scholarly journals Testing impacts of goal-oriented outreach with the Girl Scouts: Can a single activity change attitudes towards insects?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Mongue ◽  
Kaila L. Colyott

AbstractMost people meet insects with fear and disgust but this reputation is largely unfounded, as few insects pose health risks. In fact, many are beneficial and their absence would adversely affect human life; thus insect conservation is important but unpopular. We have begun addressing these concerns as part of a broader effort to establish an ongoing outreach partnership between graduate students at the University of Kansas and the Girl Scouts of Northeast Kansas/Northwest Missouri. To explore ways to advocate for insect conservation, we held an insect collecting activity at a Girl Scout summer camp and surveyed changes in attitudes towards insects afterwards. This activity positively changed reactions to insect encounters and increased confidence in identifying harmful insects but did not strongly reduce fears or increase curiosity towards insects. Beyond these proximate results, this project highlights the potential of Girl Scout troops as targets for informal science education that can benefit both academics and the broader community.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-95
Author(s):  
Barbara S. Spector ◽  
Cyndy Leard

This retrospective emergent design qualitative evaluation study documents the development of a unique model for community engagement and engaged scholarship in higher education. The primary novel aspect of the model is participatory involvement of both the target audience for the program and representatives of various stakeholder groups who initiated, conceptualized, tested, assessed, and evaluated the courses and program with the professor. Members of the target audience and stakeholder groups also recruited participants, contributed to refining the courses and program to meet the needs of the stakeholder groups, and contributed to redesigning courses for online learning. The model emerged while developing and evaluating the Informal Science Institutions Environmental Education Graduate Certificate Program (ISI Program) at the University of South Florida. Garnering the resources of a previously untapped audience, the informal science education (ISE) community, presented the university with a way to increase enrollment. Also reported are sample benefits accrued to learners in the program, to the ISI community, to the community at large, and additional benefits to the University.


1995 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 37-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Luetke-Stahlman

Compressed/interactive video is a relatively new format for providing preservice and inservice courses to rural and/or remote areas (Willis, 1993). At the University of Kansas Medical Center only two programs, those of Nursing and the Deaf Education, have engaged in this format of distance education. While the methodology was expected to assist graduate students in areas of the state who could not travel to participate in courses on one of the three urban campuses, it was also expected to challenge instructors to teach effectively while still encouraging active learning activities. Surveys of questions to rural and urban students were given to 13 graduate students in two courses in the fall of 1992, and to three additional students in the fall of 1993. Analyzed results documented the success of the compressed/interactive (ITV) video teaching format for this small group of master level students in Kansas.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 295
Author(s):  
María Guadalupe Veytia-Bucheli ◽  
José Gómez-Galán ◽  
Diego Vergara

Communication processes are part of human life. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and, especially, the use of smartphones have generated new forms of interaction and communication, both synchronous and asynchronous, in formal and informal spaces. One of the most used applications is WhatsApp, which allows the sending of text, documents, images, and emojis. It is important to study these new forms and languages of communication in higher education because any educational or training process is essentially communicative. This research was carried out using a mixed approach, with a nonexperimental, descriptive, and transversal design, using a technique of a survey made up of 30 items. It was applied to postgraduate university students to determine their use and value among people with a consolidated university academic career, which would allow us to determine the presence of these new languages in this context. The basic objectives were to identify the frequency of use of emojis through WhatsApp amongst Mexican graduate students and to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of their use. The results confirmed the increase of emojis in conversations conducted by WhatsApp among fellow students. As positive elements, it was determined that they favor the development of a pleasant environment, confidence, and empathy, in addition to expressing emotions, feelings, and reactions. However, emojis also have drawbacks and disadvantages. Among them is the risk that they are misunderstood since their meaning is not shared, that they divert attention from a central idea, and, in general, that they sometimes have an addictive character that implies a waste of time in a study context, such as at the university. In conclusion, it can be argued that ICTs are profoundly transforming the processes of written communication in today’s society, including the university world. New languages that present intercultural, dynamic, dialectic, and ecosystemic alternatives to speech or writing have appeared. Emojis, in the context of higher education, would be an example of this trend.


2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 291-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy C. Crone ◽  
Sharon L. Dunwoody ◽  
Raelyn K. Rediske ◽  
Steven A. Ackerman ◽  
Greta M. Zenner Petersen ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 42-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Korkmaz YİĞİTER ◽  
Hakan TOSUN

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of participation in a 1-week summer camp on thehopelessness and self-esteem of the university students attending Sport Sciences Faculty. Participants were 36university students assigned to experiment group using a random procedure. Coopersmith Self-esteem and Beck Hopelessness Scales were completed at the beginning and end of the summer camp by designed the university. The obtained data were analysed in the SPSS 18.0 program and the significance level was taken as 0.05. The descriptive statistics, independent simple t test, paired simple t test and Pearson correlation were used for analyse the data in the study. According to the results of the research, no significant difference was observed in the comparison of the hopelessness and self-esteem levels between pre and post-test. In addition, there was a significant difference in the hopelessness level of male and female students but any significant difference was not observed in terms of self-esteem. There was a significant relationship between hopelessness and self-esteem pre and post-test. These result shows that a 1-week summer camp cannot change the hopelessness or self-esteem level. However, as the self-esteem rises, the rate of despair decreases whereas as the despair rises, the selfesteem decreases.


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