Deed to Fort Hill plantation and enslaved persons between Floride Calhoun, Cornelia M. Calhoun and Andrew P. Calhoun, 1854 May 15

The deed includes a slave schedule naming 50 enslaved persons and their ages. It also includes a land survey map of the 1,102-acre plantation farm

Actions speak louder than words: designing transdisciplinary approaches to enact solutions

Sustainability science uses a transdisciplinary research process in which academic and non-academic partners collaborate to identify a common problem and co-produce knowledge to develop more sustainable solutions. Sustainability scientists have advanced the theory and practice of facilitating collaborative efforts such that the knowledge created is usable. There has been less emphasis, however, on the last step of the transdisciplinary process: enacting solutions. We analyzed a case study of a transdisciplinary research effort in which co-produced policy simulation information shaped the creation of a new policy mechanism. More specifically, by studying the development of a mechanism for conserving vernal pool ecosystems, we found that four factors helped overcome common challenges to acting upon new information: creating a culture of learning, co-producing policy simulations that acted as boundary objects, integrating research into solution development, and employing an adaptive management approach. With an increased focus on these four factors that enable action, we can better develop the same level of nuanced theoretical concepts currently characterizing the earlier phases of transdisciplinary research, and the practical advice for deliberately designing these efforts

The Effects of Using Multimedia Presentations and Modular Worked-out Examples as Instructional Methodologies to Manage the Cognitive Processing Associated with Information Literacy Instruction at the Graduate and Undergraduate Levels of Nursing Education

Information literacy is a complex knowledge domain. Cognitive processing theory describes the effects an instructional subject and the learning environment have on working memory. Essential processing is one component of cognitive processing theory that explains the inherent complexity of knowledge domains such as information literacy. Prior research involving cognitive processing relied heavily on instructional subjects from the areas of math, science and technology. For this study, the instructional subject of information literacy was situated within the literature describing ill-defined problems using modular worked-out examples instructional design techniques. The purpose of this study was to build on the limited research into cognitive processing, ill-defined problems and modular worked-out examples by examining the use of a multimedia audiobook as an instructional technique to manage the cognitive processing occurring during information literacy instruction. Two experiments were conducted using convenience samples of doctoral nursing students (Experiment 1, n = 38) and undergraduate nursing students (Experiment 2, n = 80). Students in Experiment 1 completed a pretest, were exposed to a brief eight-minute and sixteen-second (8:16) multimedia audiobook instructional session, and then completed a posttest. The pretest and posttest consisted of one ill-defined problem presented as an essay-style question, and eleven multiple-choice questions. Experiment 2 built upon Experiment 1 through the addition of three questions measuring extraneous processing, generative processing and essential processing. Experiment 1 results indicated a large Cohen\u27s effect size for the multiple-choice set of questions (d = 1.08) and a medium effect size for the essay-style, ill-defined problem (d = 0.73). Experiment 2, results indicated a medium effect size for the multiple-choice set of questions (d = 0.55) and a medium effect size for the essay-style, ill-defined problem (d = 0.67). With respect to Experiment 2, there were statistically significant differences between generative processing and extraneous processing, t(79) = 6.84, p \u3c .001 and between essential processing and extraneous processing was t(79) = 4.37, p \u3c .001. There was no statistically significant difference between essential processing and generative processing was t(79) = 1.69, p = .09

Turning Contention into Collaboration: Engaging Power, Trust, and Learning in Collaborative Networks

Given the complexity and multiplicity of goals in natural resource governance, it is not surprising that policy debates are often characterized by contention and competition. Yet at times adversaries join together to collaborate to find creative solutions not easily achieved in polarizing forums. We employed qualitative interviews and a quantitative network analysis to investigate a collaborative network that formed to develop a resolution to a challenging natural resource management problem, the conservation of vernal pools. We found that power had become distributed among members, trust had formed across core interests, and social learning had resulted in shared understanding and joint solutions. Furthermore, institutions such as who and when new members joined, norms of inclusion and openness, and the use of small working groups helped create the observed patterns of power, trust, and learning

Building Strategic Consensus: A Grassroots Planning Process

Many strategic plans start from a top-down approach, with a committee or key group of stakeholders making decisions affecting the entire organization. While the process of developing and implementing a comprehensive strategic plan requires significant tactical work, it can also foster a more inclusive, staff-centered organization. The Gleeson Library | Geschke Learning Resource Center at the University of San Francisco has just completed its first library-wide strategic plan. In alignment with our values and mission, we intentionally chose a more democratic, grass-roots process designed to build consensus and foster inclusivity by engaging and empowering staff across all departments. In this forum, we’ll discuss how we built a collaborative, library-wide process that engaged everyone in brainstorming, crafting, prioritizing and executing on the final strategic plan. While our presentation will discuss key tactical strategic planning steps we took that worked (and some that did not), our goal for this panel presentation is not to emphasize the nuts and bolts of strategic planning, but rather the community-building potential. Attendees will come away from this panel with concrete, actionable steps they can take in building their own strategic initiatives based on USF’s success in creating an inclusive model that solicited and implemented feedback from all library staff

Block Coordinate Descent for Sparse NMF

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) has become a ubiquitous tool for data analysis. An important variant is the sparse NMF problem which arises when we explicitly require the learnt features to be sparse. A natural measure of sparsity is the L$_0$ norm, however its optimization is NP-hard. Mixed norms, such as L$_1$/L$_2$ measure, have been shown to model sparsity robustly, based on intuitive attributes that such measures need to satisfy. This is in contrast to computationally cheaper alternatives such as the plain L$_1$ norm. However, present algorithms designed for optimizing the mixed norm L$_1$/L$_2$ are slow and other formulations for sparse NMF have been proposed such as those based on L$_1$ and L$_0$ norms. Our proposed algorithm allows us to solve the mixed norm sparsity constraints while not sacrificing computation time. We present experimental evidence on real-world datasets that shows our new algorithm performs an order of magnitude faster compared to the current state-of-the-art solvers optimizing the mixed norm and is suitable for large-scale datasets