"They helped me through the semester": electronic instructor messages can foster the instructor-student relationship.

Building rapport between instructors and students is a challenge, especially in large classes and in online environments. Previous work has shown that non-content Instructor Talk can foster positive student-teacher relationships, but less is known about non-content talk in electronic instructor messages. Here, we used the established Instructor Talk framework to craft positively phrased electronic messages that were sent through the course's learning management system to students enrolled in an introductory biology course at a large public institution. We examined both close- and open-ended survey responses (n = 226) to assess students' perceptions of the electronic messages, the course, and their instructor. Of the established Instructor Talk categories, the building student/instructor relationship category was most memorable to students. Encouragingly, 61% of students indicated they "liked the course more" and 88% indicated they "liked the instructor more" in response to the electronic messages. This demonstrates that implementing positively phrased Instructor Talk into electronic communication is an effective way to build rapport between instructors and students.

Copper(I) cyanide networks: synthesis, structure, and luminescence behavior. Part 2. Piperazine ligands and hexamethylenetetramine.

A variety of photoluminescent, and in some cases thermochromic, metal-organic networks of CuCN were self-assembled in aqueous reactions with amine ligands: (CuCN) 2(Pip) ( 1a), (CuCN) 20(Pip) 7 ( 1b), (CuCN) 7(MePip) 2 ( 2), (CuCN) 2(Me 2Pip) ( 3a), (CuCN) 4(Me 2Pip) ( 3b), (CuCN) 7(EtPip) 2 ( 4), (CuCN) 4(Et 2Pip) ( 5), (CuCN) 3(BzPip) 2 ( 6a), (CuCN) 5(BzPip) 2 ( 6b), (CuCN) 7(BzPip) 2 ( 6c), (CuCN) 4(BzPip) ( 6d), (CuCN) 2(Bz 2Pip) ( 7), (CuCN)(Ph 2CHPip) ( 8a), (CuCN) 2(Ph 2CHPip) ( 8b), (CuCN) 3(HMTA) 2 ( 9a), (CuCN) 5(HMTA) 2 ( 9b), and (CuCN) 5(HMTA) ( 9c) (Pip = piperazine, MePip = N-methylpiperazine, Me 2Pip = N, N'-dimethylpiperazine, EtPip = N-ethylpiperazine, Et 2Pip = N, N'-diethylpiperazine, BzPip = N-benzylpiperazine, Bz 2Pip = N, N'-dibenzylpiperazine, Ph 2CHPip = N-(diphenylmethyl)piperazine, and HMTA = hexamethylenetetramine). New X-ray structures are reported for 1b, 2, 3b, 4, 5, 6a, 6d, 7, 8b, 9b, and 9c. An important structural theme is the formation of (6,3) (CuCN) 2(piperazine) sheets with or without threading of independent CuCN chains. Strong luminescence at ambient temperature is observed for all but complexes 6 and 7. All luminescent compounds show a broad emission band in the blue region at about 450 nm attributable to metal-to-ligand charge transfer behavior based on the large Stokes shift between excitation and emission maxima. 3, 8, and 9 are thermochromic due to an additional lower energy emission band, which is absent at 77 K.