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"Psychosis" site:.org

This site would be a good use for a research project dealing with mental health disorders. It is a medically reviewed site last updated in 2022 and provides a formal overview of the mental disorder.

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What is the difference between psychosis and schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia and psychosis are two strongly connected words, but they aren't the same thing.

Psychosis: This is a collection of symptoms that involves a disconnection from reality and the world around you. Psychosis can also happen with many medical conditions and mental health disorders, such as encephalitis or bipolar disorder.

Schizophrenia: This is a condition and a spectrum of related disorders. Psychosis is a key symptom of all these conditions.

What is the difference between psychosis and neurosis?

Neurosis and psychosis are very different conditions, though there's some confusion because of outdated definitions and word use.

Psychosis: In the past, psychosis used to refer to any mental illness that caused a big enough disruption in a person's ability to function and go about daily activities. Today, it refers to symptoms that show a person has some kind of disconnection from reality.

Neurosis: A neurosis (the term for more than one is "neuroses") is an obsolete term for very high levels of worry or anxiety (experts tend to describe these as anxiety disorders to avoid confusion). Disconnection from reality isn't something that happens with anxiety on its own. However, people who have psychosis can also have anxiety-related conditions, and a person can have both at the same time.

Are there different kinds of psychosis?

Yes and no. Psychosis is a collection of symptoms that happen with other mental health conditions. Experts used to describe psychosis with different types or terms, but that's not very common anymore. That said, there are still a few conditions that use "psychosis" or "psychotic" in their name. Examples include:

Brief psychotic disorder.

Postpartum psychosis.

Substance/medication-induced psychotic disorder.

What are examples of psychosis?

There are different ways that delusions and hallucinations, the two key psychotic symptoms, can happen.

Types of delusions

One way experts split delusions into different categories is by determining whether they're "bizarre" or "non-bizarre."

Bizarre delusions: These are so extreme that there's no way they're true. An example is someone believing an android (a robot that looks human) with the appearance of a loved one has taken that person's place and is pretending to be them.

Non-bizarre delusions: These are delusions that seem possible, but a person has no evidence to support the belief. An example of a non-bizarre delusion is that someone is following them.

Experts also tend to group delusions into common themes. A few examples include:

Grandiose: A person with grandiose delusions may believe they're a celebrity or have special powers.

Nihilistic: These are delusions where a person believes a major catastrophe or disaster is going to happen.

Persecutory: These are delusions where a person believes someone or something is trying to hurt them or is "out to get" them.

Types of hallucinations

Hallucinations can happen in many ways, depending on the involved senses. Sometimes, hallucinations can involve more than one sense at a time. Some examples of hallucinations include:

Auditory: These are hallucinations you can hear. An example of an auditory hallucination is hearing someone speaking to you who isn't really there.

Visual: These are hallucinations you can see. An example of a visual hallucination is seeing something that isn't there or seeing unusual lights or shapes.

Tactile: These are hallucinations that involve things you can feel. A common example is feeling a crawling sensation on your skin.

Hallucinations that involve the senses of smell and taste are possible, but they aren't very common.

What are the warning signs of psychosis?

The early warning signs of psychosis usually aren't easy to spot. They can take different forms depending on the cause of the psychosis itself, and they can sometimes appear days or even weeks before other symptoms.

Some common early warning signs of schizophrenia - a condition that always involves some form of psychosis - include:

Changes in emotions (acting afraid, suspicious or paranoid, or a noticeable decrease in showing emotions).

Changes in behaviors (problems focusing or thinking, avoiding usual activities).

Changes in socialization (avoiding friends and family).

How can I help a loved one who seems to have psychotic symptoms?

Because people with psychosis have trouble telling the difference between what's real and what isn't, they often can't recognize or understand that they have these symptoms or a mental health condition. Commonly, they'll dismiss or resist suggestions that they get care because they don't believe anything is wrong with them. That's why psychosis can be a source of frustration or fear for someone with these symptoms or their loved ones.

If you notice a loved one showing signs of schizophrenia or a related condition, you can try to help them by doing the following:

Ask how you can help. People with psychosis or conditions that involve it may talk about their symptoms without realizing these are symptoms of a mental health issue. Listening and communicating may help your loved one see that others care for them and want to help.

Encourage them to see someone who can help. Treatment for psychosis, especially medications, can make a big difference in a person's ability to tell what's real and what's not. Once medications take effect, they may start to understand that they have a condition that needs care.

Don't judge or argue. People with psychosis have trouble telling what's real and what isn't. To compensate for this disconnection from reality, their brain may generate things that only they can see or hear. These things will feel real, so arguing or showing them evidence isn't helpful. It's also important not to judge someone who shows these symptoms. That can make them feel even more isolated, and it may push them away from seeking help.

Stay calm. People with psychotic symptoms can feel afraid or frustrated when others don't seem to understand or believe them. That can make them pull away from others, making them feel even more alone. Try to remain calm, reassure your loved one and help them feel as safe as possible (don't make them feel trapped or threatened). If there's a lot of noise nearby, try to make the environment quieter or ask if you can go somewhere more peaceful.

Get help in emergencies. People with psychosis and related conditions have a much higher risk of dying by suicide. If someone with psychotic symptoms says they're thinking about harming themselves or others, or if they show severe paranoia or agitation, or act abusively or violently, then you should immediately call your local emergency services.

Is someone with psychosis dangerous?

People who experience psychosis can sometimes behave in ways that put themselves or others at risk. You should go to the nearest emergency room or call 911 (or your local emergency services number) if you have thoughts about harming yourself, including thoughts of suicide or about harming others. If you have thoughts like this, then you can call any of the following:

Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (United States). To call this line, dial 988.

Local crisis lines. Mental health organizations and centers in your area may offer resources and help through crisis lines.

911 (or your local emergency services number). You should call 911 (or the local emergency services number) if you feel like you're in immediate danger of harming yourself. Operators and dispatchers for 911 lines can often help people in immediate danger because of a severe mental crisis and send first responders to assist.

A note from Cleveland Clinic
Psychosis is a word commonly used - often incorrectly - to describe various mental health conditions or issues. The correct use of psychosis refers to a collection of symptoms, including delusions and hallucinations, which happen when a person experiences a disconnection from reality. These symptoms can happen for a wide range of reasons, from mental health conditions to injuries to infections. While these symptoms can be concerning for the person having them or for the people around them, it's often possible to effectively treat these symptoms. In some cases, these symptoms can stop with treatment of whatever is causing them, or the underlying cause.

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Psychosis: What It Is, Symptoms, Causes, Types & Treatment

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Psychosis refers to symptoms that happen when a person is disconnected from reality. It may involve hallucinations or delusions, and it can happen for many reasons.

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site:.edu "Accounting History"

This website could be useful for accounting majors that want to learn a little bit more about what accounting was like and it could help with a research assignment because the professor may want you to learn more what accounting was like in the past.

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As we navigate the intricate financial landscapes of today, it's essential to recognize the historical roots that have shaped the indispensable field of accounting. The history of accounting is a journey that traces back centuries, reflecting the fundamental role it plays in shaping economies, businesses, and financial practices. Let's delve into the evolution and enduring importance of accounting in the modern world.

Historical Footprints: The origins of accounting can be traced to ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. These societies used rudimentary record-keeping systems to track their economic activities, including transactions and resources. The development of complex trade networks and the need for accurate financial records propelled the refinement of these early accounting methods.

Birth of Modern Accounting: The industrial revolution marked a turning point in accounting history. With the rise of complex business structures and the need for standardized financial reporting, double-entry bookkeeping emerged. Luca Pacioli, an Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar, is often credited with codifying the principles of double-entry bookkeeping in a book written in 1494.

Economic Progress and Accountability: The history of accounting is intertwined with economic growth and accountability. As businesses expanded, reliable financial records became critical for informed decision-making, attracting investments, and ensuring transparency. Governments recognized the pivotal role of accounting in regulating commerce and enacted laws to standardize financial reporting practices.

Modern Landscape: In today's fast-paced global economy, accounting holds paramount significance. It serves as the backbone of businesses, enabling them to monitor financial health, plan budgets, and comply with legal regulations. Accurate financial reporting bolsters investor confidence and supports effective management strategies.

Accounting's history is a testament to its enduring importance in shaping the world of commerce and finance. From humble origins to a sophisticated discipline, accounting has evolved to meet the demands of ever-changing economies. Its role in fostering transparency, accountability, and economic progress remains unwavering. As we forge ahead, it's crucial to acknowledge the historical journey that has led us to a world where accounting is an integral cornerstone of business and financial management.

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What is the history and importance of accounting?

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Accounting's history is a testament to its enduring importance in shaping the world of commerce and finance.

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site:.edu "Childcare for infants"

This article is helpful for anyone, especially those looking to raise, or who are actively help raising young children. It provides different options for different modalities of raising children.

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Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Childcare for Young Children and Families; A Book of Photographs and Simple Text

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In this Independent Study to fulfill the requirements for my graduate degree at Bank Street College of Education, I am highlighting developmentally appropriate practice in childcare for infants and toddlers. In book format, I will cite aspects of good practice, using both simple text for young children, more in-depth text for adults, and black and white photographs to illustrate these points further. The rationale will cover my own personal history that lead me to believe that The Bank Street Family Center models developmentally appropriate practice. It also includes research to back my claims. All experiences supporting my ideas are solidly based in the practices of The Bank Street Family Center.

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site:. " Special Education"

This website is not only helpful for parent as well as teacher to find resources for children with special needs. This website and provides services for students regarding mental health, financial aid resources, etc.

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In DoDEA's Blueprint for Continuous Improvement, the vision statement, the mission statement and the guiding principles each embrace the notion that ALL students will be successful in our schools. Special educators work collaboratively with general educators and share the responsibility for ensuring that students with identified disabilities will meet with success. ALL students can learn when instruction is geared to their strengths and they are given sufficient opportunity to learn.

Special education is specially designed instruction, support, and services provided to students with an identified disability requiring an individually designed instructional program to meet their unique learning needs. The purpose of special education is to enable students to successfully develop to their fullest potential by providing a free appropriate public education in compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) as implemented by DoD Instruction 1342.12, "Provision of Early Intervention and Special Education Services to Eligible DoD Dependents."

DoDEA's special education programs and services are provided in accordance with the Department of Defense (DoD) Manual 1342.12, "Provision of Early Intervention and Special Education Services to Eligible DoD Dependents," dated June 17, 2015.
In DoDEA, special education and related services are available to eligible students, ages 3 through 21 years of age. To be eligible for special education:

The child must have an identified disability;

The disability must adversely (negatively) affect the child's educational performance; and

The child must require a specially designed instructional program.

Note: Students with a disability who are not found eligible for special education and related services may receive reasonable accommodations and modifications under DoDEA Policy Memorandum: Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in a DoDEA Dependent Educational Programs and Activities.

Eligibility Categories

DoDEA recognizes clearly defined disabilities with specific criteria for determining eligibility. The specific disabilities recognized by DoDEA are:

Autism Spectrum Disorder

Deafness

Deaf-Blindness

Developmental Delay

Emotional Disturbance

Hearing Impairment

Intellectual Disability

Orthopedic Impairment

Other Health Impairment

Specific Learning Disability

Speech or Language Impairments

Traumatic Brain Injury

Visual Impairment, including blindness

Multiple Disabilities

Educational Services

Decisions regarding the type of special education services to be provided and the educational placement for the provision of such services is based upon a student's individual need. Students with disabilities are educated in the least restrictive environment that is most appropriate for them. A variety of special education services are available beginning with full participation in the general education classroom to the extent possible--often with the provision of supplementary aids and support--as determined by the school's Case Study Committee (CSC) which includes parents. Services are provided in the least restrictive environment for each student and may include:

Consultation provided by special educators to the general education teacher;

Collaborative instruction in the general education classroom through co-teaching by the general and special education teachers; and

Instruction in the special education classroom for part or all of the school day.

Related Services

Related services are those services required for the student to benefit from his or her special education program and may include psychological and counseling services, language, speech, and hearing, transportation, assistive technology, physical and occupational therapy, and medical services that are required for diagnostic or evaluation purposes.

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The Special education program provides specially designed instruction, support, and services to students with an identified disability requiring an individually designed instructional program to meet their unique learning needs.

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site:.edu "adverse childhood experience"

This website could be helpful for Social Work or Psychology students studying or researching ACEs (adverse childhood experiences). This website provides explanation, statistics, and resources on ACEs.

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Elliot Walsh, Research Dissemination Coordinator

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What Are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)? ACEs Definition, Data Challenges, and Resources | SHADAC

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Children’s health is impacted by a number of factors – family life and income, housing, neighborhood, nutrition, health care access and cost, amongst others.

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site:.edu "Victorian literature"

This website could be helpful for English students who need to do research on the Victorian period. The website contains explanations of the various kinds of literature during the time as well as titles of popular works from each genre.

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The Victorian period of literature roughly coincides with the years that Queen Victoria ruled Great Britain and its Empire (1837-1901). During this era, Britain was transformed from a predominantly rural, agricultural society into an urban, industrial one. New technologies like railroads and the steam printing press united Britons both physically and intellectually. Although now the period is popularly known as a time of prim, conservative moral values, the Victorians perceived their world as rapidly changing. Religious faith was splintering into evangelical and even atheist beliefs. The working class, women, and people of color were agitating for the right to vote and rule themselves. Reformers fought for safe workplaces, sanitary reforms, and universal education. Victorian literature reflects these values, debates, and cultural concerns. Victorian literature differs from that of the eighteenth century and Romantic period most significantly because it was not aimed at a specialist or elite audience; rather, because the steam printing press made the production of texts much cheaper and because railroads could distribute texts quickly and easily, the Victorian period was a time when new genres appealed to newly mass audiences.
POETRY
Poetry was one of the most popular genres of the Victorian period. The Romantic poets, particularly William Wordsworth (who lived through the beginning of the period, dying in 1850) were revered and widely quoted. The Victorians experimented with narrative poetry, which tells a story to its audience, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh (1856), an entire novel written in verse. The poem tells the story of Aurora Leigh, a woman who seeks a career as a poet after rejecting an inheritance and a male suitor, and so tells, in part, the story of Barrett Browning's own struggles to make her poetic way in the world. Narrative poetry could also be much shorter, like Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" (1862), which recounts how a woman is seduced into eating beautiful fruit sold by goblins and how her sister saves her after she sickens.

Victorian poets also developed a new form called the dramatic monologue, in which a speaker recites the substance of the poem to an audience within the poem itself. Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" (1842), in which the Duke of Ferrara describes how he (probably) killed his last wife to the man who is arranging his next marriage, is one of the most famous examples of a dramatic monologue. Alfred, Lord Tennyson also used the form in "Ulysses" (1842), in which Ulysses recounts his reasons for setting out on a last voyage to the men with whom he will sail.

Tennyson also wrote lyric, or non-narrative poetry, including what is perhaps the most famous poem of the Victorian era, In Memoriam A. H. H. (1849). Tennyson wrote this book-length sequence of verses to commemorate the death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam. The poem contains some of the most famous lines in literature, including "'Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all," and was widely quoted in the Victorian period.

Poets like Tennyson, the Brownings, and Rossetti frequently wrote poetry in order to create a powerful emotional effect on the reader, but some Victorian poets also wrote simply to entertain. Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear wrote nonsense or light verse, a genre that plays with sounds and rhythm in melodious ways. Famous examples include Carroll's "Jabberwocky" (1871), a poem that uses many invented words to narrate the killing of a monster called the Jabberwock, and Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat" (1871), which describes the adventures of the title characters.
THE GOTHIC, SENSATION FICTION, AND MELODRAMA
Although different kinds of realism (see below) dominated the novel in the Victorian period, the eighteenth-century tradition of the Gothic lived on, particularly in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847). Jane Eyre uses many Gothic conventions: a young, pure female heroine; a sinister house filled with mysteries; and a handsome, brooding older man - but within a Victorian frame. Jane Eyre must make her own way in the world as a governess, and must also pursue what is right for her despite Victorian gender and class conventions.

Jane Eyre uses some Gothic tropes, but sensation fiction (so named because its suspenseful plots inspired dangerous "sensations" in readers) more fully embraced the surprise and horror typical of the Gothic. Sensation fiction typically centers on deception and bigamy, in which men or women are lured into fake marriages - and worse. Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (1859), which tells the story of two women who look strangely alike and are substituted for each other at various points, is perhaps the most famous example. Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862), in which a supposedly deranged woman tries to kill her husband after he realizes that she has married another man, also shocked Victorian readers.

One of the aims of sensation fiction was to surprise and trouble readers by challenging social conventions, but another Victorian genre, melodrama, achieved popularity by upholding popular values. Melodramas divide characters starkly into those who are vicious and those who are virtuous. They evoke emotion in readers and viewers by making virtuous characters the subject of vicious plots. These were some of the most popular theatrical productions of the period.
NOVELS AND DIFFERENT KINDS OF REALISM
Although poetry and plays were important in Victorian cultural life, the period is known as the great age of the novel. The serial form of publishing, in which installments of a novel were released at regular intervals, encouraged engaged audiences. Victorian books are also famously long. In part, this was because improvements in papermaking and printing technology made printing books much cheaper. The rise of lending libraries, which would individually lend out volumes of a book (a book like Jane Eyre was a "tripledecker," or had three volumes) also contributed to the great length of Victorian novels. A three-volume book could be read by three readers at the same time, while a one-volume book could only be read by one. Lending libraries made more money on tripledeckers, and their encouragement helped that form become dominant in the Victorian marketplace.

Realism, which aims to portray realistic events happening to realistic people in a realistic way, was the dominant narrative mode of the Victorian novel - but it had many variants.
Satirical realism
William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1847-48) best exemplifies satirical realism, a mode that emphasizes the worst qualities of each character and suggests that the world, or "Vanity Fair," is a dark and unfair place. The novel follows the adventures of Becky Sharpe, a scheming and amoral heroine who manipulates all those around her (and does very well for herself), in contrast to Amelia Sedley, a trusting and virtuous young woman who struggles to find happiness.
Psychological realism
Psychological realism emphasizes portraying the rich inner life of characters - their thoughts, feelings, motivations, anxieties, etc. In George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-72) for instance, she portrays the progress of several marriages in a small provincial town. Dorothea Brooke, the heroine, is an idealist who marries an elderly scholar, Casaubon, in the hopes of helping him with his work. But she becomes disillusioned and finds herself attracted to his nephew Will Ladislaw.
Social realism
Social realism focuses on the foibles, eccentricities, and remarkable characteristics of people, who are frequently caricatured. Often comic (and sometimes tragicomic), it is best exemplified by the work of Charles Dickens. In novels like Oliver Twist (1837-39) in which Dickens uses the plight of the orphan Oliver to critique a heartless orphanage overseen by eccentric bumblers, Dickens both criticized the social system and created a vibrant world of memorable characters. In his masterpiece Bleak House (1852-53) Dickens takes aim at the bureaucratic excesses of the court system as seen in the never-ending court case Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.
Industrial novels
The rapid transformation of Britain into an industrial society prompted some writers to write novels which exposed the difficult plight of the working class. In Dickens' Hard Times (1854), the millworker hero, Stephen Blackpool, faces ostracism after his refusal to join the millworkers' union. Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855) uses the viewpoint of Margaret Hale, an emigrant from southern England to a northern industrial city, to address the plight of millworkers.
The novel and empire
As Dickens and Gaskell focused on important domestic issues, other writers turned their attention to Britain's rapidly-expanding empire, which they took as a subject for novels and poetry. Rudyard Kipling celebrated British rule in India with his novel (1901), in which the young Kim becomes a British spy in India. Joseph Conrad took a more skeptical stance toward imperialism in Heart of Darkness (1899), in which the sailor Marlow journeys through the Belgian Congo. Although ostensibly about the Belgian rather than the British Empire, Marlow informs his fellow sailors that his tale applies to Britain as well.
JOURNALISM AND PERIODICAL WRITING
With the cheaper price of printing, British journalism and periodical writing flourished and formed a significant part of Victorian literary production. Essayists like John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Babington Macauley, John Stuart Mill, and Matthew Arnold all wrote famous works of nonfiction prose that analyzed British history and critiqued current trends in British society. Professional female journalists like Harriet Martineau and prominent reformers like Florence Nightingale also used the periodical press to raise awareness about important issues in British society. Finally, important figures in British literature were also frequent contributors to the periodical press. Dickens ran a literary magazine called Household Words, while Eliot edited the Westminster Review for several years.
CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
The nineteenth century is frequently seen as the golden age of children's literature. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) narrate the story of Alice, who finds herself in a place called "Wonderland" populated by grinning cats, mad hatters, and an evil queen. J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy (1911) similarly imagines a fantastical place of mermaid lagoons, evil pirates, and fairy magic.
THE FIN DE SIÈCLE
The last part of the Victorian period, roughly 1880-1900, is referred to as the "fin de siècle," a French term that means "end of the century." Novels from this period tend to be more melancholy and bleak than earlier Victorian works, which conventionally had happy endings. Thomas Hardy's famously depressing novels Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1892) and Jude the Obscure (1895), for instance, describe how their protagonists' lives are ruined by social forces. Tess gives birth to a child out of wedlock, which causes the husband she later marries to shun her when he finds out. Jude Fawley's dreams of becoming a student at an elite university are destroyed both by his low social status as a stoneworker and by a disastrous early marriage.

Fin de siècle literature is also characterized by a move away from the forms of realism that had dominated the earlier part of the century and into genre fiction. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, made his first appearance in 1886. Science fiction also became popular in the fin de siècle, as H. G. Wells imagined future worlds in The Time Machine (1895) and an alien invasion in The War of the Worlds (1897).

At the same time that Hardy envisioned bleak outcomes of human striving and Doyle and Wells developed new genres, Oscar Wilde wrote hilariously witty plays like The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) which describes the comic endeavors of two men who are trying to marry two women, both of whom are determined to marry men named Ernest. Although Wilde was the toast of the literary town at the time of the play's production, he was soon prosecuted for sodomy and thrown into jail. His "Ballad of Reading Gaol" (1897) is a mournful evocation of prison life and the death of dreams, as the refrain reiterates: "all men kill the thing they love."

I used the following sources to prepare this introduction to Victorian literature:

Adams, James Eli. A History of Victorian Literature. Oxford: Blackwell, 2012.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age. Ed. Carol T. Christ and Catherine Robson. New York: Norton, 2006.

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The Victorian period of literature roughly coincides with the years that Queen Victoria ruled Great Britain and its Empire (1837-1901). During this era, Britain was transformed from a predominantly rural, agricultural society into an urban, industrial one. New technologies like railroads and the steam printing press united Britons both physically and intellectually.

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site:srfs.upenn.edu ; "budgeting"

This website could be useful if a student is doing a project on budgeting strategies, as it lists 4 different strategies. Or, it could be useful if they just want general knowledge that will help them budget and make responsible financial decisions in the future. This is helpful because it can lead to students making better decisions with their money.

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Penn Student Registration & Financial Services

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Whether you’ve recently become responsible for managing your finances or you’ve been doing it for years, you should consider using

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site:nih.gov intitle"dairy consumption"

This could be useful for a student trying to write a paper about the effects of dairy consumption on a person's health. Nih.gov is credible and more relevant to health than other government departments that might have articles on dairy, such as the USDA.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
AS Abargouei, M Janghorbani, M Salehi-Marzijarani, A Esmaillzadeh

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Effect of dairy consumption on weight and body composition in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled clinical trials

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Increasing dairy consumption without energy restriction might not lead to a significant change in weight and body composition, whereas inclusion of dairy products in weight loss energy-restricted diets would result in more favourable results. Although the conclusions reflect the evidence, the limited size and number of trials and their limited follow-up mean that they may not be sufficiently cautious.

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"ai" "employment" site:.gov

This site -- even though 1/2 a year is a long time in the field of AI and these projections have certainly changed since the release of GPT5 -- gives real data on employment demographic changes of the future. This can be used to make any number of arguments.

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AI impacts in BLS employment projections

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Technology, including that powered by artificial intelligence (AI), has long been a factor impacting the job outlook for many occupations. Over the 2023–33 employment projections period, AI is expected to primarily affect occupations whose core tasks can be most easily replicated by Generative AI in its current form. Other jobs, including some in the computer, legal, business and financial, and architecture and engineering groups, are also potentially susceptible to AI-related impacts.

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"Psychology" site:.gov

This website summarizes survey data, using tables, graphs, and fact sheets; Evaluate surveys, the methods underlying them, and their performance to improve future surveys.

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site:.edu "executive functions"

This would be helpful for an assignment because as an education major we talk a lot about the functions of children's brains in their ability to learn. This infographic helps me have a quick insight about what executive functions are and how it functions in the brain. This topic is very interesting to me.

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"CSBS" site:uni.edu

This is a UNI website where individuals can learn about the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences here at the University of Northern Iowa. It has resource links to meet the staff/faculty, centers and involvement, and the various departments.

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CSBS Home | College of Social & Behavioral Sciences

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The College of Social & Behavioral Sciences is made up of a variety of programs that explore how human behavior relates to society. Our students are innovative, resilient and engaged ... focused on inspirin

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"criminology" site:.gov

This site is a government, peer reviewed research article. It talks about the nature of crime through many lenses like criminological, sociological, and psychological.

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Humans have dark side that loves crime and violence. We all may deny it but the contrary is true. And it applies regardless of our age, caste, social status, region, religion or education. The television, movies, sports and many happenings reported in news papers and magazines are indicative of our obsession with the fact and fiction of crime and violence. Modern culture is infact can be referred to as the most violent culture in history in the number of crimes and in the nature brutality.[ 1]

Recently, Nithari hogged the lime light and the press was full of wild speculations and assumptions.[ 2] It was so much everywhere because crime somehow intrigues people. It can attract or repel but it does happen. It can amuse so also frighten us. It can generate anger when it affects near or dear ones in our community. The crime arouses so much of interest or passion, yet its understanding as to why it occurs and what we can do about it has often remained a problem. Public officials, politicians, experts and consultants and anyone who matters often offer simple and incomplete discourses on the events and method of solution for eradicating crime. Solutions offered may be more policing, setting up of closed circuit TVs, increasing street lighting, putting up sturdy locks, karate classes for the people on the one hand and stiff penalties, speedy imprisonment or capital punishment on the other hand for the criminals. 'Experts' dole out abstract interpretations that have any practical value. In short, as in most areas of human behavior, there is no shortage of experts but there are few effective solutions.[ 3]

Bartol argues effectively that 'our inability to prevent crime is partly due to our problems in understanding criminal behavior, a complex phenomenon. Since crime is complex, it goes without saying that explanations of crime require complicated, involved answers. Research indicates that most people have a very limited tolerance for complexity and ambiguity. They apparently want simple, straight forward answers for even a very complex issue. As behavioral scientists we need to understand that criminal behavior is a vastly complex, yet poorly understood phenomenon. There is no all encompassing psychological explanation for crime, than there is sociological, anthropological, psychiatric, economic or historic one.[ 3] Without the help of many disciplines, for sociology or psychology to reach the basic 'truth' is almost impossible. In most, understanding criminal behavior calls for an inter disciplinary approach integrating data, theory and the practical view point of each discipline.

HUMAN NATURE AND CRIME

Bartol[ 3] again reviews underlying assumptions about human nature and identifies 3 major domains:

'Conformity' perspective: Classical example is the strain theory of Merton R. K. which argues that 'humans are fundamentally good people and conforming beings who are strongly influenced by values and attitudes of the society in which they live. It assumes that humans, as creatures of conformity who want to do the 'right' thing'. 'Right' thing therefore is what the society says is the 'right' thing. For example, the American society advocates 'accumulation of wealth or status is all important and many continue to accept these well advertised goals'. Education, social network, contacts and family influence can help access these to many but not to all. When there is 'perceived discrepancy', between materialist values and goals cherished and the availability of legitimate means, then crime and delinquency occurs. Groups and individuals experience high level of 'strain' are forced to decide whether to accept of violate norms or laws, consequently they conform, withdraw or rebel.

'Non-conformist' perspective: Assumes that human beings are basically undisciplined creatures, given the chance would flout society's convention and commit crime indiscriminately. Travis Hisschi's[ 3] social control theory contentes that crime and delinquency occur when an individuals ties to the conventional order or normative standards are weak or largely nonexistent, where checks and balances in the society are at fault. This assumes that human nature in fundamentally 'bad' or 'antisocial'.

The third perspective assumes that human beings are basically 'neutral' by birth and they learn all their behaviors, beliefs and tendencies from social environment and this is the cornerstone of learning approach. A good example is Sutherland's differential association theory. Accordingly, criminal behavior is learned through social interaction with other people. "It is not the result of emotional disturbance, mental illness or innate qualities of 'goodness' or 'badness' "....... People learn to be criminal as a result of messages they get from others, who were also thought to be criminals. The conventional wisdom that "bad company promotes bad behavior" aptly summarizes the theme.

ROLE IN CRIMINOLOGY

Hence, criminology utilizes multi-disciplinary approach. Knowledge about criminal actions encompasses psychology, sociology, psychiatry, anthropology, biology, neurology, political science, economics etc. Though our expertise is in the field of psychological principles, we need to learn concepts, theories and research knowledge from other disciplines to understand, explain and prevent criminal behavior.

SOCIOLOGICAL ISSUES

The demographic and group variables such as "age, race, gender, socio-economic status, interpersonal relationships, ethnic-cultural application" are significant for certain categories and patterns of crime. It also probes situational or environmental factors that are conducive to criminal action such as the time, place, kind of weapon used, circumstances surrounding the crime etc. In the broader sense, it covers underlying social conditions - which may be inequities in education, employment or criminal justice system.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES

What can be called 'Psychological criminology' encompasses science of behavior and Mental processes of the criminal. Here the focus is "individual's criminal behavior - how it is acquired, evoked, maintained or modified". It considers both the social and personality factors and how these are mediated by mental processes. Recently there is a shift in its focus to the cognitive aspects of offending.[ 3] Exploring consistent, stable personality disposition or traits was the serious study in the past.[ 4] In search of personality traits little attention was paid to the environment or situation. It was thought that once personality variables were identified it would be possible to determine and predict which individual was most likely to engage in criminal behavior! Search for single personality type of the murderer, rapist or psychopathic killer is not possible. 'Criminal profiling' refers to the process of identifying personality traits, behavioral tendencies and demographic variables of an offender based on characteristics of the crime.[ 5] Frequently this is based on database collected on previous offenders who have committed similar offences. Bartol et al[ 3] contend that this is 95% an art based on speculation and only 5% science. Unvalidated clinical judgement and unsubstantiated hunches are common.

PSYCHIATRIC CRIMINOLOGY

Psychiatric criminology is also called forensic psychiatry. Traditionally, at least in America and Europe, Freudian psycho-analytic or psycho-dynamic tradition and subsequently neo-Freudian formulations are common. The psycho-analytic position assumes that one must dwell into the abysses of human personality to find unconscious determinants of human behavior, including criminal behavior. Abramsen[ 6] had noted "that the criminal rarely knows completely the reasons for his conduct" or as Roche,[ 7] emphases that 'every criminal is such by reason of unconscious forces within him....' In short overt behaviors are indirectly signals of symbolic dynamic, underlying attributes. Unconscious defenses distort or disguise the real meaning of absurd behavior. However, contemporary psychiatric criminology has tried to overcome traditional psychiatric criminology which had failed in replicable research data base.

CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR: DEFINITION

The earliest definition of crime in Tappan, 1947 quoted in Bartol[ 3] as 'an intentional act in violation of the criminal laws committed without defense or excuse and penalized by the state as a felony or misdemeanor'. To establish criminal behavior is that sense needs proving that it is intentional, it did not occur accidentally or without justification or excuse. To be held criminally responsible, a person must have known what he or she is doing during the criminal act and must have known that it was wrong. Surely it raises many questions.

Whether one should restrict oneself to a legal definition and study only those individuals who have been convicted of crime?

Whether one should include individuals who indulge in antisocial behavior but have not been detected by the criminal justice system?

Can we include persons predisposed to be criminal and how to identify them?

Bartol[ 3] reports that even by conservative estimates 16-18% of total U.S. population have arrest records for non-traffic offences (U.S Dept of justice, 1988).[ 8] How to include many who violate law but escape detection? Those who come to the attention but never arrested?

In U.S the system of recording incidence on basis of official police report, self-report studies and national or regional victimization studies may be fine to an extent but what about many other countries, including India where the system itself needs many corrections? Sellin[ 9] and others though argue about sticking to legal definition of criminal - one who is detected, arrested or committed, psychological point of view is that we should not limit ourselves to the mere legal definition. Because each society has different and changing set of values, the judgment of criminal act also varies from time to time and society to society. Many states in the U.S.A. differ significantly in their criminal codes and one continually revising them.[ 3] Chemical or substance possession, prostitution and pornography are classic examples of changing statue and selective enforcement.

Society and for that matter judicial system which are part of that society, perceive and process violators with some discrimination, so much so the offenders background, social status, personality, motivation, sex, age, race, legal council and circumstances surrounding the offence, all affects the legal process. It is highly likely that individuals who have been arrested, convicted or punished represent a distinctly different sample from those who participate in illegal activity but avoid detection, conviction or punishment. Also error and subjectivity cannot be removed realistically for determination of guilt, innocence or sentencing process. It is reported that if the victim is respectable citizen, the offender will receive stiffer sentence than if the case involves an 'unrespectable' Victim.[ 10] It is also reported that defendants who raped a married woman or virgin were more likely to receive longer sentences than defendants who raped a divorced woman.[ 11]

CONCLUSION

The psychological or psychiatric criminology has to look beyond the individuals who have reached the final stage of the legal process to understand the 'criminal mind'. There is a filtering as 'suspect', 'arrested', 'charged', 'convicted' to the ultimate label of convict, inmate prisoner or criminal shows funneling effect. That means only fewer and fewer individuals reach subsequent step in the criminal justice process, which is called 'the great pyramid of legal order' or 'legal iceberg'.[ 12] Our approach should go beyond the behavior that generally qualifies as criminal. From this perspective, we can include the vast body of psychological research that deals with such areas as aggression, "deviant" sexual behavior and moral development.[ 3] Our focus has to be on the persistent repetitive offender, whether detected or undetected by the criminal justice system. In this process, psychiatrists are uniquely placed with a vast information which is personal, clinical and social. However, that entails higher responsibility to oneself, profession and to the society.

REFERENCES

4. Mischel W. Toward a cognitive social learning reconceptualization of personality. Psychol Rev. 1973;80:252-83. doi: 10.1037/h0035002. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

10. Jones C, Aronson E. Attribution of fault to a rape victim as a function of respectability of the victim. J Personality Soc Psychol. 1973;26:415-9. doi: 10.1037/h0034463. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Indian Journal of Psychiatry are provided here courtesy of Wolters Kluwer -- Medknow Publications

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Psychiatrist and the science of criminology: Sociological, psychological and psychiatric analysis of the dark side

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Humans have dark side that loves crime and violence. We all may deny it but the contrary is true. And it applies regardless of our age, caste, social status, region, religion or education. The television, movies, sports and many happenings reported in news papers and magazines are indicative of our obsession with the fact and fiction of crime and violence.

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site:.edu "Nursing Burnout"

This site provides a peer reviewed, timely, and statistical research article that provides information on how to avoid nursing burnout while in school, and in the health care field. Within this site, for nursing students it is important to take care of yourself and a lot of programs suggest or require you understand the signs of nursing burnout and how to better yourself.

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University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences

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Nurse Burnout: Risks, Causes, and Precautions for Nurses

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We outline what nurse burnout is, the dangers it poses, how to prevent it, and how to address it if it’s happening to you. Learn more about burnout in nursing!

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"WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic" site:.edu

The article “WHO Declares COVID‑19 a Pandemic” provides a timely, peer-reviewed account of the World Health Organization’s declaration on March 11, 2020, highlighting the rapid global spread of COVID-19 and the dramatic rise in cases. It outlines WHO’s urgent public health recommendations, including self-isolation for individuals with mild symptoms and social distancing measures even in countries without confirmed cases, emphasizing the need for early containment.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, has declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic ( 1).

At a news briefing, WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that over the past 2 weeks, the number of cases outside China increased 13-fold and the number of countries with cases increased threefold. Further increases are expected. He said that the WHO is "deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction," and he called on countries to take action now to contain the virus. "We should double down," he said. "We should be more aggressive."

Among the WHO's current recommendations, people with mild respiratory symptoms should be encouraged to isolate themselves, and social distancing is emphasized and these recommendations apply even to countries with no reported cases ( 2).

Separately, in JAMA, researchers report that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was most often detected in respiratory samples from patients in China. However, live virus was also found in feces. They conclude: "Transmission of the virus by respiratory and extrarespiratory routes may help explain the rapid spread of disease."( 3).

COVID-19 is a novel disease with an incompletely described clinical course, especially for children. In a recente report W. Liu et al described that the virus causing Covid-19 was detected early in the epidemic in 6 (1.6%) out of 366 children (≤16 years of age) hospitalized because of respiratory infections at Tongji Hospital, around Wuhan. All these six children had previously been completely healthy and their clinical characteristics at admission included high fever (>39°C) cough and vomiting (only in four). Four of the six patients had pneumonia, and only one required intensive care. All patients were treated with antiviral agents, antibiotic agents, and supportive therapies, and recovered after a median 7.5 days of hospitalization. ( 4).

Risk factors for severe illness remain uncertain (although older age and comorbidity have emerged as likely important factors), the safety of supportive care strategies such as oxygen by high-flow nasal cannula and noninvasive ventilation are unclear, and the risk of mortality, even among critically ill patients, is uncertain. There are no proven effective specific treatment strategies, and the risk-benefit ratio for commonly used treatments such as corticosteroids is unclear ( 3, 5).

Septic shock and specific organ dysfunction such as acute kidney injury appear to occur in a significant proportion of patients with COVID-19-related critical illness and are associated with increasing mortality, with management recommendations following available evidence-based guidelines ( 3).

Novel COVID-19 "can often present as a common cold-like illness," wrote Roman Wöelfel et al. ( 6). They report data from a study concerning nine young- to middle-aged adults in Germany who developed COVID-19 after close contact with a known case. All had generally mild clinical courses; seven had upper respiratory tract disease, and two had limited involvement of the lower respiratory tract. Pharyngeal virus shedding was high during the first week of symptoms, peaking on day 4. Additionally, sputum viral shedding persisted after symptom resolution. The German researchers say the current case definition for COVID-19, which emphasizes lower respiratory tract disease, may need to be adjusted( 6). But they considered only young and "normal" subjecta whereas the story is different in frail comorbid older patients, in whom COVID 19 may precipitate an insterstitial pneumonia, with severe respiratory failure and death ( 3).

High level of attention should be paid to comorbidities in the treatment of COVID-19. In the literature, COVID-19 is characterised by the symptoms of viral pneumonia such as fever, fatigue, dry cough, and lymphopenia. Many of the older patients who become severely ill have evidence of underlying illness such as cardiovascular disease, liver disease, kidney disease, or malignant tumours. These patients often die of their original comorbidities. They die "with COVID", but were extremely frail and we therefore need to accurately evaluate all original comorbidities.

In addition to the risk of group transmission of an infectious disease, we should pay full attention to the treatment of the original comorbidities of the individual while treating pneumonia, especially in older patients with serious comorbid conditions and polipharmacy. Not only capable of causing pneumonia, COVID-19 may also cause damage to other organs such as the heart, the liver, and the kidneys, as well as to organ systems such as the blood and the immune system. Patients die of multiple organ failure, shock, acute respiratory distress syndrome, heart failure, arrhythmias, and renal failure ( 5, 6).

What we know about COVID 19?

In December 2019, a cluster of severe pneumonia cases of unknown cause was reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The initial cluster was epidemiologically linked to a seafood wholesale market in Wuhan, although many of the initial 41 cases were later reported to have no known exposure to the market ( 7).

A novel strain of coronavirus belonging to the same family of viruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), as well as the 4 human coronaviruses associated with the common cold, was subsequently isolated from lower respiratory tract samples of 4 cases on 7 January 2020.

On 30 January 2020, the WHO declared that the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and more than 80, 000 confirmed cases had been reported worldwide as of 28 February 2020 ( 8). On 31 January 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that all citizens returning from Hubei province, China, would be subject to mandatory quarantine for up to 14 days. But from China COVID 19 arrived to many other countries. Rothe C et al reported a case of a 33-year-old otherwise healthy German businessman :she became ill with a sore throat, chills, and myalgias on January 24, 2020 ( 9). The following day, a fever of 39.1°C developed, along with a productive cough. By the evening of the next day, he started feeling better and went back to work on January 27. Before the onset of symptoms, he had attended meetings with a Chinese business partner at his company near Munich on January 20 and 21. The business partner, a Shanghai resident, had visited Germany between January 19 and 22. During her stay, she had been well with no signs or symptoms of infection but had become ill on her flight back to China, where she tested positive for 2019-nCoV on January 26.

This case of 2019-nCoV infection was diagnosed in Germany and transmitted outside Asia. However, it is notable that the infection appears to have been transmitted during the incubation period of the index patient, in whom the illness was brief and nonspecific. The fact that asymptomatic persons are potential sources of 2019-nCoV infection may warrant a reassessment of transmission dynamics of the current outbreak ( 9).

Our current understanding of the incubation period for COVID-19 is limited. An early analysis based on 88 confirmed cases in Chinese provinces outside Wuhan, using data on known travel to and from Wuhan to estimate the exposure interval, indicated a mean incubation period of 6.4 days (95% CI, 5.6 to 7.7 days), with a range of 2.1 to 11.1 days. Another analysis based on 158 confirmed cases outside Wuhan estimated a median incubation period of 5.0 days (CI, 4.4 to 5.6 days), with a range of 2 to 14 days. These estimates are generally consistent with estimates from 10 confirmed cases in China (mean incubation period, 5.2 days [CI, 4.1 to 7.0 days] and from clinical reports of a familial cluster of COVID-19 in which symptom onset occurred 3 to 6 days after assumed exposure in Wuhan ( 10- 12).

The incubation period can inform several important public health activities for infectious diseases, including active monitoring, surveillance, control, and modeling. Active monitoring requires potentially exposed persons to contact local health authorities to report their health status every day. Understanding the length of active monitoring needed to limit the risk for missing infections is necessary for health departments to effectively use resources. A recent paper provides additional evidence for a median incubation period for COVID-19 of approximately 5 days ( 13). Lauer et al suggest that 101 out of every 10 000 cases will develop symptoms after 14 days of active monitoring or quarantinen ( 13). Whether this rate is acceptable depends on the expected risk for infection in the population being monitored and considered judgment about the cost of missing cases. Combining these judgments with the estimates presented here can help public health officials to set rational and evidence-based COVID-19 control policies. Note that the proportion of mild cases detected has increased as surveillance and monitoring systems have been strengthened. The incubation period for these severe cases may differ from that of less severe or subclinical infections and is not typically an applicable measure for those with asymptomatic infections

In conclusion, in a very short period health care systems and society have been severely challenged by yet another emerging virus. Preventing transmission and slowing the rate of new infections are the primary goals; however, the concern of COVID-19 causing critical illness and death is at the core of public anxiety. The critical care community has enormous experience in treating severe acute respiratory infections every year, often from uncertain causes. The care of severely ill patients, in particular older persons with COVID-19 must be grounded in this evidence base and, in parallel, ensure that learning from each patient could be of great importance to care all population,

Appendix

Avoid all non-essential travel

Conflict of interest:

The author declares that he has no commercial associations (e.g. consultancies, stock ownership, equity interest, patent/licensing arrangement etc.) that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article

References

1. WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID19 -March 2020 [Google Scholar]

2. CIDRAP-Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. 11 March 2020 [Google Scholar]

3. Srinivas M, Gomersall CD, Fowler R. Critically Ill Patients With COVID-19 JAMA. Published online. March 11, 2020 doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.3633. doi:10.1001/JAMA.2020.3633. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

6. Woelfel R, Corman VM, Guggemos W, et al. Clinical presentation and virological assessment of hospitalized cases of coronavirus disease 2019 in a travel-associated transmission cluster. medRXiv. March,8, 2020 [Google Scholar]

8. World Health Organization. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): Situation Report - 38. 27 February 2020 Accessed at www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200227-sitrep-38-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=9f98940c_2. on 28 February 2020. [Google Scholar]

13. Lauer SA, Grantz KH, et al. The Incubation Period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) From Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases: Estimation and Application. Ann Intern Med. 2020 doi: 10.7326/M20-0504. [Epub ahead of print 10 March 2020]. doi: https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-0504 . [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

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The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, has declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic ( 1). At a news briefing, WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that over the past 2 weeks, the number of cases outside China increased 13-fold and the number of countries with cases increased threefold.

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"To What Extent Do Study Habits Relate To Performance?" site:.gov

This site talked about different study habits that can be done to affect a students performance on exams. The research was based off of student test scores, and how each student studied for that exam. This website can be useful because it can show students what does, and doesn't work for studying for an exam.

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Abstract

Students' study sessions outside class are important learning opportunities in college courses. However, we often depend on students to study effectively without explicit instruction. In this study, we described students' self-reported study habits and related those habits to their performance on exams. Notably, in these analyses, we controlled for potential confounds, such as academic preparation, self-reported class absences, and self-reported total study time. First, we found that, on average, students used approximately four active strategies to study and that they spent about half of their study time using active strategies. In addition, both the number of active strategies and the proportion of their study time using active strategies positively predicted exam performance. Second, on average, students started studying 6 days before an exam, but how early a student started studying was not related to performance on in-term (immediate) or cumulative (delayed) exams. Third, on average, students reported being distracted about 20% of their study time, and distraction while studying negatively predicted exam performance. These results add nuance to lab findings and help instructors prioritize study habits to target for change.

INTRODUCTION

One of our goals in college courses is to help students develop into independent, self-regulated learners. This requires students to perform several metacognitive tasks on their own, including setting goals, choosing strategies, monitoring and reflecting on performance, and modifying those steps over time ( Zimmerman, 2002). There are many challenges that learners encounter in developing self-regulation. One such challenge is that students often misjudge their learning during the monitoring and reflection phases ( Kornell and Bjork, 2007). Often, students feel that they learn more from cognitively superficial tasks than from cognitively effortful tasks. As one example, students may feel that they have learned more if they reread a text passage multiple times than if they are quizzed on that same material ( Karpicke and Roediger, 2008). In contrast to students' judgments, many effortful tasks are highly effective for learning. R. A. Bjork defines these effective, effortful tasks as desirable difficulties ( Bjork, 1994). In the present study, we investigated the frequency with which students reported carrying out effortful (active) or superficial (passive) study habits in a large introductory biology course. Additionally, we examined the relationship between study habits and performance on exams while controlling for prior academic preparation and total study time.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Why Would Difficulties Be Desirable?

During learning, the goal is to generate knowledge or skills that are robustly integrated with related knowledge and easily accessible. Desirable difficulties promote cognitive processes that either aid forming robust, interconnected knowledge or skills or retrieving that knowledge or skill ( Bjork, 1994; also see Marsh and Butler, 2013, for a chapter written for educators). Learners employing desirable difficulties may feel that they put in more effort and make more mistakes, but they are actually realizing larger gains toward long-term learning than learners using cognitively superficial tasks.

Which Study Habits Are Difficult in a Desirable Way?

Study habits can include a wide variety of behaviors, from the amount of time that students study, to the strategies that they use while studying, to the environment in which they study. The desirable difficulties framework ( Bjork and Bjork, 2011), describes two main kinds of effective habits that apply to our study: 1) using effortful study strategies or techniques that prompt students to generate something or test themselves during studying and 2) distributing study time into multiple sessions to avoid "cramming" near the exam. In the following two paragraphs, we expand upon these study habits of interest.

The desirable difficulties framework suggests that study strategies whereby students actively generate a product or test themselves promote greater long-term learning than study strategies whereby students passively consume presentations. This is supported by strong evidence for the "generation effect," in which new knowledge or skills are more robustly encoded and retrieved if you generate a solution, explanation, or summary, rather than looking it up ( Jacoby, 1978). A few generative strategies that are commonly reported among students-summarization, self-explanation, and practice testing-are compared below. Summarization is a learning strategy in which students identify key points and combine them into a succinct explanation in their own words. As predicted by the generation effect, evidence suggests that summarization is more effective than rewriting notes (e.g., laboratory study by Bretzing and Kulhavy, 1979) or reviewing notes (e.g., classroom study by King, 1992). Self-explanation is a learning strategy wherein students ask "how" and "why" questions for material as they are being exposed to the material or shortly after ( Berry, 1983). This is one form of elaborative interrogation, a robust memory technique in which learners generate more expansive details for new knowledge to help them remember that information ( Pressley et al., 1987). Self-explanation requires little instruction and seems to be helpful for a broad array of tasks, including recall, comprehension, and transfer. Further, it is more effective than summarization (e.g., classroom study by King, 1992), perhaps because it prompts students to make additional connections between new and existing knowledge. Practice testing is supported by evidence of the "testing effect," for which retrieving information itself actually promotes learning ( Karpicke and Roediger, 2008). The memory benefits of the "testing effect" can be achieved with any strategy in which students complete problems or practice retrieval without relying on external materials (quizzing, practice testing, flashcards, etc.). In this study, we refer to these strategies together as "self-quizzing." Self-quizzing is especially effective at improving performance on delayed tests, even as long as 9-11 months after initial learning ( Carpenter, 2009). Additionally, in the laboratory, self-quizzing has been shown to be effective on a range of tasks from recall to inference ( Karpicke and Blunt, 2011). Overall, research suggests that active, more effortful strategies-such as self-quizzing, summarization, and self-explanation-are more effective for learning than passive strategies-such as rereading and rewriting notes. In this study, we asked whether these laboratory findings would extend to students' self-directed study time, focusing especially on the effectiveness of effortful (herein, "active") study strategies.

The second effective habit described by the desirable difficulties framework is to avoid cramming study time near exam time. The "spacing effect" describes the phenomenon wherein, when given equal study time, spacing study out into multiple sessions promotes greater long-term learning than massing (i.e., cramming) study into one study session. Like the "testing effect," the "spacing effect" is especially pronounced for longer-term tests in the laboratory ( Rawson and Kintsch, 2005). Based on laboratory studies, we would expect that, in a course context, cramming study time into fewer sessions close to an exam would be less desirable for long-term learning than distributing study time over multiple sessions, especially if that learning is measured on a delay.

However, estimating spacing in practice is more complicated. Classroom studies have used two main methodologies to estimate spacing, either asking the students to report their study schedules directly ( Susser and McCabe, 2013) or asking students to choose whether they describe their pattern of study as spaced out or occurring in one session ( Hartwig and Dunlosky, 2012; Rodriguez et al., 2018). The results from these analyses have been mixed; in some cases, spacing has been a significant, positive predictor of performance ( Rodriquez et al., 2018; Susser and McCabe, 2013), but in other cases it has not ( Hartwig and Dunlosky, 2012).

In the present study, we do not claim measure spacing directly. Lab definitions of spacing are based on studying the same topic over multiple sessions. But, because our exams have multiple topics, some students who start studying early may not revisit the same topic in multiple sessions. Rather, in this study, we measure what we refer to as "spacing potential." For example, if students study only on the day before the exam, there is little potential for spacing. If, instead, they are studying across 7 days, there is more potential for spacing. We collected two spacing potential measurements: (1) cramming, or the number of days in advance that a student began studying for the exam; and (2) consistency, or the number of days in the week leading up to an exam that a student studied. Based on our measurements, students with a higher spacing potential would exhibit less cramming and study more consistently than students with lower spacing potential. Because not every student with a high spacing potential may actually space out the studying of a single topic into multiple sessions, spacing potential is likely to underestimate the spacing effect; however, it is a practical way to indirectly estimate spacing in practice.

Importantly, not all difficult, or effortful, study tasks are desirable ( Bjork and Bjork, 2011). For example, in the present study, we examined students' level of distraction while studying. Distraction can come in many forms, commonly "multitasking," or splitting one's attention among multiple tasks (e.g., watching lectures while also scrolling through social media). However, multitasking has been shown to decrease working memory for the study tasks at hand ( May and Elder, 2018). Thus, it may make a task more difficult, but in a way that interferes with learning rather than contributing to it.

In summary, available research suggests that active, effortful study strategies are more effective than passive ones; that cramming is less effective than distributing studying over time; and that focused study is more effective than distracted study. Whether students choose to use these more effective practices during their independent study time is a separate question.

How Do Students Actually Study for Their Courses?

There have been several studies surveying students' general study habits. When asked free-response questions about their study strategies in general, students listed an average of 2.9 total strategies ( Karpicke et al., 2009). In addition, few students listed active strategies, such as self-quizzing, but many students listed more passive strategies, such as rereading.

There have also been studies asking whether what students actually do while they are studying is related to their achievement. Hartwig and Dunlosky (2012) surveyed 324 college students about their general study habits and found that self-quizzing and rereading were positively correlated with grade point average (GPA). Other studies have shown that using Facebook or texting during study sessions was negatively associated with college GPA ( Junco, 2012; Junco and Cotten, 2012). While these findings are suggestive, we suspect that the use of study strategies and the relationship between study strategies and achievement may differ from discipline to discipline. The research we have reviewed thus far has been conducted for students' "general" study habits, rather than for specific courses. To learn about how study habits relate to learning biology, it is necessary to look at study habits within the context of biology courses.

How Do Students Study for Biology Courses?

Several prior qualitative studies carried out within the context of specific biology courses have shown that students often report ineffective habits, such as favoring passive strategies or cramming. Hora and Oleson ( 2017) found that, when asked about study habits in focus groups, students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses (including biology) used predominantly passive strategies such as reviewing notes or texts, practices that in some cases were unchanged from high school. Tomanek and Montplaisir (2004) found that the majority of 13 interviewed students answered questions on old exams (100% of students) and reread lecture slides (92.3% of students) or the textbook (61.5% of students) to study for a biology exam, but only a small minority participated in deeper tasks such as explaining concepts to a peer (7.7% of students) or generating flashcards for retrieval practice (7.7% of students). We can also learn indirectly about students' study habits by analyzing what they would change upon reflection. For example, in another study within an introductory biology classroom, Stanton and colleagues ( 2015) asked students what they would change about their studying for the next exam. In this context, 13.5% of students said that using active strategies would be more effective for learning, and 55.5% said that they wanted to spend more time studying, many of whom reported following through by studying earlier for the next exam ( Stanton et al., 2015). In the current study, we extended prior research by exploring the prevalence of multiple study habits simultaneously, including the use of active study strategy and study timing, in a large sample of introductory biology students.

In addition to characterizing students' study habits, we also aimed to show how those study habits were related to performance in a biology classroom. In one existing study, there were positive associations between exam performance and some (but not all) active strategies-such as completing practice exams and taking notes-but no significant associations between performance and some more passive strategies-such as reviewing notes/screencasts or reviewing the textbook ( Sebesta and Bray Speth, 2017). In another study, both self-reported study patterns (e.g., spacing studies into multiple sessions or one single session) and self-quizzing were positively related to overall course grade in a molecular biology course ( Rodriguez et al., 2018). We build on this previous work by asking whether associations between performance and a wide variety of study habits still hold when controlling for confounding variables, such as student preparation and total study time.

Hypotheses

In this study, we asked whether students actually use cognitive psychologists' recommendations from the desirable difficulty framework in a specific biology course, and we investigated whether students who reported using those recommendations during studying performed differently on exams than those who did not. We wanted to focus on how students spend their study time, rather than the amount of time that they study, their level of preparation, or engagement. Therefore, we used regression analyses to hold preparation (i.e., ACT math and the course pretest scores), self-reported class absences, and overall study time equal. In this way, we estimated the relationship between particular study habit variables-including the strategies that students use, their timing of using those strategies, and their level of distraction while studying-and exam performance.

Based on previous research and the desirable difficulties framework, we hypothesized that:

Students would use a combination of active and passive strategies, but those who used more active study strategies or who devoted more of their study time to active strategies would perform higher on their exams than those who used fewer active strategies or devoted less time to active strategies.

Students would vary in their study timing, but those with less spacing potential (e.g., crammed their study time or studied less consistently) would perform worse, especially on long-term tests (final exam and course posttest), than students with more spacing potential.

Students would report at least some distraction during their studying, but those who reported being distracted for a smaller percent of their study time would score higher on exams than students who reported being distracted for a larger percent of their study time.

METHODS

Context and Participants

Data for this study were gathered from a large-enrollment introductory biology course (total class size was 623) during the Spring 2019 semester at a selective, private institution in the Midwest. This course covers basic biochemistry and molecular genetics. It is the first semester of a two-semester sequence. Students who take this course are generally interested in life science majors and/or have pre-health intentions. The data for this study came from an on-campus repository; both the repository and this study have been approved by our internal review board (IRB ID: 201810007 for this study; IRB ID: 201408004 for the repository). There were no exclusion criteria for the study. Anyone who gave consent and for whom all variables were available was considered for the analyses. However, because the variables were different in each analysis, the sample differed slightly from analysis to analysis. When we compared students who were included in the first hypothesis's analyses to students who gave consent but were not included, we found no significant differences between participants and nonparticipants for ACT math score, pretest score, year in school, sex, or race (Supplemental Table 1). This suggested that our sample did not dramatically differ from the class as a whole.

Other than those analyses labeled "post hoc," analyses were preplanned before data were retrieved.

Timeline of Assignments Used in This Study

Figure 1 shows a timeline of the assignments analyzed in this study, which included the exam 1 and 2 reflections (both online), exams 1 and 2 (both in person), the course pre and post knowledge tests (both online), and a cumulative final exam (in person). As shown in the text boxes within Figure 1, the majority (85.7% [430/502] or greater) of students completed each of the assignments that were used in this study.

FIGURE 1.

Timeline of assignments used in this study organized by mode of submission (online vs. in person) and grading (completion vs. accuracy). Exam days are indicated by thick lines. There were other course assignments (including a third exam), but they are not depicted here, because they were not analyzed in this study. Exam return is indicated by dotted lines. Light gray boxes represent weeks that class was in session. The number of consenting students who completed each assignment is indicated in the corresponding assignment box; the total number of consenting students was 502.

Exam Reflections

Students' responses to exam 1 and 2 study habits reflections were central to all of our hypotheses. In these reflection assignments, students were asked to indicate their study habits leading up to the exam (see Supplemental Item 1 for prompts), including the timing of studying and type of study strategies. The list of strategies for students to choose from came from preliminary analysis of open-response questions in previous years. To increase the likelihood that students accurately remembered their study habits, we made the exercise available online immediately after each exam for 5 days. The reflection assignment was completed before exam grades were returned to students so that their performance did not bias their memory of studying. Students received 0.20% of the total course points for completion of each reflection.

Exams

Exams in this course contained both structured-response (multiple-choice, matching, etc.) and free-response questions. The exams were given in person and contained a mixture of lower-order cognitive level (i.e., recall and comprehension) and higher-order cognitive level (i.e., application, analysis, synthesis, or evaluation) questions. Two independent (A.B and G. Y.) raters qualitatively coded exam questions by cognitive level using a rubric slightly modified from Crowe et al. (2008) to bin lower-order and higher-order level questions. This revealed that 38% of exam points were derived from higher-order questions. Each in-term exam was worth 22.5% of the course grade, and the cumulative final exam was worth 25% of the course grade. To prepare for the exams, students were assigned weekly quizzes and were given opportunities for optional practice quizzing and in-class clicker questions as formative assessment. Students were also provided with weekly learning objectives and access to the previous year's exams. None of the exam questions were identical to questions presented previously in problem sets, old exams, or quizzes. Additionally, in the first week of class, students were given a handout about effective study strategies that included a list of active study techniques along with content-specific examples. Further, on the first quiz, students were asked to determine the most active way to use a particular resource from a list of options. The mean and SD of these exams, and all other variables used in this analysis, can be found in Supplemental Table 2. Pairwise correlations for all variables can be found in Supplemental Table 3

Pre and Post Knowledge Test

As described previously ( Walck-Shannon et al., 2019), the pre/posttest is a multiple-choice test that had been developed by the instructor team. The test contained 38 questions, but the percentage of questions correct is reported here for ease of interpretation. The same test was given online in the first week of classes and after class sessions had ended. One percent extra credit was given to students who completed both tests. To encourage students to participate fully, we presented the pre and posttests as learning opportunities in the course to foreshadow topics for the course (pretest) or review topics for the final (posttest). Additionally, we told students that "reasonable effort" was required for credit. Expressing this rationale seemed to be effective for participation rates. While others have found that participation is low when extra credit is offered as an incentive (38%, Padilla-Walker et al., 2005), we found participation rates for the pre- and posttests to be high; 97.4% of students completed the pretest and 85.9% of students completed the posttest.

Statistical Analyses

To test our three hypotheses, we used hierarchical regression. We controlled for potential confounding variables in step 1 and factored in the study variable of interest at step 2 for each model. We performed the following steps to check that the assumptions of linear regression were met for each model: first, we made scatter plots and found that the relationship was roughly linear, rather than curved; second, we plotted the histogram of residuals and found that they were normally distributed and centered around zero; and finally, we checked for multicollinearity by verifying that no two variables in the model were highly correlated (greater than 0.8). All statistical analyses were performed in JMP Pro (SAS Institute).

Base Model Selection

The purpose of the base model was to account for potential confounding variables. Thus, we included variables that we theoretically expected to explain some variance in exam performance based on previous studies. First, based on a meta-analysis ( Westrick et al., 2015) and our own previous study with a different cohort in this same course ( Walck-Shannon et al., 2019), we expected academic preparation to predict performance. Therefore, we included ACT math and biology pretest scores in our base model. Second, the negative relationship between self-reported class absences and exam or course performance is well documented ( Gump, 2005; Lin and Chen, 2006; Credé et al., 2010). Therefore, we included the number of class sessions missed in our base model. Finally, our research questions focus on how students use their study time, rather than the relationship between study time itself and performance. Because others have found a small but significant relationship between total study time and performance ( Credé and Kuncel, 2008), we controlled for the total number of hours spent studying in our base model. In summary, theoretical considerations of confounds prompted us to include ACT math score, biology pretest score, self-reported class absences, and self-reported exam study time as the base for each model.

Calculated Indices

In the following sections we provide descriptions of variables that were calculated from the reported data. If variables were used directly as input by the student (e.g., class absences, percent of study time distracted) or directly as reported by the registrar (e.g., ACT score), they are not listed below.

Total Exam Study Time.

In students' exam reflections, they were asked to report both the number of hours that they studied each day in the week leading up to the exam and any hours that they spent studying more than 1 week ahead of the exam. The total exam study time was the sum of these study hours.

Number of Active Strategies Used.

To determine the number of active strategies used, we first had to define which strategies were active. To do so, all authors reviewed literature about desirable difficulties and effective study strategies (also reviewed in Bjork and Bjork, 2011, and Dunlosky et al., 2013, respectively). Then, each author categorized the strategies independently. Finally, we met to discuss until agreement was reached. The resulting categorizations are given in Table 1. Students who selected "other" and wrote a text description were recoded into existing categories. After the coding was in place, we summed the number of active strategies that each student reported to yield the number of active strategies variable.

Proportion of Study Time Using Active Strategies.

In addition to asking students which strategies they used, we also asked them to estimate the percentage of their study time they spent using each strategy. To calculate the proportion of study time using active strategies, we summed the percentages of time using each of the active strategies, then divided by the sum of the percentages for all strategies. For most students (90.0% for exam 1 and 92.8% for exam 2), the sum of all percentages was 100%. However, there were some students whose reported percentages did not add to 100%. If the summed percentages added to between 90 and 110%, they were still included in analyses. If, for example, the sum of all percentages was 90%, and 40% of that was using active strategies, this would become 0.44 (40/90). If the summed percentages were lower than 90% or higher than 110%, students were excluded from the analyses involving the proportion of active study time index.

Number of Days in Advance Studying Began.

In the exam 2 reflection, we asked students to report: 1) their study hours in the week leading up to the exam; and 2) if they began before this time, the total number of hours and date that they began studying. If students did not report any study hours earlier than the week leading up to the exam, we used their first reported study hour as the first day of study. If students did report study time before the week before the exam, we used the reported date that studying began as the first day of study. To get the number of days in advance variable, we counted the number of days between the first day of study and the day of the exam. If a student began studying on exam day, this would be recorded as 0. All students reported some amount of studying.

Number of Days Studied in Week Leading Up to the Exam.

As a measure of studying consistency, we counted the number of days that each student reported studying in the week leading up to exam 2. More specifically, the number of days with nonzero reported study hours were summed to give the number of days studied.

RESULTS

The study strategies that students selected, the timing with which they implemented those strategies, and the level of distraction they reported while doing so are described below. We depict the frequencies with which certain study variables were reported and correlate those study variables to exam 1 and exam 2 scores. For all performance analyses described in the Results section, we first controlled for a base model described below.

Base Model

We attempted to control for some confounding variables using a base model, which included preparation (ACT math and course pretest percentage), self-reported class absences, and self-reported total study hours. For each analysis, we included all consenting individuals who responded to the relevant reflection questions for the model. Thus, the sample size and values for the variables in the base model differed slightly from analysis to analysis. For brevity, only the first base model is reported in the main text; the other base models included the same variables and are reported in Supplemental Tables 5A, 7A, and 8A.

The base model significantly predicted exam 1 score and exam 2 score for all analyses. Table 2 shows these results for the first analysis; exam 1: R 2 = 0.327, F(4, 419) = 51.010, p < 0.0001; exam 2: R 2 = 0.219, F(4, 466) = 32.751, p < 0.0001. As expected, all individual predictor terms were significant for both exams, with preparation and study time variables positively associated and absences negatively associated. For means and SDs of all continuous variables in this study, see Supplemental Table 2. We found that the preparatory variables were the most predictive, with the course pretest being more predictive than ACT math score. Total study time and class absences were predictive of performance to a similar degree. In summary, our base model accounted for a substantial proportion (32.7%) of the variance due to preparation, class absences, and study time, which allowed us to interpret the relationship between particular study habits and performance more directly.

TABLE 2.

Exam 1

Exam 2

Base model

βstd.

b unstd.

SE

R 2

βstd.

b unstd.

SE

R 2

Did Students Who Used More Active Study Strategies Perform Better on Exams?

We first investigated the specific study strategies listed in Table 1. Then, we examined the total amount of time spent on active strategies to test our hypothesis that students who spent more time actively studying performed better on exams. Further, we counted the number of different types of active strategies that students used to test whether students who used a more diverse set of active strategies performed better on exams than those who used fewer active strategies.

Study Strategies Differed in Their Frequency of Use and Effectiveness.

The frequency with which specific study strategies were employed is reported in Table 1. Almost all students reported reading notes. The next most prevalent strategies were active in nature, including that students (in order of prevalence) completed problem sets, completed old exams, self-quizzed, synthesized notes, explained concepts, and made diagrams. Surprisingly, each of these active strategies was used by the majority of students (54.7-86.1%) for both exams 1 and 2 ( Table 1). Less frequently used strategies included those more passive in nature, including that students (in order of prevalence) watched lectures, reviewed online content, read the textbook, and rewrote notes. A relatively infrequent strategy was attending review sessions, office hours, and help sessions. Because student engagement varied dramatically in these different venues, we classified this category as mixed. In summary, our results showed that, after reading notes, the most frequently used strategies were active strategies.

Next, we wondered whether the types of strategies that students reported using were related to exam performance. For these analyses, we added whether a student used a specific strategy (0 or 1) into the model, after controlling for the base model reported in Table 2. When holding preparation, class absences, and total study time equal, we found that, on average, students who reported having completed problem sets, explained concepts, self-quizzed, or attended review sessions earned 4.0-7.7% higher on average on both exams 1 and 2 than students who did not report using the strategy (see b unstd. in Table 3). Notably, these strategies were active in nature, except for the category attending review session, which was mixed in nature. The remaining active strategies were positively correlated to performance for only one of the exams. Additionally, we observed that the strategies categorized as passive were either nonsignificant or negatively related to performance on at least one exam. Together, these results suggest that active strategies tended to be positively related to exam performance. In our sample, each of these active strategies was used by the majority (more than half) of the students.

The Proportion of Time Spent Using Active Strategies Positively Predicted Exam Score.

To further understand how active strategies related to performance, we investigated the proportion of study time that students spent using active strategies. On average, students spent about half of their study time using active strategies for exam 1 (M = 0.524, SD = 0.244) and exam 2 (M = 0.548, SD = 0.243), though values varied from 0 to 1 ( Figure 2). Importantly, students who spent a larger proportion of their study time on active strategies tended to perform better on exams 1 and 2. More specifically, after accounting for our base model (Supplemental Table 5A), the proportion of time students spent using active strategies added significant additional predictive value for exam 1, F(1, 416) = 8.770, p = 0.003, Δ R 2 = 0.014; and exam 2, F(1, 450) = 14.848, p = 0.0001, Δ R 2 = 0.024. When holding preparation, class absences, and total study time equal, we found that students who spent all of their study time on active strategies scored 5.5% higher and 10.0% higher on exams 1 and 2, respectively, than those who spent none of their study time on active strategies ( Table 4). Overall, these two results suggested that, on average, students spent about half of their study time using active strategies and students who devoted more study time to active strategies tended to perform better on exams.

FIGURE 2.

Distribution of the proportion of time that students devoted to active study for exam 1 ( n = 422) and exam 2 ( n = 456). Percentages of students in each bin are indicated.

The Number of Active Strategies Used Positively Predicted Exam Score.

We next investigated the number of active strategies used by each student. On average, students used approximately four active strategies for exam 1 (M = 4.212, SD = 1.510) and exam 2 (M = 4.239, SD = 1.501). Very few students used no active strategies and most students (73%) used four or more active strategies ( Figure 3). Further, those students who used more active strategies tended to perform higher on exams 1 and 2. More specifically, after accounting for our base model, the number of active strategies students used added significant additional predictive value for exam 1, ( F(1, 416) = 33.698, p < 0.0001 Δ R 2 = 0.024; and exam 2, F(1, 450) = 91.083, p < 0.0001, Δ R 2 = 0.066. When holding preparation, class absences, and total study time equal, we found that, for each additional active strategy used, students scored 1.9% and 2.8% higher on exams 1 and 2, respectively. Students who used all six active strategies scored 11.1% higher and 16.6% higher on exams 1 and 2, respectively, than those who used no active strategies ( Table 4, See Supplemental Table 5A for base model). In summary, students who used a greater diversity of active strategies tended to perform better on exams.

FIGURE 3.

Distribution of the number of active strategies that each student used for exam 1 ( n = 422) and exam 2 ( n = 456). Percentages of students in each bin are indicated.

Post Hoc Analysis 1: Are Certain Active Strategies Uniquely Predictive of Performance?

Though it was not part of our planned analyses, the previous finding that the number of active strategies is predictive of performance made us question whether certain active strategies are uniquely predictive or whether they each have overlapping benefits. To test this, we added all six of the active strategies into the model as separate variables in the same step. When doing so, we found that the following active strategies were distinctly predictive for both exams 1 and 2: explaining concepts, self-quizzing, and completing problem sets (Supplemental Table 6). In other words, the portion of exam-score variance explained by certain active strategies was non-overlapping.

Did Study Timing Predict Performance on Immediate or Delayed Exams?

We next characterized students' spacing potential using two indices: 1) the number of days in advance that studying began (cramming) and 2) the number of days in the week leading up to the exam that a student studied (consistency). Notably, in these results, we adjusted for our base model, which included total study time. In this way, we addressed the timing of studying while holding the total amount of studying equal. We examined outcomes at two different times: exam 2, which came close after studying; and the cumulative final exam and the posttest, which came after about a 5-week delay.

Cramming Was Not a Significant Predictor of Exam 2, the Final Exam, or the Posttest.

While there was variation in the degree of cramming among students, this was not predictive of exam score on either immediate or delayed tests. On average, students began studying 5.842 d in advance of exam 2 (SD = 4.377). About a third of students began studying 0-3 days before the exam, and another third began studying 4-6 days before the exam ( Figure 4A). When holding preparation, class absences, and total study time equal, we found that the number of days in advance that studying began was not a significant predictor of in-term exam 2, the posttest, or the cumulative final ( Table 5; see Supplemental Table 7A for base model).

FIGURE 4.

Distributions of spacing potential variables for exam 2 ( n = 450). (A) The distribution of the days in advance that exam 2 studying began (cramming); (B) the distribution of the number of days studied in the week before exam 2 (consistency). Percentages of students in each bin are indicated.

Studying Consistency Was Not a Significant Predictor of Exam 2, the Final Exam, or the Posttest.

While there was variation in how consistently students studied in the week leading up to exam 2, this consistency was not predictive of exam score either immediately or on delayed tests. On average, students studied 5 of the 8 days leading up to the exam (M = 5.082, SD = 1.810). Sixteen percent of students studied every day, and no students studied fewer than 2 days in the week leading up to the exam ( Figure 4B). When holding preparation, class absences, and total study time equal, we found that the number of days studied in the week leading up to the exam was not a significant predictor of in-term exam 2, the posttest, or the cumulative final ( Table 5; see Supplemental Table 7A for base model).

In summary, our students varied in both the degree of cramming and the consistency of their studying. Even so, when holding preparation, class absences, and study time equal as part of our base model, neither of these spacing potential measures were predictive of performance on immediate or delayed tests.

Did Students Who Reported Being Less Distracted while Studying Perform Better on Exams?

In addition to the timing of studying, another factor that contextualizes the study strategies is how focused students are during study sessions. In the exam reflections, we asked students how distracted they were while studying. Here, we relate those estimates to exam scores while controlling for our base model of preparation, class absences, and total study time.

Distraction while Studying Was a Negative Predictor of Exam Score.

On average, students reported being distracted during 20% of their exam 1 and exam 2 study time (exam 1: M = 20.733, SD = 16.478; exam 2: M = 20.239, SD = 15.506). Sixty-one percent of students reported being distracted during more than 10% of their study time ( Figure 5). Further, students who were more distracted while studying tended to perform lower on exams 1 and 2. After accounting for our base model, the percent of study time that students reported being distracted added significant additional predictive value for exam 1 and exam 2; exam 1: F(1, 429) = 12.365, p = 0.000, Δ R 2 = 0.019; exam 2: F(1, 467) = 8.942, p = 0.003, Δ R 2 = 0.015. When holding preparation, class absences, and total study time equal, we found that students who reported being distracted 10% more than other students scored about 1% lower on exams 1 and 2 ( Table 6; see Supplemental Table 8A for base model). In summary, this suggests that not only was it common for students to be distracted while studying, but this was also negatively related to exam performance.

FIGURE 5.

Distribution of the percent of time students reported being distracted while studying for exam 1 ( n = 435) and exam 2 ( n = 473). Percentages of students in each bin are indicated.

DISCUSSION

Students' independent study behaviors are an important part of their learning in college courses. When holding preparation, class absences, and total study time equal, we found that students who spent more time on effortful, active study strategies and used a greater number of active strategies had higher scores for exams. Yet neither students who started studying earlier nor those who studied over more sessions scored differently than students who started later or studied over fewer sessions. Additionally, students who were more distracted while studying tended to perform worse than students who were less distracted. In other words, both the degree to which students employed desirably difficult strategies while studying and their level of focus when doing so were important for performance.

Specific Study Strategies (Hypothesis 1)

Our finding that more time and diversity of active study strategies were associated with higher exam grades was consistent with our hypothesis based on the desirable difficulties framework, laboratory, and classroom research studies ( Berry, 1983; King, 1992; Bjork, 1994; Karpicke and Roediger, 2008; Karpicke and Blunt, 2011; Hartwig and Dunlosky, 2012). Our study brought together lab research about effective strategies with what students did during self-directed study in an actual course. In doing so, we affirmed the lab findings that active strategies are generally effective, but also uncovered further nuances that highlight the value of investigating course-specific study strategies.

First, our study, when combined with other work, may have revealed that certain study strategies are more common than course-nonspecific surveys would predict. For example, compared with surveys of general study habits, our students reported relatively high use of active strategies. We found that the majority of students (73%) reported using four or more active strategies, which was more than the 2.9 average total strategies listed by students in a survey about general study habits at this same institution ( Karpicke et al., 2009). In particular, we found that two-thirds of students reported the active study strategy of self-quizzing. This was considerably higher than what was found in a free-response survey about general habits not focused on a specific course at the same institution ( Karpicke et al., 2009). In this survey, only 10.7% reported self-testing and 40.1% reported using flashcards. This higher frequency of self-quizzing behaviors may be due to a combination of factors in the course, the measures, and/or the students. In this course, we attempted to make self-quizzing easier by reopening the weekly quiz questions near exam time ( Walck-Shannon et al., 2019). We also used a course-specific survey rather than the more general, course-nonspecific surveys used in the previous research. Additionally, it is possible that, in recent years, more students have become more aware of the benefits of self-testing and so are using this strategy with greater frequency. When we compared our frequencies of several categories to analogous categories from course-specific surveys of introductory biology students ( Sebesta and Bray Speth, 2017) and molecular biology students ( Rodriguez et al., 2018), we saw similar results. Combined with our work, these studies suggest that when students focused on a particular course, they reported more active strategies than when prompted about studying in general.

Second, the opportunity to control for potential confounding variables in our study, including total study time, allowed us to better estimate the relationships between specific strategies and performance. This approach was important, given concerns raised by others that in classroom studies, benefits of certain strategies, such as explanation, could simply have been due to greater total study time ( Dunlosky et al., 2013). Our results showed that, even when controlling for total study time, self-explanation and other strategies were still significant predictors of performance. This helped illustrate that the strategies themselves, and not just the time on task, were important considerations of students' study habits.

Third, we were surprised by how predictive the diversity of active strategies was of performance. While we found that the proportion of active study time and the number of active strategies were both important predictors of performance, we found that the latter was a stronger predictor. This suggests that, if total study time was held equal, students who used a larger number of active strategies tended to perform better than those that used a smaller number of active strategies. This finding also deserves to be followed up in subsequent study to determine whether any of the active strategies that students use tend to co-occur in a "suite," and whether any of those suites are particularly predictive of performance. We suspect that there is some limit to the benefit of using diverse strategies, as some strategies take a considerable amount of time to master ( Bean and Steenwyk, 1984; Armbruster et al., 1987; Wong et al., 2002), and students need to devote enough time to each strategy to learn how to use it well.

Additionally, we found that particular active study strategies-explanation, self-quizzing, and answering problem sets-were uniquely predictive of higher performance in a biology course context. Undergraduate biology courses introduce a large amount of discipline-specific terminology, in addition to requiring the higher-order prediction and application skills found among STEM courses ( Wandersee, 1988; Zukswert et al., 2019). This is true for the course studied here, which covers biochemistry and molecular genetics, and the assessments that we used as our outcomes reflect this combination of terminology, comprehension, prediction, and application skills. Our results support the finding that active, effortful strategies can be effective on a variety of cognitive levels ( Butler, 2010; Karpicke and Blunt, 2011; Smith and Karpicke, 2014); and this work extends support of the desirable difficulties framework into biology by finding unique value for distinct generative or testing strategies.

Study Timing (Hypothesis 2)

Inconsistent with our second hypothesis that students with less spacing potential would perform worse than students with more spacing potential, we found no relationship between study timing and performance on in-term or cumulative exams. Because we knew that spacing was difficult to estimate, we analyzed two spacing potential indices, the degree of cramming (i.e., the number of days in advance that students started studying) and the consistency of studying (i.e., the number of days studied in the week leading up to the exam). We controlled for total study time, because the spacing effect is defined as identical study time spread over multiple sessions rather than fewer, massed sessions. When doing so, neither of these measures were significantly related to performance.

There are a few possible explanations why we may not have observed a "spacing effect." First, as explained in the Introduction, we measured spacing potential. It could be that students with high spacing potential may have arranged their studies to mass studying each topic, rather than spacing it out, which would lead us to underestimate the spacing effect. Second, students likely studied again before our cumulative final. This delayed test is where we expected to see the largest effect, and restudying may have masked any spacing effect that did exist. Third, we asked students to directly report their study time, and some may have struggled to remember the exact dates that they studied. While this has the advantage that it results in more sensitive and direct measures of students' spacing potential than asking students to interpret for themselves whether they binarily spaced their studies or crammed ( Hartwig and Dunlosky, 2012; Rodriguez et al., 2018), students who did not remember their study schedules may have reported idealized study schedules with greater spacing, rather than realistic schedules with more cramming ( Susser and McCabe, 2013), thus minimizing the expected spacing effect.

Despite the lack of a spacing effect in our data, we certainly do not advocate that students cram their studying, as we find it likely that students who started studying earlier may also have tended to study more. Also, those same students who studied earlier may have felt less stressed and gotten more sleep. In other words, even though our estimation of spacing potential did not capture performance benefits, benefits of spacing for well-being may be multifaceted and not wholly captured by our study.

Distraction (Hypothesis 3)

Consistent with our third hypothesis, we found a negative relationship between distraction while studying and performance. This finding agreed with the few available studies that related distraction during self-directed out-of-class studying and grade, but differs in that our students reported a lower level of distraction than other published studies ( Junco, 2012; Junco and Cotten, 2012). One possible reason for our low distraction estimate may have been that students were inadvertently underestimating their distraction, as has been reported ( Kraushaar and Novak, 2010). In addition, some students may not have been including multitasking as a type of distraction, and this habit of multitasking while studying will likely be difficult to change, as students tend to underestimate how negatively it will affect performance ( Calderwood et al., 2016).

Implications for Instruction

How can we leverage these results to help students change their habits? We present a few ideas of course structural changes that follow from some of the results from this study:

To encourage students to use more active study strategies, try asking students to turn in the output of the strategy as a low-stakes assignment. For example, to encourage self-explanation, you could ask students to turn in a short video of themselves verbally explaining a concept for credit. To encourage practice quizzing, try to publish or reopen quizzes near exam time ( Walck-Shannon et al., 2019) and ask students to complete them for credit.

To encourage students to use active study strategies effectively, model those strategies during class. For example, when doing a clicker question, explicitly state your approach to answering the question and self-explain your reasoning out loud. This also gives you an opportunity to add the rationale for why certain strategies are effective or provide advice about carrying them out. In addition to modeling a strategy, remind students to do it often. Simply prompting students to explain their reasoning to their neighbors or themselves during a clicker question helps shifts students' conversations toward explanation ( Knight et al., 2013).

To encourage students to stay focused during studying, provide voluntary, structured study sessions. These could include highly structured peer-led team-learning sessions during which students work through a packet of new questions ( Hockings et al., 2008; Snyder et al., 2015) or more relaxed sessions during which students work through problems that have already been provided ( Kudish et al., 2016).

Limitations and Future Directions

There are multiple caveats to these analyses, which may be addressed in future studies. First, our data about study behaviors were self-reported. While we opened the reflection exercise immediately after the exam to mitigate students forgetting their behaviors, some may still have misremembered. Further, some students may not have forgotten, but rather were unable to accurately self-report certain behaviors. As stated earlier, one behavior that is especially prone to this is distraction. But, similarly, we suspect that some students had trouble estimating the percent of study time that they spent using each strategy, while their binary report of whether they used it or not may be more accurate. This may be one reason why the number of active strategies has more explanatory power than the percent of time using an active strategy. Separately, although students were told that we would not analyze their responses until after the semester had ended, some may have conformed their responses to what they thought was desirable. However, there is not strong evidence that students conform their study habit responses to their beliefs about what is effective. For example, Blasiman and colleagues found that, even though students believed rereading was an ineffective strategy, they still reported using it more than other strategies ( Blasiman et al., 2017). Another limitation due to self-reporting is that we lack knowledge of the exact, nuanced behaviors that a student carried out. Thus, a student who chose a strategy that we defined as active-such as "completing problem sets"-may have actually performed more passive behaviors. Specifically, while we did use verbal reminders and delay the release of a key when encouraging students to complete the problem sets and old exams before looking at the answers, some students may have looked up answers prematurely or may have read passively through portions of the key. These more passive behaviors may have underestimated the importance of active strategies. A second limitation is that these data were collected from a course at a selective research-intensive institution and may not be applicable to all student populations. A third limitation is that our analyses are correlational. While we have carefully selected potential confounds, there may be other important confounding variables that we did not account for. Finally, it was beyond the scope of this study to ask whether certain subgroups of students employed different strategies or whether strategies were more or less predictive of performance for different subgroups of students.

Despite these caveats, the main point is clear. Students' course-specific study habits predict their performance. While many students in our sample reported using effective strategies, some students still had room to improve, especially with their level of distraction. One open question that remains is how we can encourage these students to change their study habits over time.

Supplementary Material

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank April Bednarski, Kathleen Weston-Hafer, and Barbara Kunkel for their flexibility and feedback on the exam reflection exercises. We would also like to acknowledge Grace Yuan and Ashton Barber for their assistance categorizing exam questions. This research was supported in part by an internal grant titled "Transformational Initiative for Educators in STEM," which aimed to foster the adoption of evidence-based teaching practices in science classrooms at Washington University in St. Louis.

REFERENCES

Associated Data
This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.
Supplementary Materials

Articles from CBE Life Sciences Education are provided here courtesy of American Society for Cell Biology

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To What Extent Do Study Habits Relate to Performance?

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Students' study sessions outside class are important learning opportunities in college courses. However, we often depend on students to study effectively without explicit instruction. In this study, we described students' self-reported study habits ...

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"Graves disease" site:.gov

This site provided an overview of Graves disease, along with its symptoms, causes, prevalence, and treatment. This would be very helpful if you were writing a research paper over Graves or autoimmune disorders in general.

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National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

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What is Graves' disease?

Graves' disease is an autoimmune disorder that can cause hyperthyroidism, or overactive thyroid. The thyroid is a small, butterfly-shaped gland in the front of your neck. Thyroid hormones control the way your body uses energy, so they affect nearly every organ in your body, even the way your heart beats.

With Graves' disease, your immune system attacks your thyroid gland, causing it to make more thyroid hormones than your body needs. As a result, many of your body's functions speed up.

The thyroid is a small gland in your neck that makes thyroid hormones.

How common is Graves' disease?

Graves' disease affects nearly 1 in 100 Americans. 1 About 4 out of 5 cases of hyperthyroidism in the United States are caused by Graves' disease. 1

Who is more likely to have Graves' disease?

Graves' disease is more common in women and people older than age 30. 2 You are more likely to develop the disease if you

have a family history of Graves' disease or Hashimoto's disease

have other autoimmune disorders, such as3,4

vitiligo, which causes some parts of your skin to lose color

autoimmune gastritis, which attacks the cells in your stomach lining

type 1 diabetes, which occurs when your blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high

rheumatoid arthritis, which affects your joints and sometimes other parts of your body

use nicotine products

What are the complications of Graves' disease?

Untreated, Graves' disease can cause serious health problems, including

a rapid and irregular heartbeat that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure, and other heart-related problems

thinning bones, osteoporosis, and muscle problems

problems with the menstrual cycle, fertility, and pregnancy

eye discomfort and changes in vision

What are the symptoms of Graves' disease?

Graves' disease often causes symptoms of hyperthyroidism. Graves' disease can also affect your eyes and skin. Symptoms can come and go over time.

Hyperthyroidism

Symptoms of hyperthyroidism can vary from person to person and may include 5

weight loss, despite an increased appetite

rapid or irregular heartbeat

nervousness, irritability, trouble sleeping, fatigue

shaky hands, muscle weakness

sweating or trouble tolerating heat

frequent bowel movements

an enlarged thyroid gland, called a goiter

Eye problems

More than 1 in 3 people with Graves' disease develop an eye disease called Graves' ophthalmopathy (GO). 6 GO occurs when your immune system attacks the muscles and other tissues around your eyes. Symptoms can include

bulging eyes

gritty, irritated eyes

puffy eyes

light sensitivity

pressure or pain in the eyes

blurred or double vision

These symptoms can start before or at the same time as symptoms of hyperthyroidism. Rarely, GO can develop after Graves' disease has been treated. You can develop GO even if your thyroid function is normal. Most people have mild symptoms.

Skin problems

Rarely, people with Graves' disease develop a condition that causes the skin to become reddish and thick, with a rough texture. Called Graves' dermopathy or pretibial myxedema, the condition usually affects your shins but can also develop on the top of your feet and other parts of your body. Most cases are mild and painless.

Researchers aren't sure why some people develop autoimmune disorders such as Graves' disease. These disorders probably develop from a combination of genes and an outside trigger, such as a virus.

With Graves' disease, your immune system makes an antibody called thyroid-stimulating immunoglobulin (TSI) that attaches to your thyroid cells. TSI acts like thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), a hormone made in your pituitary gland that tells your thyroid how much thyroid hormone to make. TSI causes your thyroid to make too much thyroid hormone.

How do doctors diagnose Graves' disease?

Your doctor will take your medical history and perform a physical exam to look for signs of Graves' disease. To confirm a diagnosis of Graves' disease, your doctor may order one or more of these thyroid tests

Blood tests. These tests can measure the levels of your thyroid hormones and also check for TSI.

Radioactive iodine uptake test. This test measures the amount of iodine your thyroid is taking up from your bloodstream to make thyroid hormones. If your thyroid is taking up large amounts of iodine, you may have Graves' disease.

Thyroid scan. This test, often done together with the radioactive iodine uptake test, shows how and where iodine is distributed in your thyroid. With Graves' disease, the iodine shows up throughout the gland. With other causes of hyperthyroidism such as nodules-small lumps in the gland-the iodine shows up in a different pattern.

Doppler blood flow measurement. This test, also called Doppler ultrasound, uses sound waves to detect increased blood flow in your thyroid due to Graves' disease. Your doctor may order this test if radioactive iodine uptake is not a good option for you, such as during pregnancy or breastfeeding.

How do doctors treat Graves' disease?

Treating hyperthyroidism

Hyperthyroidism is usually treated with medicines, radioiodine therapy, or thyroid surgery. Your doctor can help you identify the best option based on your age, health, symptoms, and other factors.

Radioiodine therapy

Thyroid surgery

Most cases of GO are mild. The following tips may help you control mild symptoms.

If you have severe GO, your doctor may recommend

steroids or other medicines that reduce your body's immune response

surgery to improve bulging eyes or correct changes to your vision

radiation therapy to the muscles and tissues around the eyes, used rarely

GO often improves with treatment or even resolves on its own. But it can come back or get worse. Triggers include stressful life events and smoking. 6

Smoking makes GO worse. If you smoke or use other tobacco products, stop. Ask for help so you don't have to do it alone. You can start by calling the National Quitline at 1-800-QUITNOW or 1-800-784-8669. For tips on quitting, go to Smokefree.gov.

How do eating, diet, and nutrition affect Graves' disease?

Your thyroid uses iodine to make thyroid hormones. If you have Graves' disease or another autoimmune thyroid disorder, you may be sensitive to harmful side effects from too much iodine in your diet. Eating foods that have large amounts of iodine-such as kelp, dulse, or other kinds of seaweed-may cause or worsen hyperthyroidism. Taking iodine supplements can have the same effect.

Talk with your health care professional about

what foods to limit or avoid

any iodine supplements you take

any cough syrups or multivitamins you take, because some may contain iodine

Clinical Trials for Graves' Disease

The NIDDK conducts and supports clinical trials in many diseases and conditions, including endocrine diseases. The trials look to find new ways to prevent, detect, or treat disease and improve quality of life.

What are clinical trials for Graves' disease?

Clinical trials-and other types of clinical studies -are part of medical research and involve people like you. When you volunteer to take part in a clinical study, you help doctors and researchers learn more about disease and improve health care for people in the future.

Researchers are studying many aspects of Graves' disease, including new medicines for treating Graves' disease and GO.

Watch a video of NIDDK Director Dr. Griffin P. Rodgers explaining the importance of participating in clinical trials.

What clinical studies for Graves' disease are looking for participants?

You can view a filtered list of clinical studies on Graves' disease that are open and recruiting at www.ClinicalTrials.gov. You can expand or narrow the list to include clinical studies from industry, universities, and individuals; however, the National Institutes of Health does not review these studies and cannot ensure they are safe. Always talk with your health care provider before you participate in a clinical study.

References

[1] Akram S, Elfenbein DM, Chen H, Schneider DF, Sippel RS. Assessing American Thyroid Association guidelines for total thyroidectomy in Graves' disease. Journal of Surgical Research. 2020;245:64-71. doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2019.07.029

[2] Kahaly GJ, Bartalena L, Hegedus L, Leenhardt L, Poppe K, Pearce SH. 2018 European Thyroid Association guideline for the management of Graves' hyperthyroidism. European Thyroid Journal. 2018;7(4):167-186. doi: 10.1159/000490384

[3] Ferrari SM, Fallahi P, Ruffilli I, et al. The association of other autoimmune diseases in patients with Graves' disease (with or without ophthalmopathy): review of the literature and report of a large series. Autoimmunity Reviews. 2019;18(3):287-292. doi: 10.1016/j.autrev.2018.10.001

[4] Rotondi M, Virili C, Pinto S, et al. The clinical phenotype of Graves' disease occurring as an isolated condition or in association with other autoimmune diseases. Journal of Endocrinological Investigation. 2020;43(2):157-162. doi: 10.1007/s40618-019-01094-7

[5] Mathew P, Rawla P. Hyperthyroidism. In: StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing. Updated November 21, 2020. Accessed July 14, 2021. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537053

[6] Antonelli A, Fallahi P, Elia G, et al. Graves' disease: clinical manifestations, immune pathogenesis (cytokines and chemokines), and therapy. Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. 2020;34(1):101388. doi: 10.1016/j.beem.2020.101388

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Overview of Graves' disease, an autoimmune disorder that can cause hyperthyroidism, or overactive thyroid.

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"Children's books" site: .edu

I think this website would be good for research because it talks about real life experiences of children and reading and how they've connected with books that they've read.

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Ever since I was born and could see,
Everywhere I looked, I saw dance.
In the clouds as the wind blew them across the sky,
In the ripples on a pond,
Even in the sea of ants marching up and down their hills.
Dance was all around me. Dance was me.
As a young girl, Melanie Kirkwood Marshall '15 wanted to dance. If Sassy could, why couldn't she?

Over and over again, she read that opening passage of Debbie Allen's children's book Dancing in the Wings. She pored over Kadir Nelson's sparkling illustrations of Sassy, a young black girl who, her classmates tease, is too tall to dance. Encouraged by her family, Sassy dances anyway. And after winning a big audition, she concludes: "Mama was right - being tall wasn't so bad after all."

Kirkwood Marshall, now a doctoral student of language and literacy education at the University of Illinois, recently looked through her old copy of Dancing in the Wings and discovered a note from her mother scribbled on the endpapers: Always love yourself.

"I didn't know it at the time - no kid would be thinking, 'Oh, my mom got this because it validates my appearance' - but I leaned on that book heavily for understanding who I was and what I wanted to do," says Kirkwood Marshall, who is African American.

Such is the importance of multicultural children's literature. Scholar Rudine Sims Bishop famously coined the phrase "mirrors and windows" - meaning that a good book can serve as a window to an unfamiliar world, a mirror for self-affirmation, or, ideally, both.

But for all the potential, mirrors for children of color have been scarce. Dancing in the Wings was one of some 5,000 children's books published in the U.S. in 2000. Only 147 of them - less than 3 percent - featured black characters. Only 151 books combined featured Asian, Latino/Latina, or indigenous characters.

Today, more than half of K-12 public school students are children of color, yet less than 15 percent of children's books over the past two decades have contained multicultural characters or story lines. In 2018, roughly 10 percent of all children's books featured black characters, 7 percent featured Asian characters, 5 percent featured Latino/Latina characters, and 1 percent featured indigenous characters.

These troubling numbers come from the UW Cooperative Children's Book Center, or CCBC, which has become the authoritative source nationally for tracking diversity in children's and young adult literature. Since 1985, the center's librarians have indexed every new book, providing data for a long-overdue reevaluation of the publishing industry and promoting a more accurate reflection of a diverse world.

Along the way, their efforts have collided with century-old barriers in children's literature. And although there's reason for optimism, their work is far from over.

"I Feel Guilty When I'm Not Reading"

Despite its name, the Cooperative Children's Book Center is for adults.

"We always say, 'We're a collection of books for children and teens for adults who work with children and teens'," says Kathleen T. Horning '80, MA'82, director of the CCBC, which is part of the UW School of Education and supported by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

The center opened in 1963 with joint funding from the state and the university - hence cooperative - as a resource for Wisconsin's librarians and teachers to assess new books and donate their old ones. Thanks to major investments in education by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, public school libraries suddenly had money and sought guidance on how best to spend it.

The UW campus didn't have space for an unproven library, so the CCBC opened on the fourth floor of the state capitol building under the massive dome. It expanded and moved to the new Helen C. White Hall in 1971, and later to its current home in the Teacher Education Building.

Now with an established reputation, the CCBC receives nearly every children's book from American (and some Canadian) publishers - as many as 3,500 per year. Its four librarians - Horning, Megan Schliesman MA'92, Merri V. Lindgren '88, MA'89, and Madeline Tyner MA'17 - each read and evaluate upwards of 1,000 volumes per year. "You do that at home," says Schliesman, laughing. "If you didn't have a passion for it, you would hate this job. I feel guilty when I'm not reading."

The CCBC highlights the best 250 books of the bunch in its annual publication, Choices, which emphasizes diverse works. Outreach remains central to its mission, with the librarians frequently traveling the state to speak to teachers and librarians. The center also provides information to Wisconsin schools and libraries responding to book challenges from community members.

The CCBC's library contains a current collection of all new publications, a permanent collection of recommended books, and a historical collection of previously acclaimed works. The vast inventory serves as a treasure trove for UW students and faculty conducting research on children's literature.

According to Horning, no other children's book center offers such a range of services - from reviewing books and gathering data to shelving every publication and traveling the state. In the 1990s, government representatives from Malaysia and Venezuela visited the CCBC to learn how to create a state-sponsored center back home.

"It doesn't seem possible for anyone to replicate it," says Horning, who has been on the staff since 1982. "They can replicate a part of it but not all of it. And that's probably because when this library was started - in terms of the economy, in terms of partnerships - it was exactly the right time."

And it perfectly positioned the CCBC to expose a serious problem in the world of children's literature.

The All-White World

Ginny Moore Kruse MA'76 was honored, and then alarmed.

In 1985, the American Library Association asked the longtime director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center to join the national Coretta Scott King Book Award committee. The annual award recognizes outstanding books by black authors and illustrators.

The committee didn't convene for long. There were only 18 books for consideration - 0.7 percent of the 2,500 published that year.

"I was flabbergasted," says Kruse, who headed the CCBC from 1976 to 2002.

The same year, Horning received a call from a librarian at a Milwaukee public school looking for multicultural books. "I looked up 'blacks, fiction' in the Subject Guide to Children's Books in Print and found a really small column of books," Horning says. "Before it, there were a couple of pages labeled 'bears, fiction.' It struck me as quite ironic that there were all these books about bears and so few books about black people."

Horning and Kruse decided to publish the 18-book statistic in the 1985 Choices and vowed to continue tracking diversity among new titles. Their efforts captured the attention of the children's book world, but underrepresented readers had been aware of the problem for decades.

"We weren't the first people to realize the paucity of books by African American writers and artists," Kruse says. "Black librarians, black teachers, black literature experts, black families - they had experienced the lack of books reflecting themselves and their lives. What made the CCBC stats memorable was the numbers confirming the experiences."

Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, portrayals of people of color in children's books relied on racial stereotypes and caricatures, as in Little Black Sambo. "No matter that my mother said that I was as good as anyone," children's author Walter Dean Myers wrote in 1986. "She had also told me, in words and in her obvious pride in my reading, that books were important, and yet it was in books that I found ... blacks who were lazy, dirty, and above all, comical."

Between the 1930s and 1950s, several authors of color found success writing children's books, including Ann Petry, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Yoshiko Uchida. But they were rare and their books exceptions.

In 1965, the Saturday Review rocked the publishing industry with its article "The All-White World of Children's Books." Author Nancy Larrick reviewed 5,000 recent books and found that less than 1 percent portrayed contemporary African American life. A librarian told Larrick: "Publishers have participated in a cultural lobotomy," treating the African American as "a rootless person."

Around the same time, advocates formed the Council on Interracial Books for Children to encourage authors of color to create books and to push publishers to accept them. In step with the civil rights movement in the late '60s and early '70s, multicultural literature proliferated, and literary giants of color emerged - Myers, Virginia Hamilton, Sharon Bell Mathis, Mildred D. Taylor, Lucille Clifton.

And then, for some four decades, progress halted. An economic downturn in the mid-'70s slashed book budgets for public schools and libraries, and "books by minority authors, bought in addition to usual purchases, were the first to go," USA Today reported in 1989, becoming the first national outlet to cite the CCBC's data.

With publishers increasingly relying on large bookstores for sales, the long-held notion that black books don't sell became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Systemic barriers and the editorial instincts of overwhelmingly white publishing houses deterred would-be authors of color.

According to the CCBC's data, between 1985 and 2014, children's books by African American authors or illustrators never surpassed 3.5 percent of annual publications. Books containing African American content never reached 6 percent. Even more sparse were books about Asian Americans, Latinos/Latinas, or indigenous people.

Every few years, according to Horning, a new media outlet would pick up the CCBC's statistics, but the resulting conversation would soon trail off. Then something changed.

#WeNeedDiverseBooks

In 2013, 94 of the 3,200 new children's books received by the CCBC - 2.9 percent - featured black characters.

Frustrated by the familiar tale, Walter Dean Myers and his son Christopher, also a children's book author, penned a pair of powerful columns in the New York Times. The younger Myers referred to "the apartheid of literature - in which characters of color are limited to the townships of occasional historical books that concern themselves with the legacies of civil rights and slavery but are never given a pass card to traverse the lands of adventure, curiosity, imagination, or personal growth."

Later that year, the announcement of an all-white, all-male panel for a major book festival sparked outrage on Twitter. The resulting hashtag, #WeNeedDiverseBooks, evolved into a nonprofit organization that continues to promote diversity in children's literature and fund programs for aspiring book creators and publishers of color.

The numbers are trending up. Between 2014 and 2018, the CCBC saw books about African Americans and indigenous people roughly double, and books about Asian Americans and Latinos/Latinas triple. The librarians credit scholars and advocates on social media who are keeping the conversation going, as well as independent publishers, such as Lee & Low Books, that are dedicated to diversifying literature.

The progress is still relative. While books about Latinos/Latinas may have tripled, the CCBC has found that they still represent only 6.8 percent of all books. In 2017, a character in a picture book was four times more likely to be a dinosaur than an indigenous child, and two times more likely to be a rabbit than an Asian American child. Only two picture books had a child with a disability as a primary character.

The CCBC now tracks disability and other forms of identity like gender and sexual orientation. Later this year, the center plans to launch a public database logging all of the children's books it receives. Researchers will be able to easily identify books with specific themes or aspects of representation.

The data have found a permanent home on social media. "We used to see the conversation [on diversity] blow over after a month, but it hasn't blown over this time," Horning says. "We get two or three emails and calls a week asking for our stats."

But with social media comes controversy. And on Twitter, discussion of children's literature has become contentious, with charges of prejudice and countercharges of censorship.

"Toxic Online Culture"

As a UW senior in 2014, Melanie Kirkwood Marshall camped out in the Cooperative Children's Book Center to study the representation of black girlhood in young adult literature. The few books she found were disappointingly homogeneous. But now, as a doctoral researcher, she's noticing promising trends.

"Not only are we seeing an increase in realistic fiction," she says, "but there's an uptick in speculative and science fiction stories. They're allowing black girls an opportunity to imagine themselves in ways they wouldn't have before."

The CCBC librarians note that the #OwnVoices social media movement has paved the way for such stories. It promotes the importance of "cultural insiders" portraying their own identities and experiences.Proponents of #OwnVoices believe that when "cultural outsiders" attempt to write about people from different backgrounds, they're prone to stumble into problematic representations, ranging from harmful stereotypes to inauthentic narratives. And now, social media critics often condemn books and authors - as renowned as Dr. Seuss and J. K. Rowling - for cultural insensitivities. To some, that's the price of progress. To others, it's a slide toward censorship.

The publisher Scholastic famously recalled the 2016 picture book A Birthday Cake for George Washington after a social media outcry. Initially praised by reviewers for its tale of the president's enslaved head chef, the book was denounced for glossing over the horrors of slavery.

Last year, two authors of color pulled their debut young adult novels just prior to publication. A Place for Wolves by Kosoko Jackson, a gay black author, received online criticism for using the Kosovo War as a backdrop for the love story of a non-Muslim American. The fantasy novel Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao, a Chinese immigrant, angered #OwnVoices supporters by allegedly paralleling the history of African American slavery.

"It just snowballed into a lot of people who hadn't read the book [criticizing it]," Zhao told National Public Radio in November after releasing Blood Heir with revisions.

Some see these anti-book campaigns as an expression of "cancel culture." Ruth Graham cautioned in Slate: "We've gotten an increasingly toxic online culture around [young adult] literature, with ever more baroque standards for who can write about whom under what circumstances. From the outside, this is starting to look like a conversation focused less on literature than obedience."

By contrast, adherents of #WeNeedDiverseBooks claim they're protecting children from hurtful material and challenging authors to be more sensitive. They're happy to wrest some of the power from a publishing industry that's still 80 percent white and has historically controlled what stories are told. "Social media is giving a voice to a lot of people who never had a platform before," Horning says.

Equipped for Tomorrow

As the children's book world grapples with these complex discussions, sociological studies affirm the importance of representation. Research has shown that children notice race as early as six months, begin to internalize bias between the ages of two and five, and can become set in their beliefs by age 12.

"If children grow up never seeing, never reading, never hearing the variety of the wide range of voices, they lose so much," Kruse told the journal Language Arts in 1993. "They will not be equipped for today, not to mention tomorrow. The world will go right past them. They are going to be stunned when everyone is not like them."

Last year, Kirkwood Marshall became a mother herself. One of the first books she bought her daughter was Sulwe, written by Lupita Nyong'o and illustrated by Vashti Harrison. It follows a young black girl's journey from being insecure about her skin tone to embracing her unique beauty.

"It's come full circle," Kirkwood Marshall says. "I did the same thing [as my mother] - I wrote a note to my daughter in the book. It just says: May you always love your beautiful brown skin.

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Ever since I was born and could see, Everywhere I looked, I saw dance. In the clouds as the wind blew them across the sky, In the ripples on a pond, Even in the sea of ants marching up and down their hills. Dance was all around me. Dance was me.

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Site:.edu "contemporary art"

This would be helpful for an assignment since I am getting an education degree in art, as well as an art history minor. I have to do lots of research on art movements and styles for projects. Art21 is one of my favorite sites and I love to watch the videos they have interviewing working artists themselves!

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Art21 defines contemporary art as the work of artists who are living in the twenty-first century. Contemporary art mirrors contemporary culture and society, offering teachers, students, and general audiences a rich resource through which to consider current ideas and rethink the familiar. The work of contemporary artists is a dynamic combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that challenge traditional boundaries and defy easy definition. Diverse and eclectic, contemporary art is distinguished by the very lack of a uniform organizing principle, ideology, or -ism. In a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world, contemporary artists give voice to the varied and changing cultural landscape of identities, values, and beliefs.

Audiences play an active role in the process of constructing meaning about works of art. Some artists say that the viewer contributes to or even completes the artwork by offering his or her personal reflections, experiences, opinions, and interpretations. One of the cornerstones of Art21's philosophy is to allow artists to present their work in their own words and to encourage viewers to consider, react, and respond to visual art.

Curiosity, openness, and dialogue are the most important tools for engaging with works of art. Instead of questioning whether an artwork is good or bad, the study of contemporary art requires an open-ended methodology and an inquiry-based approach. Asking questions that ignite discussion and stimulate debate is an important first step toward appreciating and interpreting works of art that can defy expectation, may provoke strong responses, or contradict personal beliefs or societal values.

We believe:

Bringing contemporary art into schools and communities enables educators to promote curiosity, encourage dialogue, and initiate debate about the world and the issues that affect our lives.

Art21 artists serve as creative role models, who can inspire people of all ages to consider how ideas are developed, articulated, and realized in the contemporary world, offering educators opportunities to support diverse learning styles.

Contemporary artists address both current events and historical ideas. These references help educators and students make connections across their curriculum and support interdisciplinary thinking

As artists continue to explore and employ new technologies and media, the work they create encourages media literacy in an increasingly media-saturated society.

Art21 enables students to understand that contemporary art is part of a cultural dialogue that concerns larger frameworks, such as ideas about beauty, personal and cultural identity, family, community, and nationality.

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Art21 defines contemporary art as the work of artists who are living in the twenty-first century. Contemporary art mirrors contemporary culture and society, offering teachers, students, and general audiences a rich resource through which to consider current ideas and rethink the familiar.

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site:.gov intitle:"Iowa"

In this site you are able to access resources on federal assistance, disaster resources, etc. Important parts of Iowa's government. Many of these resources have other subcategories that you can expand your research on.

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site:.gov "climate change

This site was helpful because it talked about NASA having long-term observations of the planet changing. This is useful to students who want to learn more about climate change and in particular about the percentage in increase and decrease in CO2, global temp and others.

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NASA is a global leader in studying Earth’s changing climate.

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site:.gov "environmental" "climate change"

This website is helpful because it explains what climate change is and how it impacts our food, water, health, and environment. If you were researching the effects of climate change on the environment, this would be a great source, especially because it is an official US gov site.

https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/climate-change-impacts

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"sustainable interiors" site:.edu

This educational website is helpful to Interior Designers so they can see what is sustainable. Things like materials and natural elements (daylight, wind, etc.) a building can be made more sustainable and better for those who reside in it.

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Sustainable Interiors for Health, Wellness, and Design Innovation

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Discover the principles of sustainable interior design, including the use of recycled, renewable, and non-toxic materials. This article delves into the importance of making responsible decisions as an interior designer and the impact of these choices on both the environment and human health.

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"artificial intelligence" site:.edu

This educational blog post from the University of Cincinnati provides an overview of the history, types, applications, and pros/cons of AI. A student could use this page to find definitions and examples about the different types of AI, including reactive, limited memory, theory of mind, and self-aware.

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What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Definition, Uses, and More

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Discover the basics of AI, from its definition to its key uses, pros, cons, and future impact on business and society