The Pedagogy of Digital Storytelling in the College Classroom

In the fall of 2008, Rachel Raimist and Walter Jacobs collaboratively designed and taught the course “Digital Storytelling in and with Communities of Color” to 18 undergraduate students from a variety of disciplines. Candance Doerr-Stevens audited the class as a graduate student. This article examines the media making processes of the students in the course, asking how participants used digital storytelling to engage with themselves and the media through content creation that both mimicked and critiqued current media messages. In particular, students used the medium of digital storytelling to build and revise identities for purposes of rememory, reinvention, and cultural remixing. We provide a detailed online account of the digital stories and composing processes of the students through the same multimedia genre that the students were asked to use, that of digital storytelling

Community Building, Community Bridging

A summary document of our research, entitled "Community Building, Community Bridging: Linking Neighborhood Improvement Initiatives and the New Regionalism in the San Francisco Bay Area," discusses the three initiatives and draws general lessons for those interested in how communities and regions could better work together

The artists’ footprint: investigating the distinct contributions of artists engaging the public with climate data

This thesis investigates the distinct contributions of artists who engage the public with climate data, exploring the role of the artists and the value of their contributions by focusing on two studies of artist-led projects. The first investigates how the author’s own artist led collective, Active Ingredient, engaged the public with climate data through a touring interactive artwork. The second study explores the design of an online platform for capturing, authoring and ‘performing’ climate data. This platform was developed and tested by Active Ingredient in collaboration with researchers from the University of Nottingham, and then used by other artists to engage with climate data. The studies reveal how the artistic projects were designed and experienced, through a mixed methods approach requiring the author to shift perspectives in order to investigate her own arts practice alongside the work of other artists in this field. The findings from these studies suggest that the artists adopt a distinctive voice that fosters an emotional engagement with climate data, rather than an informative or persuasive one, that goes beyond ‘environmental knowing’ towards human-scale, embodied, localized and personalized sense making. This research reveals how the artists use the key strategies of performing data, sensory experience and multiple interpretations to provoke these emotional responses. Highlighting the challenges and opportunities of engaging temporal structures and narratives to represent climate data; treating the data as a new material that is embedded into the artworks and embodied in various sensory forms; abstracting and juxtaposing multiple, contrasting and yet related datasets so as to invite comparisons, while opening up spaces between them for interpretation and dialogue. This results in a discussion of the role of technology within the artistic process, how the artists walk a line between authenticity and emotional engagement in their interpretations of climate data and the importance of an ongoing dialogic collaboration between the artists, researchers and climate scientist that support authentic and meaningful engagements with climate data. The research presents rich descriptions of the artists’ strategies for engaging the public with climate data and revealing that artists have a distinctive and powerful role to play in relation to climate change and sustainability; one that Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Climate Science need to understand as they continue to move into this territory, and where HCI in particular might ultimately learn about how to bring an emotional treatment to many other forms of data

Religious Involvement and the Attitudes Toward Birth Control

Religious Involvement and the Attitudes Toward Birth Control Carly Jacobs, Rachel LaFont, Whitney Wright Faculty Advisor: Erin M. Pryor, Ph.D. Key words: religion, birth control, contraceptive, sexual education, pregnancy prevention Historically, religious communities with conservative beliefs about sex and procreation offer limited access to and deter the use of birth control for pregnancy prevention (Cole & Geist, 2021; Piper et al., 2022; Wilde & Danielsen, 2014). Studies show that the higher religiosity involvement someone has, the less likely they are to use any artificial birth control to prevent pregnancy, and the more likely for them to remain abstinent (Piper et al., 2022). Recognizing the disparity in education of and access to birth control is important in continuing the fight for reproductive justice (Price, 2020; Roberts, 2015; Ross & Solinger, 2017). Therefore, our research explores religious involvement, attitudes toward birth control, and how different religions affect access to birth control in different ways. Through Dr. Pryor’s Social Research Methods class, we have synthesized previous research literature and explored different methodologies including: surveying Belmont students in an Introduction to Sociology course, analyzing a secondary data source of a CBS News survey about the Catholic church, analyzing content of sexual education initiatives, and interviewing a Belmont student about their experience. All of these methods were used to further our understanding of the influence of religion on access to and the use of birth control

The Annotated Accessible Canada Act - Excerpt

An accessible MS Word version of this document is available for download at the bottom of this screen under Additional files . The Act to ensure a barrier-free Canada, S.C. 2019, c. 10, which is commonly known as the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) came into force on July 11, 2019. It is Canada’s first piece of federal legislation focusing on accessibility for persons with disabilities. As a piece of federal legislation, the ACA regulates accessibility for those sectors of the economy that fall under federal jurisdiction pursuant to s. 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867. This includes federal works and undertakings, businesses and organizations such as banks, airlines, railways, marine and other interprovincial transportation carriers, the Canadian Forces, parliamentary entities such as the Senate and the House of Commons, and most Crown corporations such as Canada Post. The underlying philosophy of the Act is to remove existing disabling barriers and to prevent the creation of new barriers for people with disabilities within the federal sphere. The Act provides a structure for the creation of accessibility standards through regulations. These standards would then apply to the regulated entities that are subject to the Act. The ACA also sets up an elaborate and innovative system of compliance and enforcement which requires regulated entities to create accessibility plans, provide feedback processes to hear about barriers encountered by their users, and to implement steps to address and remove these barriers. Compliance and enforcement of the ACA are led by the Accessibility Commissioner, which is a unique office that does not exist in any of the provinces that have created accessibility legislation to date. The ACA aims to achieve a “Canada without barriers” by January 1, 2040. However, the Act itself has a number of exemptions which lead to a patchwork approach to its application across federally regulated entities. These exemptions appear most explicitly with respect to transportation, telecommunications and broadcasting. For example, as regards transportation, the Canadian Transportation Agency, on approval of the Governor in Council (Cabinet), may make regulations regarding accessibility plans and the process of feedback by users regarding disabling barriers (s. 63). The standards would therefore be made by the Canadian Transportation Agency instead of through the process designed in the ACA for the development of standards by the Canadian Accessibility Standards Development Organization (CASDO), and the establishment of those standards into regulations by Cabinet. The Accessible Canada Act has twelve parts. In this book, we cover the most significant parts of the Act from the perspective of members of the public who may use it: people with disabilities, advocates and lawyers, as well as disability rights researchers and scholars– that is, this resource discusses the ACA from the beginning of the statute up to and including Part 9. A brief summary of each Part of the entire ACA may be found on the Department of Justice website. In 2017, Statistics Canada reported that 22% of the population of Canada aged 15 years or older identify as people with disabilities. With a population in Canada of approximately 38 million, those with disabilities comprise over 7 million people. We hope that this resource will help interested individuals, especially people with disabilities in Canada, to unravel, interpret and examine the implications of the Accessible Canada Act, and to know their rights within it

The Annotated Accessible Canada Act - Complete Text

An accessible MS Word version of this document as well as related tables are available for download at the bottom of this screen under Additional files . The Act to ensure a barrier-free Canada, S.C. 2019, c. 10, which is commonly known as the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) came into force on July 11, 2019. It is Canada’s first piece of federal legislation focusing on accessibility for persons with disabilities. As a piece of federal legislation, the ACA regulates accessibility for those sectors of the economy that fall under federal jurisdiction pursuant to s. 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867. This includes federal works and undertakings, businesses and organizations such as banks, airlines, railways, marine and other interprovincial transportation carriers, the Canadian Forces, parliamentary entities such as the Senate and the House of Commons, and most Crown corporations such as Canada Post. The underlying philosophy of the Act is to remove existing disabling barriers and to prevent the creation of new barriers for people with disabilities within the federal sphere. The Act provides a structure for the creation of accessibility standards through regulations. These standards would then apply to the regulated entities that are subject to the Act. The ACA also sets up an elaborate and innovative system of compliance and enforcement which requires regulated entities to create accessibility plans, provide feedback processes to hear about barriers encountered by their users, and to implement steps to address and remove these barriers. Compliance and enforcement of the ACA are led by the Accessibility Commissioner, which is a unique office that does not exist in any of the provinces that have created accessibility legislation to date. The ACA aims to achieve a “Canada without barriers” by January 1, 2040. However, the Act itself has a number of exemptions which lead to a patchwork approach to its application across federally regulated entities. These exemptions appear most explicitly with respect to transportation, telecommunications and broadcasting. For example, as regards transportation, the Canadian Transportation Agency, on approval of the Governor in Council (Cabinet), may make regulations regarding accessibility plans and the process of feedback by users regarding disabling barriers (s. 63). The standards would therefore be made by the Canadian Transportation Agency instead of through the process designed in the ACA for the development of standards by the Canadian Accessibility Standards Development Organization (CASDO), and the establishment of those standards into regulations by Cabinet. The Accessible Canada Act has twelve parts. In this book, we cover the most significant parts of the Act from the perspective of members of the public who may use it: people with disabilities, advocates and lawyers, as well as disability rights researchers and scholars– that is, this resource discusses the ACA from the beginning of the statute up to and including Part 9. A brief summary of each Part of the entire ACA may be found on the Department of Justice website. In 2017, Statistics Canada reported that 22% of the population of Canada aged 15 years or older identify as people with disabilities. With a population in Canada of approximately 38 million, those with disabilities comprise over 7 million people. We hope that this resource will help interested individuals, especially people with disabilities in Canada, to unravel, interpret and examine the implications of the Accessible Canada Act, and to know their rights within it

Massachusetts Health Passport Project Evaluation Final Report

Adapted from the Executive Summary: The Massachusetts Health Passport Project (MHPP) began in April 2004, as a pilot program of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project at Boston College Law School under the direction of Francine Sherman, Esq. The program was originally called the Girls’ Health Passport Project (GHPP) and was designed to address the unmet health needs and gaps in health care services for girls committed to the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS) and re-entering their communities from DYS assessment and treatment facilities. An advisory board of health, juvenile justice, philanthropy, and evaluation professionals assisted the program in its early development

The artists’ footprint: investigating the distinct contributions of artists engaging the public with climate data

This thesis investigates the distinct contributions of artists who engage the public with climate data, exploring the role of the artists and the value of their contributions by focusing on two studies of artist-led projects. The first investigates how the author’s own artist led collective, Active Ingredient, engaged the public with climate data through a touring interactive artwork. The second study explores the design of an online platform for capturing, authoring and ‘performing’ climate data. This platform was developed and tested by Active Ingredient in collaboration with researchers from the University of Nottingham, and then used by other artists to engage with climate data. The studies reveal how the artistic projects were designed and experienced, through a mixed methods approach requiring the author to shift perspectives in order to investigate her own arts practice alongside the work of other artists in this field. The findings from these studies suggest that the artists adopt a distinctive voice that fosters an emotional engagement with climate data, rather than an informative or persuasive one, that goes beyond ‘environmental knowing’ towards human-scale, embodied, localized and personalized sense making. This research reveals how the artists use the key strategies of performing data, sensory experience and multiple interpretations to provoke these emotional responses. Highlighting the challenges and opportunities of engaging temporal structures and narratives to represent climate data; treating the data as a new material that is embedded into the artworks and embodied in various sensory forms; abstracting and juxtaposing multiple, contrasting and yet related datasets so as to invite comparisons, while opening up spaces between them for interpretation and dialogue. This results in a discussion of the role of technology within the artistic process, how the artists walk a line between authenticity and emotional engagement in their interpretations of climate data and the importance of an ongoing dialogic collaboration between the artists, researchers and climate scientist that support authentic and meaningful engagements with climate data. The research presents rich descriptions of the artists’ strategies for engaging the public with climate data and revealing that artists have a distinctive and powerful role to play in relation to climate change and sustainability; one that Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Climate Science need to understand as they continue to move into this territory, and where HCI in particular might ultimately learn about how to bring an emotional treatment to many other forms of data

Dynamic strategy : investigating the ambidexterity–performance relationship

PURPOSE : This study aims to determine whether organisations in emerging economic contexts demonstrate ambidexterity for sustainable performance in the long term and what the effects of environmental turbulence are on the ambidexterity and sustainable performance relationship. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH : This study used self-administered questionnaires and telephonic surveys. The sample consisted of profit-seeking organisations from many different industries within South Africa, including, but not limited to, manufacturing, business services, finance, hospitality and tourism, and retail and wholesale. The research was conducted during the 2017 financial year. FINDINGS/RESULTS : It was found that moderate to strong relationships exist between the two sub-dimensions of ambidexterity and sustainable performance. The findings depict a strong relationship between exploration and exploitation as the sub-dimensional constructs of ambidexterity, reinforcing existing literature on simultaneous exploration and exploitation. There was no statistically significant information, indicating that environmental turbulence moderates the ambidexterity and sustainable performance relationship. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS : Considering the strong positive relationship between the two subdimensions of ambidexterity and sustainable organisational performance, it is advisable for management of South African organisations to focus on ambidextrous strategies for sustaining performance in turbulent environments. ORIGINALITY/VALUE : This study contributes to the limited body of knowledge investigating ambidexterity as a dynamic capability in an emerging economic context. Moreover, this study contributes to clarify the ambidexterity and sustainable performance relationship in terms of whether organisations can simultaneously explore and exploit and what type of relationship exists between ambidexterity and sustainable performance as previous studies delivered mixed results.http://www.sajbm.orgam2021Business Managemen