1,844 results on '"scientific and technical information"'
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2. Human Connection with Nature Improves Wellbeing and Pro-Environmental Behavior: A Literature Review
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Devi Mariya Sulfa, Hadi Suwono, and H. Husamah
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Given the world's continuous environmental concerns, there is a need for increased participation in nature protection. The ecological crisis of the last decade on Earth has become one of the causes of the rupture of society's relationship with nature. Such relationships can predict diverse attitudes, concerns, intentions, and pro-environmental behavior (PEB). A systematic literature review (SLR) aims to compare, study, and analyze journal articles that relate to issues related to nature as a major factor in pro-environmental behavior. The results of selecting articles indexed by SCOPUS found as many as 1716 publications. The 50 open-access publications of articles were chosen based on specific criteria and further examined to identify eight final articles that align with the Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) scale. Pro-environmental behavior strengthens human relationships with nature and encourages a sense of ownership and involvement with the environment. Pro-environmental behavior refers to behaviors that are beneficial to the environment, such as supporting conservation policies, recycling, and participating in nature. Research using INS scale, which focuses on connections with nature, still has significant potential and should persist in making contributions to science and humanity.
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- 2024
3. Visualising the Scientific Landscape of Global Research in Self-Compassion: A Bibliometric Analysis
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Chinun Boonroungrut, Kanyarat Muangkaew, Kamol Phoyen, Thitima Vechpong, Wananya Punyakitphokin, Gunchanon Khawda, Gallayaporn Nantachai, Nuttawut Eiamnate, Puangsoy Worakul, Chilungamo M'manga, and Wulan Patria Saroinsong
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Research in self-compassion has rapidly increased. Providing a comprehension of the scientific knowledge landscape will be helpful for researchers to identify the gaps and develop future research ideas in this field without subjectivity. Thus, overarching structures in self-compassion Scopus-indexed research were sought to be analysed here. Bibliometric techniques were used to extract documents indexed in Scopus under the domain of self-compassion (N = 1,764 articles) using bibliophily, a web interface of the Bibliometrix 3.0 and VOSviewer to conduct analysis and visualisation. The number of published articles shows an upward trend; the United States occupies the leading position in publication volumes and citations. Undoubtedly, K. D. Neff and her sustained cited model were reported as a prolific author and influential article in self-compassion literature. The top affiliation was the University of Texas at Austin, which was the leading university in both production and citation. Mindfulness was a key journal that was considered in publication volume and received citations; however, authors tended to publish from diverse selected sources. The top 50 most frequently used terms were related to individual differences and psychological status. Finally, the thematic mapping provided a comprehensive illustration showing significant themes and knowledge gaps in self-compassion research, which categorised individual differences as basic, measurement validation as niche and PTSD as emerging themes. The current findings presented scientific mappings and extensive tables containing information that usefully proposes future directions and the critical broader scope of research in self-compassion.
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- 2024
4. How Do Authors Choose Keywords for Their Theses and Dissertations in Repositories of University Libraries? An Introspection-Based Enquiry
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Mariangela Spotti Lopes Fujita, Roberta Cristina Dal’Evedove Tartarotti, Paula Regina Dal´Evedove, and Maria Carolina Andrade e Cruz
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Considering the importance of subject retrieval for scientific visibility, and the need to guide authors in self-archiving their papers in institutional repositories of university libraries, this study observed the patterns and strategies used by authors while indexing for keyword assignment. The study examined four categories of analysis: criteria for keyword assignment; use of controlled vocabulary for keyword assignment; understanding of the importance of keywords; and ordering criteria and function of assigned keywords. The study found that, while assigning keywords, authors: consider fundamental concepts for representing significant content of the text; act as domain expert indexers; and are unaware that keyword assignment is an indexing process that requires controlled vocabularies. The research suggests that institutional repositories implement a hybrid information representation and retrieval system to allow for both the representation of more specific subjects of knowledge domains, as well as controlled vocabulary indexing terms.
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- 2024
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5. Enhancing Medical Students' Science Communication Skills: From the Perspective of New Media
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Ying Zhang, Jiao Wang, Yan Yan, Jie Xu, Hui Li, Ting Zhang, Haixia Wen, Xiaoyu Liu, Yanyan Liu, Chunmei Lv, and Hui Zhu
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With the development of science over the years, people have increasingly realized the importance of science communication. Unfortunately, very little research has focused on helping medical students develop the capabilities of science communication. To improve medical students' science communication and evaluate the effectiveness of New Media through mobile clients in health science communication, a competition was held among medical undergraduates. Outstanding works were selected for publication on our official health science communication WeChat account. Furthermore, the participants volunteered to complete a questionnaire survey to help us assess students' awareness of science communication. Our analysis revealed that students had a strong willingness to serve society and to participate in science communication work. Students generally agreed that science communication work had excellent effects on professional knowledge and related skills. In addition, the correlation results showed that the greater students' willingness to participate in health science communication was, the greater their sense of gain. New Media effectively expand the influence of students' popular science works. Our findings suggest that competition in science communication has a positive impact on enhancing students' awareness and capabilities in science communication. In addition, New Media are an effective way to improve students' scientific communication efficiency. However, we also noted that students' participation rate and enthusiasm for scientific communication were not high. Further research is needed to determine the reasons for this situation and potential strategies to further improve students' science communication.
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- 2024
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6. How to Automate the Extraction and Analysis of Information for Educational Purposes
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Calvera-Isabal, Miriam, Santos, Patricia, Hoppe, H. -Ulrich, and Schulten, Cleo
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There is an increasing interest and growing practice in Citizen Science (CS) that goes along with the usage of websites for communication as well as for capturing and processing data and materials. From an educational perspective, it is expected that by integrating information about CS in a formal educational setting, it will inspire teachers to create learning activities. This is an interesting case for using bots to automate the process of data extraction from online CS platforms to better understand its use in educational contexts. Although this information is publicly available, it has to follow GDPR rules. This paper aims to explain (1) how CS communicates and is promoted on websites, (2) how web scraping methods and anonymization techniques have been designed, developed and applied to collect information from online sources and (3) how these data could be used for educational purposes. After the analysis of 72 websites, some of the results obtained show that only 24.8% includes detailed information about the CS project and 48.61% includes information about educational purposes or materials.
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- 2023
7. Factors Influencing Science and Environmental Education Learning of Blind Students: A Case of Primary School for the Blind in Thailand
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Prasertpong, Phanuwat, Charmondusit, Kitikorn, Taecharungroj, Viriya, Rawang, Wee, Suwan, Sumit, and Woraphong, Seree
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The main objective of this research was to study the factors influencing the science and environment of education program for blind students at the elementary level. This research used mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative approaches), specifically a questionnaire survey was conducted to better understand the current situation on Science and Environmental Education Learning among 192 blind students in 14 primary schools for the blind in Thailand and in-depth interviews with the directors, science and Environmental teachers, and students' parents, 30 interviewees in total. The data were collected and analyzed into frequency and percentage (and K-means clustering) using SPSS software. The research findings from data collection from 192 blind students illustrated that the importance of facilitator that involve teaching materials (43%) was support appropriate to Science and Environmental Education teaching materials for blind students, 34% students had a good relationship with their classmates and teachers. A total of (32%) were provided more Braille textbooks for Science and Environmental Education teaching. K-means cluster analysis showed four clusters of science and environmental education learning blind students. The study concluded that the factors influencing effectiveness of science and environmental education learning of blind students consisted of facilitators, the creation of scientific learning processes, media and technology as the medium for communicating scientific knowledge, appropriate curriculum for blind students, and cognitive abilities of blind students in physical, mental, intelligence, and emotion terms.
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- 2023
8. Writing and Scientific Publication Skills of University Teachers: A Survey Study
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Velazco, Derling José Mendoza, Hinostroza, Elizeth Mayrene Flores, Briones, Josselyn Leonela Muñoz, and Cedeño, María Leonila García
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In the academic world, the skills of scientific writing and publishing allow for the sharing and dissemination of academic research. The research analysed the scientific publications of university teachers from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Technical University of Manabí (FCHS-UTM), Ecuador, in order to determine their skills and preferences in terms of scientific journals, writing language, type of publication, indexing, and editorial quality. A descriptive quantitative approach study was applied. A survey study was carried out. The sample selection was non-probabilistic and participatory. The sample consisted of 55 teachers from the faculty. A 25-item questionnaire was developed for data collection. The results were analysed using descriptive statistics. Among the results the faculty has a preference for national or local scientific journals. The language most used in studies is Spanish. University researchers are more professional in their use of American Psychological Association (APA) norms. The study presented implications such as the promotion of scientific publication and professional development, preservation of language and culture, professionalism in citation standards, promotion of collaboration, improvement of editorial quality and training strategies.
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- 2023
9. Construction of a Literature Map on Collaborative Virtual White Boards
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Cinthya Lady Butron Revilla, Edith Gabriela Manchego Huaquipaco, Diana Lizeth Prado Arenas, and Alexandra Milagros Perez Ramirez
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The aim of higher education is to make the student the protagonist of their learning. In this context, the researchers must create appropriate scenarios that enable students to explore and develop critical thinking both independently and cooperatively while making use of information technology. This paper presents a model of pedagogical practice in the subject of Introduction to Research Methodology (IRM) based on the construction of literature maps applying John W. Creswell's research design theory through the use of virtual whiteboards. 120 students from the seventh cycle of the study plan of the School of Architecture of the National University of San Agustín participated. As a result, the model used in this paper enabled students to collect and organize the data necessary to formulate their research and develop critical thinking based on scientific knowledge. In this process, it was possible to reflect on the importance of emphasizing the development of critical and creative thinking skills in order to create literary maps that contribute to the comprehensive education of students. It should be noted that students are obliged to be protagonists in the construction of their knowledge especially in subjects that develop competencies related to scientific research.
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- 2023
10. Assessing ESL University Students' Metacognitive Online Reading Strategies
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Ruhil Amal Azmuddin, Nurul Nadia Muhammad, Arulselvi Uthayakumaran, and Hamizah Zahari
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Extracting information through online reading has become second nature to ESL students in higher institutions. Although online reading is indispensable among ESL university students, they lack the ability to read effectively. The present study examines students' metacognitive online reading strategies and how those strategies reflect understanding of scientific online reading materials for academic purposes. This was conducted through an online survey and semi-structured interviews. Data was collected among 55 university students enrolled in various Science and Technology courses. Out of the same sample, ten students were selected to participate in the interviews. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis with the use of SPSS and NVivo respectively. Thematic analysis was validated using inter-rater reliability analysis through Cohen Kappa analysis that yielded substantial results, indicating that the findings were reliable. Although the findings from the survey revealed that problem-solving strategies were used mainly by students, semi-structured interviews found contradicting results where support reading strategies were believed to reflect understanding by students. Implications that can be drawn are two folds. Students are motivated to use metacognitive online reading strategies depending on the type of texts; two, the need to use different reading strategies to elicit purposeful information based on the subject matter. [For the full proceedings, see ED654100.]
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- 2023
11. Science Communication in Congress: For What Use?
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K. L. Akerlof, Maria Carmen Lemos, Emily T. Cloyd, Selena Nelson, and Kristin M. F. Timm
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Background: Elected members of the US Congress rely on staff, including fellows with scientific and engineering expertise, to find and interpret information for use in policymaking. Factors that impede, or facilitate, the communication of scientific information within the institution thus can play a critical role in legislative capacity, but there is a limited understanding of these dynamics in the hyper-partisan body. Aims and objectives: This study presents and tests a four-dimensional model describing how the obstacles to science communication in Congress change depending on whether information is sought for use in support of established policy positions ('strategic use') or to inform decision making ('substantive use'). Methods: Data were collected between November 2017 and February 2019 through interviews with 58 congressional staff members in personal offices assigned to energy, natural resources, and science issue portfolios, and through surveys with 68 science and engineering fellows who completed their year in Congress between 2015 and 2019. Findings: Placing scientists and engineers in Congress as fellows augments staffing and institutional expertise. Yet we find that both staff and fellows experience communication-related impediments in using scientific information. Staff report more challenges in using science to substantively make policy decisions, due not only to lack of time, but also factors such as contacts, access, and information presentation. Fellows report fewer barriers and use science for policy in largely identical ways to staff. Discussion and conclusion: These findings support the proposed model and highlight the importance of staff scientific fluency and the decision-making context for science communication in Congress.
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- 2024
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12. Helping Mentors Address Scientific Communication in STEM Research Training Helps Their Mentees Stay the Course
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C. Cameron, H. Y. Lee, C. B. Anderson, E. K. Dahlstrom, and S. Chang
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Scientific communication (SC) has important social-cognitive, behavioral, and career-related benefits for emerging researchers, but both mentors and mentees find development of SC skills challenging. Whether training mentors to effectively mentor development of SC skills could have a meaningful impact on mentees was not clear. The Scientific Communication Advances Research Excellence (SCOARE) project has conducted faculty training workshops in techniques for mentoring SC skills since 2018. To study indirect workshop effects of mentors' attendance at the SCOARE workshop on their matched PhD and postdoctoral mentees (N = 477), we surveyed mentees before and 6 months after their mentors attended and measured their social-psychological and behavioral outcomes. To examine the effectiveness of the workshop and to explore whether workshop effects vary based on mentee demographic characteristics, including home language variety (speaker of standardized English [STE], non-standardized English [NSTE], or another language [L2]), we conducted multilevel models. After adjusting baseline scores, mentees of mentors who attended SCOARE workshops (W +) were more engaged in speaking activities ([beta] =0 .30, p = 0.016), had higher science identity ([beta] = 0.20, p = 0.048), and were less likely to reconsider their career due to SC skills ([beta] = -- 0.39, p = 0.004) than mentees in the W-- group. Across demographic groups, mentees of mentors who attended SCOARE workshops showed similar improvements in SC outcomes. Postdoctoral mentees, compared to doctoral mentees, had higher science identity and lower intention to pursue a non-research-intensive career. Comparing mentees of the 3 categories of home language variety, both the NSTE and L2 groups, compared to the STE group, were more likely to reconsider their careers due to SC skills and had a higher intention to pursue non-research-intensive careers both at baseline and post-workshop, suggesting the possibility of language background as a barrier to mentee career progression. Mentor training for SC skill development can improve social-psychological and behavioral outcomes for mentees, including science identity, frequency of speaking, and reconsideration of research careers due to concerns about SC.
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- 2024
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13. Decolonizing and Diversifying Research in Cognitive Development
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Leher Singh
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This article serves as an introduction to the Special Issue on "Decolonizing and Diversifying Research in Cognitive Development." The Special Issue comprises six articles: two articles are empirical articles that focus on executive function development in under-represented environments, two articles address barriers pathways toward behavioral change in advancing toward diversification and decolonization; and two articles focus on reconciling sampling and reporting practices with the scientific goal of generalizability. Though different lenses, each article identifies important practices and considerations for broadening the study of cognitive development to faithfully represent children's diverse environments and trajectories via developing methods and practices "in situ" and sampling judiciously across diverse settings. The series culminates in a commentary via Bard and Keller, who discuss each article and articulate future pathways toward decolonization and diversification.
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- 2024
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14. A Rhetorical Content Analysis of Moroccan Regional Agronomic Abstracts: Textual Practices of Plurilingual Science Communication
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Alexander J. Mahmou-Werndli
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In order to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the varied ways multiple language competencies are invoked in scientific communication and publication, this study features a content analysis of a collection of English, French, and Arabic abstracts from 14 articles of Al-Awamia, a Moroccan agronomic journal. Mapping rhetorically significant differences across abstracts in different languages suggests that EN/FR abstracts are tailored to an international specialist audience and Arabic abstracts favor a domestic policymaker audience in several key ways. The textual moves made to address these different audiences are typical of those studied by scholars of science communication, and accordingly this study indicates that plurilingual textual practices in scientific writing are associated with differences in audience and stakeholders. These findings carry implications for trans/pluri/multilingually oriented scholars of scientific communication, as well as for those who prepare future researchers for the demands of publication, suggesting that the flexible use of diverse linguistic resources is important to scientific practice in a globalized world.
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- 2024
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15. Integrating Digital Literacies and Scientific Communication in a Multimedia Anatomy Group Assignment to Advance Contextual Learning
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Junhua Xiao
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Anatomists are facing a new generation of learners who will study and work in a technology-rich environment. Indeed, digital technologies are tremendously changing how information and knowledge are communicated and retrieved. However, it remains unclear whether an anatomy assessment can be designed to promote contextual learning through integrating a digital communication strategy. To investigate this, assessment methods were diversified in the first-year neuroanatomy and third-year regional anatomy curricula through implementing a multimedia human anatomy group assignment integrating digital literacies and scientific communication. Through completing this multimedia assignment, students demonstrated their anatomy knowledge transfer using a range of approaches. The main mode of presentations chosen in the two anatomy units were non-animated video presentations ([approximately] 50%), animated video presentations ([approximately] 30%), storyboards ([approximately] 10%), podcasts ([approximately] 3%), and filmed videos ([approximately] 3%). A 5-point Likert scale learning and teaching survey was conducted for a total of 195 undergraduate health science students to evaluate students' perception of this group assignment. The majority of students (70-80%) strongly agreed or agreed that the multimedia group assignment helped their teamwork skills. Students who produced animated videos significantly outperformed those who adopted the non-animated presentations during the end-of-semester theory examination (p < 0.05). This study demonstrates that an anatomy group assignment integrating digital literacy and scientific communication is an effective assessment strategy associated with a positive learning experience and outcome. This inquiry-based assignment promotes learning through assessment, allowing students to not only consolidate and extend anatomy knowledge but also developing effective digital communication skills, providing new insights into non-didactic anatomy assessments.
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- 2024
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16. Science Literacy: Using Multimodal STEM Text Sets to Help Students with Disabilities Engage in Argumentation
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William Romine, Delinda van Garderen, William Folk, Amy Lannin, Rachel Juergensen, Cassandra Smith, Heba Abedelnaby, and Tracey Milarsky
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Today's students live within a world filled with complexity, uncertainty, and misinformation; thus, educators need to help all learners, including students with learning disabilities, how to comprehend complex information about the natural world and make credible evidence-based claims. Our study is a first step in making this possible. In this investigation, our goal was for students to make a claim, use evidence and content-specific vocabulary, and then use reasoning to link claims with evidence in an argument. These outcomes were assessed using a pre-post design with a scenario-based assessment administered twice before and once after instruction, which used multimodal STEM text sets to fuse science and literacy learning. Data indicate that (a) both students with disabilities and those without disabilities made significant gains in argumentation and (b) the effects of instruction were similar for both groups of students. Gains for students with disabilities suggest the multimodal STEM text sets provided important scaffolding that enabled this group to learn important content in the general education classroom.
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- 2024
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17. Global Diffusion of Quality Assurance Research in Higher Education: A Study on Collaboration and Concepts
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Salih Bardakci, Yasemin Yelbay Yilmaz, and M. Dilek Avsaroglu
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Research on quality assurance in higher education has been expanding globally; however, there is still scope for exploring the depth of diffusion to evaluate its impact. To this end, collaboration structures between countries and common concepts in scientific texts were examined in this study. The bibliographic mapping method was employed to analyse data that was derived from the Web of Science. "Higher education" and "Quality Assurance" were the keywords searched and bibliographical data of 3080 scientific texts were extracted. Analyses on co-authorship and co-occurrence were made through the VOSviewer software tool. According to the results, research on quality assurance in higher education spread in half of the countries in the world as of 2021. Research intensity and collaboration relationships reveal that quality assurance research is spreading geographically in North America and Europe. In terms of concepts, although there has been an expansion over the years from a limited understanding of quality management to a more comprehensive perspective of quality assurance in education, it was seen that the central and static view of quality assurance is still solid.
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- 2024
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18. Improving Text Comprehension of Fifth-Grade Students with Learning Disabilities: A Single-Case Study Examining the TWA Strategy
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Matthias Grünke, Janina Kahn-Horwitz, Marlene Saban, and Anne Barwasser
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Reading comprehension is a fundamental and indispensable skill for academic achievement and daily functioning. Sadly, a significant number of children and youth, particularly those diagnosed with learning disabilities (LD), encounter difficulties in acquiring this vital capability. Thankfully, several well-established approaches exist to offer effective support. In this single-case study, we investigated the effects of the TWA (Think Before Reading, While Reading, and After Reading) strategy on enhancing text comprehension among three fifth-grade students with LD. Despite displaying proficient fluency skills, participants struggled significantly with comprehending informative science and social studies passages. TWA empowers learners to actively engage in self-monitoring and self-evaluation during the reading process. Study findings were encouraging, demonstrating that the TWA strategy significantly augmented the students' ability to comprehend the provided informative texts. Moreover, data on social validity indicated that the participants enjoyed the lessons and perceived them as helpful. The discussion includes study limitations and directions for future research in this area.
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- 2024
19. Communicating Research to Practitioners -- Between Scientific Rigor, Easy Science and Practitioners' Self-Perception of Expertise
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Hadjar Mohajerzad, Andreas Martin, Lavinia Kamphausen, and Sarah Widany
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Purpose: Research shows that there are mechanisms of information simplification that lead to the danger that first, laypeople rely on their own epistemological skills when assessing scientific claims. Second, laypeople underestimate their dependence on experts when they receive simplified information. This underestimation can be problematic because scientific knowledge, due to its complexity, usually cannot be fully understood without further advice from experts. Compared to laypersons, adult education practitioners can be expected to have a higher level of scientific literacy in relation to knowledge in their professional field because they are familiar with the structure of knowledge through their formal education. The present study examines whether the "easiness effect" also occurs in adult education practitioners when they read simplified and highly simplified texts about research findings. Design/methodology/approach: The sample consisted of 1.267 continuing education institutions. For the survey experiment, participants were randomly assigned to tree text types at the end of the survey: easy, less scientific and scientific text. We used the difference-in-difference method to analyze the data. Findings: The study examined whether easily presented research findings influenced self-assessment and reliance on experts. The results of our study support the hypothesis that the easiness effect is also present among professional practitioners. Originality/value: The use of clear and nontechnical language is essential for ensuring that scientific knowledge is accessible and utilizable outside of academic circles. This aspect gains particular significance in educational research, as it enables professional practitioners to comprehend and ideally implement, research findings in their daily routines to address and resolve real-world challenges in their educational environments. Previous studies have demonstrated that the way text is presented influences laypeople's perceived reliance on experts. Building upon the conceptual framework of the easiness effect, this survey experiment took an additional step by focusing specifically on a targeted audience: professional practitioners in adult education.
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- 2024
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20. Designing Knowledge Dissemination in a Digital Era -- Analysing TED Talks' Multimodal Orchestration
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Jiang, Jingxin and Lim, Fei Victor
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Online learning has gained increasing attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers face social exigencies to design ways of knowledge dissemination in online instruction. We posit that understanding how knowledge can be represented in successful online academic genres can inform teachers on how they can design students' online learning experiences. This study examined how scientific knowledge is disseminated in one of the most widespread academic genres, TED Talks, which share discoursal similarities with other academic genres such as online lectures. This study adopted a systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis approach to explore how a presenter used speech, images, and gestures to disseminate knowledge. The analysis shows that a presenter orchestrates speech, images, and gestures strategically to clarify the scientific ideas and engage the audience. Based on understanding how the three semiotic modes are used to disseminate scientific knowledge in accessible and engaging ways, this paper discusses how insights on multimodal orchestration can function as a heuristic tool to inform design in online learning.
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- 2022
21. Integrating Natural Resources Education and Citizen Science Communication through the Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (Drones)
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Kulhavy, David, Unger, Daniel, Hung, I-Kuai, Schalk, Chris, Zhang, Yanli, and Viegut, Reid
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Science communication is increasing through the use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) or drones. Within the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU), UASs such as the DJI Phantom 4 Pro and Mavic Mini2 drones were used by students and faculty to study mistletoe, crepemyrtle and fire ants and then drone images were uploaded to iNaturalist, the largest repository for flora and fauna specimens to share with the scientific community and general public. The benefits of using a UAS is that nadir (directly above) images of the specimens increase the locational accuracy of each specimen compared to distance images acquired from a smartphone. By incorporating drones into course works at SFASU, faculty are increasing the technological abilities of students to communicate natural resource information to a greater audience as a citizen scientist. With ever increasing capabilities and lower cost, UAS are becoming a viable alternative to smartphones for communication of science, especially for iNaturalist. The ability to communicate science information and display images adds a dimension for the citizen scientist to use a UAS in teaching and information exchange while creating a well-rounded, better informed, and more employable student upon graduation.
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- 2022
22. The Five Core Concepts of Biology as a Framework for Promoting Expert-Like Behaviors in Undergraduates Learning How to Read Primary Scientific Literature
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Chatzikyriakidou, Kyriaki, Tacloban, Marie Janelle, Concepcion, Kassandra, and McCartney, Melissa
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A growing body of literature shows that primary scientific literature (PSL) is a valuable and useful tool for science, technology, engineering, and math education. We currently have a relatively limited understanding of how skills relating to reading PSL progress through academic careers, i.e., the process by which expertise in reading PSL develops. In this study, we built on previous work showing clear differences in strategies that experts use to read PSL that are not often available to or documented with novice PSL readers. Using the five core concepts (5CCs) of biology, outlined in "Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology," as a framework for student engagement with PSL, we investigated whether the 5CCs can be used to (i) increase student engagement with PSL, (ii) provide a context for PSL, and (iii) integrate student prior knowledge when reading PSL. Second, we investigated whether a 5CCs-based, semester-long intervention could shift student reading habits to be more expert-like. As no direct assessment for this exists, we instead measured student motivation for reading PSL, their Biology identity, and their perceived learning gains in science. We found that, through the use of the 5CCs as a framework for reading PSL, students were able to integrate previous knowledge and engaged with PSL constructively. Additionally, we saw positive shifts in student motivation for reading PSL, student Biology identity, and student self-reported learning gains in Biology. Taken together, the 5CCs, as a disciplinary framework, have great potential as a pedagogical tool for increasing student engagement with PSL in Biology classrooms.
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- 2022
23. Can Students Evaluate Scientific YouTube Videos? Examining Students' Strategies and Criteria for Evaluating Videos versus Webpages on Climate Change
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Abed, Fayez and Barzilai, Sarit
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Background: YouTube is widely used for learning about scientific issues in and out of school. However, much of the scientific information on YouTube is inaccurate. Prior studies have mostly focused on how students evaluate textual online information sources and have not yet systematically examined how they evaluate authentic scientific YouTube videos. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine how students evaluate authentic scientific YouTube videos in comparison to scientific webpages. Methods: Eighth grade students ranked six YouTube videos on the topic of climate change, justified their rankings, and responded to metacognitive prompts designed to elicit their evaluation criteria and strategies. Students also responded to a parallel webpage evaluation measure. We analysed and compared students' evaluation strategies and criteria. We also examined which evaluation criteria predict students' judgments of YouTube video quality. Results and Conclusions: Students predominantly relied on evaluation of video content, focusing mainly on criteria of communicative quality and explanation quality. Students tended to neglect source expertise and information validity criteria. Students evaluated videos mostly similarly to how they evaluated webpages. However, affective experiences played a greater role in video evaluation; whereas task relevance and verbal quality played a smaller role. Students' evaluation criteria predicted their judgments of video quality. Implications: The findings suggest that students are unprepared for critically evaluating scientific YouTube videos and that digital information literacy instruction should address this gap. The study also identifies some unique challenges of video evaluation that educators should attend to.
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- 2023
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24. Developing a Model for Interdisciplinary Collaboration for STEM Graduate Students
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Kim, Eun Gyong, Baldwin, Matthew, Shin, Aeri, Peyton, Carter, and Fanguy, Mik
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For English as a foreign language (EFL) graduate students in STEM, with the need to publish in an international journal comes the double burden of developing general English language skills and discipline-specific writing skills. To help these students effectively, discipline-specific scientific writing (SW) instruction is necessary but has been scarce in Asian contexts. This study investigates how discipline-specific SW courses were developed for graduate students at a Korean science and engineering university, if the courses were successfully implemented, and what could be done to improve the offering of such courses. The study uses a mixed methods research design, informed by the research paradigm of pragmatism. The dataset used in the present study includes interviews, questionnaire surveys, and performance measurement. Interviews were conducted with six language and five content professors and nine teaching assistants, and 42 students involved in the development and offering of the SW courses. A purposive sampling approach was used in selecting interviewees. In addition, two types of questionnaire surveys were conducted among the students who had taken the courses: 225 participated in the university survey and 312 in the program survey. In addition, a pretest and posttest were given to measure students' improvement in their SW performances. For data analysis, text analysis and descriptive statistics were used. The results show that the courses were well received by all those involved. Students expressed appreciation for their instructor's individual attention and feedback on their writing. Moreover, students' posttest scores showed substantial improvement. On the other hand, the study raises such issues as difficulties in collaboration between the language and content professors and the need to enhance the course's relevance to students' major fields. The study concludes by offering suggestions on how to improve the interdisciplinary aspect of SW courses for STEM students and by providing a recommended model of interdisciplinary collaboration among language and content professors and teaching assistants.
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- 2023
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25. Ten Competencies for the Science Misinformation Crisis
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Allchin, Douglas
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Scientific misinformation and disinformation, proliferating via the internet and social media, are now significant problems. Proposed solutions vary substantially. Here, I describe a set of prospective benchmarks--10 competencies--that seem essential for reorienting science education to address the challenge. They include, first, elements of epistemic motivation, including basic epistemological beliefs about "constructed" knowledge, adopting a posture of respect for empirical evidence, and an understanding of our epistemic dependence on experts. Second, the benchmarks include perspectives and skills in interacting with media sources. These include how to identify experts, how to identify credible gatekeepers, how to recognize deceptive strategies, and how to deal with social networks and technology. Finally, the competencies include self-regulation, such as acknowledging the cognitive dispositions that bias our thinking (especially about information that challenges our pre-existing beliefs) and the counter-balancing role of consensus. I hope that these competency goals can function as a concrete target in guiding discussion of perhaps more complete or more nuanced approaches to the current crisis. With such competencies clearly and explicitly articulated, teachers will be better positioned to develop effective classroom strategies to nurture the relevant competencies.
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- 2023
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26. When and Why Do People Act on Flawed Science? Effects of Anecdotes and Prior Beliefs on Evidence-Based Decision-Making
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Michal, Audrey L., Zhong, Yiwen, and Shah, Priti
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Today's citizens are expected to use evidence, frequently presented in the media, to inform decisions about health, behavior, and public policy. However, science misinformation is ubiquitous in the media, making it difficult to apply research appropriately. Across two experiments, we addressed how anecdotes and prior beliefs impact readers' ability to both identify flawed science and make appropriate decisions based on flawed science in media articles. Each article described the results of flawed research on one of four educational interventions to improve learning (Experiment 1 included articles about having a tidy classroom and exercising while learning; Experiment 2 included articles about using virtual/augmented reality and napping at school). Experiment 1 tested the impact of a single anecdote and found no significant effect on either participants' evidence evaluations or decisions to implement the learning interventions. However, participants were more likely to adopt the more plausible intervention (tidy classroom) despite identifying that it was unsupported by the evidence, suggesting effects of prior beliefs. In Experiment 2, we tested whether this intervention effect was driven by differences in beliefs about intervention plausibility and included two additional interventions (virtual reality = "high plausible," napping = "low plausible"). We again found that participants were more likely to implement "high plausible" than "low plausible" interventions, and that evidence quality was underweighed as a factor in these decisions. Together, these studies suggest that evidence-based decisions are more strongly determined by prior beliefs than beliefs about the quality of evidence itself. [This article was published in "Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications" (EJ1292623).]
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- 2021
27. Opinions and Understandings of Science Center Visitors about Exhibits and Labels
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Laçin-Simsek, Canan and Öztürk, Meltem
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In this study, it is aimed to determine the opinions and understandings of the visitors coming to the science center, which is an informal learning environment, about the exhibits and labels. For this purpose, the opinions of the visitors about the exhibits and labels, their understanding of the exhibits and labels were examined. The research is qualitatively oriented. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The study group of the research consists of 95 people visiting Kocaeli Science Center between October 2017 and December 2018. In the analysis of the data, content analysis was used. It was determined that the visitors found the exhibits beautiful and interesting, generally noticed the labels and read them. These visitors stated that the labels should be more colorful, remarkable, more easily understandable, their fonts should be bigger and the narration of the label could be supported with visual elements. The vast majority of the visitors stated that they understood what was told in the exhibit, but when asked what they understood, it was seen that the majority of them did not understood it, some of them only described how to use the exhibit. It is thought that the findings will contribute to the literature regarding the science centers.
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- 2021
28. Exploring Adolescents' Critical Thinking Aptitudes When Reading about Science in the News
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Bissonnette, Marianne, Chastenay, Pierre, and Francoeur, Chantal
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This research studies the critical thinking skills of six teenagers in their final years of high school. It looks at the way those students use a set of cognitive skills in order to analyze scientific and pseudoscientific information available in online news articles. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six students chosen according to their results in a questionnaire about interest in science topics. Results show a large gap between participants' use of critical thinking skills. Most of these skills were mainly used for text comprehension, evoking general knowledge, numeracy, arguments assessment and production, and life skills (open-mindedness and metacognition). The participants were often confused when they were asked to justify their stances, and when they had to compare arguments' value. This exploratory study could lead to a better understanding of teenagers' strengths and weaknesses in news media literacy, and the part that schools could play in helping students develop them.
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- 2021
29. 'Unless You Can Explain': Voices of Graduate Students and Their Professor Regarding the Importance of Science Communication Course
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Suprapto, Nadi, Ku, Chih-Hsiung, and Chang, Te-Sheng
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This study aimed to analyse the experiences of graduate students and their professor deal with science communication courses. Capturing the nature and the pedagogic experiences of the courses and describing the trend issues around them were the main focus of this study. By using a constructivist approach, eight graduate students and one Professor of science education program at a public university in the East of Taiwan were submitted participant qualitative interviews to discuss their learning experiences in the course. The findings revealed that first; science communication bridges the gap between people and science communities and includes interaction between various other longer-established academic domains. Second, it is about interpersonal and public communication among and by science professionals. Third, it emphasises the importance of communicative pedagogy: instructional design, media and technology, classroom management, interpersonal interaction, and assessment. Fourth, the trending issue around science communication can be reviewed from science content, nature of science, and social cognition theory. This study pinpoints the position of science, communication, and science communication as a package in which giving a linkage between scientists and science communicators as collective roles.
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- 2021
30. Levels and Criteria for Understanding of the Scientific Text in the Pre-University Period
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Olga, Kharitonova, Olga, Fisenko, and Marina, Masyuk
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The article covers the issues concerning the levels and criteria of preparatory department students' understanding of the scientific text. Teaching scientific language presupposes work with scientific texts at a language proficiency level of A1. When teaching how to work with the scientific text, one should consider its pragmatic, contents and cognitive discourse functions. Understanding is a multi-level psychological category, which determines foreign students' way of reading the scientific text. Each of the levels forms certain skills of text understanding. The article proves that comprehension of the depths of meaning is one of the criteria of scientific text understanding.
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- 2021
31. Nature of Science (NOS) Being Acquainted with Science of Science (SoS): Providing a Panoramic Picture of Sciences to Embody NOS for Pre-Service Teachers
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Koponen, Ismo T.
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Understanding about nature of science is important topic in science education as well as in pre-service science teacher education. In science education, Nature of Science (NOS), in its different forms of educational scaffoldings, seeks to provide with students an understanding of features of scientific knowledge and science in general, how scientific knowledge changes and becomes accepted, and what factors guide scientific activities. For a science teacher, deep and broad enough picture of sciences is therefore of importance. This study attempts to show that the research field called Science of Science (SoS) can significantly support building such a panoramic picture of sciences, and through that, significantly support NOS. The SoS approaches the structure and dynamics of science quantitatively, using scientific documents (e.g., publications, reports, books and monographs and patent applications) as trails to map the landscape of sciences. It is argued here that SoS may provide material and interesting cases for NOS, and in so doing enrich NOS in a similarly significant way as history, philosophy and sociology of science (HPSS) scholarship has done thus far. This study introduces several themes based on SoS that are of relevance for NOS as they were introduced and discussed in a pre-service science teachers' course. The feedback from pre-service teachers shows that introducing SoS, with minimal additional philosophical interpretations and discussions, but simply as evidential facts and findings, sparks ideas and views that come very close to NOS themes and topics. Discussions related to nature of science, and specific educational NOS scaffoldings for it, can find a good companion in SoS; the latter providing facts and evidence of thee structure and dynamics of sciences, the former providing perspectives for interpretations.
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- 2021
32. Adapting Literature Critique Engagement Activities for Online Learning Due to COVID-19: Use of Online Learning Groups to Promote Scientific Literacy Capabilities in Undergraduate Nutrition Education
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Beauchamp, David M., Newton, Genevieve, and Monk, Jennifer M.
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Maintaining scientific literacy (SL) skill development in undergraduate science education while transitioning courses from the in-person to online learning environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic requires adaptation of some teaching practices. This study assessed the effectiveness of small online learning groups as the active engagement strategy (replacing in-person breakout groups) to promote SL skill development in fourth year undergraduate nutritional science students in the online learning environment (Fall 2020 semester). As a secondary outcome, SL skill development in the online learning environment (Fall 2020, n=178) was compared to that of the in-person course format (Fall 2019, n=144). Students were surveyed at the start and end of the semester to assess their i) scientific literature comprehension, ii) SL skill perceptions, and iii) practical SL skills. The use of online learning groups contributed to improvements in both literature comprehension and SL skill perceptions (P<0.05), however, practical SL skills remained unchanged (P>0.05). There was no difference in the magnitude of improvement in students' SL skill perceptions or their practical SL skills between course formats (P>0.05). The ability to think critically about the scientific literature was increased in both course formats, with greater improvements observed in the online course format (P=0.02). Additionally, only students in the online course format had improved comprehension of scientific methods versus the in-person format (P=0.05). Collectively, these data demonstrate that the adaptations of an in-person course to an online learning environment using small online learning groups can similarly promote the development of SL in undergraduate nutrition education.
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- 2021
33. The Regime of 'Post-Truth': COVID-19 and the Politics of Knowledge
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Kwok, Henry, Singh, Parlo, and Heimans, Stephen
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The emergence of 'post-truth' is often associated with the rise of conspiracy theories and the lack of trust in scientific knowledge. This article attempts to theorise the complex division of labour in this regime of 'post-truth', with reference to the COVID-19 pandemic/infodemic. First, we argue that the 'post-truth' condition mirrors what Foucault called the 'will to truth', and that this challenges the procedures and systems by which truth and knowledge are ordered. Second, through Basil Bernstein's extension of Foucault's work, we argue that the era of post-truth has two features regarding the condition of knowledge: (1) that conflicts in the field of knowledge recontextualisation, that is, the pedagogisation of knowledge, are becoming more intense and visible, and (2) that greater exposure to high-stakes, uncertain scientific knowledge, which grows at exponential rate, increases social anxieties and leads to biopoliticisation of neoliberal responsibilisation.
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- 2023
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34. Motivations and Deterrents in Contemporary Science Communication: A Questionnaire Survey of Actors in Seven European Countries
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Wilkinson, Clare, Milani, Elena, Ridgway, Andy, and Weitkamp, Emma
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As the ecosystem of actors communicating science has become more complex, there is a need to understand the motivations and deterrents of those involved in the communication of science, technology and health topics. This article reports on a survey of 465 communication actors based in seven European countries. The findings suggest strong commonalities between role and country, with personal enthusiasm a key motivator, and from a theoretical perspective, these motivations can be viewed as relatively pragmatic. More variation was found between countries and roles in barriers to communication, though these suggest a perception that institutions do not value this work.
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- 2023
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35. Negotiating Scientific Knowledge in the Development of an eHealth MOOC
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Gilstad, Heidi, Skogen, Martha, Toussaint, Pieter, Larsen, Cathrin B., and Faxvaag, Arild
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Interdisciplinary team communication in eHealth development is challenging because all disciplines have unique, intrinsic discursive practices, theories and artefacts. Due to these factors, members of interdisciplinary teams can experience problems in communication and collaboration. Through a centered focus, members can benefit individually, inspire one another, and ultimately reach a timely delivery of their common pedagogical goal(s). Using the lens of dialogism, this paper aims to identify the conceptual considerations that arose during the development of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for higher education in eHealth. Methods included auto-ethnography and interdisciplinary dialogue supported by literacy artefacts, including visual material. Results yielded a visual tool for meta-assessment of team communication, and an organizing principle for topics in the MOOC. A major implication is that especially for eHealth, scientific communicative competence of experts--while establishing a common understanding--can lead to a unique and meaningful delivery of high pedagogical quality.
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- 2023
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36. International vs National Academic Bibliographies. A Comparative Analysis of Publication and Citation Patterns in Scopus, Google Scholar, and the Hungarian Scientific Bibliography
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Gergo Háló and Márton Demeter
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Following academic globalization, successful integration into the international research community is a fundamental interest for all participating countries. The success of these internationalization processes, however, are often under scrutiny, and the results are rarely unequivocal. This holds true for Central and Eastern Europe, which usually is described as a semiperipheral region of global knowledge production. Analyzing the publication and citation indices of 365 Hungarian social scientists in one national (Hungarian Scientific Bibliography) and two global (Scopus, Google Scholar) databases, we explicate the current international impact of Hungarian academic research while exploring pivotal factors behind the major differences between databases. Our results indicate that Hungarian scholars lag behind their peers in neighboring countries, necessitating effective policy measures. To this end, the analysis recommends the use of standardized global publication databases instead of national datasets, while still acknowledging the shortcomings of the latter in research assessment protocols.
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- 2023
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37. Using an Explicit Query and a Topic Model for Scientific Article Recommendation
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Smail, Boussaadi, Aliane, Hassina, and Abdeldjalil, Ouahabi
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The search for relevant scientific articles is a crucial step in any research project. However, the vast number of articles published and available online in digital databases (Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, etc.) can make this task tedious and negatively impact a researcher's productivity. This article proposes a new method of recommending scientific articles that takes advantage of content-based filtering. The challenge is to target relevant information that meets a researcher's needs, regardless of their research domain. Our recommendation method is based on semantic exploration using latent factors. Our goal is to achieve an optimal topic model that will serve as the basis for the recommendation process. Our experiences confirm our performance expectations, showing relevance and objectivity in the results.
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- 2023
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38. Adolescents' Evaluation of Online Scientific Information in Daily Life Contexts: When Sourcing Matters
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Macedo-Rouet, M., Trópia, G., Castilhos, W., Massarani, L., Brasil, V., and Almeida, C.
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Sourcing is the ability to evaluate information by analysing source parameters such as author's expertise on a given topic. Past research, mostly based on school-related materials and tasks, shows that adolescents do not pay attention to source parameters when evaluating online scientific information. However, recent research has suggested that such a 'lack of sourcing' may depend on the purpose for which information seeking takes place. The present study sought (a) to elicit the contexts in which adolescents seek information in their daily lives (included, but not limited to school-related assignments) and (b) to test the assumption that their attention to information sources depends on the purpose of their search. Focus groups were conducted with small groups of teenagers from contrasted socioeconomic backgrounds in two metropolitan areas (Rio de Janeiro and Paris). Five main contexts were identified, ranging from school assignments to monitoring topics of personal interest. Consistent with our assumption, references to sources were more frequent in personal compared with school information seeking contexts. The results suggest that researchers and science educators who wish to develop sourcing strategies among adolescents should use a variety of tasks, building on students' experiences of sourcing in daily life.
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- 2023
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39. A Comparison of Memory Performances for Expository Scientific Prose and Diagram in Flat vs. Spatially Distributed Layouts in Virtual Reality
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Elif S¸ener
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Unlike desktop computers, reading in virtual reality allows the reader and the information to cohabit in the three-dimensional space. However, virtual reality typography rarely exploits the new affordances three-dimensionality offers. This study addressed the need to understand the contributions of spatially distributed layouts on expository text memory. An experiment with 40 college students was conducted to compare recall and recognition performances in two conditions; a flat layout without any spatial attributions to test baseline memory ability and a condition using a virtual reality-based, spatial layout. It was hypothesized that spatial layout assist in retrieving information from scientific expository text, which tends to have a difficult word or syntax structure and high conceptual density. Multiple regression analysis showed that using spatially distributed layouts to retrieve information did not provide an increase in both recall and recognition of the participants. A thematic analysis of interviews suggested that customizing the text layout through interactions would be helpful for information retrieval. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]
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- 2023
40. Asking Questions about Scientific Articles--Identifying Large N Studies with LLMs
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Razvan Paroiu, Stefan Ruseti, Mihai Dascalu, Stefan Trausan-Matu, and Danielle S. McNamara
- Abstract
The exponential growth of scientific publications increases the effort required to identify relevant articles. Moreover, the scale of studies is a frequent barrier to research as the majority of studies are low or medium-scaled and do not generalize well while lacking statistical power. As such, we introduce an automated method that supports the identification of large-scale studies in terms of population. First, we introduce a training corpus of 1229 manually annotated paragraphs extracted from 20 articles with different structures and considered populations. Our method considers prompting a FLAN-T5 language model with targeted questions and paragraphs from the previous corpus so that the model returns the number of participants from the study. We adopt a dialogic extensible approach in which the model is asked a sequence of questions that are gradual in terms of focus. Second, we use a validation corpus with 200 articles labeled for having N larger than 1000 to assess the performance of our language model. Our model, without any preliminary filtering with heuristics, achieves an F1 score of 0.52, surpassing previous analyses performed that obtained an F1 score of 0.51. Moreover, we achieved an F1 score of 0.69 when combined with previous extraction heuristics, thus arguing for the robustness and extensibility of our approach. Finally, we apply our model to a newly introduced dataset of ERIC publications to observe trends across the years in the Education domain. A spike was observed in 2019, followed by a decrease in 2020 and, afterward, a positive trend; nevertheless, the overall percentage is lower than 3%, suggesting a major problem in terms of scale and the need for a change in perspective.
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- 2023
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41. Investigating Factors That Influence Students' Ability to Seek Online Bilingual Scientific Information
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Archila, Pablo Antonio, Ortiz, Brigithe Tatiana, Truscott de Mejía, Anne-Marie, and Restrepo, Silvia
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Purpose: Seeking online bilingual scientific information is a key aspect of bilingual scientific Web literacy -- abilities to engage critically with science on the Web using two languages. This study aims to determine whether factors such as age, education major, gender and type of school attended at secondary level (monolingual, bilingual, trilingual) influence undergraduates' ability to search online Spanish-English bilingual scientific information. Design/methodology/approach: The participants in this study were 60 students (43 females and 17 males, 18-25 years old) enrolled in a university bilingual science course at a high-ranked Colombian university. They were asked to complete two tasks in which they had to seek online scientific information in Spanish and in English and post their responses on the Web application, Padlet® (padlet.com). Findings: Results indicate that students' gender and age influence their academic performance in both tasks and level of originality in using information obtained via the Web, respectively. Moreover, the "scientific journal" was the top source of online information from which participants sought most information to complete both tasks. Originality/value: People are becoming increasingly accustomed to seeking and sharing online scientific information to support points of view and make decisions. However, it is not known which factors influence students' ability to seek online first language-English bilingual scientific information in countries where English is the second or foreign language.
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- 2023
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42. Desettling Science through Partnership
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Sara Tolbert, Helen Mora, Matiu Ratima, and Mel Tainui
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In this article we share how developing and following tikanga was integral to our enactment of mana orite in the local curriculum as we (tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti) collaborated on a Year 7 science unit: Plants, Place, and People. Our initial thinking as we approached this unit had been to look for connections between matauranga Maori, the New Zealand science curriculum, and a prior unit on plants that the lead teacher partner had developed. However, through ongoing conversations with tangata whenua, mana whenua, and kaiako Maori at the outset and throughout this work, we concluded that this approach was misguided. Instead, we recognised that for this unit on plants, it made more sense to start with matauranga Maori o te ao turoa--Maori knowledge about the natural world--and then use matauranga Maori and science as lenses for understanding plants, place, people, and the relationships between them. Findings reveal how this mohiotanga-enhancing approach created space for students in a superdiverse classroom to share their own narratives and experiences, in a process of "desettling" expectations in science.
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- 2023
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43. Assessing Scientific Literacy Skill Perceptions and Practical Capabilities in Fourth Year Undergraduate Biological Science Students
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Cartwright, Nadia M., Liddle, Danyelle M., Arceneaux, Benjamin, Newton, Genevieve, and Monk, Jennifer M.
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In a fourth year undergraduate nutritional toxicology course that included an instructional emphasis on scientific literature critique activities and assessments, we determined the change in students' (n=144) scientific literacy (SL) skills. The change in students' perceived and practical SL skills were determined by the completion of two surveys, administered at the start and end of the semester. Additionally, we conducted a follow-up SL survey at the end of the subsequent academic semester (i.e., four months later) to determine if students retained any improvements in their SL skills. Over the semester, students showed improvements in their perceived capabilities of all SL skill parameters assessed (P<0.05); however, the most significant gains were apparent in the areas of i) knowledge application (specifically identifying novel problems or research questions and using new information to address unfamiliar problems or knowledge gaps), and ii) knowledge translation and communication (translating complex information from the scientific literature into clear and understandable terms). There was no change in students TOSLS score between the start and end of the semester (P>0.05). In the follow-up SL survey students showed further improvements in their perceptions of the SL skills for 7 of the 10 parameters assessed compared to the end of the previous semester (P<0.05), however, there remained no change in their practical SL skills assessed using TOSLS. Collectively, this data demonstrates that students' perceptions of their SL capabilities may not align with their practical capabilities.
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- 2020
44. Transfer of Learning for Evidence-Based Practice in Psychology
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Jiménez-Pérez, Ana L. and Vargas-Contreras, Eunice
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The aim of this paper is to assess the transfer of learning of students from a master's degree in psychology through observation of their skills in information assessment and intervention. The participants were 10 incoming students of a professional-aimed master's program in psychology offered in a Mexican public university. They carried out two types of tasks: a) review of a scientific text and b) interaction in intervention with clients, where the participants were evaluated by observational strategies. The results reflect zero relation between the level of skill displayed by most students in their information assessment skills and their intervention skills, which could suggest a low probability to conduct evidence-based practice. The data presented provide information for the design of graduate programs in order to foster the transfer of learning of these skills, which is essential for evidence-based practice.
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- 2020
45. Introducing Animal-Assisted Intervention for Special Education in Integrated Farming System
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Zhi, Teh Xian, Aziz, Zalena Abdul, and Taib, Nooriati
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Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopment disorder that affects an individual's social skills, communication skills and repetitive behaviours. Due to these factors, an autism learning environment has to be purposely-built to cater for the sensory needs of these learners. In special education practice, animal-assisted intervention has become popular over recent years to this end. This study aims to analyse the practice of animal-assisted intervention in an autism learning environment with the aid of a sustainable system called an integrated farming system. The study is conducted using mixed methods, involving content analysis of the technical information and detailed drawings of an integrated farming system, as well as an online survey about the implementation of the intervention in autism classrooms via such a system. Our findings show that the technical drawings for implementing an integrated farming system in the built environment represent an architectural intervention. The online survey also shows positive feedback from experts in autism services. The study concludes that animal-assisted autism learning is a promising future model for special education. It also suggests that an integrated farming system is a potential nature-based livestock farming solution to include animals in a farm-based autism educational setting. This could serve as a reference and basis for future architects or researchers to extend the research or implement animal-assisted interventions in real practices.
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- 2020
46. A Student Organization's Use of Social Media in Promoting the Geosciences
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Landicho, Christoper Jan Bacurin
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Social media has changed the landscape of human communication and interaction. Scientists, researchers, and scientific organizations are now gradually engaging in these online platforms. Understanding how social media works requires a closer look at the current practices and beliefs of its users. This study sought to determine how an undergraduate student organization used social media in achieving its goal of promoting the geosciences. It also aimed to describe the perceived usefulness of social media in this endeavor. To this end, members of the University of the Philippines Geological Society answered an online survey. Results revealed that the majority of the respondents use social media to acquire and disseminate geoscience-related content. They expressed positive perceptions of its use in promoting the geosciences. Content analysis of the organization's Facebook page showed that it was used for academic and non-academic organizational activities. It is recommended that similar studies involving more groups and social media platforms be conducted.
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- 2020
47. Critical Rationalism and Trust in Science
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Chmielewski, Adam
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In this paper, I consider whether the critical rationalist philosophy of science may provide a rationale for trusting scientific knowledge. In the first part, I refer to several insights of Karl Popper's social and political philosophy in order to see whether they may be of help in offsetting the distrust of science spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the second part, I address the more general issue of whether the theoretical principles of the critical rationalist philosophy of science may afford a foundation for building trust in science. Both parts of the discussion, confined for the sake of the argument largely to the repudiation of the concept of good reasons for considering a theory to be true, imply that this question would have to be answered negatively. Against this, I argue that such a conclusion is based on a misconception of the nature of scientific knowledge: critical rationalism views science as a cognitive regime which calls for bold theories and at the same time demands a rigorous and continuous distrust towards them, and it is precisely this attitude that should be adopted as a compelling argument for trusting science.
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- 2022
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48. Motivating and Shaping Scientific Argumentation in Lab Reports
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Gouvea, Julia, Appleby, Lara, Fu, Liren, and Wagh, Aditi
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Writing a lab report can be an opportunity for students to engage in scientific thinking. Yet students' lab reports often do not exhibit evidence of such engagement. Students' writing can appear focused on "filling in" required components and reporting on predetermined conclusions. We conducted a design experiment in an introductory biology laboratory course and examined the impact on students' engagement in argumentation in lab reports. Over two design iterations, students' arguments more often considered and integrated multiple claims, included a broader range of evidence and ideas, and gave appropriate attention to uncertainty in conclusions. We argue that two interrelated changes to the design of the lab course made these shifts possible. First, we restructured the role of instructors to position them as an audience interested in students' thinking. Second, we introduced more uncertainty into the lab activities to provoke consideration of multiple interpretations. We propose that these changes created a different "rhetorical context" that helped motivate and shape students' engagement in argumentation. More broadly, we suggest that an important alternative to explicitly scaffolding knowledge and skills is to design learning environments that can inspire students to engage in a range of scientific practices more authentically.
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- 2022
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49. Do We Have a 'Trust' Problem? Exploring Undergraduate Student Views on the Tentativeness and Trustworthiness of Science
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Cobern, William W., Adams, Betty A. J., Pleasants, Brandy A.-S, Bentley, Andrew, and Kagumba, Robert
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Science includes the fundamental attributes of durability and uncertainty; hence, we teach about the "tentative yet durable" nature of science. Public discourse can be different, where one hears both confidence about "settled science" and doubts about "just theories." The latter observation gives rise to the possibility that emphasis on learning the tentative nature of science offers some people the actionable option of declining to accept canonical science. Our paper reports the findings from initial and replication exploratory studies involving about 500 preservice, elementary/middle school teacher education students at a large Midwestern public university. Using a survey method that included opportunities for student comments, the study tested hypotheses about confidence in the veracity, durability, tentativeness, and trustworthiness of science. We found that most students embrace noncontroversial science as correct, and that almost all embraced the tentative nature of science regardless of what they thought about controversial topics. However, when asked about the trustworthiness of science, many students were not willing to say that they trust scientific knowledge. Even students strongly supportive of science, including controversial science, responded similarly. And why did they say that science is not trustworthy? The explanation echoed by many students was that scientific knowledge is tentative. Our paper concludes with implications for instruction and research. Our findings suggest that it would be prudent for science educators to increase instructional focus on the relationship between data and evidence that leads to the durability of scientific knowledge. Future research needs to thoroughly investigate the public interpretation of what we teach about the nature and characteristics of science, and for the implications it might have on how scientific knowledge is or is not incorporated in the development and implementation of public policy.
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- 2022
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50. 'Trust Me, I'm a Scientist' How Philosophy of Science Can Help Explain Why Science Deserves Primacy in Dealing with Societal Problems
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Blancke, Stefaan and Boudry, Maarten
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Modern democratic societies tend to appeal to the authority of science when dealing with important challenges and solving their problems. Nevertheless, distrust in science remains widespread among the public, and, as a result, scientific voices are often ignored or discarded in favour of other perspectives. Though superficially "democratic", such a demotion of science in fact hinders democratic societies in effectively tackling their problems. Worryingly, some philosophers have provided ammunition to this distrust and scepticism of science. They either portray science as an institution that has unrightfully seized political power, or they claim that science constitutes only one voice among many and that scientists should know their proper place in our societies. As philosophers of science, we believe that it is potentially dangerous to undermine trust in science in this way. Instead, we believe that philosophers should help people to understand why science, even though it is far from perfect, deserves our trust and its special standing in modern societies. In this paper, we outline what such an explanation may look like from a naturalistic and pragmatic perspective, and we discuss the implications for the role of philosophy of science in science education.
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- 2022
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