Washington Park Cemetery: The History and Legacies of a Sacred Space

Washington Park Cemetery (WPC) is an historically African American cemetery that has struggled to endure countless years of mistreatment and negligence. It is important to identify not only the cemetery itself as sacred, but also the legacies and stories of those who are laid to rest in the space. Provided is a comprehensive history of the once prominent African American cemetery that examines its origins, various controversies, and current physical state. Since the history of this cemetery has never been collected and compiled into a comprehensive document, this research serves as a historical tool that allows individuals to learn about the triumphs and hardships African Americans have experienced in life and death at WPC

Keeping Up with Trends in Your Library: Simple and Speedy Ways to Assess Users’ Needs

Objective: To find simple, fast, and easy ways to assess library users’ needs and to get real-time responses in order to shorten the interval between deploying surveys, gathering responses and implementation of solutions. In the past the library employed email surveys to assess user needs but the process was inefficient and ineffective due to low response rates and time spent creating online surveys. Methods: The library team began using paper “micro-assessments” to understand users’ needs. Short paper surveys of no more than five questions, were deployed at three different times throughout the academic year: (1) Medical students were handed surveys during one of the library’s weekly events about their use of library-issued iPads; (2) Surveys were left on each study space in the library quiet room over the course of one week asking about students’ opinions on food being allowed in the library quiet room; (3) Faculty were handed surveys during departmental meetings to assess their interest in scholarly publishing topics. Completed surveys were collected and results were tabulated the same day. Results: Results of the student iPad micro-assessment helped librarians understand students’ use of library-issued iPads. Feedback from the second student survey informed policy decisions in regards to allowing food in the library quiet room. Finally, results of the faculty micro-assessments led to the development of short presentations on scholarly communication topics, delivered by librarians during faculty departmental meetings, as well as one-on-one EndNote training sessions and a Getting Published Workshop

Mathematical modeling in algebra textbooks at the onset of the Common Core State Standards

Student achievement in mathematics continues to be compared internationally, with the results indicating that students in other developed countries are outperforming students from the United States. Mathematical modeling is an expectation in both the new Common Core State Standards and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This study seeks to find the differences in expectations for students in mathematical modeling between the United States and Singapore, which is one country that regularly outperforms the U.S. on international assessments. Since teachers and students regularly use textbooks for curriculum, homework, and other resources, this study compares two textbooks from the U.S. with the high school series adopted in Singapore. More specifically, the aim of this study is to compare frameworks of mathematical modeling and code to-be-solved problems in algebra textbooks using characteristics common to all frameworks. While the U.S. textbooks explicitly state which word problems address the expectation of mathematical modeling, the Singapore program does not have this attribute. So, an equivalent chapter (in objective and number of to-be-solved problems) in all three textbooks will be coded for evidence of the expectations of mathematical modeling. The results of this study indicate that no standard framework for mathematical modeling exists, but there are multiple areas of overlap. This study found that the ratio of word problems to numerical problems was comparable in the three textbooks, although the U.S. algebra textbooks used in a one-year course had the same number of to-be-solved problems as the four-year Singapore series. Results also indicate that to-be-solved problems in the Singapore textbook series do not provide students with more explicit mathematical modeling instructions than do the U.S. textbooks. This study also found that the interpretation of to-be-solved problems differed according to the experience of the rater. None of the textbooks in this study provided to-be-solved problems that asked students to engage in the mathematical modeling cycle as delineated by any of the four frameworks

What is STEM Education?

Editoria

Higher Education and Society: A research report

This report draws on a substantial body of research undertaken by the Open University's Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) on the changing relationships between higher education and society. Higher education currently faces many changes, some externally driven by government policies and changing patterns of social and economic demand and some internally driven by changes in the way knowledge is produced and organised within universities and other 'knowledge organisations'. CHERI examines these changes through empirical research which is policy relevant though not policy dictated, frequently international, and broadly focused on the social impacts of higher education. Does higher education make a difference and to whom? In their different ways, the articles in this report seek to provide answers to this important but difficult question

Creating a Medical Library Terms Taxonomy for Citation Analysis

Objective: To create a medical library terms taxonomy in order to find trends in the medical library literature. In order to explore trends in scholarly publishing by health sciences librarians in the last five years, we endeavored to examine keywords used in articles published in four health sciences library journals during this time. From our initial review we determined that: author-created keywords are not always based on a controlled vocabulary; MeSH subheadings do not include terms unique to the library field; and Library of Congress taxonomy is too broad. Thus, it was necessary to create a taxonomy by grouping similar keywords into categories in order to accurately identify trends. Methods: Citations from four health sciences library journals from 2016-2020 were exported from PubMed and EBSCO Academic Search Premier into EndNote X9. Keywords from all citations were exported from EndNote as a text file and then imported into Microsoft Excel. Pivot tables were used to determine the number of times each keyword was used and to aggregate identical keywords. A team of six librarians with a variety of skill sets and backgrounds reviewed each keyword to determine how to categorize and group terms to create a taxonomy. Results: 8,806 keywords from the journals were downloaded into spreadsheets and aggregated. Pivot tables were used to combine identical terms resulting in 2,801 unique keywords which are currently being categorized to complete the taxonomy. Conclusion: While choosing keywords without use of a controlled vocabulary when submitting a manuscript allows for flexibility and customization, and might result in better retrieval during natural language searching, what we discovered through this project is that choosing keywords without the use of a controlled vocabulary makes it difficult to see trends and to conduct a bibliometric analysis

Themes in Health Sciences Librarianship Literature, 2016-2020: A Keyword and Subject Analysis

Previous investigations into trends in Library and Information Science (LIS) literature have revealed changes in the topics librarians publish on over time, with older studies highlighting classification and indexing, and information retrieval and more recent studies highlighting keywords such as internet, information technology, digital libraries, and again, information retrieval. No similar investigation has been conducted on current publication trends by health sciences librarians. This study analyzes the top themes on which health sciences librarians published from 2016 to 2020 by examining the frequency of keywords. Keywords and subject headings were analyzed from The Journal of the Medical Library Association, Medical References Services Quarterly, The Journal of Hospital Librarianship, and The Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries. A total of 8,806 keywords were downloaded for analysis and organized into 292 categories during taxonomy creation. The ten most frequent themes were: libraries, information, education, humans, demography, librarian, geographical locations, research, electronic resources, and technology. The study also found that data, psychiatry and psychology, informatics, and publishing were other key themes, indicating that health sciences librarians are publishing on a wide range of topics. Some keywords that appeared only once, such as telecommuting and flexible staffing, suggest emerging areas of research for librarians

Teaching with Big Data: Report from the 2016 Society for Neuroscience Teaching Workshop

As part of a series of workshops on teaching neuroscience at the Society for Neuroscience annual meetings, William Grisham and Richard Olivo organized the 2016 workshop on Teaching Neuroscience with Big Data. This article presents a summary of that workshop. Speakers provided overviews of open datasets that could be used in teaching undergraduate courses. These included resources that already appear in educational settings, including the Allen Brain Atlas (presented by Joshua Brumberg and Terri Gilbert), and the Mouse Brain Library and GeneNetwork (presented by Robert Williams). Other resources, such as NeuroData (presented by William R. Gray Roncal), and OpenFMRI, NeuroVault, and Neurosynth (presented by Russell Poldrack) have not been broadly utilized by the neuroscience education community but offer obvious potential. Finally, William Grisham discussed the iNeuro Project, an NSF-sponsored effort to develop the necessary curriculum for preparing students to handle Big Data. Linda Lanyon further elaborated on the current state and challenges in educating students to deal with Big Data and described some training resources provided by the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility. Neuroinformatics is a subfield of neuroscience that deals with data utilizing analytical tools and computational models. The feasibility of offering neuroinformatics programs at primarily undergraduate institutions was also discussed

The Question of School Resources and Student Achievement: A History and Reconsideration

One question posed continually over the past century of education research is to what extent school resources affect student outcomes. From the turn of the century to the present, a diverse set of actors, including politicians, physicians, and researchers from a number of disciplines, have studied whether and how money that is provided for schools translates into increased student achievement. The authors discuss the historical origins of the question of whether school resources relate to student achievement, and report the results of a meta- analysis of studies examining that relationship. They find that policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders have addressed this question using diverse strategies. The way the question is asked, and the methods used to answer it, is shaped by history, as well by the scholarly, social, and political concerns of any given time. The diversity of methods has resulted in a body of literature too diverse and too inconsistent to yield reliable inferences through meta-analysis. The authors suggest that a collaborative approach addressing the question from a variety of disciplinary and practice perspectives may lead to more effective interventions to meet the needs of all students

Patient experience in an interprofessional collaborative practice for underserved patients with heart failure

Heart failure is a complex chronic condition that results in multiple patient visits throughout the care continuum. Patient experience has associations with clinical outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine patient experience among the underserved in a specialized interprofessional collaborative practice heart failure clinic. This prospective study utilized both qualitative and quantitative data to describe the patient experience within an interprofessional collaborative practice. Data were collected from patient experience surveys in 1128 patients seen in the Heart Failure Transitional Care Services for Adults (HRTSA) clinic between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2021. Interprofessional collaborative practice surveys were completed by clinic staff members. When examining relationships associated with patient experience, we found three significant associations. Being single was negatively associated with patient experience. When examining IPCP and patient experience, overall interprofessional collaborative practice alignment [t(237)=2.00, p=.046 ] and the team’s alignment of mission, vision and purpose [t(254)=1.99, p=.047] were positively related to patients’ care satisfaction. Interprofessional collaborative practice team alignment can positively impact patient experience in underserved patients with heart failure. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Quality & Clinical Excellence lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework (https://www.theberylinstitute.org/ExperienceFramework). Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this lens