Creating Co-Curricular Activist Writing Projects for Students in Writing Programs: The Case of the Neurodiversity Celebration Collaborative (NCC)

Context The NCC originally came into being through calls from various corners for more attention to the unmet mental health needs of college students and students with autism (Beiter et al.;Bruffaerts et al.;Lipson et al.;PinderAmake;Storrie et al.) as well as calls from disability activists for more space to support, highlight, and celebrate disabled and neurodiverse persons and the rich diversity they bring to our campuses (Dwyer et al.;Clouder et al.;Sachs;Yergeau). Through strategic research and advocacy, we will evaluate current mental health resources on and off campus, create appreciation versus sympathy for cognitive differences, bring to light inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the literature, establish appropriate forums of disclosure for students, and ultimately help constitute a more connected and understanding campus climate that celebrates neurodiversity as an integral part of any functioning university and its surrounding community. [...]most recently during the 2021-2022 academic year, the group held an event in which they discussed the concept of neurodiversity itself with a wider audience. Establishing student leaders is a crucial step in moving the faculty member out of the leadership role and making it clear to students that they have agency and the final say in how things will go.

"Medical student syndrome”: a real disease or just a myth?—a cross-sectional study at Menoufia University, Egypt

BackgroundA widely held belief is that "Medical student syndrome” is frequently experienced by young medical students, that is, they experience the symptoms of the diseases they are studying or fear of having such illness. A hypothesis is that because medical students constantly learn about life-threatening conditions and diseases, they experience persistent fear and stress regarding having a severe medical condition, an anxiety-related illness called nosophobia.ResultsAlthough medical students scored an average of 14.14 on a scale measuring potential nosophobia a, the difference between their scores and those of non-medical students, who scored an average of 0.11, is significantly higher (p 0.001). According to the presented analysis, non-medical and medical students exhibit distinct levels of nosophobia. The analysis of responses to hypochondriacal behaviors revealed that students from non-medical faculties scored an average of 1.43 points. By contrast, the average score for medical students was 7.87, which is significantly higher than that of the non-medical students (p 0.001).ConclusionsMedical students are at higher risk for health anxiety and hypochondrial attitudes than non-medical students are.

CONFRONTING WHITENESS IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION THROUGH RACIALIZED STUDENT ACTIVISM

In 2010, a group of racialized doctoral students at an elite university in Canada collectively mobilized against institutional racism within their school of social work. They insisted that their school confront the ways in which White supremacy was embedded within various policies and practices. These early initiatives led to the creation of the Racialized Students’ Network (RSN). Although the RSN has ended, it has produced a new generation of scholars who continue to interrogate Whiteness and White supremacy. It has also offered roadmaps through which newer generations of racialized social work scholars can advance anti-racist and decolonial feminist perspectives within postsecondary social work institutions in Canada. In this article, the authors, who are now tenure-track or tenured professors at Canadian universities, demonstrate the ways in which graduate student anti-racist activisms are a central avenue for confronting Whiteness and institutional racism. Through a collaborative autoethnographic methodology, this article draws from the authors’ personal experiences within the RSN, the group’s source documents, and their collective analysis on how the RSN has informed their ongoing activism. They discuss how their everyday experiences align with current anti-racist struggles and movements to shape their actions and responses in academe. The RSN Model of Racialized Students’ Activism is presented to demonstrate the collective processes the student activists explored to reflect and apply their intersecting identities to support racialized students and address systemic racism.Alternate :En 2010, un groupe d’étudiants racisés, aux études doctorales dans une université canadienne, s’est mobilisé collectivement contre le racisme institutionnel au sein de leur école de travail social. Ces étudiants ont insisté pour que leur école confronte les façons dont la suprématie blanche s’ancrait dans diverses politiques et pratiques. Ces premières initiatives ont conduit à la création du Racialized Students’ Network (RSN). Bien que le RSN n’existe plus, il a donné naissance à une nouvelle génération de chercheurs qui continuent de s’interroger sur la blancheur et la suprématie blanche. Il a également offert des feuilles de route grâce auxquelles les nouvelles générations de chercheurs en travail social racisés peuvent faire progresser les perspectives féministes, antiracistes et décoloniales au sein des programmes de travail social dans les établissements postsecondaires au Canada. Dans cet article, les auteurs, qui sont maintenant professeurs titulaires ou permanents dans des universités canadiennes, démontrent comment les activismes antiracistes des étudiantes et étudiants sont une avenue centrale pour confronter la suprématie blanche et le racisme institutionnel. Grâce à une méthodologie autoethnographique collaborative, cet article s’inspire des expériences personnelles des auteurs au sein du RSN, des documents sources du groupe et de leur analyse collective sur la façon dont le RSN a influencé leur activisme actuel. Ils discutent de la manière dont leurs expériences quotidiennes s’alignent sur les luttes et les mouvements antiracistes actuels pour façonner leurs actions et leurs réponses dans le milieu universitaire. Afin de démontrer les processus collectifs entrepris par les activistes étudiants pour refléter et utiliser leurs identités entrecroisées afin de soutenir les étudiantes et étudiants racisés et confronter le racisme systémique, le modèle d’activisme des étudiantes et étudiantes racisés du RSN est présenté.

Climate Justice: Science for a Better World

Student groups research air pollution (both a cause of climate change with the buildup of greenhouse gases, and an effect of climate change as the warming atmosphere holds the polluted air close to the earth), and other effects of climate change. Explore Divide the students into groups to research one vulnerable population and create an audio-visual presentation to help the rest of the class understand how a particular population is affected disproportionately by the impacts of climate change. Encourage students within each group to peruse different resources and then pool their knowledge to create a focused presentation. Since time is always at a premium, consider giving students access to the Vulnerable Populations Research Websites page (see Online Connections), rather than having them do an open search. Have different student groups focus on different parts of the world, or different issues (drought, fire, sea level rise, extreme weather, air quality), or different populations (poor, children, elderly, sick).

Mobilizing BIPOC Student Power against Liberalism at Soka University of America: A Collection of Voices

[...]all students are required to live on campus, a grand resort-like gated community overlooking canyons on three sides in suburban Orange County in California, in order to engage in dialogue with each other and learn how to get along. [...]there are few Black students (constituting less than three percent of the student body) and virtually no full-time Black faculty trained in critical Black studies on our campus or representation of African Studies in the curriculum. Given its proclaimed commitments and mission and endowment, we ask why it is that when BIPOC working-class students ask for the fulfillment of their needs, interests, dreams, desires, demands, well-being, our incredibly wealthy university is always unable to find resources for working-class and/or BIPOC students. Since its founding, there have been and continue to be no resources specific to working-class and/or BIPOC students, whose needs and demands are viewed as "special-interest," with suspicion, as threatening, as too divisive, met with derision, and continually dismissed, ignored, rejected. Even though decisions at SUA are typically made hierarchically by the president and the dean often in disregard of faculty expertise or conviction, we were told the university's hands are tied;it has limited resources;it can't move forward without faculty support (despite considerable faculty support);it can't move forward without expansive faculty approval (read: the same faculty who teach imperialist frameworks must approve of our pedagogies of resistance);Life Sciences is "a totally different beast";concentrations must have broad appeal despite broad student support;etc., etc. Since its founding, there has been no concerted effort by our SLAC to question its reproduction of whiteness.

Mobile Learning Applications for Refugees: A Systematic Literature Review

The proliferation of mobile devices in everyday life since the end of the 20th century has led to mobile applications for educational purposes and the creation of the research field of mobile learning. Despite the extended research interest on the effectiveness of this field, there is limited research on mobile learning for various social groups, such as refugees, students with learning difficulties and disabilities. Due to the unprecedented number (over one hundred million) of refugees during the second decade of the 21st century worldwide, many NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and UN (United Nations) initiatives have proposed leveraging mobile learning for refugee educational needs. This research article focuses on mobile learning for refugee education. Namely, the present systematic literature review results from 2015 to 2020 will give a concrete picture of the recently existing mobile learning apps for refugees and their characteristics. According to the research findings, 15 characteristics were collected out of 14 applications. According to prior literature, areas of agreement or discrepancies in the field were found. Two new -to previous literature- characteristics were revealed: interwoven psychological and educational features and refugees’ cultural features in the apps. The summarization and categorization of the app’s characteristics aim to contribute to mobile learning research and impact game developers, educators, and NGOs according to refugee needs. The limitations of this study and issues for further exploration will also be discussed in the last sections.

Cardinal Connect: A Student Organization Events Management System

Student organizations and the office are greatly affected by the COVID 19 pandemic, forcing universities to shift into the online setting. The organizations continue to adapt to the new normal by conducting online events and activities. However, managing events and activities can be challenging, especially without the use of a common platform. The paper proposes an event management system that would ease the transition to the online setting and reduce workload. A web application that focuses on event application, event implementation, and post-activity evaluation would benefit the coordination between the involved parties. The study aims to automate necessary document processes, provide an online platform for student organizations to execute proposals, generate and summarize the entirety of the events and activities. The study will be using a Likert Scale survey questionnaire for the Office of the Students Affairs and Student organizations to measure the usability of the Cardinal Connect Event Management System. The data develop a web-based application that would improve the event management at Mapua University. The researchers will be testing the serviceability of the system by using a Usability Test to test its serviceability. This is because the study requires a specific population of student organizations. The prototype is possible using HTML, CSS, and Javascript for the front-end and PHP, Python, Javascript for the back-end development. Through a prototype, the users can execute design features of the web application and conduct usability testing to improve the overall user experience. The web application aids the needs of the university and how the different organizations would engage students to maximize their university life. © 2021 ACM.