156 research outputs found
Open Educational Resources: Why Libraries Are Incentivizing Open Content Creation, Curation, and Adaptation
The movement toward Open Educational Resources is challenging and changing the paradigm of academic libraries. Libraries are leading and innovating in the movement for the creation and adaptation of openly licensed content, whereby the creator can retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute content. There are large-scale library or librarian-led projects that are broadening library services, such as SUNY Affordable Learning Solutions, the Achieving the Dream OER degrees, Affordable Learning Georgia, as well as smaller campus initiatives. These projects shift the library’s role in education and increase measurable retention rates, such as engagement, student satisfaction, grade performance, and successful completion of courses. This chapter provides an overview of large-scale projects and then provide an example of the process at Lehman College to start an OER Fellowship, which was adapted from City Tech
Leveraging Library Expertise in Support of Institutional Goals: A Case Study of an OER Initiative at Lehman College
Incentivizing faculty adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) as a method for reducing textbook costs to increase access and affordability of higher education has been an area of development in academic libraries. This manuscript describes the experience at Lehman College, CUNY, the only four-year public college in the Bronx, NY. The OER initiative involves the creation of a new program, which includes assisting faculty with adopting and adapting OER, as well as training and discussion around issues pertinent to OER, such as finding and evaluating OER. The case study explains local conditions and provide an overview of the financial implications for textbook costs that OER alleviates as well as the pedagogical benefits. The repositioning of the Library through this initiative is also discussed
The Tight Empirical Relation between Dark Matter Halo Mass and Flat Rotation Velocity for Late-Type Galaxies
We present a new empirical relation between galaxy dark matter halo mass
() and the velocity along the flat portion of the rotation
curve (), derived from 120 late-type galaxies from the SPARC
database. The orthogonal scatter in this relation is comparable to the observed
scatter in the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation (BTFR), indicating a tight
coupling between total halo mass and galaxy kinematics at .
The small vertical scatter in the relation makes it an extremely competitive
estimator of total halo mass. We demonstrate that this conclusion holds true
for different priors on that give a tight BTFR, but requires
that the halo density profile follows DC14 rather than NFW. We provide
additional relations between and other velocity definitions at
smaller galactic radii (i.e. , , and ) which can be useful for estimating halo masses from kinematic
surveys, providing an alternative to abundance matching. Furthermore, we
constrain the dark matter analog of the Radial Acceleration Relation and also
find its scatter to be small, demonstrating the fine balance between baryons
and dark matter in their contribution to galaxy kinematics.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Accepted to MNRAS Letter
Evolving Into the Open: A Framework for Collaborative Design of Renewable Assignments
Open pedagogy reconceives the notion of who creates knowledge and provides a pathway to empower students as creators. Leveraging open education resources in the classroom results in numerous benefits for students, including free access to knowledge, a participatory culture, and opportunities for innovation and creativity (Hegarty, 2015). Open pedagogical design often results in renewable course assignments, which empower students to create authentic resources that can be positioned to have greater impact through time, space, and gravity, particularly as they have longevity, reach, and value (Seraphin et al., 2018). In this chapter, we will highlight a collaborative partnership between library and education faculty which led to the development of open pedagogical design in a teacher education course. Based on our collaborative processes, we also propose a five-step framework to transform an existing assignment into a renewable assignment
Opening the Conversation: Getting Started
This column explores the concept of Open Educational Resources and how it relates to librarianship
Student textbook purchasing: the hidden cost of time
Choice in textbook purchasing has been portrayed as beneficial to students. However, the time spent exploring options for purchasing textbooks takes students away from other obligations in their lives. This research is a study of student textbook purchasing. In this paper, the literature regarding the textbook acquisition process is explored. Students were surveyed regarding their textbook purchasing habits. I found that most students visited multiple stores or websites, but those who purchased textbooks ultimately only purchased from the campus bookstore/bookstore website or Amazon.com. Approximately twenty percent of students reported spending more than two hours purchasing textbooks. The ways in which the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) could affect student time in acquiring materials is also discussed
Testing Feedback-Modified Dark Matter Haloes with Galaxy Rotation Curves: Estimation of Halo Parameters and Consistency with CDM
Cosmological -body simulations predict dark matter (DM) haloes with steep
central cusps (e.g. NFW, Navarro et al. 1996). This contradicts observations of
gas kinematics in low-mass galaxies that imply the existence of shallow DM
cores. Baryonic processes such as adiabatic contraction and gas outflows can,
in principle, alter the initial DM density profile, yet their relative
contributions to the halo transformation remain uncertain. Recent high
resolution, cosmological hydrodynamic simulations (Di Cintio et al. 2014, DC14)
predict that inner density profiles depend systematically on the ratio of
stellar to DM mass (M/M). Using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo
approach, we test the NFW and the M/M-dependent DC14 halo
models against a sample of 147 galaxy rotation curves from the new {\it
Spitzer} Photometry and Accurate Rotation Curves (SPARC) data set. These
galaxies all have extended H{\small I} rotation curves from radio
interferometry as well as accurate stellar mass density profiles from
near-infrared photometry. The DC14 halo profile provides markedly better fits
to the data compared to the NFW profile. Unlike NFW, the DC14 halo parameters
found in our rotation curve fits naturally fall within two standard deviations
of the mass-concentration relation predicted by CDM and the stellar
mass-halo mass relation inferred from abundance matching with few outliers.
Halo profiles modified by baryonic processes are therefore more consistent with
expectations from cold dark matter (CDM) cosmology and
provide better fits to galaxy rotation curves across a wide range of galaxy
properties than do halo models that neglect baryonic physics. Our results offer
a solution to the decade long cusp-core discrepancy.Comment: 23 Pages, 18 Figures, MNRAS Accepte
The Strength of Community: The Role of Social Support Networks in Sport Officials’ Retention
Previous researchers have indicated that a sense of community and social support are vital to referee retention; however, little is known about the connection between specific characteristics of sports officials’ networks and retention. To better understand the sports officiating shortage, researchers explored the social support networks of 116 referees utilizing egocentric network analysis. The authors suggest that retention of sports officials depends on the interpersonal ties and network structures within which the referees are embedded. Specifically, resulting hierarchical models confirmed that retention relationships among officials are a multilevel phenomenon, and that outside communication and community were vital network characteristics that fostered retention relationships. Network size, tenure, and the officiating level also were significant when considering an official’s network and its impact on retention. Areas for future research and suggestions for referee managers are presented
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