Information and Communication Technology Literacy among First-Year Honors and Non-Honors Students: An Assessment

Today’s students should be able to retrieve and critically evaluate information from digital media; to organize, interpret, and apply the information; and to compose an effective presentation that responds to a clearly articulated research problem and communicates to a particular audience. These skills have been of special concern to the honors community, as evidenced by the 2009 JNCHC Forum on “Honors in the Digital Age.” Development of these twenty-first-century competencies, called information and communication technology (ICT) literacy, is the object of a curriculum enhancement project underway in the honors program, jointly with general education, at Louisiana Tech University. Recently, in the project’s initial phase, an assessment of student performance was conducted using the Educational Testing Service’s (ETS) iSkills test. This article reports results which respond to the following questions: How ICT-literate are the university’s freshmen? Do first-year honors students demonstrate greater proficiency in these skills than non-honors freshmen? How do Louisiana Tech’s honors freshmen compare to those at other four-year colleges? The Louisiana Tech University Honors Program has grown significantly in the last few years. The program currently counts between 460 and 480 students in its program, with a little more than half of those students majoring in science and engineering. Students are admitted to the program as freshmen if they meet one of two criteria: a 26 composite ACT score or a ranking in the top 10% of their graduating class. Our program is reworking its curriculum to place greater emphasis on undergraduate research, that is, to focus on the process of generating knowledge and to develop students’ college-level competencies in original inquiry, evidentiary analysis, critical use of information, and purposeful communication in writing or public presentation. The program is promoting information and communication technology literacy because the abilities to marshal and interpret sources in the digital environment of the twenty-first century are indispensable to undergraduate research, expected by institutions of higher learning, desired by employers, and required by accrediting agencies. Funded by a Traditional Enhancement Program grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents Support Fund, principal investigator Brian Etheridge, Director of the Louisiana Tech Honors Program and Chair of the University’s General Education Requirements Committee, assisted by coprincipal investigator Boris Teske, College of Liberal Arts Liaison Librarian, administered the ETS iSkills test to a total of 97 freshmen and 73 juniors during fall quarter 2009. The object was to pilot a nationally renowned, standardized performance assessment to inform curriculum enhancement: to establish a baseline for cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis through repeated and multiple authentic assessments, such as the evaluation of portfolios; to identify practices proven to be effective; and to adapt and apply them to general education using the honors program as a “laboratory” or test bed for curricular innovation

The United States and Public Diplomacy: Toward an International History

The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.The United States and Public Diplomacy: Toward an International History will bring together the latest scholarship on the history of public diplomacy from a variety of disciplines, with an eye toward publication of an edited book intended to introduce scholars, graduate students, practitioners, and the general public to public diplomacy studies. While at times a slippery term, public diplomacy denotes activities designed to shape, manipulate, or otherwise influence public opinion to facilitate the achievement of foreign policy objectives. Its practitioners have harbored ambitions ranging from advancing particular ideologies such as Nazism or communism, to spreading cultural values and products, to simply fostering goodwill between nations. Practitioners of public diplomacy have also used a range of methods to achieve their objectives, including • The creation of films, pamphlets, and other propaganda; the suppression of cultural products deemed injurious to their interest. • The employment of local people and firms to disseminate their message. • The building of coalitions with state and non-state allies to achieve their public diplomacy objectives. In particular, this conference will explore the ways public diplomacy reflects ideas and beliefs that inform security policy. Public diplomacy serves as an ideal nexus through which scholars can observe and analyze the interplay of culture and diplomacy, domestic and international politics, and security concerns and civil liberties.Web page announcement, conference program, conference photo

Misplaced Modifier: Honors Students and Honors Education

The challenge posed by for-profit educators to the existing system is a real one that is not likely to go away any time soon and is, in fact, likely to intensify. Gary Bell’s essay is a thoughtful exegesis on how we came to this point. He roots his narrative in the explosion of the profit motive, citing several instances of privatization in other industries here and in other countries. Bell understandably laments that the wave of privatization has made its way to the shores of honors education, and he spends considerable time dissecting the argument of start-ups like American Honors. In calling attention to these issues, he has done a useful service to the honors community

A Traditional Educational Practice Adapted for the Digital Age

“Did you know that you are the star of my favorite reality show?” an online auditor asked a University of Baltimore honors student at a reception in the spring semester of 2013. The student was one of twenty-one honors undergraduates who had enrolled for credit in The King Years, a weekly seminar taught by Taylor Branch, the scholar who won the Pulitzer Prize for the first volume of his trilogy on the Civil Rights era. The auditor was one of hundreds of remote learners who tuned in every week to the simultaneous webcast of the class. In UB’s alternative MOOC, Branch engaged the UB students in conversations about pivotal moments in the civil rights movement while a graduate student present in the classroom fielded online questions and comments from engaged web viewers. For days after the live broadcast, the conversation continued in cyberspace as auditors reviewed the web footage and chatted with each other and Branch about the issues that had come up in class. At the end of the semester, the online participants had a chance to meet Branch in person and rub elbows with the students at a reception, an event that encapsulated the two goals of the course: a face-to-face seminar for enrolled honors students and a massive yet interactive seminar experience for the general public. Our experiment with an alternative MOOC allowed the University of Baltimore to contribute to three conversations concerning educational innovation: (1) How can we define and deliver online education to large numbers of students in ways that support excellence? (2) How can digital advances add to an academic institution’s civic engagement? (3) How can honors shape the expectations for massive online experiences

Cost benefit analysis of performing a pilot project for hydrogen-powered ground support equipment at Lemoore Naval Air station

MBA Professional ReportThe primary purpose of this thesis is to provide a cost benefit analysis of a pilot program at NAS Lemoore for the use of hydrogen fuel cell powered aviation ground support equipment (GSE) and provide general background information on hydrogen power. The analysis is conducted to determine expected program costs and to determine what benefits the Navy could achieve by using hydrogen fuel cell powered tow tractors, electric carts and hydraulic carts. Analysis shows benefits in the following areas: reduced green house gas emissions and noise pollution reduced HAZMAT generation due to reduced oil usage and spills/leaks, reduced maintenance labor costs for fuel cell over diesel engines, and reduced training time required after full fleet fuel cell implementation.http://archive.org/details/costbenefitnalys1094510089US Navy (USN) authors.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Studies in Cyberspace: Honors, Professional Teacher Development, Curricular Development, and Systemic Change in Louisiana

For years, honors programs and colleges have experienced well-documented difficulties in justifying and defending their budgets (and in some cases their existence). These challenges—some of which are discussed in the 2006 JNCHC “Forum on Honors Administration” and the 2009 JNCHC “Forum on Social Class and Honors”—have ranged from the philosophical (“honors programs are elitist”) to the pragmatic (“we have to take care of our own students first, so we can’t spare any faculty for an honors class”). Honors administrators have therefore developed an extensive and effective litany of benefits that emphasize how honors programs enhance the student experience, the health of the university, and the good of the community. Honors administrators highlight the role of honors education in student development and curricular innovation; we trot out statistics regarding the positive impact of honors on recruitment and retention; and we show what good citizens our students are, how they engage and serve the larger community. Some remain unconvinced, however. In good years these doubts can handicap honors programs in their struggle with other units for adequate funding, and in lean times, as universities seek to protect their “academic core” with fewer resources and staff, these familiar criticisms can be crippling. To better insulate themselves as well as to better fulfill familiar mandates, honors programs must continually strive to place themselves at the core of the university’s mission, not only as that mission relates to the development of the university itself but also as it relates to the university’s commitments to state and regional initiatives. What follows is how the honors program at Louisiana Tech University sought to position itself to participate in a state and regional initiative to develop an area that is ideally suited to the strengths of honors education: the emerging field of cyberspace (see the 2009 JNCHC “Forum on Honors in the Digital Age”). In initiating studies in cyberspace, the honors program drew on traditional strengths of honors education but also charted some new venues for exploration that might be of use to other programs and colleges