Sense of community among school psychologists on an Internet site.

A major challenge confronting psychologists is finding relevant professional development experiences. An Internet-based professional community is one approach to meeting this challenge. The authors investigated the development of such a professional community among school psychologists. Results from behavioral measures and questionnaires reflected a moderate to strong sense of community among the participants. The single best predictor of sense of community was the participants' perceptions that the Internet site enhanced their professional development. On-line participation and social support also related to sense of community. Results suggest that the Internet is a promising medium for the development of professional communities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Another Look at Hartford Civic Center Coliseum Collapse

Only a few hours after five thousand basketball fans had left, the roof of the Hartford Civic Center Coliseum collapsed under a heavy snowfall. Fortunately, the arena was empty. The design of the space frame roof had been based on an innovative and extensive computer analysis. However, when deflections twice as great as those predicted by the computer analysis were observed during construction, the warning was ignored. Overconfidence in computer analysis results played a large part in this failure. A useful lesson from this case is that the computer is only an analytical tool and computed results must be checked by the designer with a careful eye. The long, unbraced lengths of compression members made them highly susceptible to buckling. This case serves as a lesson for engineering students and practicing engineers concerning the difficult technical, professional, procedural, and ethical issues that may arise during the design and construction of a complex, high-occupancy structure.     

Learning from successful and failed experience: The moderating role of kind of after-event review.

The claim that appropriate "after-event review (AER)" may increase the relative value of drawing lessons from successes, as compared with failures, was examined in the present study. The study was a laboratory experiment in which the effect of type of AER (failure-focused, success-focused, failure- and success-focused, and no AER review) on performance improvement and causal attributions was tested under conditions of earlier success and earlier failure. In general, 2 results were demonstrated: (a) Drawing lessons from successful experience is feasible, and its effectiveness is contingent upon the type of AER. More specifically, after successful events, the most effective review is that of wrong actions, whereas after failed events, any kind of event review (correct or wrong actions) is effective. (b) AERs elicit more internal (as opposed to external) and specific (as opposed to general) attributions. These 2 classifications moderate the effect of AERs on task performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)