Jocelyn Evans

Factors in Information Literacy Education

Information literacy has long been discussed in the field of library science but is only recently becoming applied in specific academic disciplines. This article assesses student learning of information literacy skills analyzing data collected from three semesters of the Introduction to Comparative Politics course. Variables such as major discipline, gender, class year, and grades on several performance indicators are used to identify key patterns in successful information literacy learning among students. Questions that drive this research include: How do major disciplines approach information literacy differently. Is information literacy discipline specific? Does gender affect information literacy aptitude? Do upper-division students still need information literacy education? Which students are most deficient in their pretest knowledge of information literacy? What types of exercises are effective in teaching information literacy? Through analysis of our data, we address these questions and isolate the most significant factors in student learning of information literacy skills. Our data suggest that information literacy knowledge is content sensitive. Not only is information literacy significantly associated with several performance indicators, information literacy appears to be discipline specific.

Teaching Better, Teaching Together: A Coordinated Student Exit Poll Across the States

Student exit polling has demonstrated value in the classroom (Berry and Robinson 2012; Evans and Lagergren 2007; Lelieveldt and Rossen 2009), but faculty typically operate these polls in isolation. When faculty collaborate, however, students gain additional benefits from the experience. Collaboration provides a geographically diverse “student community” that allows students to engage in experiential learning beyond the confines of their immediate classrooms. The authors have created assignments and an instructors manual on running student exit polls in undergraduate courses. Three institutions used these assignments during the Fall 2012 semester. By using structured assignments, these instructors created an opportunity to participate collaboratively with others in survey design and data analysis. Student assessment data showed that students explored their own political communities and honed skills across learning domains. Most importantly, students applied relevant political science concepts to the electoral process, exercised critical thinking, practiced oral and written communication, and grappled with project management. This type of collaboration provides political perspective and community engagement within political science for both faculty and students.

Telling the Story of the American Presidency: Examining the Content and Perspective of Presidency Chapters in Introductory American Politics Texts

While previous scholarship suggests that “American government textbooks are more alike than they are different,” an examination of the markets most frequently adopted texts suggests that this consistency does not extend much further than the subjects of major chapters. We explore the degree to which four major introductory American politics texts provide a standardized curriculum concerning the American presidency. We utilize five distinct lenses to capture explicit and implicit features of the text: organization, emphasis, illustration, evidence, and perspective. Findings suggest that texts differ in meaningful ways in terms of content, emphasis, and perspective.

How the Mall Means: An Analysis of the National Mall as a Cohesively Built Environment

Abstract The National Mall is the focus of millions of visitors to the Americas capital, Washington, DC, each year. Todays Mall is the product of three significant periods of planning and development. This article examines the L’Enfant Plan, the McMillan Plan, and the National Park Service Master Plan to understand the ways in which this public space has evolved as well as the referential meaning it holds for us today. Through Goodmans theoretical framework, the Mall is perceived as a cohesively built environment with potential meaning for reflexive as well as prescriptive implications for American national identity. 1 The object of the present investigation is to prepare for the city of Washington a plan that shall enable future development to proceed along the lines originally planned—namely, the treatment of the city as a work of civic art—and to develop the outlying parks as portions of a single well-considered system. 2

Evaluating the quality of mid-sized city parks: a replication and extension of the Public Space Index

Abstract The current study evaluates the quality of 60 city parks in Northwest Florida, using the Public Space Index developed by Vikas Mehta. This index combines the following five dimensions of public space: inclusiveness, safety, comfort, pleasurability and meaningful activities. It uses 40 variables to score public spaces across these five dimensions. The analysis serves as a replication and extension of the PSI in a mid-sized city environment. The findings attest to the utility of this methodological tool for the study of public space across urban environments, on a larger scale, and across disciplines. However, the discussion and implications suggest the limitations of the PSI for use in smaller cities and less urban environments. The study concludes with specific suggestions for adapting the measures of the PSI to more appropriately capture the quality of public space in these settings.

Preserving the Seminar Experience

ABSTRACT This article presents a new approach to online graduate education. With hopes of recruiting a larger cohort in order to preserve a graduate program struggling with low enrollment, we began offering a limited number of seats to students who would attend class in real time but from remote locations, using a videoconferencing platform. Unlike traditional asynchronous course delivery, we believed that videoconferencing would allow distance learners, with very little intervention, to enter into the give-and-take of classroom discussion and to receive instructor and student feedback in real time. We present some preliminary reflections on our initial experiences with this mode of course delivery and review the data collected from a survey distributed to students enrolled in these courses. We argue that these findings suggest this model serves as an effective hybrid option for distance learners that may help to preserve the traditional graduate seminar for programs across a variety of disciplines.