URL: https://engineering.missouri.edu/2019/07/creativity-based-curriculum-to-build-on-initial-success/
Point of Contact: Dr. Rose Marra at rmarra@missouri.edu
The nation’s economy and security require an engineering workforce that can design, manufacture, test, and deploy effective solutions to urgent, complex problems. In addition to developing traditional engineering skills, this workforce must also gain skills in innovation and creativity. This project aims to address this need by investigating a new paradigm of engineering education that integrates the foundations of science, engineering, problem-solving, and critical thinking with training in creative thinking, which is the foundation of innovation.

URL: https://showme.missouri.edu/2019/saving-history-from-disappearing/
Point of Contact: Dr. Sarah Buchanan at buchanans@missouri.edu
The shift to digital publishing has put born-digital primary source materials at risk as technology platforms proliferate and grow more complex. Researchers at MU investigate and document the key technology systems and production steps in use at contemporary news organizations to analyze and share how digital preservation policies and practices can be established within the news industry.

Point of Contact: Dr. Hyerim Cho at hyerimcho@missouri.edu
Project summary: Video games have a unique interactive format characteristic; due to this nature, previous studies focused on the escapist motivations of video games as a relatively passive way of consuming entertainment media. However, the current project hypothesizes that video game players use video games as tools to actively cope with everyday emotional struggles, ranging from mild stress to more severe conditions, such as PTSD. This research project aims to identify which elements of video games influence their decisions on choosing a game to regulate their emotions and make suggestions for video game recommendation and reference services to enhance users’ search experiences and satisfy their affective needs.

Point of Contact: Dr. Rose Marra at marrar@missouri.edu
The project Improving Engineering-Related Social Cognitions through Teaching is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1926480.

The goal of this project is to assess the impact of teaching practices that can lead to improved self-efficacy and outcome expectations of engineering students, in particular women engineering students. In this project, researchers create a learning community comprised of engineering faculty to learn about social cognitive-based teaching practices. In this Engineering Faculty Learning Community (EFLC), researchers support faculty in designing and implementing these teaching practices. In addition, students in faculty’s course are invited to complete surveys voluntarily and confidentially, which measure their social cognitions (i.e., self-efficacy, outcome expectations, persistence intentions). PI: Dr. Sarah Orton, Associate Professor Civil Engineering, CO-PIs: Dr. Rose Marra, Professor and Director SISLT; Dr. Lisa Flores, Professor Psychology

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URL: https://lacl.missouri.edu/
Point of Contact: Dr. Jenny Bossaller at BossallerJ@missouri.edu
Do you believe in the healing power of reading? Do you feel that your library could do more to help people in recovery from substance abuse? Is your library an innovator in these domains? If you answered yes to any of these questions, we want to hear from you!

We invite applications from library staff for in-person or online participation in a two-day national forum that will bring together library staff and experts working in the interdisciplinary recovery field.

URL: https://mhs.missouri.edu/
Point of Contact: Joe Griffin at GriffinJG@missouri.edu
Mission Hydro Science (MHS) is a science education game for middle school students.

“An adventure to colonize an alien earth like planet. Can you harness the natural water resources to help sustain you?”

MHS is also an opportunity to craft a powerful learning game that incorporates gaming, 3D virtualization, problem-solving context, social interactions, teaching and learning materials based on empirical learning progressions, opportunities for just-in-time instruction, scaffolding for argumentation, an empirically-grounded instructional model, and an analytics system

The MHS Project just received a large grant and will be continuing game development and school implementations!

Point of Contact: Dr. Jenny Bossaller at BossallerJ@missouri.edu

As part of the American Rescue Plan for Museums and Libraries, the team will conduct a needs assessment and environmental scan of rural, urban, and suburban public libraries to determine strengths and weaknesses in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We will review programming and services provided by public libraries to meet the health information needs of their users; and each library’s use of open data and open science resources to create informational resources. Our goals are to help libraries learn what worked and what didn’t work during the pandemic, and for which type of library; and to offer a free webinar to introduce public librarians to open information and open science resources to support them as they support their communities’ public health. The goal is to support public librarians across the country, in the short term, by increasing their knowledge of open science and open sources of information they can use to provide health data. In the long term, our hope is to support public library administrators and policy-makers by demonstrating public libraries’ public health role, exposing them to successful approaches to public health promotion, and helping them understand how to overcome barriers to information sharing in future pandemics.

PI: Dr. Jenny Bossaller; CO-PIs: Dr. Denice Adkins, Dr. Hyerim Cho, and Dr. Heather Moulaison-Sandy.

URL: https://pbpf.americanarchive.org/
Point of Contact: Dr. Sarah Buchanan at buchanans@missouri.edu
MLIS students gain hands-on experience in audiovisual preservation, collaborating with KOPN Community Radio and the WGBH Educational Foundation to digitize public media materials and provide access in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting at https://americanarchive.org/special_collections/kopn-women. Our work supports multigenerational diversity research and prepares graduates for audiovisual archival careers.

Point of Contact: Hyerim Cho at hyerimcho@missouri.edu
A relatively newer format of storytelling and visual narrative medium, Webtoon, now has 55 million global users monthly from 60 different countries with 100 billion views annually. Webtoon has become an international phenomenon due to its rapid growth and popularity among global fandom. While there have been theoretical efforts to understand Webtoon’s characteristics as a transnational communication medium, such as understanding its phenomena from a lens of the Korean Wave (Hallyu), there is a lack of empirical studies that understand the real, international audiences of Webtoon. Comic books and graphic novels have been proven to be effective tools for learning literacy and understanding diverse cultures and subjects. Their unique format characteristic combines visual cues and textual information, creating an ideal literacy learning environment. In addition, authors of this medium from diverse backgrounds have encouraged their audiences to experience various cultures and historical moments secondhandedly. For this reason, many educational institutions and libraries in the United States have incorporated comic books and graphic novels in their social, historical, cultural, and language programs. The current research project looks at Webtoon from this perspective; this project aims to understand American audiences’ motivations for reading Webtoon and Webtoon’s informal learning aspects regarding the Korean language and culture.

URL: https://www.archaeological.org/interactive-dig/pompeii-italy/
Point of Contact: Dr. Sarah Buchanan at buchanans@missouri.edu
Working with Data Archivist, Dr. Sarah Buchanan, iSchool students contribute to the digital archive presentation of archaeological artifacts, spatial data, and site photography.