Hazel Larsen Archer and Photography at Black Mountain College, 1933 - 1957

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College

Distance students: Finding information and help for coursework

Advances in web technology continue to effect dynamic change in the delivery of tertiary Distance education and academic library services in New Zealand. Alongside this rapid evolution it is important to understand the corresponding changes to the course-related information needs of Distance students. While increased online availability of information is beneficial for Distance students, their demographic profile and study mode can create unique challenges, requiring tailored support to ensure they are able to utilise resources to the same level as on-campus students. This small-scale survey of Distance students and librarians at the University of Otago investigated provision, perceptions and use of course-related information resources. The results, although limited, contribute to knowledge about the information and library help-seeking needs of Distance students. The findings illustrate the value of both online library resources and the ‘personal’ nature of targeted support for students. Librarians collaborate with teaching staff to place library resources in virtual learning environments and to deliver targeted library instruction at appropriate points. Areas identified for further research include the technological barriers that Distance students still face and how a personalised library service can be provided in response to student needs and as a measurable contribution to ensuring student retention and course completion

A Humanistic Approach to Understanding Child Consumer Socialization in US Homes

We present findings from a qualitative, multisite, multi-method, longitudinal study of parents and their preschool-aged children that explores the intersections of marketing influences in the home and in the larger outside world of children. Findings indicate that preschoolers represent complicated and nuanced “consumers in training” beyond predictions based on their “perceptual stage of development.” Specifically, our data revealed interesting ways in which marketing and consumer culture can foster a number of pro-social consumer outcomes (e.g., charity, gift-giving, financial literacy). We also noted an emerging understanding by preschoolers of the social meanings of goods for identity construction and product evaluation. Finally, through a presentation of an idiographic case, we show how consumer socialization cannot be attributed to one factor such as media but is based on multiple and concurrent factors—parents, siblings, peers, and home environment—that act to moderate, mediate, and provide meaning for marketing messages

Living, Eating and Learning: Children’s Experiences of Change and Life in a Refugee Camp

This is a study about children living in an unusual setting, a refugee camp. It recognizes that this situation causes disruption to children’s lives but rather than focusing exclusively on this disruption, emphasizes the children’s everyday experiences of continuity and change as interpreted through their position as social actors. The study is based on 2 years of fieldwork conducted in Kala refugee camp in Zambia using participatory and child-centred research techniques. It studies the children’s everyday lives in order to gain a picture of continuity and change, and in particular, how these are experienced by the children. Going to school, working and playing remain central to children’s lives but these are experienced differently in the camp. By locating children as agents within their social context, this study considers the wider impact of the camp setting on children’s experience of growing up. Children’s preoccupations reflect those of the social group but include a unique child perspective on these issues. Dependency on NGO provision of food is a key defining characteristic of their refugee experience. The impact of this reaches beyond provision of nutrition due to the importance of food in economic and social transactions, as a means of defining social relations and its symbolic role in everyday conversation. These combine to provide a forum for the negotiation of power relations between refugees and with the NGOs. The study concludes that changes to lifestyle affect the way that children grow up and therefore have an impact on their ideas of identity and what is acceptable or desirable behaviour. Adults, who aim to ‘socialise’ children into appropriate behaviour, affect this, but ultimately children are active in authoring their own experiences, drawing influences from every aspect of their environment

The Impact of Cognitive Processes on Input Enhancement Techniques: studying Chinese Students with English as their Second Language

This thesis investigates the effects of an instructed second language acquisition method called Input Enhancement: textual using boldface, and audio enhancement, using intonation and stress and explicit rules aimed at facilitating gender pronoun grammar structures in English as a second language. Previous research on visual input enhancement has found mixed effects, and there is a scarcity of audio enhancement research thereby requiring more empirical studies. The relationship with cognitive processes is also explored in this investigation to provide a contribution to the understanding of cognitive load in instructed second language acquisition. There has been a long debate of how effective input enhancement is (typically visual input enhancement) and to what degree cognitive processes play a role in this instructed second language acquisition method. The present thesis reports on a methodological synthesis with a meta-analysis and two experimental studies. First, the synthesis on visual input enhancement and grammar learning was performed on available studies (published and grey literature) in a 35-year period. 29 studies were included and focused on the method and design to help explain some of the variability in findings in this group of studies. A quantitative review of these 29 studies calculating and aggregating effect sizes using Cohen’s d values. The results indicate mixed effect sizes ranging from small to large, d = 0.34, 95% CI [0.142, 0.542. The pre to post-test results focus on the how learners have performed from with 0.78 pre, 95% CI [0.496, 1.07]. This is a large effect and shows that students with the enhanced input texts improve from their pre-test scores to post-tests scores. Results demonstrates that second language learners with enhanced texts in the studies rarely outperform with in their comparison groups (control group/unenhanced or only text groups). Conclusions from the analysis highlight the need for an improvement in methodological practices in visual input enhancement for grammar learning including reporting research design and measures more thoroughly. In total, two experiments were then designed and conducted with a total of 416 second language learners of English participants (Experiment 1– 311, Experiment 2 – 105) participated in voluntary sessions. Experiment 1 was a four-week study which focused on the extent to which increased textually salient enhancements to a grammar form with intermediate second language learners of English in a middle school in China. With a total of six study conditions, participants were exposed to their study condition twice in two weeks and performed immediate and delayed post-tests a week later. The magnitude of visual input enhancement in Experiment 1 revealed that the rules only group performed best in the immediate short-term and that learners with rules and enhancement created possible cognitive overload. Experiment 2 was a seven-week study which focused on the impact of modality (visual or audio-visual) on input enhancement and grammatical rules on intake with pre-sessional Chinese students. Audio input enhancement was designed and tested whereby the grammar form was emphasised naturally through native speaker stress and intonation. Again, in six conditions, participants studied for three sessions a week lasting a total of two weeks with immediate post-tests and then three weeks later with delayed post-tests. In both experimental studies, the participants were Chinese learners of English. Experiment 2 found no difference between audio and visual input enhancement but may have demonstrated cognitive load in audio and explicit rules condition. Overall, the results of the studies in this thesis shed light on the notion that input enhancement may be impacted by cognitive processes and using this method does not always achieve long-term learning. Therefore, the statistical analyses demonstrate mixed findings from both input enhancement studies but do uncover how cognitive load plays a role in situations where the learner becomes overloaded with too much implicit and explicit information. This thesis concludes by suggesting that there is a relationship between cognitive processes and input enhancement techniques. Careful design of materials and staging needs to be considered before providing this form of instructed second language acquisition method to second language learners of English. In the future, there should also be more studies on audio input enhancement

The challenges and affordances of online participatory workshops in the context of young people's everyday climate crisis activism: insights from facilitators

Participatory workshops can provide an equitable way of working with diverse communities to co-produce new knowledge and understanding in the context of young people’s everyday climate crisis activism. Drawing on data from interviews with seven facilitators, we consider the specific affordances and challenges provided by participatory workshops that are held online with groups including young people and teachers. We highlight that the online format can provide a powerful methodological tool for co-production, community building and developing constructive intergenerational dialogue. Although online workshops can include diverse voices, barriers and challenges remain when seeking to reduce the persistent under-representation of some groups

Creating and communicating social research for policymakers in government

Many academics ask ‘How can I use my research to influence policy?’. In this paper, we draw on our first-hand experience as social researchers for the British Government to advise how academics can create and communicate research with policymakers. Specifically, we describe methods of communicating research to policymakers in relation to research we undertook to listen to farmers about their priorities for a new agricultural policy for England following the exit of the UK from the European Union. The main purpose of this research was to ensure farmers’ voices were included in policy development and therefore communication of the research to policymakers was key. We reflect on the effectiveness of the communication methods we employed and summarise our learnings into four practical recommendations: (1) make research relevant to policymakers; (2) invest time to develop and maintain relationships with policymakers; (3) utilise ‘windows of opportunity’; and (4) adapt presentation and communication styles to the audience. We consider that employing these recommendations will help to improve how evidence is communicated between academia and government and therefore the influence of evidence in decision-making processes

Halocarbons associated with Arctic sea ice

Short-lived halocarbons were measured in Arctic sea-ice brine, seawater and air above the Greenland and Norwegian seas (∼81°N, 2 to 5°E) in mid-summer, from a melting ice floe at the edge of the ice pack. In the ice floe, concentrations of C2H5I, 2-C3H7I and CH2Br2 showed significant enhancement in the sea ice brine, of average factors of 1.7, 1.4 and 2.5 times respectively, compared to the water underneath and after normalising to brine volume. Concentrations of mono-iodocarbons in air are the highest ever reported, and our calculations suggest increased fluxes of halocarbons to the atmosphere may result from their sea-ice enhancement. Some halocarbons were also measured in ice of the sub-Arctic in Hudson Bay (∼55°N, 77°W) in early spring, ice that was thicker, colder and less porous than the Arctic ice in summer, and in which the halocarbons were concentrated to values over 10 times larger than in the Arctic ice when normalised to brine volume. Concentrations in the Arctic ice were similar to those in Antarctic sea ice that was similarly warm and porous. As climate warms and Arctic sea ice becomes more like that of the Antarctic, our results lead us to expect the production of iodocarbons and so of reactive iodine gases to increase

The effect of monitoring complexity on stakeholder acceptance of CO2 geological storage projects in the US gulf coast region

Environmental monitoring at geologic CO2 storage sites is required by regulations for the purposes of environmental protection and emissions accounting in the case of leakage to surface. However, another very important goal of environmental monitoring is to assure stakeholders that the project is monitored for safety and effectiveness. With current efforts to optimize monitoring for cost-effectiveness, the question remains: will optimization of monitoring approaches degrade stakeholder assurance, or do heavily-instrumented sites communicate higher risk to a stakeholder? We report the results of a stakeholder survey in Gulf Coast states of the US where carbon capture and storage (CCS) is developing quickly. We rely on a 2 by 2 factorial experiment in which we manipulate message complexity (complex v. simple) and social norm (support from scientists v. support from community members). Subjects were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: 1) complex message with scientist support; 2) complex message with community member support; 3) simple message with scientist support; or 4) simple message with community member support. In addition to the experimental stimuli, subjects were also asked about their need for cognition, attitudes toward science and scientists, attitudes about climate change and support for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Our sample is drawn from residents in states bordering the western Gulf of Mexico (Texas, Louisiana, Florida) where CO2 geologic storage is being planned both onshore and offshore. The results offer important implications for public outreach efforts to key stakeholders