The unprecedented opportunities for production and collaborative working supported by Web 2.0 technology offer immense potential for active knowledge creation. Research to date has mostly explored the demographic factors that influence production but we argue here that a more detailed understanding of the psychological determinants of online…

Issues of representation and identity are paramount in youth media. These issues are further complicated when youth draw on popular culture and other media resources as vehicles to interpret and represent themselves (Alvermann, 2008, Jenkins et al., 2006). While youth-produced media often draw on popular culture resources and are frequently…

This report analyzes data from the 1982, 1985, 1992, 2002, and 2008 Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). Analyses focus on differential arts participation by race/ethnicity and the effect of race/ethnicity on arts participation. Descriptive and inferential analyses explore trends in arts participation by race/ethnicity across the…

Students are experts at sizing up instructors, but many do not extend this analysis to non-instructor audiences, which can reduce their effectiveness in new communication situations. Audience, therefore, is a crucial threshold concept not only in Rhetoric and Composition, but in any discipline that values communication skills. How can instructors…

As evidenced by the strong use of musical scores in modern film, film music has come a long way since the initial silent film's piano or organ accompaniment that simply marked general emotions or moods. Though film music has retained its basic functions of reflecting emotions and moods in the images, the film score has progressed into actually…

In this article, the author explores the pedagogical value of cinema's capacity to offer a "decentered" mode of perspective for the audience. The author illustrates a film's ability to present a different perspective with reference to Sean Penn's "The Pledge" (2001) and Ivan Sen's "Beneath Clouds" (2002), which show how cinema allows viewers to…

Experts in science communication were asked to identify the essential elements of a science communication course for post-graduate students. A Delphi methodology provided a framework for a research design that accessed their opinions and allowed them to contribute to, reflect on and identify 10 essential elements. There was a high level of…

When writers write, how do they decide to whom they are speaking? How does this decision affect writers' cognition about writing? Their motivation to write? In this article, I review literature on cognitive and social processes of writing, conceptualizations of audience, writing across distinct learning environments, and writers' motivations. I…

With collaborative learning one of the hottest buzzwords in higher education today, it is tempting to believe that schools have taken to the concept like ducks to water. Sadly, that is not the case. The old-style lecture format has been employed for so long that faculty--even students--often struggle to transition to a more engaged approach to…

Much recent work in the study of popular culture has emphasized the extent to which it is not only a site of signifying practices, myths, meanings and identifications, but also an arena of intensities, of affective flows and corporeal state-changes. From this perspective, many areas of popular culture (from calisthenics to social dance to video…

For the author, the key analytic question about a popular song is not "What does it mean?" or "What hidden or coded meaning does it express?" but "What does its popularity tell us about the cultural moment when it resonated with its public?" How did the song "create its audience," so to speak? Obviously, a 1973 hit song, if it could time-travel,…

Professional music communities have realized that if they do not promote their art forms among the youth of today, the future of their music may be in question. Many local ethnic music groups have recognized the need to make the first move and go out to the audiences of the future and bring their brand of music to these audiences. Their task is to…

Clinicians experience great pressures to provide timely, effective, and evidence-based medical care. Educators can aid these clinicians through the development of new tools that can facilitate timely completion of clinical tasks. These tools should summarize evidence-based information in a convenient format that allows easy use. This article…

4-H volunteers and staff are often faced with providing educational programs and opportunities for youth with wide ranges of age and ability. To address this challenge, researchers from the University of California Cooperative Extension developed and tested a Best Practices Matrix that outlines domain-specific, age-appropriate characteristics of…

There is a dearth of research into teaching strategies and learning approaches for units involving sensitive topics that can provoke an emotional response in students. In a business ethics unit, attempts to strike a balance between conceptual knowledge and theory and skills training can be challenging because the unit can involve personal,…