Motivational Social Visualizations for Personalized E-Learning

A large number of educational resources is now available on the Web to support both regular classroom learning and online learning. However, the abundance of available content produces at least two problems: how to help students find the most appropriate resources, and how to engage them into using these resources and benefiting from them. Personalized and social learning have been suggested as potential methods for addressing these problems. Our work presented in this paper attempts to combine the ideas of personalized and social learning. We introduce Progressor + , an innovative Web-based interface that helps students find the most relevant resources in a large collection of self-assessment questions and programming examples. We also present the results of a classroom study of the Progressor +  in an undergraduate class. The data revealed the motivational impact of the personalized social guidance provided by the system in the target context. The interface encouraged students to explore more educational resources and motivated them to do some work ahead of the course schedule. The increase in diversity of explored content resulted in improving students’ problem solving success. A deeper analysis of the social guidance mechanism revealed that it is based on the leading behavior of the strong students, who discovered the most relevant resources and created trails for weaker students to follow. The study results also demonstrate that students were more engaged with the system: they spent more time in working with self-assessment questions and annotated examples, attempted more questions, and achieved higher success rates in answering them

Achievement and Aspiration

In contrast to previous work, our study considers both meaning and mediation factors in the achievement-aspiration relationship. In a sample of graduate students ("academic-career aspirants"), we examine sex differences in the achievement- aspiration relationship as they vary with type of academic achievement and professional aspirations, and as it is mediated by individuals' perceptions of their professional roles and their faculty's support. We find: (1) Women's achievement-aspiration conversion is different from, but not necessarily lower than, men's. Rather, the strength and direction of the relationship vary with aspiration type (traditional versus alternative) and, to some extent, with specific types of academic achievement (e.g., paper publication and GPA). (2) The mediators of the achievement-aspiration relationship also vary by sex and aspiration type. Notably, women's aspirations for traditional career rewards are largely a function of their perceptions of the structural availability of job opportunity.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68567/2/10.1177_073088848100800403.pd

Social Work Theories and Practice with Battered Women: A Conflict-of-Values Analysis

In the 1970s, wife abuse became a concern of sociologists, feminists, and family theorists. The new perspectives they brought to the problem, which focused more on social factors than on individual pathology, challenged social workers to examine how their practice and assumptions perpetuated the problem. This article investigates how the social work literature has been affected by new theories of domestic violence and analyzes the impact that these theories have had on practice with battered women.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67024/2/10.1177_088610998700200205.pd

An examination of sex differences in social support among older men and women

This paper is designed to empirically investigate sex differences in social support. Several types of sex differences are examined, including quantity and quality of support, the relationship between quantitative and qualitative measures of support, the number and source of support provided and received, and the relative predictive power of quality and quantity of support on well-being. The data are taken from the Supports of the Elderly, a national survey of older people (Kahn and Antonucci, 1984). Included in the present study are 214 men and 166 women ranging in age from 50 to 95 who are married and have at least one child. The analyses reveal that women have larger networks and receive supports from multiple sources, while men tend to rely on their spouses exclusively. Men report greater satisfaction with marriage than women. Quantitative supports are more related to qualitative supports for women than for men. For both sexes, the quality of support rather than the quantity of support has significantly greater effects on well-being; both the quantity and quality of social support have a greater impact on the well-being of women compared to men.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45580/1/11199_2004_Article_BF00287685.pd

Social support and social structure

The burgeoning study of social support in relation to social stress and health would benefit from increased attention to issues of social structure. Three aspects of social relationships, all often referred to as social support, must be more clearly distinguished—(1) their existence or quantity (i.e., social integration), (2) their formal structure (i.e., social networks), and (3) their functional or behavioral content (i.e., the most precise meaning of “social support”)—and the causal relationships between the structure of social relationships (social integration and networks) and their functional content (social support) must be more clearly understood. Research and theory are needed on the determinants of social integration, networks, and support as well as their consequences for stress and health. Among potential determinants, macrosocial structures and processes particularly merit attention.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45658/1/11206_2005_Article_BF01107897.pd

Unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion: An analysis of the negative components of masculinity and femininity

The negative components of masculinity and femininity, conceptualized by Spence and her colleagues (1979) as unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion, were explored by examining dominant and submissive acts used in their expression. In three separate sessions, subjects (N=129) completed scales designed to measure these constructs, a Dominance Act Report, and a Submissiveness Act Report. Dominant acts used in the expression of unmitigated agency involved the formation of separations (e.g., making decisions without consulting the others involved in them), narcissistic self-assertion (e.g., telling others to perform one's menial tasks), and self-protection (e.g., bluffing one's way out of an embarrassing situation). Submissive acts used in the expression of unmitigated communion involved failing to make normatively appropriate agentic responses (e.g., walking out of a store knowing that one had been short-changed) and subjugating personal desires to group wishes (e.g., giving up vacation plans in deference to the preferences of others). Discussion focuses on elaborating the concepts of unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45594/1/11199_2004_Article_BF00288234.pd

Empty nest, cohort, and employment in the well-being of midlife women

Whether the empty-nest experience has positive or negative consequences for women's well-being at midlife may depend on their historical cohort membership and employment status. In this study, it was posited that the empty nest was likely to be a negative experience among the particular cohort of women (Cohort II) who reached adulthood during the period of strong societal emphasis on women's maternal role known as the feminine mystique, would be experienced positively among the earlier cohort (Cohort I) who as young adults were encouraged to enter the labor force during World War II. Analyses of covariance tested the relationships among empty-nest status, cohort membership, and employment status, and three measures of psychological well-being, adjusted for age, education, and marital status. The results of this study show that cohort and employment each have important independent associations with women's well-being at midlife, but that the experience of the empty nest depends on these two factors, especially cohort experiences.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45589/1/11199_2004_Article_BF00287990.pd