Stability of Isometric Strength Asymmetry and Its Relationship to Sprint and Change-of-Direction Performance Asymmetry in Division-I Collegiate Athletes

The purpose of this dissertation was to evaluate the stability of strength asymmetry over a long-term period (1 year) and investigate the relationship of strength asymmetry to field test performance asymmetry in NCAA division-1 athletes. Isometric mid-thigh pull (IMTP) peak force asymmetry, ground contact time and finish time asymmetries on 10m sprint and 505 agility test performances were also observed. The impact of strength was also investigated in these studies to determine its effect on the magnitude of asymmetry. In the second study, peak force asymmetry over a one-year period was observed to be a rather volatile quality, with ranges between 16% or 8%, depending on the formula used. Based on this finding, it is possible that there may be a “normal” range of asymmetry that an individual athlete exhibits that could be linked to training adaptations along with other factors. Based on simple observation, an individual tendency toward symmetry existed in certain athletes. This relationship may be useful to explore in future study

Thinking in hashtags: exploring teenagers’ new literacies practices on twitter

This research investigates how three high school students in the USA developed new literacies practices through their participation in teenage Twitter. Data was collected from two sources, including archival data from participants’ Twitter over a two-year span, and semi-structured interviews. Results found that teenagers developed a number of practices that facilitated orientation to cultural conventions of teenage Twitter, helped them mobilize followers for participatory events, and led to reflective awareness of how to tell stories on Twitter. This study suggests that teenagers used the affordances of Twitter in order to craft multimodal narratives that are co-constructed, participatory, nonlinear, and emergent. Thinking in hashtags, for participants, is a kind of action that serves to develop affinities of relation (to friends, to pop culture, and to new knowledge) through mediatized ‘vital life stuff

Educating Social Scholars: Examining Novice Researchers’ Practices with Social Media

Recent articles in the educational research fi eld have called for a stronger research focus on students’ learning with everyday technologies in-and-out-of classrooms and on the changing nature of scholars’ practices in light of technological advancements. We present fi ndings from a mixed methods study of whether and how novice researchers understand and practice social scholarship – a concept currently being debated in various disciplines – which seeks to leverage social media affordances to create expanded sites for research collaboration, peer review, dissemination, and evaluation of research impact. We found that novice researchers focused almost exclusively on social scholarship of discovery and much less on interdisciplinary, teaching, or applied scholarship. Insights from this study will appeal to those interested in examining the theory and design of graduate student learning and faculty development

#SocialMediaEd: Perspectives on Teaching about and with Social Media in Higher Education

Within the field of education and informational technology, technologies like social media — near ubiquitous in the lives of today’s high school and college students — raise interesting questions about learning, teaching, literacy, design and democracy for researchers and educators. In this panel we considered multiple perspectives on teaching with and about social media from researchers at five different institutions. Three panelists: Greenhow, Gleason and Krutka all teach variations of a Social Media in Education course within graduate programs at their respective universities and each presented an overview of their course goals and curriculum. Description of these courses was enriched by commentary from the panel chair and moderator, also social media in education researchers. The session was organized for maximum audience participation to advance conversations about an essential social media in higher education curriculum across institutions and how to implement and evaluate it

Toward Critical Social Media Pedagogy: The Intersection of Narrative, Social Media, and the Civic

This paper presents a theoretical meditation connecting the co-constructed, participatory narratives of social media with opportunities for increased participatory and critical civic engagement. We argue that teaching with and through social media uses practices to develop student agency, facilitate raised-consciousness, and encourage action-oriented problem solving by leveraging co-constructed processes and the social. We work toward a critical social media pedagogy by considering the possibilities of social media. These allow for storytelling across dimensions of time and space through co-constructed understandings of reality in order to bend the arc of narrative. Further, we contend that through social media storytelling, we see the development of preconditions for civic engagement engaging in identity formation, affinity building, and participation

Walking the Line between Reality and Fiction in Online Spaces: Understanding the Effects of Narrative Transportation

Recent contentions about fake news and misinformation online has shed light on the critical need for media literacy at a global scale. Indeed, digital stories are one of the main forms of communication in the 21st century through blogs, videos-sharing websites, forums, or social networks. However, the line between facts and fiction can often become blurry in these online spaces, and being able to distinguish between reality and fantasy can have important consequences in the lives of young Internet users. Using contemporary examples from news stories, fanfiction, advertising, and radicalization, this article outlines the features, affordances, and real-life implications of digital stories. As a result, we provide recommendations for educators to create awareness and empower students about digital storytelling practices

The Rhetoric of Androgyny: Gender and Boundaries in Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness

The androgyny of the Gethenians in The Left Hand of Darkness is a vehicle for Ursula Le Guin's rhetoric concerning gender roles. Le Guin attempts to make the reader identify with an ideal form of androgyny, through which she argues that many of the problems of human existence, from rape and war to dualistic thought and sexism, are products of gender roles and would be absent in an androgynous world. The novel also links barriers of separation and Othering with masculine thought, and deconstructs these separative boundaries of opposition, while promoting connective borders which acknowledge difference without creating opposition. The novel thus criticizes gendered thought processes and social roles, because they lead to opposition and separation

Learning with social media: Bringing popular platforms into the classroom to develop literacy, identity, and citizenship

Walk into almost any secondary school today and you’ll see students seemingly glued to their phones. A study from 2018 revealed that almost 50% of youth are online “almost constantly” and they’re often engaging with social media, whether watching videos on YouTube, participating in the latest dance craze on TikTok, checking Facebook, or making videos on Snapchat. Through these sites, young people are creating sophisticated digital stories, finding and sharing relevant information, contributing to current discussions and, in short, developing digital literacy, digital citizenship, language, and other valuable 21st-century skills