Three studies evaluated the influence of extralegal bias factors on mock jurors' perceptions of hate crimes. Race of victim (African American, Caucasian), race of perpetrator (African American, Caucasian), and political orientation (self-identified conservative, liberal) were manipulated in Experiment 1. Results indicated differential perceptions such that certainty of guilt and sentence ratings were greatest when the victim was African American and the perpetrator was Caucasian. Experiment 2 used a noncollege sample and found results parallel to Experiment 1. Experiment 3 examined the role of peer group and found Caucasians sentenced the defendant more severely when the victim was African American, but only when the defendant's peer group encouraged the attack. This research highlights the importance of examining extralegal factors within the context of hate crimes.
This Complete Evidence-based Practice paper will focus on the design, implementation, and evaluation of a multidisciplinary introductory engineering course that integrates theory and hands-on practice around a theme of underwater robotics. The course is required for all students (including non-engineering majors) at a small liberal arts college and is the first engineering course for the majority of enrollees. The previous version of the course was a traditional lecture-based introduction to lumped element modeling of mechanical and electrical systems and modeling of signals using a Fourier analysis approach. The new version of the course covers most of the same technical content, although a Laplace transform approach has replaced the Fourier transform approach and a brief introduction to control theory has been added.Based on best practices in engineering education, the course design and implementation team has moved from the lecture model to a model that includes active learning (flipped classroom) tutorials and hands-on practicums. Students watch videos created by the instructors before the first tutorial session of the week, then come to tutorial to take both individual and team quizzes (similar to Team-Based Learning practices) and work with their teams on a short problem that provides real-world context for the content covered in the videos. The second tutorial session of the week is dedicated to context-rich problem solving with significant interaction between the instructors and students. Following the two tutorial sessions each week, students take part in a 2.5-hour practicum session where they experience the content in a hands-on environment, with most practicums focused on an aspect of the underwater robot. For example, the robot is placed in a water tank with a buoyancy "spring" attached and a chirp signal is input to the thruster to obtain a Bode plot response of the robot's position versus thruster input frequency.Evaluation measures include a pre/post attitudinal survey regarding the usefulness of class content, intent to major in engineering, and understanding of the engineering profession and pre/post content tests from both the previous, lecture-based incarnation of the course, and the new version of the course. Results show significant increases in student learning, affective gains, perceived understanding of the field of engineering, and an erasure of a previous gender gap in course performance. IntroductionAn ideal introductory engineering course would expose students to the rigor and excitement of engineering through the design, modeling, and analysis of engineering systems. Because first year students often lack the technical background to take on detailed modeling and analysis, successful introductory courses situated in the first year of the curriculum are often focused on conceptual design. The core curriculum of Harvey Mudd College (HMC), an undergraduate institution offering STEM majors only, includes a course entitled Introduction to Engineering Systems; this course is requir...
We believe that the professional responsibility of bioscience and biotechnology professionals includes a social responsibility to contribute to the resolution of ethically fraught policy problems generated by their work. It follows that educators have a professional responsibility to prepare future professionals to discharge this responsibility. This essay discusses two pilot projects in ethics pedagogy focused on particularly challenging policy problems, which we call "fractious problems". The projects aimed to advance future professionals' acquisition of "fractious problem navigational" skills, a set of skills designed to enable broad and deep understanding of fractious problems and the design of good policy resolutions for them. A secondary objective was to enhance future professionals' motivation to apply these skills to help their communities resolve these problems. The projects employed "problem based learning" courses to advance these learning objectives. A new assessment instrument, "Skills for Science/Engineering Ethics Test" (SkillSET), was designed and administered to measure the success of the courses in doing so. This essay first discusses the rationale for the pilot projects, and then describes the design of the pilot courses and presents the results of our assessment using SkillSET in the first pilot project and the revised SkillSET 2.0 in the second pilot project. The essay concludes with discussion of observations and results.
We conducted a series of 7‐d toxicity tests with Ceriodaphnia dubia in dilutions of low‐hardness natural waters, which contained dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations up to 10 mg/L. Stream waters were mixed with well water to achieve 2 target hardness levels (20 and 35 mg/L) and 4 DOC concentrations. Tests with aluminum (Al)‐spiked waters were conducted in a controlled CO2 atmosphere to maintain the pH at a range of 6.0 to 6.5. The results were used to estimate effect concentrations for survival and reproduction, expressed as total (unfiltered) Al concentrations. There were small differences in total‐Al thresholds between waters with 20 and 35 mg/L hardness, but effect concentrations for C. dubia survival (median lethal concentrations) and reproduction (effect concentrations, 20%) increased log‐linearly with increasing DOC concentrations in the range, 0.3 to 6 mg/L. Slopes of these regressions were similar to slopes from data used to revise the US Environmental Protection Agency water quality criterion for Al, but toxic effects in the present study occurred at total‐Al concentrations 8‐ to 10‐fold greater than toxicity values used for criteria development. This difference probably reflects the long equilibration (aging) times of Al test waters used in the present study (up to 192 h) compared with short (3‐h) equilibration times in other studies used for criteria development. These results confirm the importance of DOC as a control on Al toxicity in low‐hardness waters, but they also demonstrate that total‐Al concentrations are not predictive of Al toxicity, except under defined water quality (pH, hardness, DOC) and exposure conditions (e.g., aging of test waters). Environ Toxicol Chem 2019;38:2121–2127. Published 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of SETAC. This article is a US government work, and as such, is in the public domain in the United States of America.
HarveyMudd College, where her primary role is to coordinate data collection, interpretation and dissemination to support teaching and learning, planning and decision-making across the college.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.