Lucian F. Dinu

Identifying the Goals of Weather Instruction: Toward a Model Approach for Broadcast Meteorology

For more than forty years, researchers have understood the importance of broadcast meteorology to audiences. Viewers typically list weather among their top reasons for watching the news on television. Despite weathers significance, there is little empirical evidence regarding how college journalism and mass communication programs approach the subject. This study compares how media professionals regard its importance in college education with the views of journalism and mass communication faculty. Broadcasters believe more than faculty do that additional emphasis should be given to weather principles and presentation. An integrated model combining atmospheric science with mass communication courses is recommended.

The social mediated age of information: Twitter and Instagram as tools for information dissemination in higher education

Despite high levels of global connectivity, Americans are generally underinformed about the world. The US Department of Education named social media as a viable option for improving learning objectives, yet minimal research supports such a claim regarding internationalization. While what research exists exclusively investigated Facebook, no research explored the viability of other popular platforms, such as Twitter or Instagram. Through an experimental design conducted on 405 college students, this study probed how the presentation of textually based (Twitter) and visually based (Instagram) messages affected American college students’ recall of digital information. It also investigated how communicator credibility affected the way college students consumed digitally disseminated information. Results showed that information retention was most improved by visually based information published by professional news outlets. Such findings help to better understand the contributions social media are capable of making as information tools, particularly when applied to American post-secondary education.

Online Games as a Component of School Textbooks: A Test Predicting the Diffusion of Interactive Online Games Designed for the Textbook Reformation in South Korea

Currently, the South Korean government is in the process of transforming school textbooks from a paper-based platform to a computer-based digital platform. Along with this effort, interactive online educational games (edu-games) have been examined as a potential component of the digital textbooks. Based on the theory of diffusion of innovations, this study examined how 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students perceive an interactive online edu-game and whether or not their communication attributes predict their willingness to diffuse the game. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed that four perceptions of the innovation – relevant advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability – were statistically significant predictors of students’ willingness to diffuse an online edu-game as indicated by the theory of diffusion of innovations, while only trialability was not. Based on these results, this study provides some implications for the diffusion of interactive online educational games as a potential component of the digital textbook.