Research use in educational decision-making has been encouraged and well documented at the K-12 education level in the United States but not in higher education, or more specifically for educational technology. We conducted a qualitative study to investigate the role of research in decisions about acquiring and using educational technology for…

Consumers' perceptions of the terminology used on food production labels may lead to a perceived risk, which influences their grocery shopping decisions. Risk perception is the consumers' belief that he or she may be exposed to something that is harmful or uncertain. Women are more aware of food labels due to their perceived risk associated with…

Faculty members experience a gap between how they would prefer to spend their work time and how they actually do so. In this article we report results from a four-week workshop called "The Terrapin Time Initiative." It was guided by theories of behavioral economics and behavioral design, which suggest that small changes to the context,…

Senior leadership teams are the key decision-makers invested with authority who work collectively to achieve organizational goals. While there is a rich literature on this topic across many disciplines, there is a dearth of research on this topic in higher education. In this article we argue for the need for research on senior leadership teams…

Students' choice of college major is related to their interests (Porter and Umbach in Res High Educ 47:429-449, 2006), and students whose major is well-aligned with their interests are more likely to persist in that major (Allen and Robbins in Res Higher Educ 49(1):62-79, 2008) and complete a college degree in a timely manner (Allen and Robbins in…

Data interpretation can be difficult. Data visualization techniques from the manufacturing industry make interpretation easier. Control charts display trends in context, so it is clear when performance is truly changing and when it is not. Decision makers know when to act, when to maintain, and when to celebrate. This article discusses the use of…

This chapter uses feminist and empowerment theories as a framework to examine how women in mid-level professional leadership perceive their level of influence and define leadership. Results indicate that empowerment behaviors are central when these women engage in opportunities to influence institutional decision-making, in the ways they identify…

The leadership of librarians (notably, school librarians) is sometimes invisible, or at least rarely acknowledged. This chapter explores one academic's experiences as a school librarian and the inherent leadership roles embedded in her work. Despite years of impact studies, the visibility of the school librarian as a competent school or university…

In all areas of human activity, decision-making based on data analysis is very important. As the availability of data grows, it becomes critical to educate not only traditional students but also those individuals who are now in the workforce, as many of them are expected to manage the complex data streams and to provide evidence and guidance for…

Matching unfamiliar faces is highly error-prone, and most studies highlight the implications for real-world ID-checking. Here we study a particular instance of ID-checking: proof of age for buying restricted goods such as alcohol. In this case, checkers must establish that an identity document is carried by its legitimate owner (i.e., that the ID…

This article presents ways to explore mathematical concepts using Catan, a popular board game. After a brief overview of game play, we explore considerations with many potential entry points for mathematical modeling, such as which resource is the best, which resources will be rare or plentiful, where to build, and risk assessment.

This paper invokes cognitive developmental theory as a means for preparing citizens to deal with and resolve conflicts within or across nations. We take the centuries-old Greek-Turkish dispute as an example. We first outline a theory of intellectual development postulating that mental changes emerge in response to changing developmental priorities…

One of the particularly challenging aspects of children's literature lies in its ethics. The intended audience of children's literature is often perceived to be morally malleable, and particularly vulnerable to narrative strategies. This why it is of high importance to consider the moral contents which children's narratives attempt to communicate…

Humans tend to avoid cognitive effort. Whereas evidence of this abounds in adults, little is known about its emergence and development in childhood. The few existing studies in children use different experimental paradigms and report contradictory developmental patterns. We examined effort-related decision-making in a sample of 79 five- to…

The present study examined whether a defense rebuttal expert can effectively educate jurors on the risk that the prosecution's fingerprint expert made an error. Using a sample of 1716 jury-eligible adults, we examined the impact of three types of rebuttal testimony in a mock trial: (a) a methodological rebuttal explaining the general risk of error…