From passive to active learning: contingent faculty collaboratively leading pedagogical change

A paradigm shift is underway in higher education where the role of the college instructor moves from a pure disseminator of knowledge to a facilitator of collaborative knowledge creation. Successful active learning strategies are gaining prominence through proven empirical research. Most recently, active learning strategies utilizing emerging collaborative software such as Web 2.0 technologies have furthered advanced cooperative and collaborative learning. The research points to the far reaching benefits that active learning can have across an institution and the affects that it can have upon faculty and students alike. Better retention and deeper learning are just two outcomes derived from employing active learning. These types of outcomes can ultimately have a profound impact upon institutions and individuals within the educational community. Through a mixed methods approach, this action research study examines how adjunct faculty can not only contribute to deep and meaningful pedagogical change, but how they can become empowered to lead that change. This dissertation examines how a change from passive to active learning transpired in a single course through an academic year. Through three iterative action research cycles, data were collected, analyzed, and acted upon with the goal of making that successful change

Nanoplasmonic Colloidal Suspensions for the Enhancement of the Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes Luminescent Emission

Aiming to enhance the luminescence yield of carbon nanotubes, we introduce a new class of hybrid nanoplasmonic colloidal systems (π-hybrids). Nanotubes dispersed in gold nanorod colloidal suspensions yield hybrid structures exhibiting enhanced luminescence up to a factor of 20. The novelty of the proposed enhancement mechanism relies on including metal proximity effects in addition to its localized surface plasmons. This simple, robust and flexible technique enhances the luminescence of nanotubes with chiralities whose enhancement has never reported before, for example the (8,4) tube

Carbon nanotube chirality enrichment through chirality-selective precipitation

The interaction with surfactants changes from one carbon nanotube species to the other. We used this to replace non-ionic surfactants by ionic ones. By fine-tuning the replacement conditions, we covered some specific nanotubes with non-ionic surfactants and the others with ionic ones. Addition of salt triggers precipitation of the species suspended by the ionic surfactant; this effectively leads to chiral selective enrichment of a carbon nanotube suspension. We hence produce an (8,4)-enriched suspension by replacing a polyglycerol-based custom amphiphile with the commercial SDBS and salting with NaCl

On critical fortune and «misfortune» of Luca Giordano in Viaje de España By Antonio Ponz

Este artículo analiza la visión crítica de Antonio Ponz sobre la obra de Lucas Jordán. En su Viaje de España, aunque sujeto a la condena común de su tiempo con referencia al arte barroco, parece en parte asumir una posición contradictoria y a contracorriente respecto a la apreciación del lenguaje pictórico de Jordán, como si fuera una especie de acercamiento íntimo, como pintor, al tema y a la técnica de un artista que solo va a ser valorado en los siglos siguientes.This paper analyzes Antonio Ponz’s critical view towards Luca Giordano’s work. Although anchored in common contemporary disapproval of Baroque, Ponz, in his Viaje de España, seems to assume a vague countertrend position for appreciation of Giordano’s pictorial language, intimately approaching, with the painter’s eye, the material and the technique of an artist who will be reconsidered only in the following centuries

More Than Meets the Home: Mapping Home Movie Migrations in Recent Preservation and Programming Initiatives

In the popular imaginary, small gauge format home movies have been understood as small, dormant objects whose function and relevance remain fixed to domestic settings and rituals of family reminiscing. However, in the last few decades, scholars, and theorists from a variety of disciplines have introduced new strategies and methodologies of approaching the home movie and have positioned the home movie as a complex archival text that offers rich historical and cultural insights. We can observe these methodologies and practices at work in the various archival institutions and cultural formations which have emerged in response to these new and evolving engagements with home movies. Through a close analysis of the applied methodologies and practices embodied in the working models of two specific home movie preservation initiatives, Home Movie Day (HMD) and Chicago’s South Side Home Movie Project (SSHMP), this thesis aims to identify and demonstrate how, and to what capacity, home movies are transformed and reanimated within these new archival frameworks. The first chapter maps the interdisciplinary methodologies and archival interventions for approaching home movies that have been emulated through the global HMD model. The second chapter responds to the shortcomings of the HMD model and draws from theories and practices explored in chapter one to critically examine how SSHMP’s archival practices work to reactivate and reanimate black American home movies. This analysis shows that, through these alternative frameworks, we see home movies transform into a series of community engagements, pedagogical tools, artistic exercises, and institutional practices

Dipole-switch induced modification of the emissive response of carbonnanotubes

The interaction of carbon nanotubes with the molecular dipole switch spiropyran is expected to affect the optical response of the tubes. Until now, the need of anchor groups to immobilize the switches on the tubes has hindered the experimental observation of the effects of switching on the emission behavior of the tubes. Here we present spiropyran-carbon nanotube complexes obtained by micelle swelling. This method does not require any anchor nor sophisticated chemistry to warrant close tube-switch proximity. For the first time, we observe the shifts predicted theoretically and their effect on the tubes' excitation and emission energies

Carbon nanotubes for the optical far-field readout of processes that are mediated by plasmonic near-fields

As science progresses at the nanoscopic level, it becomes more and more important to comprehend the interactions taking place at the nanoscale, where optical near-fields play a key role. Their phenomenology differs significantly from the propagative light we experience at the macroscopic level. This is particularly important in applications such as surface-enhanced spectroscopies for single-molecule detection, where often the optimization of the plasmonic structures and surfaces relies on far-field characterizations. The processes dominating in the far-field picture, though, are not the same dominating in the near-field. To highlight this, we resort to very simple metallic systems: isolated gold nanorods in solution. We show how single-walled nanotubes can be exploited to read out processes occurring at the near-field level around metallic nanoparticles and make the information accessible in the far-field region. This is implemented by monitoring the spectral profile of the enhancement of the photoluminescence and Raman signal of the nanotubes for several excitation wavelengths. Through this excitation-resolved study, we show that the far-field optical readout detects the transversal and longitudinal dipolar plasmonic oscillations of gold nanorods, whereas the near-field readout through the nanotubes reveals other mechanisms to dominate. The spectral position of the maximum enhancement of the optical near-field mediated signals are located elsewhere than the far-field bands. This dichotomy between near-field and far-field response should be taken into account when optimizing plasmonic nanostructures for applications such as surface-enhanced spectroscopies