Maureen Reed

The relative effects of university success courses and individualized interventions for students with learning disabilities

Little is known about the relative effects of post‐secondary learning services for students with learning disabilities. We compared outcomes for students with learning disabilities who selected to: (1) take an academic learning success course (course‐intervention), (2) have regular individual interventions (high‐intervention) or (3) use services only as needed (low‐intervention). Pre‐ and post‐test comparisons revealed improvements in academic self‐efficacy and academic resourcefulness for students in the course‐ and high‐intervention groups. The course‐intervention group also showed decreases in their failure attributions to bad luck and increases in their general repertoire of learned resourcefulness skills in comparison to the high‐intervention group and had significantly higher year‐end GPAs in comparison to the low‐intervention group. Here we find positive outcomes for students with learning disabilities taking a course that teaches post‐secondary learning and academic skills.

Factors influencing academic success and retention following a 1st-year post-secondary success course

We examined the psycho-social factors predicting performance and retention following a post-secondary success course that was developed after Rosenbaums (1990, 2000) model of self-control and the academic success literature. Before and after the course, students completed measures assessing general and academic resourcefulness, academic self-efficacy, explanatory style for failure, anxiety, impulsivity, inattentiveness, and hyperactivity. Students who were most disadvantaged at the onset of the course were more likely to show the most gains in many of these measures. Students showing the greatest improvements in academic self-control and the greatest declines in hyperactivity-impulsivity following the course were more likely to attain the highest 2nd-term grades. Students deciding not to return to university for their 2nd year had impoverished general or academic resourcefulness skills or both. Suggestions are provided to help educators reach these students.

Collaboration between Librarians and Teaching Faculty to Teach Information Literacy at One Ontario University: Experiences and Outcomes

Purpose: In this study, we sought to describe information literacy success outcomes for students who participated in a university course where university librarians and teaching faculty collaborated in all aspects of the course including; curricular development, assignment development, in-class teaching, office hours for individual student development, and assessment activities. The authors wanted to examine student success in attaining information literacy skills following this one semester course. Further, the authors wanted to determine what difficulties in achieving expected information literacy levels persist even after intensive collaborative instruction. Finally, the authors wished to describe the challenges of these collaborations. Methodology: The focus of this study was to determine changes in first-year university students’ information literacy knowledge and skill following a thirteen week university preparation course that was developed through strong collaboration between university librarians and teaching faculty. Students entering their first semester of university were tested on their information literacy skills without feedback. They then took part in the required course and were post tested in the last week of the semester. Findings: Student showed strong increases in information literacy from this collaborative approach. In addition, teaching faculty and librarians felt positive about the collaborative experience. However, some students showed misunderstandings about information literacy that requires further research. Originality and Practical Implications: Our unique contribution here is our description, experiences and detailed outcomes with a collaborative process to teach information literacy. Based on our experiences here, we believe that collaboration will work best if it is planned at a curricular level, if the librarians are truly integrated into the classroom, if the librarians provide input on assignments and help with student feedback, and if targeted information literacy knowledge is tested. This planning takes time, but the librarians offer unique contributions and insight into issues surrounding information literacy that may not be obvious to faculty instructors. In our study, we also found that students confuse assignment requirements with general information literacy standards and those teaching information literacy need to be aware of these confusions. Finally, integration of librarians into college/university courses has benefits in terms of increases in student information literacy and increases in librarian knowledge of faculty expectations.

A New Look at Retest Learning in Older Adults: Learning in the Absence of Item-Specific Effects

We investigated retest learning (i.e., performance improvement through retest practice) in the absence of item-specific effects (i.e., learning through memorizing or becoming familiar with specific items) with older adults. Thirty-one older adults (ages 60-82 years, M = 71.10, SD = 6.27) participated in an eight-session self-guided retest program. To eliminate item-specific effects, parallel versions of representative psychometric measures for Inductive Reasoning, Perceptual Speed, and Visual Attention were developed and administered across retest sessions. The results showed substantial non-item-specific retest learning, even controlling for anxiety, suggesting that retest learning in older adults can occur at a more conceptual level.

The impact of reasons for attending university on academic resourcefulness and adjustment

It is a well-known phenomenon that generally resourceful students are more likely to employ specific self-control skills, such as academic resourcefulness, to overcome stressors in their life, and as a result, are more likely to be better adjusted, to receive higher grades, and to remain in university than their less resourceful counterparts. To what extent the reasons students attend university further explains academic resourcefulness and why some students fail to persevere with academic challenges were examined in this study. A sample of 481 undergraduate students completed scales assessing general and academic resourcefulness, academic self-efficacy, explanatory style, university adaptation, and reasons for attending university. Students were also asked questions concerning retention, and expected and past grade performance. The results showed that students attending university for more internal reasons and less so to please others and to delay responsibilities uniquely contributed to higher levels of academic resourcefulness. Insight as to why some students may attribute academic failure to lack of effort and personal ability, be less adjusted, decide to leave university, and be expecting and attaining lower grades is provided.

Compensatory plasticity in the deaf brain: effects on perception of music.

When one sense is unavailable, sensory responsibilities shift and processing of the remaining modalities becomes enhanced to compensate for missing information. This shift, referred to as compensatory plasticity, results in a unique sensory experience for individuals who are deaf, including the manner in which music is perceived. This paper evaluates the neural, behavioural and cognitive evidence for compensatory plasticity following auditory deprivation and considers how this manifests in a unique experience of music that emphasizes visual and vibrotactile modalities.

The influence of reasons for attending university on university experience: A comparison between students with and without disabilities

Students choose to go to university for many reasons. They include those with disabilities and those without. The reasons why students with disabilities go to university and how these reasons impact university experience, including coping (academic resourcefulness), adapting, academic ability beliefs (academic self-efficacy), and grades, are investigated. Results show that unlike non-disabled peers, first-year students with disabilities who go to university for internal reasons (e.g. for the challenge, because they like learning) show higher academic resourcefulness and self-efficacy, and that those disabled students who choose to go to university in order to get a better job show higher academic self-efficacy. Upper-year students with disabilities less often choose to go to university for others and in order to get a better job than counterparts without disabilities. Upper-year students with disabilities less often choose to go to university for the university features (e.g. student services) than first-year students with disabilities. Upper-year students with disabilities choosing to go to university in order to delay responsibilities are less adapted, and those choosing to go for the reason of getting a better job have lower grades. Recommendations on strategies to increase student coping and self-efficacy and the need for qualitative research are made.

Re-conceptualizing stress: Shifting views on the consequences of stress and its effects on stress reactivity

Background The consequences of stress are typically regarded from a deficit-oriented approach, conceptualizing stress to be entirely negative in its outcomes. This approach is unbalanced, and may further hinder individuals from engaging in adaptive coping. In the current study, we explored whether negative views and beliefs regarding stress interacted with a stress framing manipulation (positive, neutral and negative) on measures of stress reactivity for both psychosocial and physiological stressors. Method Ninety participants were randomized into one of three framing conditions that conceptualized the experience of stress in balanced, unbalanced-negative or unbalanced-positive ways. After watching a video on stress, participants underwent a psychosocial (Trier Social Stress Test), or a physiological (CO2 challenge) method of stress-induction. Subjective and objective markers of stress were assessed. Results Most of the sampled population regarded stress as negative prior to framing. Further, subjective and objective reactivity were greater to the TSST compared to the CO2 challenge. Additionally, significant cubic trends were observed in the interactions of stress framing and stress-induction methodologies on heart rate and blood pressure. Balanced framing conditions in the TSST group had a significantly larger decrease in heart rate and diastolic blood pressure following stress compared to the positive and negative framing conditions. Conclusion Findings confirmed a deficit-orientation of stress within the sampled population. In addition, results highlighted the relative efficacy of the TSST compared to CO2 as a method of stress provocation. Finally, individuals in framing conditions that posited stress outcomes in unbalanced manners responded to stressors less efficiently. This suggests that unbalanced framing of stress may have set forth unrealistic expectations regarding stress that later hindered individuals from adaptive responses to stress. Potential benefits of alternative conceptualizations of stress on stress reactivity are discussed, and suggestions for future research are made.

Multitasking in the classroom: Testing an educational intervention as a method of reducing multitasking:

Increasingly, students engage in multitasking during lecture by shifting their attention between class material and irrelevant information from texts and webpages. It is well established that this divided attention impairs memory and learning. Less is known about how to correct the problem. This study used an educational intervention in the form of a PowerPoint presentation that informed students in the experimental condition about the deleterious effects of multitasking. Students were randomly assigned to the experimental condition, the placebo condition (a slideshow about sleep), or no intervention. Participants self-reported the percentage of the time they multitasked in class and paid attention at two time points, baseline (before the intervention), and in a second lab visit 3 weeks later. The experimental intervention did not reduce student multitasking or increase student attention, relative to the other conditions. Supplementary research questions examined students’ beliefs about multitasking, finding that most thought it decreased their grades. The correlations between grade point average, stress, and boredom proneness, on one hand, and baseline attention and multitasking in class, on the other, were also inspected, revealing that students with higher grade point average pay more attention in class and multitask less. Suggestions for future research to reduce multitasking are made, including having students engage in multitasking to observe the effect on their memory retention.

Multistable Perception in Older Adults: Constructing a Whole from Fragments.

Visual perception is constructive in nature; that is, a coherent whole is generated from ambiguous fragments that are encountered in dynamic visual scenes. Creating this coherent whole from fragmented sensory inputs requires one to detect, identify, distinguish and organize sensory input. The organization of fragments into a coherent whole is facilitated by the continuous interactions between lower level sensory inputs and higher order processes. However, age-related declines are found in both neural structures and cognitive processes (e.g., attention and inhibition). The impact of these declines on the constructive nature of visual processing was the focus of this study. Here we asked younger adults, young-old (65–79 years), and old-old adults (80+ years) to view a multistable figure (i.e., Necker cube) under four conditions (free, priming, volition, and adaptation) and report, via a button press, when percepts spontaneously changed. The oldest-olds, unlike young-olds and younger adults, were influenced by priming, had less visual stability during volition and showed less ability to adapt to multistable stimuli. These results suggest that the ability to construct a coherent whole from fragments declines with age. More specifically, vision is constructed differently in the old-olds, which might influence environmental interpretations and navigational abilities in this age group.