To address four issues observed from the latest Personal Response System (PRS) review by Kay and LeSage (2009), this paper investigates, through a systematic research, how the derived benefits and challenges of PRS affect the satisfaction and continuance intention of college students in Taiwan. The empirical study samples representative college…

Introduction: Time constraints limit the quantity and type of information conveyed in audio description (AD) for films, in particular the cinematic aspects. Inspired by introductory notes for theatre AD, this study developed audio introductions (AIs) for "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Man on Wire." Each AI comprised 10 minutes of…

Class participation has long been valued by faculty members interested in engaging students in the learning process. This paper discusses class participation and shares participation techniques that promote active student engagement during class meetings. Emphasis is placed on techniques that invite a larger number of students into a course's…

Given that social media dominates informal and often formal communication routes, we argue that schools must reshape their attention to a fourth rhetorical dimension: the media through which they communicate. Specifically, schools must find ways to embrace social media as a mechanism to reach their broad audiences. This article identifies clear…

The risk convergence model proposes reduction of perceived social distance to a mediated personality as a mechanism through which the mass media can influence audiences' personal risk perceptions. As an initial test of the model, this study examined whether 5 audience variables known to facilitate media effects on personal risk…

This article uses methods from corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to examine patterns of representation around the word "Muslim" in a 143 million word corpus of British newspaper articles published between 1998 and 2009. Using the analysis tool Sketch Engine, an analysis of noun collocates of "Muslim" found that the following…

The present study was designed to investigate the impact of familiarity and audience age on children's self-presentation in self-drawings of happy, sad and neutral figures. Two hundred children (100 girls and 100 boys) with the average age of 8 years 2 months, ranging from 6 years 3 months to 10 years 1 month, formed two age groups and five…

Teenage sexual identity is shaped within a complex cultural landscape in which the issue of protecting the "innocent" (children/teens) from sexually suggestive images is high on the public agenda. Intimate relationships and sexuality have entered the public domain and are presented on the screen, offering audiences possible roles to play…

This essay considers how a male evangelical Christian in a first-year writing (FYW) course at a state university negotiates his identity in his academic writing for a non-Christian audience. It focuses on how "Austin" casuistically stretches a biblical text to accommodate his audience's pluralistic perspective. Austin's writing thus provides a…

Communicating research findings with others is a skill essential to the success of future STEM professionals. However, little is known about how this skill can be nurtured through participating in undergraduate research. The purpose of this study is to quantify undergraduate participation in research in a materials science and engineering…

This article was written as part of a comprehensive research study whose main goal was to explore and assess the effectiveness of Israeli drama as an instrument to change young Israelis' perceptions and positions toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The article will present the findings of the qualitative study of two distinct audiences:…

Student inability to explain concepts learnt in lessons using their own words academically and intellectually and their lack of interest in learning the subject are a cause of their incompetence in the development of their personality. This presents a challenge to lecturers that they should not rely entirely on conventional lectures and tutorials.…

Most higher education institutions offering programmes in music performance organise master classes for their students. It is commonly agreed that master classes offer valuable learning opportunities for the students performing, but what do they offer for students in the audience? In this article, theories of learning by observation as well as…

In this paper a STEM Education Outreach (STEM-EO) Model for promoting strategic university outreach programming at Penn State University to the benefit of university, school district and community stakeholders is described. The model considers STEM-EO as a complex system involving overarching learning goals addressed within four outreach domains…

Whenever the author talks to audiences about transforming school systems, without exception people raise objections. The half dozen most common objections often come in the form of "Yes, nice idea but..." What follows the "but" is the objection. The author learned a technique for responding to these "buts" from family members who work in sales.…