Academic literacies in the digital university

Academic Literacies is an international field of study concerned with literacies and learning in tertiary education. Some recent work in this field has focused on online and elearning environments. In our book of 2007 (Goodfellow & Lea 2007) we used an academic literacies perspective to critique what we see as the focus in much elearning practice on the 'management of learning' at the expense of disciplinary pedagogies. We argued for attention to be paid to the centrality of texts, however mediated, in the construction of knowledge and the practices of learning. Our current focus on the 'digital' extends this critique to engage with three major discourses of technology currently constructing the 'digital age' in relation to education. The first is the metaphor of the 'digital native' or 'net generation'. The second is the discourse of 'Learning 2.0, the third is the trope of the 'unbundled university'. We conclude that we need to pay much more attention to textual practice around learning and scholarship,and that, as researchers and scholars, we need to work for the reconciliation of new discourses of the digital with the continuing development of critical pedagogical and social practice in the academy and the public sphere

Diversity, biogeography, and geochemical habitat of Korarchaeota in continental hot springs

Microorganisms have traditionally been characterized based on their morphology and physiology. However, this formula does not account for the importance of a microorganism\u27s habitat, which is intimately linked to its physiology. The Korarchaeota comprise a deeply branching archaeal lineage that has proven to be difficult to isolate and, consequently, has remained uncharacterized until recently. The aim of this study was to evaluate the physicochemical and biogeographical distribution of Korarchaeota in hot springs of the Great Basin and Yellowstone National Park. Ninety-nine sediment samples were collected from hot springs with temperatures ranging from 40.7-94.3°C and pH ranging from 1.3-9.2, while recording as many coincident chemical properties as feasible. Polymerase chain reaction was used to screen samples for Korarchaeota 16S rRNA genes, and products were sequenced and phylogenetically analyzed. The resultant data set identified novel korarchaeal phylotypes and showed that korarchaeal phylotypes are not randomly distributed with respect to biogeography

Age Declines in Memory Self-Efficacy: General or Limited to Particular Tasks and Measure?

The potential for lifelong learning has been demonstrated clearly in research on problem solving, prose recall, and other measures of mental skill (Reese & Puckett, 1993; Sinnott, 1989). However, there are factors that may serve as barriers to lifelong learning for older adults (see Arenberg, chapter 23 in this volume). Among others, these factors include age changes in attentional or memory capacity (e.g., Salthouse, 1991), declines in memory self-confidence or change in memory beliefs (e.g., Berry, West & Dennehy, 1989), and reduced opportunities for education and training (e.g., Rebok & Offermann, 1983). This chapter focuses on self-report or subjective beliefs about memory

Brief strategy training enhances targeted memory and beliefs and promotes near transfer

A traditional and common approach to cognitive interventions for adults is memory strategy training, but limited work of this type has examined whether self-regulatory factors (e.g., self-evaluative beliefs) might benefit from these programs or moderate other training-related gains. Further, while interventions focused on intensive practice or core capacity training have demonstrated near transfer (performance improvement following training on untrained tasks related to the target task), evidence of near transfer from strategy training programs is quite rare. The present research, Everyday Memory Clinic–Revised (EMC-R), addressed self-regulation and transfer issues in memory strategy training. EMC-R examined whether (1) a short-term strategy training led to improvement in beliefs and strategy usage, as well as score gains, (2) training designed to emphasize self-regulatory changes was more effective than a content- and duration-matched program focused solely on strategy training, and (3) the training evidenced near transfer. Participants were 122 relatively healthy and well-educated middle-aged and older adults (51-90 years old; M=73.24, SD=8.31 years). They were recruited from the community and randomly assigned to one of three training conditions: a waitlist control group (CT; n=38), a traditional strategy-only training group (SO; n=46), or the target strategy-plus beliefs training group, designed to enhance self-regulatory factors as well as memory (SB; n=38). The training programs constituted two hours of in-person instructor-led training and approximately two to three hours of continued self-study at home. EMC-R used a 2 time (within: pretest, posttest) x 3 training condition (between: CT, SO, SB) mixed-model design. After training, as compared to pretest data and to inactive waitlist control participants, trainees demonstrated improved name recall memory, higher levels of memory self-efficacy, and more effective use of memory strategies. Contrary to expectations, benefits from training were similar for a beliefs-focused strategy training approach, as compared to the training approach without the focus on beliefs. The benefits from both training approaches extended beyond the name recall task targeted in training to performance on similar, but untrained, associative memory tasks. Results underscore the value of brief memory training that improves self-efficacy for middle-0aged and older individuals—even with only five hours of training over a single week, performance was enhanced on the trained memory task but also on untrained memory performance. From a practical standpoint, a brief but effective training regimen can be easily disseminated through existing programming, and the low cost of a single-session program may incentivize initial participation and full completion of the training

Exhumations, reburials and history making in post-apartheid South Africa.

Magister Artium - MAThis mini-thesis, ‘Exhumation, Reburial and History Making in South Africa’, is concerned with an analysis of the practices of exhumation and reburial through discussing the case studies of the Iron-Age archaeological site of Mapungubwe, the Vergelegen Wine Estate in Somerset West and the reburials carried out by the Missing Persons Task Team (MPPT) from the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), particularly its unsuccessful attempt at exhumations at the Stikland Cemetery, in an attempt to understand how they form part of the production of history. These case studies conceive of the times of the precolonial, slavery and apartheid, and are all linked temporally to an envisaged future through ideas of nation building and nationalism. As narratives produced through these exhumations and reburials, they contribute to the notion of making the post-apartheid by remaking history and reconstituting nation. Each of these case studies are significant as they in some way have been utilized in a manner that is relevant to us in the new democratic South Africa. This mini-thesis aims at rethinking the role of archaeologists, the exhumation and reburial processes, the construction of ethnicity, how the dead are used to construct narratives of struggle against apartheid and in general the implications each of these have on the re-making of history. It also thinks about what the practices of exhumation and reburial mean conceptually and how they relate to the concept of missingness, which I refer to as the process of making absence or invisibility. Thinking about exhumations and reburial in this way has allowed reflection on the purpose of the practices, in terms of who it’s for and how it’s perceived by the stakeholders involved in each case. Through dissecting each of these issues one may be able to trace how the remains to be reburied become missing. Therefore, the question of exhumation and reburial is essential in thinking about what it does for the human remains and how their identity is either shaped or lost. This thesis mainly argues that the remains in each of the case studies go through various phases of missingness and that their reburials and memorialization, or in the case of Stikland the spiritual repatriation, inscribes them further into narratives of the times that they emerged from