Austerity baby

"Austerity Baby might best be described as an ‘oblique memoir’. Janet Wolff’s fascinating volume is a family history – but one that is digressive and consistently surprising. The central underlying and repeated themes of the book are exile and displacement; lives (and deaths) during the Third Reich; mother-daughter and sibling relationships; the generational transmission of trauma and experience; transatlantic reflections; and the struggle for creative expression. Stories mobilised, and people encountered, in the course of the narrative include: the internment of aliens in Britain during the Second World War; cultural life in Rochester, New York, in the 1920s; the social and personal meanings of colour(s); the industrialist and philanthropist, Henry Simon of Manchester, including his relationship with the Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen; the liberal British campaigner and MP of the 1940s, Eleanor Rathbone; reflections on the lives and images of spinsters. The text is supplemented and interrupted throughout by images (photographs, paintings, facsimile documents), some of which serve to illustrate the story, others engaging indirectly with the written word.

Austerity baby

"Austerity Baby might best be described as an ‘oblique memoir’. Janet Wolff’s fascinating volume is a family history – but one that is digressive and consistently surprising. The central underlying and repeated themes of the book are exile and displacement; lives (and deaths) during the Third Reich; mother-daughter and sibling relationships; the generational transmission of trauma and experience; transatlantic reflections; and the struggle for creative expression. Stories mobilised, and people encountered, in the course of the narrative include: the internment of aliens in Britain during the Second World War; cultural life in Rochester, New York, in the 1920s; the social and personal meanings of colour(s); the industrialist and philanthropist, Henry Simon of Manchester, including his relationship with the Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen; the liberal British campaigner and MP of the 1940s, Eleanor Rathbone; reflections on the lives and images of spinsters. The text is supplemented and interrupted throughout by images (photographs, paintings, facsimile documents), some of which serve to illustrate the story, others engaging indirectly with the written word.

ABC for people with HIV: responses to sexual behaviour recommendations among people receiving antiretroviral therapy in Jinja, Uganda.

People living with HIV who are taking antiretroviral therapy (ART) are increasingly involved in 'positive prevention' initiatives. These are generally oriented to promoting abstinence, 'being faithful' (partner reduction) and condom use (ABC). We conducted a longitudinal qualitative study with people living with HIV using ART, who were provided with adherence education and counselling support by a Ugandan non-governmental organisation, The AIDS Support Organisation (TASO). Forty people were selected sequentially as they started ART, stratified by sex, ART delivery mode (clinic- or home-based) and HIV progression stage (early or advanced) and interviewed at enrollment and at 3, 6, 18 and 30 months. At initiation of ART, participants agreed to follow TASO's positive-living recommendations. Initially poor health prevented sexual activity. As health improved, participants prioritised resuming economic production and support for their children. With further improvements, sexual desire resurfaced and people in relationships cemented these via sex. The findings highlight the limitations of HIV prevention based on medical care/personal counselling. As ART leads to health improvements, social norms, economic needs and sexual desires increasingly influence sexual behaviour. Positive prevention interventions need to seek to modify normative and economic influences on sexual behaviour, as well as to provide alternatives to condoms

Pixels or plasticine: evoking curiosity to engage children with data

‘Pixels or plasticine’ took complex data collected from smart city research into school and used it to teach data skills to thirteen 10-year-old students. Contributing to teaching about renewable energy, the activities engaged children with data that showed roofs in a UK town, allowing the children to reason about different buildings’ potential for generating solar energy. The data was collected using LiDAR technology during an aerial survey of the region

Eliminating Writer’s Block: Flipped Classroom Meets ThinkSpace

This video interview elaborates the methodology that was presented at a Poster session at the Food & Nutrition Conference and Expo at Chicago, Oct 21 - 24, 2017. Background: Students find writing the personal statement to be a challenging and anxiety-producing aspect of the internship application. We previously implemented Flipped Classroom and small group learning approaches into the Foundations of Dietetics course. While these strategies facilitated peer feedback on personal statements, students lacked a structured system for providing comments and were limited with in-class time to provide feedback. Methods: Using ThinkSpace, a web-based active learning tool, students completed guided reflections in class. Students were not aware that the reflections were components of the first draft of the personal statement, helping create a low-risk writing environment. The peer review feature of ThinkSpace allows students to upload a draft and receive comments from peers. Students then participated in an in-class team Writer’s Workshop to discuss peer critiques. Results: Since the introduction of groups in 2014 and ThinkSpace in 2016, course evaluations have shown improvement. The mean score for “Overall, this course has been effective in advancing my learning” increased significantly from 2014-2015. Additionally, across student evaluation scores in 2015 and 2016, there was statistically more agreement that learning had been improved. Conclusion: ThinkSpace can advance teaching how to write a personal statement by allowing practice and feedback to occur outside the classroom. Improved course evaluations from 2014 to 2015 coincide with the use of small groups, indicating implementation was effective in enhancing student learning. Finally, ThinkSpace, in conjunction with groups, allows faculty to maximize student engagement by increasing the value of peer feedback and facilitate an active learning environment.https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/thinkspace_presentations/1005/thumbnail.jp

Sketchnoting A Methodology: Fostering Team Based Learning Conversations

Sketchnoting is a methodology that uses simple shapes, frames, and connectors to visualize complex information, concepts, and physical objects, thus it has a low barrier entry for skilled and non-skilled drawers, as well as for designers or non-designers alike. It is situated at the lower end of the visualization fidelity spectrum, which ranges from napkin style sketches to photo-realistic renderings or high fidelity info-graphics

Multilevel Mentoring Using TBL

Produce an action plan for using TBL in existing classroom applications, training programs, training faculty and future faculty, research teams, capstone projects, faculty learning community, scholarship using TBL

Multilevel Mentoring Using Faculty/Graduate Student/Undergraduate Student and Teaching Center Teams

Discuss ways to use TBL to create multi-level mentoring between graduate students, undergraduates, faculty, teaching center and other campus resources