Exploring the Factors Associated with Undergraduate Students’ Online Learning Anxiety: Development of the Online Learner Anxiety Scale

The purpose of this research was to explore the factors associated with online learning anxiety by carefully designing, developing, and providing preliminary validity and reliability evidence of a scale to measure undergraduate students’ online learning anxiety. We created a conceptual framework to organize the literature surrounding online learning anxiety and used this framework to develop an initial item pool of 30 items. The researchers recruited N = 297 undergraduate student participants from four public universities in the southeastern United States from whom we collected and analyzed data for descriptive statistics, internal consistency reliability, exploratory factor analysis, and correlational analysis. Following systematic analytic procedures, we arrived at a three-factor model explaining approximately 65% of the variability in these data and retained 24 items in the final model with minimal cross-loadings in the pattern matrix. We labeled the identified factors as (1) online learner feelings of negativity and inadequacy, (2) online learner apprehension towards personal communication, and (3) online learner discomfort with instructor capacity and communication. The final instrument was named the Online Learner Anxiety Scale (OLAS). Scores on the OLAS were correlated with five other measures hypothesized to relate to online learning anxiety thereby providing stronger construct validity evidence. The OLAS was found to produce reliable scores that can be validly inferred as measures of online learning anxiety among undergraduate students in institutions of higher education. These findings are discussed and framed in light of current literature on online learning and possible future research directions.

Syndemic factors associated with non-fatal overdose among young opioid users in New York City

IntroductionRates of illicit opioid use are particularly high among young adults, yet research on overdose experience and factors associated with overdose in this population remains limited. This study examines the experiences and correlates of non-fatal overdose among young adults using illicit opioids in New York City (NYC).Methods539 participants were recruited via Respondent-Driven Sampling in 2014-2016. Eligibility criteria included: aged 18–29 years old; current residence in NYC; and nonmedical prescription opioid (PO) use and/or heroin use in the past 30 days. Participants completed structured interviews to assess their socio-demographics, drug use trajectories, current substance use and lifetime and most recent overdose experiences, and were tested on-site for hepatitis C virus (HCV) antibodies.Results43.9% of participants reported lifetime overdose experience; of these, 58.8% had experienced two or more overdose events. The majority of participants’ most recent overdoses (63.5%) were due to polysubstance use. In bivariable analyses, after RDS adjustment, having ever overdosed was correlated with: household income of >$100,00 growing up (vs.$51,000-100,000); lifetime homelessness; HCV antibody-positive status; lifetime engagement in regular nonmedical benzodiazepine use, regular heroin injection and regular PO injection; and using a non-sterile syringe in the past 12 months. Multivariable logistic regression identified childhood household income >$100,00 (AOR=1.88), HCV-positive status (AOR=2.64), benzodiazepine use (AOR=2.15), PO injection (AOR=1.96) and non-sterile syringe use (AOR=1.70) as significant independent correlates of lifetime overdose. A multivariable model with multiple overdoses (vs. one) found only lifetime regular heroin use and PO injection to be strong correlates.DiscussionResults indicate a high prevalence of lifetime and repeated overdose among opioid-using young adults in NYC, highlighting a need for intensified overdose prevention efforts for this population. The strong associations of HCV and indices of polydrug use with overdose suggest that prevention efforts should address the complex risk environment in which overdose occurs, attending to the overlapping nature of disease-related risk behavior and overdose risk behavior among young people who inject opioids. Overdose prevention efforts tailored for this group may find it useful to adopt a syndemic conception of overdose that understands such events as resulting from multiple, and often interrelated, risk factors

Taking Learning to the Field: Exploring Ecology with Technology

Science is all around us and a large part of science learning takes place in informal settings (Boyce et. al, 2014). This is not always easy to demonstrate to preservice teachers in the confines of a university classroom setting. Integrating technology into preservice teacher education content courses is also not always a priority. This requires collaboration between teacher educators who are passionate about both their content and the practice of teaching. Retrospective surveys, along with student artifacts (iNaturalist postings, iMovies, lesson plans, reflections), were used to determine the impact of this collaborative project

Development of the Abbreviated Technology Anxiety Scale (ATAS)

The purpose of this research was to develop a short measure of technology anxiety and provide validity and reliability evidence for its use in a variety of studies in the social sciences. Technology anxiety is an emotion oriented towards a negative affect leading to the avoidance of information and communication technology (Wilson, 2018). We developed the Abbreviated Technology Anxiety Scale (ATAS) and applied measurement theory to provide validity and reliability evidence. We implemented the study in multiple phases that included expert panel reviews on the content and quality of the items, and three rounds of data collection and analyses to provide the needed evidence. The scores from the ATAS were found to have an internally consistent structure, as well as to correlate with other known measures of technology and anxiety. Our results support the use of the ATAS for low-stakes purposes in research studies and evaluations. A general discussion is provided looking at the potential applications of the ATAS and its relation to other existing measures

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7