educators can play a major role in designing and delivering quality oral health and disease prevention interventions for parents of preschoolers. Clearly there are opportunities to complement school-based oral health education for preschool children with a culturally appropriate parental component. The between group differences indicate that interventions need to be more specifically tailored to the racial/ethnic group intended to receive the intervention in order to have greater effectiveness

Cataloging Research by Design: A Taxonomic Approach to Understanding Research Questions in Cataloging

This paper asserts that many research questions (RQs) in cataloging reflect design-based RQs, rather than traditional scientific ones. To support this idea, a review of existing discussions of RQs is presented to identify prominent types of RQs, including design-based RQs. RQ types are then classified into a taxonomic framework and compared with RQs from the Everyday Cataloger Concerns project, which aimed to identify important areas of research from the perspective of practicing catalogers. This comparative method demonstrates the ways in which the research areas identified by cataloging practitioners reflect design RQs—and therefore require design approaches and methods to answer them

How We Done It Good: Research Through Design as a Legitimate Methodology for Librarianship

“How we done it good” publications—a genre concerning project-based approaches that describe how (and sometimes why) something was done—are often rebuked in the library research community for lacking traditional scientific validity, reliability, and generalizability. While scientific methodologies may be a common approach to research and inquiry, they are not the only methodological paradigms. This research posits that the “how we done it good” paradigm in librarianship reflects a valid and legitimate approach to research. By drawing on the concept of research through design, this study shows how these “how we done it good” projects reflect design methodologies which draw rigor from process, invention, relevance, and extensibility rather than replicability, generalizability, and predictability. Although these projects implicitly reflect research through design, the methodology is not yet explicitly harnessed in librarianship. More support for these types of projects can be achieved by making the legitimate design framework more explicit and increasing support from publication venues

Three religious orientations and five personality factors : an exploratory study among adults in England

In order to explore the power of the five factor model of personality to explain individual differences recorded on measures of the three religious orientations, a sample of 198 adults in England completed established measures of the three religious orientations (intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest) and the big five personality factors (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness). The data demonstrated that individual differences in the three religious orientations were largely independent of the five personality factors, apart from a significant positive correlation between intrinsic religiosity and agreeableness. These findings support Piedmont’s contention that religiosity is largely independent of personality when personality is operationalised in terms of the big five factors

<i>Clitoria ternatea</i> L. flower extract inhibits α-amylase during <i>in vitro </i>starch digestion

This study aimed to investigate the inhibitory effect of Clitoria ternatea flower against α-amylase during simulated in vitro wheat starch digestion. The dark-blue tropical flower is used as a food colorant but its ability to modulate starch digestion has not been tested before. The aqueous extract of the flower containing anthocyanins was a competitive inhibitor against α-amylase with an IC50 value (concentration of inhibitor required to reduce the enzyme activity by half) and inhibition constant, Ki, of 0.91 mg/mL and 0.75 mg/mL,respectively. Subjecting the extract to pasteurisation (72oC for 15 s) and boiling (for 30 min) it significantly (P&lt;0.05) decreased the anthocyanin content as determined by a pH-shift method, although the light absorbance profile of the extract remained virtually unchanged, suggesting that the equilibrium mixture of anthocyanin species was unaffected. The thermal degradation of the anthocyanins explained the partial loss of inhibition activity of the extract, as indicated by the decrease in Michaelis-Menten constant, Km, from 14.8 mg/mL in thesystems with unheated extract to 11.3 and 6.1 mg/mL in pasteurised and boiled extracts, respectively. The thermal treatments, however, did not change the type (competitive) of inhibition. The results from this work demonstrated the potential of C. ternatea flower extract in inhibiting α-amylase during starch digestion, which might lead to development of functional food/drink for controlling postprandial blood glucose level

The Critical Catalog: Giving Voice to Diverse Library Materials through Provocative Design

Although laudable strides have been made to highlight and provide access to diverse library materials about and made by traditionally marginalized communities, current approaches are curatorial, non-scalable, and non-systematic. Using a critical design approach, we address how libraries might move beyond curatorial practices with the proposal of a “Critical Catalog” that advocates for diverse materials and discusses the problems and challenges of categorizing identity. The proposed provocative catalog offers the possibility to raise awareness of diverse library materials; expose readers to new and different resources, ideas and cultures; alter reading habits; and ultimately provide more equitable representation by preventing the inadvertent and unintentional erasure of diverse library materials, thus giving a stronger voice to marginalized communities