Canadian Gender-Based Violence Prevention Programs: Gaps and Opportunities.

Gender-based violence (GBV) prevention programs have long played an important part in both teaching the realities of GBV and training people in techniques to avert, mitigate, and respond to violence. This article examines the current state of GBV prevention training in Canada through an analysis of 81 GBV education programs provided by antiviolence organizations and universities. We identified notable gaps in topics relating to technology-facilitated violence and abuse in programs targeting men and in the provision of bystander intervention training. Each of these areas represents important, but as yet unrealized, opportunities in violence prevention.

Heuristic responses to pandemic uncertainty: Practicable communication strategies of "reasoned transparency" to aid public reception of changing science.

Scientific uncertainty during pandemic outbreaks poses a challenge for health communicators. Debates continue over the extent to which health officials should be transparent about uncertainty and the extent to which they should suppress uncertainty and risk losing the public's trust when information changes. The middle ground, the concept of "reasoned transparency," proposes that communicators focus on interpreting uncertainty to the public in ways informed by risk research. However, little guidance exists for health officials on how to do so in this context. After conducting a series of one-to-one interviews about people's coronavirus disease 2019 information habits, we identified significant trends in the heuristics that people depended on to process uncertainty. Based on those trends, we propose health communicators use narratives of science as evolving to set expectations for change, and that when changes do occur, health communicators note divergences from the past and avoid simply replacing old information with new information.

"My People Already Know That": The Imagined Audience and COVID-19 Health Information Sharing Practices on Social Media.

This article examines how imagined audiences and impression management strategies shape COVID-19 health information sharing practices on social media and considers the implications of this for combatting the spread of misinformation online. In an interview study with 27 Canadian adults, participants were shown two infographics about masks and vaccines produced by the World Health Organization (WHO) and asked whether or not they would share these on social media. We find that interviewees' willingness to share the WHO infographics is negotiated against their mental perception of the online audience, which is conceptualized in three distinct ways. First, interviewees who would not share the infographics frequently describe a self-similar audience of peers that are "in the know" about COVID-19; second, those who might share the infographics conjure a specific and contextual audience who "needs" the information; and finally, those who said they would share the infographics most frequently conjure an abstract audience of "the public" or "my community" to explain that decision. Implications of these sharing behaviors for combatting the spread of misinformation are discussed.

Design Principles for an Educational Intervention Into Online Vaccine Misinformation.

As part of a design-based research effort into disrupting the spread of COVID-19 misinformation, we have iteratively designed, developed, and evaluated a learning intervention intended for public audiences. In this paper we describe the design principles we created to guide our applied research into education on the topic of online misinformation. The six principles guiding our design are: microlearning; equity; relevance and appeal to learners; interventions that do not inadvertently spread misinformation; effective counter messaging; and engagement on an emotional level. These principles are grounded on equitable design, anti-misinformation design, and emotional design.

An Evaluation of a Microlearning Intervention to Limit COVID-19 Online Misinformation.

As part of a design-based research project, we designed, developed, and evaluated a web-based microlearning intervention in the form of a comic into the problem of COVID-19 online misinformation. In this paper, we report on our formative evaluation efforts. Specifically, we assessed the degree to which the comic was effective and engaging via responses to a questionnaire (n = 295) in a posttest-only non-experimental design. The intervention focused on two learning objectives, aiming to enable users to recognize (a) that online misinformation is often driven by strong emotions like fear and anger, and (b) that one strategy for disrupting the spread of misinformation can be the act of stopping before reacting to misinformation. Results indicate that the comic was both effective and engaging in achieving these learning objectives.

A synthesis of surveys examining the impacts of COVID-19 and emergency remote learning on students in Canada.

During the COVID-19 pandemic numerous institutions around the world have surveyed students to gain an understanding of their experiences. While these surveys are valuable at a local institutional level, it is unclear as to which findings from individual surveys reflect the broader higher education environment, and which patterns may be consistent across student surveys. It is worthwhile to synthesize survey findings in order to explore patterns and potentially new understandings that may arise from such analysis. In this paper, we reviewed and synthesized 21 surveys examining the impacts of COVID-19 and emergency remote learning on approximately 155,000 student respondents in Canada. Findings reveal that the impacts of COVID-19 and emergency remote learning on students centered around (1) educational experiences, (2) mental health and wellbeing, (3) financial concerns, (4) impact on future plans, and (5) recommendations for future practice.

Faculty perceptions, awareness and use of open educational resources for teaching and learning in higher education: a cross-comparative analysis.

This paper explores faculty's perspectives and use of open educational resources (OER) and their repositories across different countries by conducting a multiple case study to find similarities and differences between academics' awareness, perceptions and use of OER, as well as examining related aspects of institutional policy and quality that may influence individual views. Data were collected through nine expert reports on each country studied (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain and Turkey) and were analyzed through qualitative content analysis using thematic coding. Findings show the impact on individual OER adoption with regard to the individual control of diverse factors by faculty members; of institutional policies and quality measures on the externally determined factors (by the institution); and of institutional professional development and provision of incentives in more internally determined factors (by the faculty members themselves). These findings carry implications for higher education institutions around the world in their attempt to boost OER adoption by faculty members.

The health belief model: How public health can address the misinformation crisis beyond COVID-19.

OBJECTIVES: This paper proposes an intervention into health misinformation that relies upon the health belief model as a means to bridge the risks associated with health misinformation and the impact on individual health, beyond the current recommendations for fact checking and information literacy. STUDY DESIGN: This is a short theoretical paper. METHODS: N/A. RESULTS: N/A. CONCLUSIONS: Misinformation researchers and public health practitioners and communicators can benefit using the infrastructures afforded by public health offices to mobilize the health belief model as a site for misinformation education.

Never-ending repetitiveness, sadness, loss, and "juggling with a blindfold on:" Lived experiences of Canadian college and university faculty members during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We report on the lived experiences of faculty members during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring the broader experiences of faculty members as individuals living multifaceted lives whose homes became their offices, their students scattered geographically and their home lives upended. Using a phenomenological approach for data collection and analysis, we conducted 20 in-depth interviews with faculty holding varied academic appointments at universities across Canada. Experiences during the early months of the pandemic were described as being overwhelming and exhausting, and participants described as being stuck in a cycle of never-ending repetitiveness, sadness and loss, or managing life, teaching and other professional responsibilities with little sense of direction. In keeping with phenomenological methods, this research paints a visceral picture of faculty experiences, seeking to contextualize teaching and learning during this time. Its unique contribution lies in portraying emergency remote teaching as an overlapping and tumultuous world of personal, professional and day-to-day responsibilities.

Open educational resources: expanding equity or reflecting and furthering inequities?

In this paper I argue that open educational resources (OER), such as open textbooks, are an appropriate and worthwhile response to consider as colleges and universities shift to digital modes of teaching and learning. However, without scrutiny, such efforts may reflect or reinforce structural inequities. Thus, OER can be a mixed blessing, expanding inclusion and equity in some areas, but furthering inequities in others.

Public comment sentiment on educational videos: Understanding the effects of presenter gender, video format, threading, and moderation on YouTube TED talk comments.

Scholars, educators, and students are increasingly encouraged to participate in online spaces. While the current literature highlights the potential positive outcomes of such participation, little research exists on the sentiment that these individuals may face online and on the factors that may lead some people to face different types of sentiment than others. To investigate these issues, we examined the strength of positive and negative sentiment expressed in response to TEDx and TED-Ed talks posted on YouTube (n = 655), the effect of several variables on comment and reply sentiment (n = 774,939), and the projected effects that sentiment-based moderation would have had on posted content. We found that most comments and replies were neutral in nature and some topics were more likely than others to elicit positive or negative sentiment. Videos of male presenters showed greater neutrality, while videos of female presenters saw significantly greater positive and negative polarity in replies. Animations neutralized both the negativity and positivity of replies at a very high rate. Gender and video format influenced the sentiment of replies and not just the initial comments that were directed toward the video. Finally, we found that using sentiment as a way to moderate offensive content would have a significant effect on non-offensive content. These findings have far-reaching implications for social media platforms and for those who encourage or prepare students and scholars to participate online.