creased by 0.47 SDs under active learning (n = 158 studies), and that the odds ratio for failing was 1.95 under traditional lecturing (n = 67 studies). These results indicate that average examination scores improved by about 6% in active learning sections, and that students in classes with traditional lecturing were 1.5 times more likely to fail than were students in classes with active learning. Heterogeneity analyses indicated that both results hold across the STEM disciplines, that active learning increases scores on concept inventories more than on course examinations, and that active learning appears effective across all class sizes—although the greatest effects are in small (n ≤ 50) classes. Trim and fill analyses and fail-safe n calculations suggest that the results are not due to publication bias. The results also appear robust to variation in the methodological rigor of the included studies, based on the quality of controls over student quality and instructor identity. This is the largest and most comprehensive metaanalysis of undergraduate STEM education published to date. The results raise questions about the continued use of traditional lecturing as a control in research studies, and support active learning as the preferred, empirically validated teaching practice in regular classrooms.

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Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Economics of Information

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

This book assesses the consequences of new information technologies for American democracy in a way that is theoretical and also historically grounded. The author argues that new technologies have produced the fourth in a series of 'information revolutions' in the US, stretching back to the founding. Each of these, he argues, led to important structural changes in politics. After re-interpreting historical American political development from the perspective of evolving characteristics of information and political communications, the author evaluates effects of the Internet and related new media. The analysis shows that the use of new technologies is contributing to 'post-bureaucratic' political organization and fundamental changes in the structure of political interests. The author's conclusions tie together scholarship on parties, interest groups, bureaucracy, collective action, and political behavior with new theory and evidence about politics in the information age.

Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

The swift development of the Internet has inspired two sorts of claims that large-scale transformations in the structure of political influence in the U.S. are under way: the populist claim that the Internet will erode the influence of organized groups and political elites, and the community-building claim that the Internet will cause a restructuring of the nature of community and the foundations of social order. These claims are significant because they address not only the currently fashionable subject of the Internet but also fundamental questions about the causal role of communication in public life. A close evaluation of both claims suggests that the assumptions underlying them are improbable at best. I suggest an alternative model of "accelerated pluralism" in which the Internet contributes to the on-going fragmentation of the present system of interest-based group politics and a shift toward a more fluid, issue-based group politics with less institutional coherence.

The Internet and Political Transformation: Populism, Community, and Accelerated Pluralism

Collective action theory, which is widely applied to explain human phenomena in which public goods are at stake, traditionally rests on at least two main tenets: that individuals confront discrete decisions about free riding and that formal organization is central to locating and contacting potential participants in collective action, motivating them, and coordinating their actions. Recent uses of technologies of information and communication for collective action appear in some instances to violate these two tenets. In order to explain these, we reconceptualize collective action as a phenomenon of boundary crossing between private and public domains. We show how a reconceptualized theory of collective action can better account for certain contemporary phenomena, and we situate traditional collective action theory as a special case of our expanded theory.

http://ucsbsocialcomputing.pbworks.com/f/bimber,+et+al.pdf

Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment

Some aspects of democracy appear more sensitive than others to the availability throughout society of political information. Individual-level political engagement poses a puzzle in this regard. An instrumentalquantitative conception of information that is central to rational theories and is also found in some behavioral theories of participation appears contradicted by historical trends. I treat the contemporary expansion in political information made possible by new information technology as a form of natural experiment. I test for a relationship between information availability and political engagement using survey data about Internet use in the period 1996-99. This test is relevant to the applied debate over whether the information revolution will prove salutary for participation, and at the same time sheds light on contending theories of information. I find little relationship exists; the only form of participation which is demonstrably connected to Internet use is donating money This finding fails to...

Information and Political Engagement in America: The Search for Effects of Information Technology at the Individual Level

Objective. This paper evaluates differences in men's and women's presence on the Internet, testing for the presence of gender-specific causes for different rates of Internet use. Methods. The paper presents new survey data collected by the author in 1996, 1998, and 1999 showing trends in Internet use, and presents regression models of Internet access and use. Results. Two statistically significant gender gaps exist on the Internet: in access and in use. The access gap is not the product of gender-specific factors, but is explained by socioeconomic and other differences between men and women. The use gap is the result of both socioeconomics and some combination of underlying gender-specific phenomena. Conclusions. Around one-half of the "digital divide" between men and women on the Internet is fundamentally gender related. Several possible causes may explain this phenomenon.

Bruce Bimber

Papers

Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

The Internet and Political Transformation: Populism, Community, and Accelerated Pluralism

Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment

Information and Political Engagement in America: The Search for Effects of Information Technology at the Individual Level

Measuring the Gender Gap on the Internet 1