Open Education Week: Open Pedagogy and Student Content Creation

Open Pedagogy is the practice of engaging students in content creation through renewable assignments so that their work lives on beyond the course and has an authentic audience. In this workshop, you will learn about how to structure an Open Pedagogy assignment and will see examples from faculty who have designed their own renewable assignments.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/openedweek2021/1002/thumbnail.jp

“Why are those Leaves Red?” Making Sense of the Complex Symbols: Ecosemiotics in Education

Deciphering complex signals of constructed educational systems requires symbolic interpretation; deciphering complex signals that are inherently ignorant of their ecological roots requires a modification of a semiotic approach, which we call ecosemiotics. This paper examines one of many average classrooms through this veil of perception. As part of a larger reevaluation of learning in modern culture, we take apart some of the symbols of the classroom and its contained learning. The paper ends with the positing of several more ecosophically inclined teacher responses

Assessment of Trace Element Contamination in Streambed Sediment and Spatial Associations in Palolo Valley Watershed, Honolulu, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi

MA University of Hawaii at Manoa 2005Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146–156).Trace elements in streambed sediment (<63 micrometers) of Palolo, Puke1e, and Waiomao Streams (Palolo Valley Watershed, Honolulu, Hawaii) were investigated. Based on weak hydrochloric acid leaching (0.5 molarity), total digestions, sequential extractions, concentration enrichment ratios, sediment quality guideline comparisons, and national stream comparisons, there was significant lead contamination in Palolo Stream and some concern for copper, nickel, and zinc. Pukele Stream had intermediate trace element contamination, while Waiomao Stream was largely uncontaminated. Palolo Stream had significantly greater concentrations of trace elements than Pukele Stream, and both streams were significantly greater than Waiomao Stream. Since sediment in Palolo Steam was significantly contaminated with trace elements, the biological integrity of Palolo Stream and downstream systems could be impaired. There were great differences in urbanization related to population, storm drains, streets, and vehicle numbers in the sub-basins. These landuse characteristics could contribute to the observed differences among trace elements concentrations in streambed sediment

Walking Practices in Higher Education: An Inquiry into the Teaching, Writing, and Walking Practices of Five Contemporary Academics

Walking has been a practice in and an essential component of the lives of many educators, philosophers, researchers, and writers in both historical and contemporary times. However, little research has been done to explore what walking means to these people and how walking influences their work. In this project, I interview five people to explore their walking practices with a focus on teaching, learning, and writing in higher education. The participants come from a range of roles that include emeritus faculty, research and teaching faculty, and a doctoral candidate. I conduct interviews while both walking and being seated with participants since walking, as a go-along interview method, is a secondary focus of the research. Through the interviews, six themes emerged: (1) walking as roots, (2) walking as experiential, (3) walking and metaphor, (4) walking pragmatics and practicalities, (5) walking in academia, and (6) walking as a method of research. I discuss these six themes through the literature, what the participants have offered, and my understandings of how walking is an under researched aspect of academic culture and practice. The project concludes with the insights and implications of what walking practices offer to educational philosophy in general, higher education, educational research, and my own practice

Contemplating Positionalities: An Ethnodrama

This article is an ethnodrama playscript that examines the role of positionality in an interdisciplinary general education program called University Studies at Portland State University. Drawing from both the literature and from the practice of critical reflection, the authors share their experiences as faculty members relative to their institutional and social positionalities. The authors perform this ethnodrama through the construction of this article for an audience of teaching faculty and administrators in higher education. Throughout the ethnodrama, the audience/readers are invited to interact with the playscript through prompted critical reflection on their own positionalities in their professional lives

The Legacy of Lead (Pb) in Fluvial Bed Sediments of an Urban Drainage Basin

The study of fluvial bed sediments is essential for deciphering the impact of anthropogenic activities on water quality and drainage basin integrity. In this study, a systematic sampling design was employed to characterize the spatial variation of lead (Pb) concentrations in bed sediment of urban streams in the Palolo drainage basin, southeastern Oahu, Hawaii. Potentially bioavailable Pb was assessed with a dilute 0.5 N HCl extraction of the \u3c63 \u3eμm grain-size fraction from the upper bed sediment layer of 169 samples from Palolo, Pukele, and Waiomao streams. Contamination of bed sediments was associated with the direct transport of legacy Pb from the leaded gasoline era to stream channels via a dense network of storm drains linked to road surfaces throughout the basin. The Palolo Stream had the highest median Pb concentration (134 mg/kg), and the greatest road and storm drain densities, the greatest population, and the most vehicle numbers. Lower median Pb concentrations were associated with the less impacted Pukele Stream (24 mg/kg), and Waiomao Stream (7 mg/kg). The median Pb enrichment ratio values followed the sequence of Palolo (68) \u3e Pukele (19) \u3e Waiomao (8). Comparisons to sediment quality guidelines and potential toxicity estimates using a logistic regression model (LRM) indicated a significant potential risk of Palolo Stream bed sediments to bottom-dwelling organisms

Securing the Next Generation

Weak authentication practices that rely on passwords for security have led to widespread data breaches and successful phishing attacks. Recent advances in the cost and usability of hardware security tokens have made the prospect of effectively augmenting password-based authentication or removing it altogether a possibility. To actualize this, a paradigm change in how people learn to authenticate accounts on-line must occur. Towards this end, we describe a curriculum to teach high-school students the perils of passwords and a program to distribute hardware security tokens to them as they are first setting up their on-line presence in order to improve the security of the next generation

The Intentional Design of a SoTL Initiative

This chapter describes a SoTL program at Simon Fraser University that focuses on the importance of analyzing the internal coherence and alignment of the program design and the thinking underpinning the design as the first steps in evaluating effectiveness or impact

CyberPDX: An Interdisciplinary Professional Development Program for Middle and High School Teachers

CyberPDX is an annual professional development program hosted at Portland State University. Our long-term goal is to broaden participation in cybersecurity. Since 2016, over 70 middle and high school teachers from the Pacific Northwest have participated in the STREAM program, which offers interdisciplinary instruction in programming, cryptography, personal security, policy, literature, and arts. In this poster, we share our interdisciplinary curriculum, present data on short-term impacts, and describe our in-progress work to evaluate the program’s longer term impacts