Learning from their mistakes - an online approach to evaluate teacher education students\u27 numeracy capability

Teachers’ numeracy capability is essential for student learning in the classroom and important across all subject areas, not only within mathematics. This study investigated the use of online diagnostic tests as a form of assessment for learning, to evaluate and support teacher education students (TES) in developing their numeracy skills. Data was collected using the “Test” feature through the Blackboard learning management system at two Australian universities. In this paper, we report on trends amongst TES who showed growth in their numeracy capability through the repeated use of the diagnostic test

Self-disclosure beyond 'vulnerability' : young people, musical biographies, technology and music-making

I sit across the table in a café, ready to begin my final interview with Julia, a young musician living with bipolar disorder who participated in this research. With a short-sleeved shirt on, her self-harm scars are obvious from the outset. As the interview continues, I begin to understand exactly how these scars are central to her music-making practice, one that involved disclosing personal stories of family mental illness. Often mediated through technology, music-making is used by Julia, as well as other young musicians, as a constructive means of engaging with personal vulnerability. Doing so enables processes of self-disclosure, which assist in the young person enacting a resilient identity. This thesis analyses the ways in which young musicians with experiences of vulnerability utilise both personal and musical biographies as part of a music-making practice that affords opportunities to manipulate, tailor and take charge of personal experience. The academic youth arts discourse assumes that young people with experiences of vulnerability are in deficit. As popularised by youth music-making initiatives, such an approach assumes that, through participating in an adult-run music-making program, the young person can move from vulnerability (deficit) to resilience (strength). Such programs elide the critical role music, as a cultural form, often plays in the lives and identities of vulnerable young people. Instead, programs position music merely as a youth engagement tool to govern and ultimately transform young people. This transformation narrative is in stark contrast with popular music discourse which romanticises stories of the tortured artist, celebrating musicians’ ongoing and continuous engagement with personal vulnerability as part of practice. This work entails a two-stage ethnographic methodology. Stage One consists of interviews with 13 young musicians with experiences of vulnerability and two youth arts professionals. Stage Two involves a series of three follow up case-study interviews with five of the young musicians who participated in Stage One. When speaking with young musicians, I utilised a ‘version of friendship as method’, an adaptation of Tillman-Healy’s ‘friendship as method’. Doing so generated experiences that could be situated in dialogue with existing youth arts discourse. This methodology also afforded new opportunities for understanding young musicians’ life worlds. Through an analysis of my empirical material, this thesis argues that young musicians with experiences of vulnerability use music-making as a means of self-disclosure; a practice that involves a continuous interplay of vulnerability and resilience as mediated through technology, personal experience and musical biography. To make this argument, I analyse the experiences of the young musicians with whom I worked through a dialogue with a range of literature, including youth arts, vulnerability and resilience studies, technology studies, and fandom and subcultures research. In particular, I build on Frith’s call for a focus within cultural studies on individual cultural practices, and I draw on Hesmondhalgh’s contention that music involves both individual and collective practices - often at the same time - to suggest that the neo-liberal focus on individualisation is deeply embedded in the lives of young musicians, especially those with lived experiences of vulnerability. However, as I demonstrate, these individual practices are embedded in strong social and collective networks. Within these contexts, young musicians with experiences of vulnerability engage in music-making practices, which afford opportunities for self-disclosure. These practices, in return, facilitate a fluid and non-linear engagement with vulnerability, which allow participants to enact a resilient self. Calling young musicians’ experiences into dialogue with the existing dominant discourse surrounding vulnerability and resilience, this thesis argues against the transformation narrative that characterises much youth arts practice. Such an approach also has implications for methodology, suggesting that specific and contextualised approaches need to complement the broad categorical approaches to understanding youth practice. In this way, this thesis complements and extends the existing youth arts discourse

Disrupting the Way We Work: An Honors Summer Vacation

Authors describe how a summer respite introduces alternative ways and spaces in which to work, positing how collaborative discourse and dismantled hierarchies can affect positive change and productive outcomes for honors programs. While some assume that the summer is our off-season, the team at the Sokolov Honors College at Youngstown State University knows that it is the time we have to be most “on,” tackling all that we don’t get to do in the semester and positioning us for a strong start to the upcoming fall. Summer 2021 seemed particularly daunting with a laundry list of items to catch up on and big projects to move forward. Through collaboration among staff and students, along with embracing creative ways to work, the honors college reached a new level of accomplishment. Rather than holing up in our individual offices trying to divide and conquer, we took a new approach: we set up shop in our honors classroom together, forgoing desks behind doors for laptops and constructive conversation. On nice days, we took our show on the road (or to the porch), continuing our collaboration by walking around campus or sitting outside in the sun

Reimagining the Airport as Classroom—Immediacy, Place, and Presence

This paper discusses a post-conference experience involving attendees who utilized airport space to debrief through face-to-face (FtF) communication. Their temporary spatial proximity led to an idea generation process of recalling, rethinking, and getting ready for what’s next. Literature about learning spaces, knowledge management, and the affordances and preferences of FtF communication are explored as they relate to using spaces for purposive conversation. The paper highlights a proposed debriefing model of immediacy, place, and presence. This framework allows organizations to leverage unique affordances of FtF communication and geography of the airport, or other similar spaces, to maximize engagement and benefit

Serving through Transcribing: Preserving History while Building Community

Community is a foundational element in honors education. During the global pandemic, students reimagined ways to connect in order to build community and serve one another. Authors describe a virtual collaboration in transcription, where honors students gathered to participate in digital transcribe-a-thons. These informal groupings evolved into a transcribing club that met three times a week (collectively logging more than 1,600 hours) and transcribed over 16,000 historical documents. A study of participating transcribers reveals enhanced historical knowledge, skill building, and opportunities for relationships with students of varying interests and backgrounds despite edicts for social distancing. While a common feature of the club is a connection to something beyond the student, authors maintain that the experience of transcribing also brings a sense of connectedness with fellow honors students and the honors college. Authors provide student insight and outcomes as well as detailed instructions for honors practitioners seeking to introduce historical transcription to their students

SUMMARY OF MORTALITY AMONG CAPTIVE CRANES AT THE INTERNATIONAL CRANE FOUNDATION: 2000-2020

We reviewed mortalities of captive cranes at the International Crane Foundation (ICF) between 2000 and 2020 to provide broad insights into contemporary factors affecting the collection’s health and survival. Sixty-three deaths were documented in 13 of 15 crane species held in the ICF collection. The mean annual mortality during the study was 2.6% and the mean age (±SD) at death was 28.4 (±12.7) years. The overall total number of deaths of males and females was similar, but there was an association between sex and death of adult versus geriatric (\u3e25 years) cranes (P \u3c 0.01); males were more likely to die at geriatric age than females. Deaths were commonly associated with chronic health and management problems (n = 44, 79%) versus problems with an acute onset (n = 12, 21%). Common causes of death in captive cranes were due to musculoskeletal problems (44%), trauma (9%), and neoplastic disease (8%). Infectious pathogens were associated with respiratory (6%), reproductive (4%), and gastrointestinal (2%) deaths. Our findings add to previous reviews of mortality among captive cranes by detailing problems associated with progressive aging of individuals in the ICF collection

SERUM CHEMISTRY, BLOOD GAS, AND PHYSIOLOGICAL MEASURES OF SANDHILL CRANES SEDATED WITH ALPHA-CHLORALOSE

Capture techniques that lessen handling stress may also lessen pathologic influences on physiologic measures, improving the validity of these measures for use in individual health assessment of freeranging wildlife. Since 1990, the International Crane Foundation (ICF) has successfully used chemical immobilization with alpha-chloralose (AC; C6H11Cl3O6), a chloral derivative of glucose, to facilitate captures of sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis tabida) for ecological studies (Hayes et al. 2003). Although this chemical has been used orally for the immobilization of many species, the physiologic effects of AC are not well understood in cranes. The primary purpose of this study was to measure serum chemistry, venous blood gas, and physiological values in free-ranging sandhill cranes successfully immobilized using this technique

Reimagining Honors Curriculum: Delivered Through Technology Utilizing Our Alumni Community

This chapter describes our thought process and the practical steps we took as we created a new course. It also provides student, faculty/ staff, and alumni perspectives on our triumphs and tribulations throughout the year. We hope that by sharing the early results of our efforts, other honors colleges or programs also looking to reimagine their first-year experience will benefit from the lessons we have learned

Road mitigation using tunnels and fences promotes site connectivity and population expansion for a protected amphibian

Habitat loss and fragmentation due to urbanisation and road developments have substantial impacts on amphibian populations and road mitigation measures are increasingly used in order to reduce such risks. However, numerous important questions remain unanswered on the actual effectiveness of such ecological road mitigation projects. We used specially adapted time-lapse recording cameras and a custom image analysis script to monitor the amphibian usage and effectiveness of a multi-tunnel mitigation site in northern England over 4 years and used before-and-after pond survey data to evaluate the mitigation results from a population trend perspective. We monitored four amphibian species, including the European protected great crested newt (Triturus cristatus), the main target of amphibian road mitigation in the UK. Despite substantial evidence of mitigation rejection and U-turn movements inside the tunnels, overall, most amphibians entering tunnels successfully used them to move between the different parts of the site separated by the road. Road fences appeared effective for preventing amphibian road mortality and site connectivity was re-established via the wildlife passage system, with multiple new ponds across the road colonised by amphibians. Unlike frogs and toads, tunnel usage by newts was strongly autumn based, indicating that such systems are mainly suitable for supporting newt dispersal movements between breeding areas. The great crested newt population increased rapidly over the course of the monitoring period, suggesting that, together with habitat replacements and improvements, the road mitigation measures were effective at maintaining site connectivity and as a population conservation measure