Discovery Systems: Analyzing the Gap Between Professors\u27 Expectations and Student Behavior

Professors want their students to develop habits of mind that empower them to cross the gap that separates opportunistic searchers from thoughtful, purposive researchers. The marketing of discovery systems (e.g., Proquest/Serials Solutions’ Summon, EBSCO Discovery Service, etc.) to academic libraries suggests that even neophytes will be able to easily maximize their research skills using these tools. These multifaceted search tools certainly do provide rich and accessible initial search results. But observation shows great disparities between search results that students submit as satisfactory and relevant and what their professors want them to select. Perhaps, pedagogically speaking, discovery systems are too rich, too multifaceted, and too beguiling for many students’ own good as they are guided through the transition from searcher to researcher. Focusing on the question of how students understand and apply the idea of relevance among articles identified by Summon, this presentation updates preliminary findings we presented at last year’s Charleston Conference. Our ongoing research finds strikingly similar research-skills deficits in students’ use of Summon to discover and select related journal articles. Spanning several academic terms, our qualitative and quantitative results reveal: (1) that students’ perceptions of relations among articles are often cued by discovery systems more than by the actual content of articles and (2) this deficit requires professors to adapt instruction (including assignments) to compensate

When Registration Barriers Fall, Who Votes? An Empirical Test of a Rational Choice Model

The United States has lower turnout than almost all other long-term democracies. Low turnout in the U.S. has been blamed on a number of factors, but many authors have asserted that the personal burden placed on most voters to register in advance of the election and the need (in many states) for continued reregistration are major causes of low U.S. turnout. It is also well-known that those with higher SES characteristics tend to vote at higher rates. Indeed, the SES gap in turnout rates is higher in the United States than in other democracies. This fact has been a major concern for those who view political participation as a hallmark of democracy. Those concerned with low levels of U.S. turnout, particularly by the poor and the less well educated, have predicted that liberalizing U.S. voter registration laws will significantly improve turnout, and that the gains will be especially great among the groups who now vote at the lowest rates. Here we offer a rational choice model of turnout that leads us to expect the greatest turnout gains from virtually eliminating voter registration costs in the United States will instead accrue to those with medium income and education. We test this prediction longitudinally over the period 1972-1992 using a vast survey on political participation and a natural experiment comparing voters in states that adopted election day registration (EDR) with those residing in states maintaining more traditional closing dates. Contrary to much of the literature, citizens with medium education and medium income voted more under EDR, as the model predicts. We conclude that the methods used here better capture and empirically identify the curvilinear relationship between voter registration laws and the turnout probabilities at various SES levels

Features Taking the Temperature: Implications for Adoption of Election Day Registration, State-Level Voter

ABSTRACT We consider the neglected importance of temperature as an explanatory variable. We show that: (1) colder states have turnout that is high relative to the national average; (2) the coldest states in the United States were more likely to adopt Election Day Registration (EDR) than other states, and very hot states never did so; and (3) those who live in colder states live longer. Drawing on the insights of Nelson Polsby, Noël Coward, Nancy Mitford, Montesquieu, and Tatu Vanhanen, we argue for the importance of temperature as an explanatory variable. Nelson Polsby (1986) has largely credited air-conditioning with both the economic development of the South in the post-World War II period, and Florida’s growth as the nation’s retirement capital. Nancy Mitford, following up on intuitions of George Orwell in “Keep the Apsidistra Flying, ” has called attention to the peculiarities of Love in a Cold Climate (1949). And, of course, who can forge

Teaching the Millennial: Strategies Informed by Research

In recent years, countless articles and books have been written about the current generation of undergraduates. Broad generalities regarding “Millennials” have been posited, with a common theme that consistently speaks to the ways digital technologies are increasingly changing these students. Conspicuously missing from these generalizations are actionable items for those who teach these students. This session will present a brief overview of the current stereotypes of undergraduate students and juxtapose these popular conceptions with our own systematic data, derived from quantitative and qualitative research. Participants in this session will engage with the notion of Digital Native and explore pragmatic ways to teach an ultimately diverse, though increasingly technologically engaged, student population. Participants will leave this session with a more accurate understanding of current student populations, and through facilitated brainstorming will learn new strategies to address specific student learning outcomes, such as information literacy and research skills

Negative Campaign Advertising: Demobilizer or Mobilizer

With political campaigns becoming increasingly adversarial, scholars have recently given some much-needed attention to the impact of negative advertising on turnout.In a widely recognized Review article and subsequent book, Ansolabehere and his colleagues (1994, 1995) contend that attack advertising drives potential voters away from the polls. We dispute the generalizability of these claims outside of the experimental setting. Using NES survey data as well aggregate sources, we subject this previous research to rigorous real-world testing. The survey data directly contradict Ansolabehere et al.'s findings, yielding evidence of a turnout advantage for those recollecting negative presidential campaign advertising. In attempting to replicate Ansolabehere et al’s earlier aggregate results we uncover quite significant discrepancies and inconsistencies in their dataset. This analysis leads to the conclusion that their aggregate study is hopelessly flawed. We must conclude that attack advertising’s demobilization dangers are greatly exaggerated by Ansolabehere et al., while they completely miss negative political advertising’s turnout benefits -- at least in voters’ own context