A Multi Case Study of Community College Discipline Faculty’s Participation in a Disciplinary Literacy Professional Learning Community

Many students enter college with inadequate reading, writing, and critical thinking skills to successfully navigate discipline-specific college-level coursework (Duff, 2010; Hyland, 2006; Lea & Street, 1998; Tsui, 2002). As such, college faculty, and specifically community college faculty, are challenged to meet the multiple literacy needs of their students while still maintaining high expectations within their discipline-specific courses. One option is for discipline faculty (e.g., history) to integrate disciplinary literacy instruction within their courses. As discipline faculty are deemed experts in their content area and often not trained in literacy, professional development focused on disciplinary literacy could provide the knowledge and experience for faculty to make this pedagogical shift. This multi-case study investigated the impact participating in a disciplinary literacy learning community had on community college discipline faculty’s perceptions, self-efficacy, and practice regarding incorporating disciplinary literacy instruction within their courses. Ten faculty from a large, multi-campus mid-Atlantic community college participated in three discipline-specific learning communities, where they learned about Moje’s (2015) 4E framework for teaching disciplinary literacy, collaborated with their peers, enhanced an assignment to address disciplinary literacy, and reflected on their experiences. The following data were collected for this study: learning community curriculum and documents, initial and final semi-structured focus group interviews, faculty journal entries, enhanced course activities, and researcher observations and reflexive journal. Data were analyzed using open and axial coding and constant comparative analysis (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to identify within-case patterns and replicative relationships across the cases (Yin, 2018). The findings revealed similarities and differences across the learning communities, and they provide insight for community college discipline faculty, literacy personnel, and administration

Artistic Concrete Stamping: A Branding Strategy

KRISTEN GREGORY (Marketing) Sponsor: David Mitchell (Marketing) Artistic Concrete Stamping: A Branding Strategy Now more than ever, it has become increasingly vital for businesses to maintain a strong brand image to remain competitive in the marketplace. No matter how big or small, a business having a strong brand image is a key ingredient for long term success. This remains true for Rhode Island small business Artistic Concrete Stamping, a locally owned and operated construction business with a family-focused image. As one of the oldest concrete stamping businesses in the state, Artistic Concrete Stamping has maintained a strong, trustworthy, family-friendly image while utilizing limited branding tools to convey this to new prospective customers. Artistic Concrete Stamping had a lot of potential to grow this strong image into a large competitive advantage that would set them apart in the market from its competitors. The key objective of this project was to give this small business owner informed recommendations to help him build upon his strong brand to obtain new customers in his target market. Several steps in a previously determined outline with a faculty sponsor were followed to draw appropriate conclusions and give the small business owner informed recommendations to help his business reach its full potential. First, an analysis of the external environment was conducted with an emphasis on direct and indirect competitors of Artistic Concrete Stamping in the marketplace. Then, the current segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) of the small business was identified and defined. Using the STP methods that were previously identified, the marketing mix was evaluated as it applied to the specific demographics targeted by this small business. A marketing mix is characterized by the analysis of a company’s product, place, promotion and price. Each of these characteristics of the marketing mix were defined and evaluated in this analysis. Using this specific information gathered in the outlined procedure above, branding recommendations were presented to the small business owner. These branding strategies were tailored to the company’s target market, current strong family-brand image, and emphasized its long standing competitive advantage in the market

Weber vs Wairua: towards a more humane bureaucracy in Aotearoa New Zealand?

The essential elements of modern bureaucracy were identified by the German social scientist Max Weber (1864–1920) and remain central today to any understanding of how modern governmental systems work. At the core of Weber’s understanding was the insight that bureaucracies are profoundly impersonal, even dehumanised, organisations, which is a key element in their ability to carry out complex, large-scale tasks. However, this dehumanised character is also one of bureaucracy’s biggest weaknesses, since it inhibits the organisation’s ability to relate to people in ways that are in tune with lived social experiences. This article argues that in Aotearoa New Zealand it should be possible to draw upon knowledge from te ao Mäori, and especially the idea of wairua, to help fulfil aspirations for an improved public service, one that is more effective and humane for all New Zealanders. However, to do so will require a much greater appreciation of such knowledge than has so far been the case

Exploring How Secondary Pre-Service Teachers’ Use Online Social Bookmarking to Envision Literacy in the Disciplines

This study considers how pre-service teachers envision disciplinary literacy through an online social bookmarking project. Thirty secondary pre-service teachers participated in the project through an undergraduate literacy course. Online bookmarks and post-project reflections were collected and analyzed using a constant comparative approach to determine emergent themes. Results suggest varying levels of disciplinary knowledge among pre-service teachers, influences of pre-service teachers\u27 envisionments on posted bookmarks, and considerations about standardized testing in disciplinary literacy instruction. Implications for teacher education are discussed in light of these results

Community College Discipline Faculty Perceptions of Role as Literacy Educators

Approximately a quarter of community college students are entering college-level courses underprepared for the literacy and critical thinking skills required to be successful in discipline courses (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2013). Discipline faculty are considered experts in their content area and are often not trained in pedagogy and literacy instruction, yet they are faced with meeting the diverse literacy needs of their students while still maintaining high content-focused expectations within their courses. This phenomenological case study investigated community college discipline faculty’s perceptions and practices regarding integrating literacy instruction within their disciplines. Data were collected from community college faculty through demographic questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. In general, the faculty articulated that it was not their role to integrate literacy instruction into their content-specific coursework, yet they often felt they had to in order to meet the needs of their students. The findings provide insight for professional development programs and indicate areas for future research

The Relationship Between Mobile Learning, Instructional Delivery, and Student Motivation in a Large Undergraduate Science Class

Science learning at the early undergraduate level provides a challenging context with large classes and many complex topics to unpack with the students. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore: how students use mobile devices for learning in a large, undergraduate classroom; what types of instructional delivery could be used with the devices in this context; and if students were motivated to learn. Classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with the professor were reported and five patterns emerged from these data: connected, personal, multimodal, engaged, and class management. From the overall findings of these data, it would appear that mobile learning can help increase student engagement and motivation in a large, undergraduate, science classroom

Habitat Associations of Fish Assemblages in the Cache River, Illinois

Fish and habitat were sampled by state agencies at 48 stations throughout the Cache River watershed, Illinois between 1992 and 2009. Two distinct fish assemblages were identified, one primarily found in the lower mainstem Cache River and a second found throughout tributaries and the upper mainstem Cache River. Using a canonical correspondence analysis, the distribution of fish species was largely explained by substrate, land use, drainage area and local habitat features. Creek chub, central stoneroller, fringed darter and fantail darter are species found to be positively associated with gravel substrate and forest. In contrast, black buffalo, gizzard shad, smallmouth buffalo, freshwater drum and bigmouth buffalo were positively associated with drainage area, silt, channel width and row crops. Cobble appears to be rare habitat associated with fringed darter, freckled madtom and fantail darter. Results suggest that substrate, land use and local habitat features influence fish assemblages within the Cache River watershed. This information contributes to both understanding aquatic community structure in a highly altered yet diverse watershed as well as management activities within the Cache River watershed

Virtual Visual Hulls: Example-Based 3D Shape Estimation from a Single Silhouette

Recovering a volumetric model of a person, car, or other object of interest from a single snapshot would be useful for many computer graphics applications. 3D model estimation in general is hard, and currently requires active sensors, multiple views, or integration over time. For a known object class, however, 3D shape can be successfully inferred from a single snapshot. We present a method for generating a ``virtual visual hull''-- an estimate of the 3D shape of an object from a known class, given a single silhouette observed from an unknown viewpoint. For a given class, a large database of multi-view silhouette examples from calibrated, though possibly varied, camera rigs are collected. To infer a novel single view input silhouette's virtual visual hull, we search for 3D shapes in the database which are most consistent with the observed contour. The input is matched to component single views of the multi-view training examples. A set of viewpoint-aligned virtual views are generated from the visual hulls corresponding to these examples. The 3D shape estimate for the input is then found by interpolating between the contours of these aligned views. When the underlying shape is ambiguous given a single view silhouette, we produce multiple visual hull hypotheses; if a sequence of input images is available, a dynamic programming approach is applied to find the maximum likelihood path through the feasible hypotheses over time. We show results of our algorithm on real and synthetic images of people