North American Universities Research Articles

Data stewardship: case studies from North American, Dutch and Finnish universities

PurposeAs national legislation, federated national services, institutional policies and institutional research service arrangements may differ, data stewardship programs may be organized differently in higher education institutions across the world. This work seeks to elaborate the picture of different data stewardship programs running in different institutional and national research environments.Design/methodology/approachUtilizing a case study design, this study described three distinct data stewardship programs from Purdue University (United States), Delft Technical University (Netherlands) and Aalto University (Finland). In addition, this work investigated the institutional and national research environments of the programs. The focus was on initiatives led by academic libraries or similar services.FindingsThis work demonstrates that data stewardship programs may be organized differently within varying national and institutional contexts. The data stewardship programs varied in terms of roles, organization and funding structures. Furthermore, policies and legislation, organizational structures and national infrastructures differed.Research limitations/implicationsThe data stewardship programs and their contexts develop, and the descriptions presented in this work should be considered as snapshots.Originality/valueThis work broadens the current literature on data stewardship by not only providing detailed descriptions of three distinct data stewardship programs but also highlighting how research environments may affect their organization. We present a summary of key factors in the organization of data stewardship programs.

Teaching Styles in North American University Classrooms: A Corpus-Driven Linguistic Analysis

Teaching Styles in North American University Classrooms: A Corpus-Driven Linguistic Analysis

Language, disciplinarity and identity: an autoethnography of an international interdisciplinary doctoral student

PurposeWhile higher education has been encouraging interdisciplinary research, few studies have been conducted to understand how interdisciplinarity shapes the identity construction of scholars, especially doctoral students who may already strive to socialize into academia.Design/methodology/approachTherefore, this study adopts the approach of autoethnography to analyze my lived experience of developing disciplinary literacy and constructing interdisciplinary identity as a Chinese international doctoral student at a North American university. Communication theory of identity (CTI) is the theoretical framework through which I understand the negotiation among my personal, enacted, relational and communal identities while communicating my research through diverse literacy practices.FindingsThis autoethnography reveals that interdisciplinary doctoral students can flexibly use discursive resources from different disciplines and literacy practices in both English and their first language to dynamically create interdisciplinary identities communicable to different discourse communities. Their identities in different disciplines can develop simultaneously, rather than suppressing one for the development of the other as they do interdisciplinary research.Originality/valueThis study first extends current scholarly discussion of disciplinary literacy to a less-investigated setting, i.e. doctoral education in higher education. Second, it adds an additive and current layer of interdisciplinarity to the existing understanding of international doctoral students’ identity construction. Third, it helps to understand how the development of disciplinary literacy can facilitate disciplinary identity construction and how disciplinary identity construction can facilitate the development of disciplinary literacy.

Factors influencing university teachers’ research productivity in North American universities

Factors influencing university teachers’ research productivity in North American universities

"Development of East Asian Collections in North American university libraries and distribution of Korean studies research materials"

"Development of East Asian Collections in North American university libraries and distribution of Korean studies research materials"

Assaults in public places: interesting numbers from a North American university city

PurposeA growing literature emphasizes violence occurring in public places. Yet, police seldom report such violence separately from violent incidents occurring elsewhere. This paper aims to distinguish assaults that occur in public vs private, outdoors vs indoors and in homes vs the night-time economy.Design/methodology/approachThe authors reorganize police data to classify 1,062 assault locations for Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2020–2021, providing basic descriptive statistics that are seldom calculated or published.FindingsIn this city, almost two-thirds of police-recorded assaults occur away from home, often within night-time economy zones. Almost half of police-recorded assaults occur outdoors.Research limitations/implicationsPublic assaults are probably under-reported and under-recorded in police data. The share of assaults occurring in public is likely to vary greatly among cities, along with reporting practices.Practical implicationsPublic assaults can create special problems for police and social services. Poor management of public space can contribute to such violence. Alcohol policy and enforcement in public places is especially relevant to public assaults. Poor urban design might explain some of the problem.Social implicationsPublic assaults are seen by many people and may do extra harm to children and even adults.Originality/valuePolice reports and academic work based on them seldom distinguish public from private assaults and seldom enumerate outdoor assaults in comparison to those indoors. In addition, statistics estimating violence in the night-time economy might not compare risks to other settings.

Biological engineering – an engineering discipline crucial to the future of our civilization

Abstract Biological engineering is a new engineering discipline that is paving the way for new products and processes based on findings from biology. These allow for environmentally friendly production, use and disposal while at the same time creating high added value. Like any engineering discipline, biological engineering requires a sound university education, which is already being provided at many North American universities. The aim of the article is to motivate policymakers to take note of this development and to establish comparable departments and degree programs in the EU.

Understanding and optimising helmet-related and other health and social effects of the first North American university campus skatepark

ABSTRACT Skateboarding has growing societal uptake, as seen through its inclusion in 2021’s Summer Olympics. To promote positive health and social outcomes, skateparks are being developed around the world. A challenge in optimising skateparks’ benefits lies in reducing injury risk, particularly head trauma. This study occurred at the University of British Columbia Skatepark (July–September 2019) with the goal of identifying and theoretically contextualising facilitators and barriers to helmet use. Participants (total n = 54, 92.6% male) were interviewed (n = 54) and surveyed (n = 27). We performed thematic analysis on the transcripts, finding that barriers to helmet use included helmet discomfort, low perceived risk of injury, cultural norms, and style, and facilitators included a belief that helmets promote safety, higher-risk skating activities, older and younger ages, and role modelling. We propose a conceptual model showing multiple points of intervention to promote skatepark safety beyond helmet use alone, integrating theories of sociology, social psychology, and public health.

AIED in English Preparatory Courses: A Comparative Study of UK and North American Universities and Its Impact on Chinese International Student Mobility

With the development of AI and other computer technologies, AIED has begun to cause new reforms in the international education. At present, most Higher education institutions in European and American countries adopt AIED to varying degrees to assist and improve the teaching environment and teaching experience of international students. This article will mainly compare the application of AIED in universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, interview Chinese students and faculty at each university through questionnaires, and analyze the interviewers attitudes towards AIED. This article will also collect reviews from international students and international education practitioners on some commonly used learning assistance platforms based on AI technology, such as MOOCS and Grammarly. This article decoded the collected interview comments and coded and integrated similar information as well. The final conclusion of this article is that the vast majority of educational professionals and international students believe that the benefits of AIEDs application outweigh the disadvantages, but ethical consideration could be drastically significant.

The Uses of X/Twitter by Members of the TESOL Community

A lack of dialogue and collaboration between researchers and practitioners has been recognized in the field of second language education. Social media platforms such as X/Twitter have potential for connecting professionals in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) community and supporting professional learning and research; however, studies of TESOL professionals’ uses of X/Twitter have only examined posts/tweets from a limited number of communities marked by hashtags/ keywords. This study identifies 23 hashtags relevant to TESOL instruction for adults in the Canadian context and used them as search parameters to extract a data set of 4,833 posts/tweets. Eighty-two North American university professors who had published in the field of TESOL, were selected and searched for on X/Twitter. Upon locating 15 X/Twitter professor accounts, all 272 posts/tweets posted over the one-year period, were extracted. Two content analyses were conducted to infer the purpose of the posts/ tweets and identify the hashtags used by the professors. Results reveal considerable variation in the professors’ and other TESOL community members’ uses of X/Twitter and suggest that the two groups participate in rather separate X/Twitter communities. Recommendations for maximizing X/Twitter as a tool for professional learning and research and fostering the research-practice link are provided.

Implementation of sustainability principles in landscape architecture education: an examination of faculty attitudes and course syllabi

Purpose This study aims to investigate the integration of education for sustainable development (ESD) into landscape architecture (LA) programs in North American universities to understand its benefits and challenges and provide insights into the implementation of sustainability principles, pedagogies and teaching methods. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzed survey data from 128 LA faculty members from 85 Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture member schools. The survey assessed the implementation of sustainability principles, pedagogies, teaching benefits and challenges to integrating sustainability into their courses. To complement the survey data, 62 LA course syllabi were analyzed using a grounded theory approach to identify the topics covered, learning objectives and learning activities. Findings The study revealed that LA programs incorporate sustainability topics in various courses using project-based and interdisciplinary learning approaches. Integrating ESD into LA curricula promotes sustainability literacy, improved understanding of sustainability concepts and the development of sustainability skills. The study also found positive correlations between teaching methods, the enhancement of sustainability literacy and the development of design and planning skills. Originality/value This research examined the effects of teaching methods on student learning outcomes and the challenges instructors faced, providing practical insights into the integration of ESD in LA education. It offers recommendations to enhance the ESD knowledge of future LA practitioners, considering the inclusion of ESD as a core value of the standard by the Landscape Architectural Accreditation Board.

Assessing Numerical Analysis Performance with the Practi Mobile App

Numerical analysis is a unique combination of mathematical and computing skills. It facilitates a deeper understanding of data analytics and machine learning software libraries, which are exploding in use and importance. However, it is a topic that continues to challenge students because it requires a confluence of conceptual, procedural, and computational skills and associated pedagogies. Therefore, it is valuable to identify effective pedagogies and tools to enhance and assess student numerical analysis skills. Despite the proliferation of mobile technology in postsecondary education, its role in the context of numerical analysis is largely unknown. This quasi-experimental pilot study used Practi, an educational mobile app designed to assess numerical analysis performance and promote both retrieval practice and deliberate practice, which have been shown to help improve performance and develop expertise. Participants were 32 undergraduate students enrolled in a second-year introductory Numerical Analysis course at a large North American university. They were prompted to use Practi to solve quizzes on a regular basis throughout the course, before and after each lecture, to promote deliberate practice and spaced retrieval. Results of a paired t-test analysis showed that Practi was able to detect improvement in student quiz performance after the lectures compared to before the lectures. Additionally, performance on the Practi quizzes after the lectures was positively associated with the overall course performance. This suggests that mobile apps supporting deliberate and retrieval practice can complement more traditional means of instruction and assessment of numerical analysis in postsecondary mathematics education.

Examining Experiences of Campus Recreation Staff Who Serve College Students With Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities (IDD): A Special Olympics Unified Sports® Study

Recreation and sports participation can produce social health benefits for college students with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD). Despite growing numbers of college students with IDD on college campuses, literature exploring inclusion within campus recreation is limited. To understand the inclusion, or lack thereof, of college students with IDD in campus recreation, experiences and attitudes of campus recreation staff ( N = 24) were examined. A mixed methods study design, including web-based surveys and semi-structured interviews was used to collect data from participants at three North American universities. Results of Multivariate Analysis of Variance and thematic analysis revealed successes, challenges, and barriers among campus recreation staff for implementing inclusion. A significant difference in perception of campus as being more inclusive between the university with Unified Sports affiliated with Special Olympics club and the university with Unified Sports affiliated with the university was also identified. Lastly, resources and strategies for inclusion were revealed as a need.

188P North American college students experience gap in online access to vaping cessation resources

188P North American college students experience gap in online access to vaping cessation resources

Exploring behavioural patterns and their relationships with social annotation outcomes

AbstractBackgroundSocial annotation has emerged as a promising educational technology that fosters collaborative reading and discussion of digital resources among learners. While the positive impact of social annotation on students' learning process and performance is widely acknowledged, students' behavioural patterns in social annotation are underexplored.ObjectivesThis study investigated patterns in students' use of annotation and response behaviours in social annotation activities. We also explored how students' performance in the behavioural, cognitive, emotional, and social dimensions varied based on their behavioural patterns.MethodsWe recruited 93 undergraduates who were enrolled in an elective course at a large North American University. Students were tasked with collaboratively annotating the class readings uploaded to Perusall, a social annotation platform, over 7 weeks. We used metaclustering to determine the optimal number of clusters pertaining to student behaviours. We compared the differences among clusters across multiple performance dimensions.Results and ConclusionsTwo distinct clusters were identified and defined as initiators and responders. We found that responders had significantly longer active reading time and exhibited greater social annotation effort compared to initiators. However, initiators received more peer acknowledgement, as evidenced by higher upvotes. No significant difference was found in cognitive insight between initiators and responders, but responders demonstrated significantly higher cognitive discrepancy. Additionally, there were no significant differences in positive and negative tones between initiators and responders; however, responders displayed higher levels of prosocial behaviours than initiators. This study has significant practical implications regarding promoting students' collaborative learning experience in social annotation.

Interprofessional education in undergraduate dental curricula: A systematic review.

Health professionals who effectively communicate and coordinate their work increase patient safety and quality of care. Therefore, an interprofessional education (IPE) program may be a valuable addition to the curriculum of health science courses. This study aims to verify how IPE has been implemented in undergraduate dental program curricula. This is a qualitative systematic review performed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines with qualitative and qualitative-quantitative studies selected in the period between 2011 and 2021. The guiding question was as follows: how has IPE been implemented in undergraduate dentistry curricula around the world? The quality of the included articles was assessed using the CASP Qualitative Checklist (2018). After the review, 22 studies were selected and data were extracted following the acronym PICo (Population, phenomenon of Interest, and COntext). The majority of studies in which IPE is included in Dentistry come from North American universities. Regarding the IPE teaching methodology, the use of active methodologies was observed and the interprofessional skills most common were role clarity, teamwork, and communication. This systematic review indicated that Dentistry is included in interprofessional activities in many studies around the world, and primarily with colleagues in medicine, nursing, and pharmacy programs. IPE teaching takes place through the use of active methodologies and develops important skills for interprofessional work.

Cultural capital—field connections for three populations of Chinese students: a theoretical framework for empirical research

“Cultural capital” and “field” are Pierre Bourdieu’s most popular concepts, applied in sociological research around the world, including China. Yet, Bourdieu’s overarching theory of reproduction in education implicitly bore the imprint of a culture-field connection specific to French schooling and society circa 1960–1980. This essay has two broad aims. First, it sketches a comparative framework for connecting cultural resources to their surrounding fields. Second, it applies that framework to three populations of Chinese students: domestic students in China, Chinese international students in North American universities, and Chinese first generation and immigrants in North America. Those populations are used to illustrate several arguments. First, domestic students in China and their diaspora in North America highlight how rationalized competitions in stratified systems trigger intensive “adaptations.” Second, Chinese immigrants have inadvertently triggered new “valuation contests” in North American education. Third, international Chinese students exemplify emerging transnational strategies of opting out of intensive competitions by switching fields. Future directions for research are discussed.

Competitiveness, quality education and universities: the shift to the post-pandemic world

PurposeThis article aims to investigate whether there is a relationship between education for the labor market in the post-pandemic stage and the educational quality of universities, taking as a sample a group of Latin American countries and their main trading partners. Reference is made to the Global Competitiveness Report 2020 of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) index, which evaluates the quality of universities.Design/methodology/approachCorrelations, clusters and T-tests were generated to test for significant differences, resulting in two blocks of countries being identified with statistically significant differences in educational efforts to prepare their citizens for the labor market and the quality of their universities.FindingsIt is concluded that there are examples of Latin American countries that, although they are emerging economies, are updating their educational systems at an accelerated pace to meet the needs demanded by the labor market, such as Chile and Argentina. In addition, there are some particular cases of Latin American QS universities that although they are not at a high level in their overall educational quality as a university, compared to North American and Asian universities, their graduates do show a high employability index. This means that in the graduate profile, these universities are also accelerating efforts to position them at a high level of preparedness to respond to the jobs and markets of tomorrow, just as the universities in developed economies do.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the sample size is a limitation of this work, since it is based on secondary information reported by the WEF (2020) and the QS World University Rankings (2021), it contributes value by analyzing specific cases. Despite its limitations, the study yields meaningful results that put the challenges of post-pandemic employment and the role that universities play in a comprehensible framework.Originality/valueThese results put special attention on the work of universities as a crucial entity to prepare citizens to develop the competencies needed for the post-pandemic labor market, especially in terms of critical thinking and digital skills. Human capital formation will drive the post-pandemic recovery process of leading countries and universities.

On the collapse of a post-tensioned reinforced concrete truss bridge during the construction phases

On March 2018 a post-tensioned reinforced concrete (RC) truss bridge, built inside a North American university campus using the Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) method, collapsed during the construction phase, while the bars of a diagonal member were being re-tensioned. This process was not part of the scheduled construction phases, but it was decided by the designers after having observed several cracks in the structural nodes.This paper aims to analyse the final design of the bridge useful to determine the hypothetical causes of the collapse. Several numerical analyses have been performed to reproduce the behaviour of the different structural elements during the construction phases. In particular, construction stage analyses have been carried out to obtain the internal actions acting on the structural elements and on the nodes during the different construction steps and in order to analyse in detail the critical phases where the occurrence of the collapse has been hypothesized. The collapse mechanism is identified in the shear failure of a node of the concrete truss during the re-tensioning of a diagonal element. In fact, the reapplication of the post-tension had increased the axial force of the diagonal and consequently the shear action on the node. Moreover, the results obtained have shown that the bridge has never been in safe conditions, mainly because the interface surface of the cold joints had not undergone any type of work and remained smooth.

Who feels like they belong? Personality and belonging in college.

Having a secure sense of belonging at school supports students' academic achievement and well-being. However, little research has examined how students' personalities relate to their feelings of school belonging. We address this gap in the literature by leveraging data from a large sample of first-year college students (N = 4,753) from a diverse set of North American colleges and universities (N = 12). We found that both extraversion and agreeableness were positively associated with belonging, while neuroticism was negatively associated with belonging. In an exploratory analysis, we examined differences between large and small schools. Students who were more extraverted, less neurotic, and less open were more likely to attend large schools. Additionally, the association between extraversion and belonging was stronger for students at large schools. These findings advance our understanding of who comes to feel like they belong at college and how school context may influence these relationships. We emphasize the need for continued research on the relationship between personality and belonging. Additionally, we highlight the implications of these results for higher education institutions.