Publically-funded schools in North America are often scary and dangerous places for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning (GBLTQ) youth, and many teens suggest that the adults charged with ensuring their safety and learning often do little to promote their acceptance and safety among their peers. Educators need preparation to become more sensitized to GBLTQ teen issues and equipped with the empathy, knowledge, and skills to support and protect these marginalized students in their care. The Faculty of Education at the University of Prince Edward Island has introduced a number of initiatives into its pre-service teacher education programs to help new teachers unpack their own beliefs, attitudes, and personal experiences with gender identity and sexual orientation and prepare them to become advocates for their GBLTQ students.

Click here to read the article in the current edition of Canada Education.

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Navigating the Internet for Learning Purposes:
Why some novices are more successful than others

Malinda Desjarlais, PhD

Assistant Professor
University of Northern British Columbia,
Psychology Department

***Archived webcast ***
BCLA Browser report

Victoria
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
1 pm – 2:30 pm
McPherson Library, Room 210
University of Victoria

Vancouver
Thursday, December 2, 2010
2 pm – 3:30 pm
Room 2270, Saunder Industries Policy Room
SFU Harbour Front Centre

Dr. Desjarlais investigates factors that influence decision-making when novices navigate the Internet for learning and information seeking purposes. In exploring learner and task characteristics she considers prior knowledge, motivation, self-regulatory skills, attentional control, and short-term memory capacity and assesses how these factors act as supports for novices when learning from the Internet. These characteristics are analyzed through pre-and post-testing, interviewing and by tracking learners’ gaze during navigation. The use of an eyetracker has revealed differences in the selection of and attention to information within a webpage, variability in information navigation characteristics, and shifts in navigation strategies. She has extended this research by exploring differences in novices’ Internet navigations related to achievement. Her presentation will be of interest to researchers and practitioners interested in Internet learning, information seeking behavior research, and imposed query searching.

About the Speaker:
Malinda Desjarlais has a PhD in Psychology from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario and is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Northern British Columbia. Her research area is in the field of human development with strong interests in cognitive development.

For more information, contact BCLRG Lecture Series Coordinators:

Nancy E. Black (blackn@unbc.ca ), Joy Kirchner (joy.kirchner@ubc.ca), Kat McGrath (kat.mcgrath@ubc.ca),  Tracie Smith (tracies@uvic.ca), Don Taylor (dtaylor@sfu.ca)