Student Voices Speak Quality Assurance: Continual Improvement in Online Social Work Education

As social work education expands instruction through the rise of distance education, educators seek new ways to improve quality in online courses. Quality assurance standards and student feedback offer valuable insights to ensure satisfying and effective online learning experiences. An examination of these two assessment approaches concurrently in the context of a 4-year study of student perspectives in MSW Human Behavior and the Social Environment foundation courses illustrates how systematic feedback from students can complement existing quality assurance standards. Of particular importance is the unmistakable strength of student voices about their learning from diverse perspectives in an online collaborative leaning setting that can and should be incorporated into standardized quality assessment guidelines for social work programs.     

How the Experience of Emotion is Modulated by Facial Feedback

The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial actions modulate subjective experiences of emotion. Using the voluntary facial action technique, in which the participants react with instruction induced smiles and frowns when exposed to positive and negative emotional pictures and then rate the pleasantness of these stimuli, four questions were addressed in the present study. The results in Experiment 1 demonstrated a feedback effect because participants experienced the stimuli as more pleasant during smiling as compared to when frowning. However, this effect was present only during the critical actions of smiling and frowning, with no remaining effects after 5 min or after 1 day. In Experiment 2, feedback effects were found only when the facial action (smile/frown) was incongruent with the presented emotion (positive/negative), demonstrating attenuating but not enhancing modulation. Finally, no difference in the intensity of produced feedback effect was found between smiling and frowning, and no difference in feedback effect was found between positive and negative emotions. In conclusion, facial feedback appears to occur mainly during actual facial actions, and primarily attenuate ongoing emotional states.     

Moral conformity in online interactions: rational justifications increase influence of peer opinions on moral judgments

Over the last decade, social media has increasingly been used as a platform for political and moral discourse. We investigate whether conformity, specifically concerning moral attitudes, occurs in these virtual environments apart from face-to-face interactions. Participants took an online survey and saw either statistical information about the frequency of certain responses, as one might see on social media (Study 1), or arguments that defend the responses in either a rational or emotional way (Study 2). Our results show that social information shaped moral judgments, even in an impersonal digital setting. Furthermore, rational arguments were more effective at eliciting conformity than emotional arguments. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of moral judgment that prioritize emotional responses.     

Teaching Social Work in an Online Environment

This article discusses the current debate surrounding online instruction (also known as distance) versus in-class social work instruction and reviews the relevant literature associated with those instructional models. The discussion specifically focuses on key issues, including the definition and growth of online education and the Blackboard revolution, and it addresses concerns about the effectiveness of teaching online compared to in-class social work instruction in areas related to students’ learning outcomes and satisfaction. Literature references also suggest that factors such as demographics may be related to outcome differences between distance and traditional students, while others found no significant differences between both student populations and their learning outcomes in particular courses such as research methods courses. Even today, however, the comparisons between online and traditional courses are unsettled, and many questions remain about the appropriateness or usefulness of these models. Therefore, the debate will continue to lead to even larger disagreements between researchers and educators on both sides. The concern about the effectiveness of teaching in an online environment is still the main concern of educational models in general and of social work education in particular. Even deeper concerns are found among educators and scholars about the ethical issues surrounding the entire online education debate.     

Kommunikation in E-Learning-Veranstaltungen. Erfahrungen der Studierenden und ihre Präferenzen für Online- oder Face-to-Face-Kommunikation

Altogether, 2,196 students from 29 Austrian universities took part in an empirical investigation on learning and communication in e-learning courses. The students completed a questionnaire on their experiences in an actual e-learning course, on their perceived learning achievements, and their enjoyment of the course. Furthermore, they expressed their preferences for online or face-to-face communication. All in all, students were satisfied with their course. They did not prefer one communication setting over another. They preferred online-communication for the distribution of information but advocated face-to-face communication when joint learning and cooperation are important or when socio-emotional relations are to be developed. The results of the study advocate blended-learning designs and give recommendations for which communication purposes online and for which face-to-face settings are more adequate.     

Eine neue Methode zur Untersuchung von Mikroprozessen in Lerndyaden: Eine Videostudie unter Berücksichtigung von kognitiven Grundfähigkeiten und Zielorientierungen

The study at present uses a new video method with individual audio tracks to investigate micro processes within learning in a simulation based learning setting. Visible and listenable behaviour was coded with regard to peer tutoring and problem solving. The frequencies and durations of these categories were summarized and used as dependent variables in regression models with cognitive abilities and goal orientations as predictors. Results showed that variation in the dyadic interactional behaviour was systematically related to these properties of the partners. For example, while overt problem solving behaviour is related to goal orientations there was no such effect for the cognitive abilities. Implications for the composition of dyadic learning groups and for further video study arrangements applying the new method will be discussed.     

Learning While Babbling: Prelinguistic Object‐Directed Vocalizations Indicate a Readiness to Learn

Two studies illustrate the functional significance of a new category of prelinguistic vocalizing—object‐directed vocalizations (ODVs)—and show that these sounds are connected to learning about words and objects. Experiment 1 tested 12‐month‐old infants’ perceptual learning of objects that elicited ODVs. Fourteen infants’ vocalizations were recorded as they explored novel objects. Infants learned visual features of objects that elicited the most ODVs but not of objects that elicited the fewest vocalizations. Experiment 2 assessed the role of ODVs in learning word–object associations. Forty infants aged 11.5 months played with a novel object and received a label either contingently on an ODV or on a look alone. Only infants who received labels in response to an ODV learned the association. Taken together, the findings suggest that infants’ ODVs signal a state of attention that facilitates learning.     

Online measures of looking and learning in infancy

Infants in laboratory settings look longer at events that violate their expectations, learn better about objects that behave unexpectedly, and match utterances to the objects that likely elicited them. The paradigms revealing these behaviors have become cornerstones of research on preverbal cognition. However, little is known about whether these canonical behaviors are observed outside laboratory settings. Here, we describe a series of online protocols that replicate classic laboratory findings, detailing our methods throughout. In Experiment 1a, 15-month-old infants (N = 24) looked longer at an online support event culminating in an Unexpected outcome (i.e., appearing to defy gravity) than an Expected outcome. Infants did not, however, show the same success with an online solidity event. In Experiment 1b, 15-month-old infants (N = 24) showed surprise-induced learning following online events—they were better able to learn a novel object's label when the object had behaved unexpectedly compared to when it behaved expectedly. Finally, in Experiment 2, 16-month-old infants (N = 20) who heard a valenced utterance (“Yum!”) showed preferential looking to the object most likely to have generated that utterance. Together, these results suggest that, with some adjustments, online testing is a feasible and promising approach for infant cognition research.     

Trends in the Formation of Environmental Enforcement International Non-Governmental Organizations, 1950–2010

Recent research highlights the importance of non-governmental organizations in environmental enforcement. These studies largely describe the operations of enforcement organizations locally. The present study offers an alternative perspective by considering environmental enforcement by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). We employ the treadmill of production thesis to investigate the formation of environmental enforcement INGOs between 1950 and 2010. Prais–Winsten estimation techniques are used to investigate whether the formation of environmental enforcement INGOs is correlated with the global ecological footprint, gross world product, and/or organization density. Results confirm that there is no correlation between the ecological footprint and INGO formation. There is, however, considerable evidence of an inverted-U association between density and founding (p?相似文献   

Supplementing a survey with respondent Twitter data to measure e-cigarette information exposure

ABSTRACT

Social media data are increasingly used by researchers to gain insights on individuals’ behaviors and opinions. Platforms like Twitter provide access to individuals’ postings, networks of friends and followers, and the content to which they are exposed. This article presents the methods and results of an exploratory study to supplement survey data with respondents’ Twitter postings, networks of Twitter friends and followers, and information to which they were exposed about e-cigarettes. Twitter use is important to consider in e-cigarette research and other topics influenced by online information sharing and exposure. Further, Twitter metadata provide direct measures of user’s friends and followers as opposed to survey self-reports. We find that Twitter metadata provide similar information to survey questions on Twitter network size without inducing recall error or other measurement issues. Using sentiment coding and machine learning methods, we find Twitter can elucidate on topics difficult to measure via surveys such as online expressed opinions and network composition. We present and discuss models predicting whether respondents’ tweet positively about e-cigarettes using survey and Twitter data, finding the combined data to provide broader measures than either source alone.     

The impact of information and setting on detection of deception by police detectives

Previous research shows that observers are hardly able to detect deception above the level of chance. The literature reveals several suggestions on how to improve the detection of deception. In this experiment the impact of four suggestions was tested. According to two suggestions the accuracy rate will improve if observers are provided with relevant information, such as (1) information about indicators of deception, or (2) outcome feedback. The two other suggestions emphasize that detecting deception is easier under certain circumstances than under others, that is, (3) spontaneous interviews are more detectable than planned interviews, and (4) the presence of comparison with a baseline facilitates the detection of deception. In the present experiment 360 police detectives assessed subjects' veracity on the basis of short videotaped interviews. Detectives watched the clips in one of 12 conditions formed by the crossing of four levels of setting (one spontaneous interview/one planned interview/two interviews-total image/two interviews-hands only) with three levels of information (no information/information about objective indicators of deception/information about objective indicators of deception plus feedback). Results revealed that information improved detection of deception, but only in the planned interview condition and the two interviews-hands only condition.This study was supported by a grant from the Recherche Advies Commissie (RAC) of the Ministry of Justice.     

Rhythmic Grouping Biases Constrain Infant Statistical Learning

Linguistic stress and sequential statistical cues to word boundaries interact during speech segmentation in infancy. However, little is known about how the different acoustic components of stress constrain statistical learning. The current studies were designed to investigate whether intensity and duration each function independently as cues to initial prominence (trochaic‐based hypothesis) or whether, as predicted by the Iambic‐Trochaic Law (ITL), intensity and duration have characteristic and separable effects on rhythmic grouping (ITL‐based hypothesis) in a statistical learning task. Infants were familiarized with an artificial language (Experiments 1 and 3) or a tone stream (Experiment 2) in which there was an alternation in either intensity or duration. In addition to potential acoustic cues, the familiarization sequences also contained statistical cues to word boundaries. In speech (Experiment 1) and nonspeech (Experiment 2) conditions, 9‐month‐old infants demonstrated discrimination patterns consistent with an ITL‐based hypothesis: intensity signaled initial prominence and duration signaled final prominence. The results of Experiment 3, in which 6.5‐month‐old infants were familiarized with the speech streams from Experiment 1, suggest that there is a developmental change in infants’ willingness to treat increased duration as a cue to word offsets in fluent speech. Infants’ perceptual systems interact with linguistic experience to constrain how infants learn from their auditory environment.     

Do people reason when they accept tricky offers? A case of approach and avoidance motivated reasoning

Tricky or deceptive sales offers are often accepted by people. But how do we explain the acceptance of such disadvantageous offers? We propose that buyers represent offers in terms of costs and benefits in a conditional goal-related mental rule along the lines of “if a cost is paid, a benefit is obtained”. This representation would be influenced by BAS (approach) and BIS (avoidance) motivational systems. Behavioural approach system (BAS) would trigger seeking evidence confirming the offer and would lead us to accept it. Behavioural inhibition system (BIS), on the contrary, seeks disconfirming evidence, leading to rejection of the offer. Activation of approach and avoidance motivation would be influenced by internal variables and the context. We carried out three experiments where participants were told to check if a deceptive conditional offer was a cheat in a thematic Wason Selection Task. Experiment 1 showed that participants preferred confirmatory selection when the benefit was linked to a human need. In Experiment 2, warning information indicating cheating was introduced, while in Experiment 3 information about product alternatives was added to the instructions. We found a weakening of confirmatory card selection in Experiment 2, and a clear preference towards falsifying selection in Experiment 3. These results support the role of approach and avoidance motivated reasoning in buying/selling exchanges. Implications of these results are discussed in comparison with cheater detection algorithm and conformation bias predictions.     

In a Flash: Thin Slice Judgment Accuracy of Leading and Trailing in Sports

Humans can detect whether athletes are leading or trailing based on thin slices of athletes’ nonverbal behavior, presumably because communicating and interpreting status has evolved to be highly beneficial for humans. The goal of the present research was to examine this evolutionary perspective on nonverbal behavior in sports. First, in Experiment 1 (N = 40), we investigated if leading athletes are rated higher on dimensions related to social status than are trailing athletes. Experiment 1 showed that perceivers rated leading athletes as more dominant, more proud, and more confident than trailing athletes, without being aware of the actual score. Second, we were interested in the role of head-related versus body-related information and in the role of dynamic versus static information. In Experiment 2, 120 participants watched short videos from basketball matches and rated whether athletes were leading or trailing. We occluded either athletes’ faces, athletes’ bodies, or showed both faces and bodies. Experiments 2 and 3 (N = 160) showed that very scarce information was sufficient for differentiating between leading and trailing athletes, even when faces or bodies were occluded. These findings are in line with ecological approaches to person perception and evolutionary accounts of nonverbal behavior.     

Electrophysiological Signals of Familiarity and Recency in the Infant Brain

Electrophysiological work in nonhuman primates has established the existence of multiple types of signals in the temporal lobe that contribute to recognition memory, including information regarding a stimulus’s relative novelty, familiarity, and recency of occurrence. We used high‐density event‐related potentials (ERPs) to examine whether young infants represent these distinct types of information about previously experienced items. Twenty‐four different highly familiar and initially novel items were each repeated exactly once either immediately ( Experiment 1 ), or following one intervening item ( Experiment 2 ). A late slow wave (LSW) component of the ERP exhibited neural responses consistent with recency signals over right‐central leads, but only when there were no intervening stimuli between repetitions. The LSW also exhibited responses consistent with familiarity signals over anterior‐temporal leads, but only when there were intervening stimuli between repetitions. A mid‐latency negative component (i.e., the Nc) also distinguished familiar from novel items, but did not exhibit a pattern of responding consistent with familiarity signals. These findings suggest that infants encode information about a variety of objects from their natural environments into long‐term memory, and can discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar items, and between recently seen and new items, very quickly (within 1 sec). They also suggest that infants represent information about not only whether a stimulus is familiar or unfamiliar but also whether it has been seen recently.     

Infant‐Directed Prosody Helps Infants Map Sounds to Meanings

Adults typically use an exaggerated, distinctive speaking style when addressing infants. However, the effects of infant‐directed (ID) speech on infants' learning are not yet well understood. This research investigates how ID speech affects how infants perform a key function in language acquisition, associating the sounds of words with their meanings. Seventeen‐month‐old infants were presented with two label‐object pairs in a habituation‐based word learning task. In Experiment 1, the labels were produced in adult‐directed (AD) speech. In Experiment 2, the labels were produced in ID prosody; they had higher pitch, greater pitch variation, and longer durations than the AD labels. We found that infants failed to learn the labels in AD speech, but succeeded in learning the same labels when they were produced in ID speech. Experiment 3 investigated the role of variability in learning from ID speech. When the labels were presented in ID prosody with no variation across tokens, infants failed to learn them. Our findings indicate that ID prosody can affect how readily infants map sounds to meanings and that the variability in prosody that is characteristic of ID speech may play a key role in its effect on learning new words.     

The effects of direct experience on consumer product evaluation

The effects of different sales strategies on consumer product evaluation were investigated. It was expected that direct product experience could decrease economic product valuation. Experiments 1 and 2 studied the effects of product trials and money-back guarantees on consumer willingness to pay (WTP). It appeared that WTP was significantly lower after a product trial than with a money-back guarantee or normal sale. In Experiment 3 a structural equation model showed that product trials had a positive effect on attitude toward the product. Also, a negative effect on WTP was found when the effect was measured directly, but a positive effect when the effect was measured indirectly (through attitude).     

Infants Show Ratio‐dependent Number Discrimination Regardless of Set Size

Evidence for approximate number system (ANS) representations in infancy is robust but has typically only been found when infants are presented with arrays of four or more elements. In addition, several studies have found that infants fail to discriminate between small numbers when continuous variables such as surface area and contour length are controlled. These findings suggest that under some circumstances, infants fail to recruit either the ANS or object file representations for small sets. Here, we used a numerical change detection paradigm to assess 6‐month‐old infants' ability to represent small values. In Experiment 1, infants were tested with 1 versus 3, 1 versus 2, and 2 versus 3 dots. Infants successfully discriminated 1 versus 3 and 1 versus 2, but failed with 2 versus 3. In Experiment 2, we tested whether infants could compare small and large values with a 2 versus 4 condition. Across both experiments, infants' performance exhibited ratio dependence, the hallmark of the ANS. Our results indicate that infants can attend to the purely numerical attributes of small sets and that the numerical change detection paradigm accesses ANS representations in infancy regardless of set size.     

Frequency of price increases and perceived inflation. An experimental investigation

The effect of frequency of subjective experience of price increases on perceived inflation, i.e. the subjective experience of general price development, is investigated. The paper presents a two-phased psychological model of perceived inflation: first, information about product price increases is gathered in daily purchase. Second, these are integrated into one perceived inflation judgment. In the integration phase, the complexity of the task should trigger heuristic processing: higher frequency of price increases should enhance their availability and thus perceived inflation. Participants simulated purchases in two scenarios. Frequency of products with increased prices was varied while overall expenditure increases as well as relative price increase of individual products were balanced. Experiment 1 presented a high frequency condition with a majority of increased prices relative to previously learned reference prices and a low frequency condition with a majority of stable prices. Experiment 2 balanced cognitive effort for product price change estimation over conditions by replacing absolutely stable prices with slightly increased prices. As predicted, perceived inflation was higher with high frequencies of increased prices, while price increases of individual products were judged correctly. Experiment 3 ruled out the alternative hypothesis that presentation duration, which in the previous experiments correlated with presentation frequency, might have been the determining factor.     

Distributional Phonetic Learning at 10 Months of Age

Infant phonetic perception reorganizes in accordance with the native language by 10 months of age. One mechanism that may underlie this perceptual change is distributional learning, a statistical analysis of the distributional frequency of speech sounds. Previous distributional learning studies have tested infants of 6–8 months, an age at which native phonetic categories have not yet developed. Here, three experiments test infants of 10 months to help illuminate perceptual ability following perceptual reorganization. English‐learning infants did not change discrimination in response to nonnative speech sound distributions from either a voicing distinction (Experiment 1) or a place‐of‐articulation distinction (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, familiarization to the place‐of‐articulation distinction was doubled to increase the amount of exposure, and in this case infants began discriminating the sounds. These results extend the processes of distributional learning to a new phonetic contrast, and reveal that at 10 months of age, distributional phonetic learning remains effective, but is more difficult than before perceptual reorganization.