Rear Window : Polio as a Cultural Ambience

Note: In lieu of an abstract, this is the article\u27s first paragraph. In the 1950’s, the question of polio as a disease that could be eradicated was still unanswered and the struggle to develop a vaccine was the frenetic backdrop for the biomedical field. Culture and daily life was infused with narratives and metaphors that attempted to control and understand the illness. “Rear Window” directed by Alfred Hitchcock was an example of a product of this ambience and though it never explicitly names polio it is infused with concepts and elements of the disease. The themes that course throughout the film reinforces and reflects certain archetypes developed to solidify the flexible and mutable nature of this feared health problem

An Interview with Dr. Kimber Thomas, Senior Innovation Specialist with the Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) at the Library of Congress

In this interview, Dr. Thomas discusses the relationship between race and copyright. This conversation with Tucker Taylor of the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship covers Dr. Thomas’s path to copyright education as well as her work at Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) at the Library of Congress.  Dr. Thomas details the interaction of race and copyright, and how it relates to librarianship and education.  She also details ideas for librarians and educators to help improve our current situation

Open Educational Resources: Finding and Utilizing Affordable Course Materials

Presentation explaining the need to use more open educational resources in the classroom as opposed to traditional textbooks. Includes statistics on the rising cost of higher education and student expenses. Provides resources for open textbooks and other educational resources

Baby Steps to Big Impacts: The Evolution of Library Involvement in the Textbook System

This article will discuss how textbook support and open educational resources (OER) have become critical considerations in the evolving library landscape. For years, textbooks have been the purview of the teaching staff at our colleges and universities, but libraries can no longer ignore the high costs, both societal and financial, of the current textbook environment. Library involvement in the textbook dilemma has come in three phases: chosen ignorance, meeting the immediate need, and striving for sustainable solutions. We will discuss each of these phases and will detail the University of South Carolina Libraries’ involvement in the textbook system. We will provide suggestions for other libraries interested in growing an OER program, focusing on development, implementation, and assessment for schools operating with limited resources. Finally, we will share our predictions for the future of library involvement in responding to the demand for affordable course materials

Interview: Deciphering the Law: Hachette v. Internet Archive Pt. 1 (2023) with Dave Hansen

This is the first in a series of interviews with those closely tied to the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit. In March 2023, the court ruled against the Internet Archive and its use of the Emergency Lending Library causing a ripple throughout the library and education fields. Below, find the answers to some of the questions that the case elicited by JCEL contributors and copyright scholars Dave Hansen, Michelle Wu, and Kyle Courtney

The Models of Authority Project: Extending the DigiPal Framework for Script and Decoration

The DigiPal project for palaeography has featured in previous DH conferences. It includes a generalised framework for the description and analysis of handwriting, initially applied to Old English of the eleventh century but subsequently extended to Latin, Hebrew, and decoration; it incorporates a novel model for describing handwriting; and a recent addition allows the embedding of linked palaeographical images into prose description. The purpose of this poster is to present new developments which form part of two further major grants, one of which is the Models of Authority project. Specifically, the focus here is on the incorporation of textual content into the model for handwriting

Exploring the nature of students’ collaborative interactions during a hands-on ill-structured engineering design task

Engineering education is experiencing a shift in curriculum format toward more emphasis on collaborative design work. This can be accomplished through means such as collaborative ill-structured tasks, which provide students with experience authentic to industry. However, research on effective ill-structured task design in the context of undergraduate group problem solving is relatively limited. Studies have explored how to design and construct ill-structured tasks that effectively engage students and promote higher learning outcomes and group collaboration, but these tasks have primarily been limited to two-dimensional representations that lack opportunity for students to realize their design implications in the physical world. While some tasks may include three-dimensional representation of task content, little is known about the influence on students’ collaborative interaction that can result from the use of physical, hands-on task products in this context. This study seeks to address this gap by characterizing the nature of students’ interactions as they worked in small groups on an ill-structured engineering design task for which a physical object was a central component. The study uses mixed methods to analyze the interactions and experiences of twenty undergraduate engineering students in five groups as they worked together to dissect a product, model its components, and make justified design changes to their model. Ethnographic observations were recorded during multiple dissection sessions for each of the five groups. Thematic analysis was used to identify initial trends in the data and to develop a coding scheme, which was then applied to characterize participants’ behaviors and collaborative processes at both individual and group levels. Frequencies of codes were compared against task scores to investigate the impact of participation in identified behaviors and processes on group performance. Results indicated positive relationships between 1) participation in dissection and task scores, and 2) participation in collaborative reflection and task scores, both of which are meaningful for future collaborative task design. The study supports the evolution of collaborative engineering problem solving by contributing to our understanding of the impact of hands-on learning in design tasks

Parental Concerns about the Health of Adolescents with Intellectual Disability: A Brief Report

Background. Parents of adolescents with intellectual disability are concerned about the future health and well-being needs of their children. Method. Qualitative data was collected as part of a cross-sectional descriptive study and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 parents. The results were themed. Results. Most parents discussed areas of their children's health which made them anxious about the future. These concerns were collated into five themes. Conclusion. The health and well-being themes were dependency, general health, challenging behaviours, and increasing support needs

Accuracy and Effectiveness of an Orchestration Tool on Instructors\u27 Interventions and Groups\u27 Collaboration

This paper presents the development of a novel orchestration tool that predicts collaborative problem-solving (CPS) behaviors of undergraduate engineering groups and investigates the use of that tool by instructors. We explore the impact of receiving real-time, machine-learning, model-based prompts on 1) instructors\u27 orchestration strategies, which are strategies instructors use to manage and facilitate collaborative activities, and 2) groups\u27 participation, including how groups are engaged in CPS activities. The orchestration tool is a dashboard that notifies instructors of–and advises them on–monitoring and intervening with groups who may need collaborative support and guidance. We describe the accuracy of the models in predicting CPS behaviors and of instructors in identifying these behaviors in the classroom. We then describe how real-time prompts from models can affect instructors\u27 orchestration strategies and students\u27 participation. Our findings show that there is variability in the accuracy of our machine learning models and that instructors are better at identifying predictive behaviors as compared to the models. Instructors in this context engaged in orchestration strategies, like monitoring and probing when using the orchestration tool, and groups of students were largely talking while on-task across classes. We triangulate across data sources to examine the effectiveness of the orchestration tool in the classroom and share pedagogical and technical implications for the field