Preparing students for community-based learning using an asset-based approach

One goal of service and community-based learning is to produce students who are more tightly engaged in the larger communities surrounding their institutions. Drawing on data from three courses, we argue that an asset-based approach plays a role in creating authentic campus-community partnerships that strive to engage students as members of the community from the outset and throughout their service learning courses. Asset-based activities help students come to understand the value of relationships amongst community members while also underscoring the value of their individual role in this group.  As such, students are more prepared for future work within the community

Student voice in work integrated learning scholarship: a review of teacher education and geographical sciences

Work integrated learning is an umbrella term that refers to the opportunities provided to university students to integrate knowledge of theory and practice as part of their degree program. As the role of students in higher education is evolving, we sought to develop our understanding of the role of students in the work integrated learning (WIL) space through exploring current literature on student voice. In this paper, we consider what has been reported about WIL in relation to student voice, how it has been represented, and how this has influenced practice. We undertook a systematic literature review for two different disciplines, one which represented an example of a professionally accredited undergraduate degree program (teacher education), and the other an example of a program with no professional accreditation (geographical sciences). The teacher education literature demonstrated more clearly the use of student voice to inform WIL within curriculum design. However, the geographical sciences literature did include examples of student voice being incorporated within the design of collaborative community-based forms of WIL. A role for students as researchers, who lead research and initiate curriculum change into WIL, was noticeably absent in both disciplinary sets of literature. The lack of evidence of the inclusion of students in the design, conduct, and analysis of WIL provides an invitation for SoTL scholars to redefine the role of students in this space

Student voice in work integrated learning scholarship: A review of teacher education and geographical sciences

Work integrated learning is an umbrella term that refers to the opportunities provided to university students to integrate knowledge of theory and practice as part of their degree program. As the role of students in higher education is evolving, we sought to develop our understanding of the role of students in the work integrated learning (WIL) space through exploring current literature on student voice. In this paper, we consider what has been reported about WIL in relation to student voice, how it has been represented, and how this has influenced practice. We undertook a systematic literature review for two different disciplines, one which represented an example of a professionally accredited undergraduate degree program (teacher education), and the other an example of a program with no professional accreditation (geographical sciences). The teacher education literature demonstrated more clearly the use of student voice to inform WIL within curriculum design. However, the geographical sciences literature did include examples of student voice being incorporated within the design of collaborative community-based forms of WIL. A role for students as researchers, who lead research and initiate curriculum change into WIL, was noticeably absent in both disciplinary sets of literature. The lack of evidence of the inclusion of students in the design, conduct, and analysis of WIL provides an invitation for SoTL scholars to redefine the role of students in this space

Anderson's ethical vulnerability: animating feminist responses to sexual violence

Pamela Sue Anderson argues for an ethical vulnerability which “activates an openness to becoming changed” that “can make possible a relational accountability to one another on ethical matters”. In this essay I pursue Anderson’s solicitation that there is a positive politics to be developed from acknowledging and affirming vulnerability. I propose that this politics is one which has a specific relevance for animating the terms of feminist responses to sexual violence, something which has proved difficult for feminist theorists and activists alike. I will demonstrate the contribution of Anderson’s work to such questions by examining the way in which “ethical vulnerability” as a framework can illuminate the intersectional feminist character of Tarana Burke’s grassroots Me Too movement when compared with the mainstream, viral version of the movement. I conclude by arguing that Anderson’s “ethical vulnerability” contains ontological insights which can allay both activist and academic concerns regarding how to respond to sexual violence

Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

Synthetic Social Support: Theorizing Lay Health Worker Interventions

Levels of social support are strongly associated with health outcomes and inequalities. The use of lay health workers (LHWs) has been suggested by policy makers across the world as an intervention to identify risks to health and to promote health, particularly in disadvantaged communities. However, there have been few attempts to theorize the work undertaken by LHWs to understand how interventions work. In this article, the authors present the concept of 'synthetic socialsupport' and distinguish it from the work of health professionals or the spontaneous social support received from friends and family. The authors provide new empirical data to illustrate the concept based on qualitative, observational research, using a novel shadowing method involving clinical and non-clinical researchers, on the everyday work of 'pregnancy outreach workers' (POWs) in Birmingham, UK. The service was being evaluated as part of a randomized controlled trial. These LHWs provided instrumental, informational, emotional and appraisal support to the women they worked with, which are all key components of social support. The social support was 'synthetic' because it was distinct from the support embedded in spontaneous social networks: it was non-reciprocal; it was offered on a strictly time-limited basis; the LHWs were accountable for the relationship, and the social networks produced were targeted rather than spontaneous. The latter two qualities of this synthetic form of social support may have benefits over spontaneous networks by improving the opportunities for the cultivation of new relationships (both strong and weak ties) outside the women's existing spontaneous networks that can have a positive impact on them and by offering a reliable source of health information and support in a chaotic environment. The concept of SSS can help inform policy makers about how deploying lay workers may enable them to achieve desired outcomes, specify their programme theories and evaluate accordingly. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.