Nursing Students’ Learning Experience with E-books

As many nursing programs are offered online in colleges and universities, student populations are likely to be working nurses who have no time to come in, or have no physical access to the library building or its print book collections to complete their course work. This has been one of the biggest obstacles for libraries in supporting off-campus faculty and students. In addition to offering document delivery services, such as shipping print books and sending articles in digital format to eligible patrons, more and more academic libraries purchase or license e-books and e-journals to replace or augment their print collections. In recent years, electronic book and journal collections have grown rapidly in academic libraries because of their ease of access and convenience (Briddon et al., 2009; Cassidy, Martinez and Shen, 2012; Walters, 2013). The emergence of e-books creates a variety of issues involving acquisition, management, workflows, and usage statistics (ALCTS, 2013)

User-Centered Collection Development: A Citation Analysis of Graduate Biology Theses

The authors sought to identify biology collection usage among graduate students at Jacksonville State University. Forty Master’s student theses from 2008-2014 were examined. A total of 2,351 citations were analyzed, of which journals accounted for 75%, books for 10%, and the remaining 15% included government documents, web sites, dissertations, and theses. Findings are consistent with previous similar studies that students referenced journals more often than books and other sources. Journal and book citations present discrepancies between number of citations and number of authors citing. Wide ranges of journal subjects were cited due to the interdisciplinary nature of graduate programs. Recommendations are provided for future collection development and library instruction practice

Unwrap Citation, Altmetric, and Mendeley Status of Highly Cited Articles in the Top-tier Library and Information Science Journals

Citation count is a quantitative method of measuring the impact of a research work. A higher citation count may indicate that the research work receives more attention among peers which could mean that the research contributes value to that discipline of literature. Citation count sums the number of times that an article is referenced by other authors. Tracking citations is important; however, the citation impact only tells a part of the story from academic researchers who conduct and publish research works. The impact of the publication on leisure readers and non-publishing readers are ignored. Furthermore, it is difficult to set a standard impact measurement across disciplines. Research showed that articles in the hard sciences (e.g. chemistry, biology) tends to gain more citations than in soft sciences (e.g. social science, psychology) (Harzing, 2010; Nederhof, 2006). Even in the same field, articles that focus on praxis often receive less citation count than those that focus on theories. However, articles that focus on practice are valuable, and should be a part of the academic landscape (Akers, 2017). Finally, measuring the value of a newly published article with citation count can be difficult, since citations grow gradually over the years. The emergence of electronic publications and web technology allows people to view a research output by the amount of attention it receives. Web-based tools such as F1000, PLos, Altmetric, Plum Analytics, CiteULike, and Mendeley collect a publication’s output through a variety of online sources. These usage statistics such as number of views, downloads, mentions, etc., disclose the popularity or influence of a publication to some degree (Zahedi, Costas, & Wouters, 2014). Mendeley readership — a feature of Mendeley Web powered by Scopus —allows researchers to monitor the impact as well as the usage of their scholarly work (Bonasio, 2014). Altmetric attention score (AAS) generates a research impact score by weighting the attention that an article receives from social media, blogs, news, and other online sources. AAS presents a quick, UNWRAP CITATIONS, ALTMETRIC SCORE, AND MENDELEY READERSHIP STATUS 3 multifaceted way to demonstrate the value of a research that is arguable more robust than citation count (Huang, Wang, & Wu, 2018). Since works in the arts and humanities typically do not receive as many citations as other disciplines, the traditional bibliometric may not be a good indicator of research impact — AAS is more considerable in fields that measure researcher and reader behaviors like searching, reading, and sharing (Cho, 2017). As an increasing amount scholars and researchers in academic disciplines create their online research profile on academic network (e.g. Academia, ResearchGate, Linkedln, Mendeley) or share their research via social media, the online attention has become a valuable aspect and a non-delay algorism to measure research impacts (Aharony et al., 2019; Garcovich, Ausina Marquez, & Adobes Martin, 2019)

Evaluation of iTunes University Courses Through Instructional Design Strategies and m-Learning Framework

As mobile learning technology promotes learning accessibility and flexibility, students benefit from social interactivity and connective learning process which will also foster students’ performance and satisfaction on learning content. The primary purpose of this research was to evaluate iTunes U courses based on instructional design strategies and the m-learning framework. A total of 27 iTunes U courses were selected and evaluated based on the following criteria: (a) The course is provided by institutions of higher education; (b) the course should include instructional design components. The results revealed that all courses scored notably higher means on Content Chunking and Objective and Content Structure. However, all courses were rated low mean scores on the Instructional Strategies categories of the following attributes: Learning Engagement, Feedback, and Evaluation. Moreover, the results revealed that all courses scored notably higher means on one of the m-learning framework which is Customisation and were rated low mean scores on the Conversation attribute. The overall conclusion of this study is that the selected iTunes U courses showed some strengths but considerable weaknesses in meeting the instructional design strategies and m-learning framework. Recommendations are provided for turning mundane courses into dynamic, user-friendly ones where students are excited about their learning

Social reconstruction in dam-induced displacement: A case study of four resettlement projects on the Lancang River, China

Involuntary movement, also known as forced displacement, has affected millions of people worldwide. At the end of 20th century, approximately 80 million people had been displaced due to hydropower projects, including approximately 22.5 million people in China. Dam-induced migration not only causes material loss, such as loss of homes and agricultural lands, but this migration also causes social capital loss, disrupting individuals’ long term sustainable social networks. In order to understand the factors that might affect social reconstruction in resettled communities, this research studies community social environments at four dam sites (Manwan, Dachaoshan, Xiaowan, and Nuozhadu) on the Lancang River in China. Data is drawn from the “Community Environment” section of The Lancang River Dam-induced Resettlement Survey (2010). This survey asked questions about participants’ economic health, social networks, and perceived well-being. Chi-square tests were used to compare the differences in survey answers between non-resettled and resettled communities at each dam site. The result indicated that the resettled communities of Manwan, Dachaoshan and Nuozhadu have higher community environment satisfaction than their non-resettled counterparts, while Xiaowan shows the opposite. Factors, like time for adaption, type of relocation compensation, as well as households’ income, labor, and other resources, and demographics (ethnicity and age), might affect social reconstruction in resettled communities. Identifying potential relationships among these factors and social capital will help to promote strategies for social reconstruction necessitated by future dam-induced displacement.Keywords: Yunnan, Resettlement, Community Reconstruction, Social Network, Social Capita

Relationships between Connectedness, Performance Proficiency, Satisfaction, and Online Learning Continuance

Maintaining momentum is vital in terms of how soon students can complete a program, especially for those who are in the early stage of taking online courses. This study attempted to extend the existing literature by examining the influence of online students’ perceived sense of connectedness, performance proficiency, and satisfaction on their intentions to continue an online learning course. A quantitative survey approach was adopted to test our hypothesized structural model. Three hundred and sixty-nine students who had taken fewer than three fully online courses participated in this study. The results revealed that three out of four testing hypotheses were all supported at the 0.01 significance level, and one of the path coefficients indicated that online students’ confidence in their ability or competency to perform academic tasks did not directly influence their intention to take future online courses. Instead, the influence of performance proficiency on online learning continuance intention was mediated through the factor of satisfaction. In addition, satisfaction was found to have a significantly direct impact on online learning continuance intention, suggesting that when students taking online courses are satisfied with their online learning experience, the likelihood for them to continue taking other online courses is higher

Sample size estimation in educational intervention trials with subgroup heterogeneity in only one arm

We present closed form sample size and power formulas motivated by the study of a psycho-social intervention in which the experimental group has the intervention delivered in teaching subgroups while the control group receives usual care. This situation is different from the usual clustered randomized trial since subgroup heterogeneity only exists in one arm. We take this modification into consideration and present formulas for the situation in which we compare a continuous outcome at both a single point in time and longitudinally over time. In addition, we present the optimal combination of parameters such as the number of subgroups and number of time points for minimizing sample size and maximizing power subject to constraints such as the maximum number of measurements that can be taken (i.e. a proxy for cost)

Relationships between Connectedness, Performance Proficiency, Satisfaction, and Online Learning Continuance

Maintaining momentum is vital in terms of how soon students can complete a program, especially for those who are in the early stage of taking online courses. This study attempted to extend the existing literature by examining the influence of online students’ perceived sense of connectedness, performance proficiency, and satisfaction on their intentions to continue an online learning course. A quantitative survey approach was adopted to test our hypothesized structural model. Three hundred and sixty-nine students who had taken fewer than three fully online courses participated in this study. The results revealed that three out of four testing hypotheses were all supported at the 0.01 significance level, and one of the path coefficients indicated that online students’ confidence in their ability or competency to perform academic tasks did not directly influence their intention to take future online courses. Instead, the influence of performance proficiency on online learning continuance intention was mediated through the factor of satisfaction. In addition, satisfaction was found to have a significantly direct impact on online learning continuance intention, suggesting that when students taking online courses are satisfied with their online learning experience, the likelihood for them to continue taking other online courses is higher.

A neural network-based adaptive power-sharing strategy for hybrid frame inverters in a microgrid

The capacitive-coupling inverter (CCI) is more cost-effective in reactive power conditioning and enhanced reactive power regulation ability when compared with the inductive-coupling inverter (ICI). As power conditioning capability is vital for a microgrid (MG) system, a new MG frame with hybrid parallel-connected ICIs and CCIs was proposed in this paper. With lower DC-link voltage for the CCI, an adaptive power sharing method was proposed for reducing total rated power and losses. A power-sharing control layer based on a back-propagation neural network that guarantees rapid and accurate sharing ratio computation was investigated as well. The results of simulations and experiments were used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method

Arsenic trioxide induces expression of BCL-2 expression via NF-κB and p38 MAPK signaling pathways in BEAS-2B cells during apoptosis

Inorganic arsenic compounds are environmental toxicants that are widely distributed in air, water, and food. B-cell lymphoma 2 (BCL-2) is an oncogene having anti-apoptotic function. In this study, we clarify that BCL-2, as a pro-apoptotic factor, participates in As2O3-induced apoptosis in BEAS-2B cells. Specifically, As2O3 stimulated the expression of BCL-2 mRNA and protein in a dose-dependent manner which was highly accumulated in the nucleus of BEAS-2B cell together with chromatin condensation and DNA fragmentation during apoptosis. Mechanistically, the process described above is mediated through the NF-κB and p38 MAPK signaling pathways, which can be abated by corresponding inhibitors, such as BAY11–7082 and SB203580, respectively. Additionally, BAY11–7082, actinomycin D, and cycloheximide have inhibitory effects on As2O3-induced expression of BCL-2 mRNA and protein, and restore the cell viability of BEAS-2B cells. Suppression of BCL-2 protein activation by ABT-199 also restored viability of BEAS-2B cell in As2O3-induced apoptosis. Furthermore, As2O3 increased the level of BCL-2 phosphorylation. These results suggest that in BEAS-2B cells, As2O3-induced apoptosis is mainly dominated by BCL-2 upregulation, nuclear localization and phosphorylation. The study presented here provides a novel insight into the molecular mechanism of BCL-2-induced apoptosis