Bronco Books: Textbook E-commerce Platform

College students purchase textbooks for the classes they take every quarter, but current solutions for selling back those textbooks are insufficient, requiring that the student pay to utilize the selling platforms or that the student build rapport within a given community. Our project, Bronco Books, offers a solution by being a native mobile application open to only SCU students. Bronco Books will be free to access and will act as an e-commerce platform where students go to sell their textbooks. We were motivated to create Bronco Books primarily because we wanted to help alleviate the financial burden that comes with purchasing textbooks. This document covers the requirements, use cases, and activity diagrams for Bronco Books. We also explain our rationale behind some of our design decisions, such as the technologies we will be using for this project, and our followed timeline. We conclude the document by discussing the lessons we learned and the developmental future of Bronco Books

Black Student Union 50th Anniversary Closing Remarks

From BSU 50th Anniversary Kick-off Event - Closing Remark

Transforming Together for Equity, Well-being, and Decolonization

Decolonization, equity, and well-being in K-12 education have become pivotal aims for educational leaders in the province of British Columbia, in Canada, and around the globe. By dismantling coloniality in pedagogical praxes and learning leadership structures within school and district systems, this paper maps a bold and essential journey for change and presents a disruptively anti-colonial amalgam of theory and practice for well-being and equity. In the central Problem of Practice, these complex system leadership goals are investigated through the case of a small and innovative BC school district. Learners—both student and adult—are at the centre of this powerful vision for educational transformation as empowered community change makers, and as beneficiaries of anti-colonial, equitable, and flourishing learning environments articulated in the plan for change. The wisdom of Indigenous and critically oriented epistemologies undergird action. Complex Adaptive Systems organizational theory supports emergence, responsivity, and interconnectedness. Leadership lenses of adaptive leadership are deepened by decoloniality, relationality, and systems thinking. Compassionate Systems Leadership and collaborative inquiry grow capacity for change hand in hand with students, parents, Elders, Indigenous families, community, teachers, and school and district leaders. Well-being and human flourishing are cultivated through networked collaboration, relational accountability, and systemness. These transformative elements cradle a coherent change vision, support solutions, and ultimately embrace an anti-colonial plan for system change focused on decolonizing pedagogy and learning leadership structures. This paper presents vision and action for collective difference-making, so critical for education now—and for a sustainable future. Transforming together is powerful alchemy

Exploring The Attitudes Of Criminal Justice And Homeland Security Students Regarding Assessment Techniques In Online Courses

Substantial increases in online education since the start of the 21st century requires investigation in to how online courses differ from traditional face-to-face courses. It is particularly important to discover how online students learn and which assessment methods they prefer and see as most beneficial to online learning. Using online assessment techniques that correspond with those rated highly my online students can lead to better student experiences in online courses and improved persistence rates in online courses, which have traditionally be lower compared to face-to-face courses. The participants for the study sample included online students majoring in Bachelor of Science degree programs of Criminal Justice, Police Studies, Homeland Security, and Correctional and Juvenile Justice Studies within the College of Justice and Safety at Eastern Kentucky University This quantitative study examined these online students\u27 attitudes toward fifteen assessment techniques commonly used in online courses. The study participants were asked to complete an online survey where they rated each assessment technique from 1 to 6 based on their personal preference for the technique. They were then asked to rate each assessment technique from 1 to 6 based on the learning value of each technique. The mean ratings were order ranked with the top five rated assessment techniques for personal preference being were Multiple Choice Questions, Matching Questions, Reflections/Issue Papers, True-False Questions, and Short Answer Questions. The top five rated assessment techniques for learning value were Reflection/Issue Papers, Multiple Choice Questions, Short Answer Questions, Matching Questions, and Discussion Boards. A series of pair-samples t-test were conducted comparing the mean ratings of each assessment technique\u27s personal preference mean rating to its corresponding learning value mean rating. Significant differences were found between the personal preference and learning value mean ratings of Journals, Research Papers, Group Papers/Portfolios, Journal Article Reviews, Wikis, Multiple Choice Questions, Fill-in-the-Blanks Questions, and Essay/Discussion Questions. The data collected was finally tested to compare each assessment technique\u27s mean personal preference rating to its corresponding learning value mean rating to determine a significant correlation relation existed between them. Tests revealed positive correlations between the personal preference mean rating and the learning value mean rating of each assessment technique

Protecting Healthcare Workers From Violence

Growing violence in the community increases the risks of injuries to healthcare workers. This project assessed the levels of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and acknowledgment of professional accomplishments in healthcare workers in the community who were responsible for the care of confused and combative clients. The community healthcare workers were assessed using the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey-Medical Personnel. An intervention was then presented, which focused on self-awareness, including mood assessments, soothing rhythmic breathing, compassionate focused imagery, and the creation of a safe place to process criticism compassionately. The participants were resurveyed after 30 days by repeating the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Service Survey-Medical Personnel. The project used a quantitative research method that assessed descriptive statistics with the comparison of means and standard deviations. The inference statistics were determined by the paired sample t test. The project concluded that the intervention significantly improved emotional exhaustion with slight improvements for depersonalization and professional accomplishments

Forecasting Crop Basis Using Historical Averages Supplemented with Current Market Information

This research compares practical methods of forecasting basis, using current market information for wheat, soybeans, corn, and milo (grain sorghum) in Kansas. Though generally not statistically superior, an historical one-year average was optimal for corn, milo, and soybean harvest and post-harvest basis forecasts. A one-year average was also best for wheat post-harvest basis forecasts, whereas a five-year average was the best method for forecasting wheat harvest basis. Incorporating current market information, defined as basis deviation from historical average, improved the accuracy of post-harvest basis forecasts. A naive forecast incorporating current information was often the most accurate for post-harvest basis forecasts.basis forecast, crop basis, current information, naive forecast, Marketing,

INCORPORATING CURRENT INFORMATION INTO HISTORICAL-AVERAGE-BASED FORECASTS TO IMPROVE CROP PRICE BASIS FORECASTS

Being able to accurately predict basis is critical for making marketing and management decisions. Basis forecasts can be used along with futures prices to provide cash price projections. Additionally, basis forecasts are needed to evaluate hedging opportunities. Many studies have examined factors affecting basis but few have explicitly examined the ability to forecast basis. Studies have shown basis forecasts based on simple historical averages compare favorably with more complex forecasting models. However, these studies typically have considered only a 3-year historical average for forecasting basis. This research compares practical methods of forecasting basis for wheat, soybeans, corn, and milo (grain sorghum) in Kansas. Across most of the multiple-year forecast methods considered, absolute basis forecast errors were slightly higher for the harvest forecasts than the post-harvest forecasts. Using an historical 3-year average to forecast basis for wheat and soybeans was optimal as compared to other multiple-year forecasts. For corn and milo, a 2-year average was the optimal multiple-year forecast method. Incorporating current market information, such as current nearby basis deviation from an historical average, into a harvest basis forecast improves accuracy for only the 4 weeks ahead of harvest vantage point, but improves the accuracy of post-harvest basis forecasts (24 weeks after harvest) from nearly all vantage points considered.Marketing,

The Fire This Time: Assessing the Scalability of Supportive Service Programs for Young Men of Color, a case study

After spending the spring 2014 semester teaching at an urban high school in New York City, I began to question specifically what could be done to better support my students; specifically the young men and boys of color. By serving as a volunteer in the Empowering Males Leadership Class (EMLC) during the spring of 2014, I developed an interest in understanding (1) how the program was effective in servicing young men and boys of color and (2) how the interplay between federal programs and local implementation was characterized. This analysis is a hybrid of political science and policy implementation analysis, with the intentions to understand how supportive service programs intentioned for young men of color are influenced or shaped by the My Brother’s Keeper Initiative. Even more so, this project goes on to assess how effective the EMLC’s model is in helping some of the most underachieving students at the case study high school. This project finds that while the EMLC is effective in creating strong social and emotional environments, it lacks the programmatic and structural ability to increase the academic standing of students. It is also concluded that in order to potentially improve the program to have stronger academic results, a series of wrap around supports are infused into the EMLC model. Regarding implementation, it is found that the program was able to implement within the school setting because of the presence of committed local workers, not a larger external force

How Did We Do? : Evaluating the Instruction Program with a Senior Survey

Library instruction programs often center around reaching first year students in a required course. Predictable contact with a student pool of this size is not only an excellent foundation for consistent delivery of information literacy instruction, it can also be a valuable component of an assessment plan. Frequently, assessment focuses on learning outcomes of instruction sessions. How else might we examine the impact of instruction through our students? DePaul\u27s Library surveyed seniors in capstone courses university-wide to gauge their perceptions of the instruction they had received over their years at the university. Their responses provided information about the reach of the instruction program (distribution, depth, and frequency) but also helped in gaining valuable insight about student research challenges and library service opportunities