“Well if you promise not to bust me, Dr. E, I could take a picture of all this and send it to them,” offered Claire. She pointed at the laminated sign in the front of the room that said in huge font, complete with helpful picture, NO CELL PHONES ALLOWED IN CLASS.

Now, I am just as annoyed as the next person by the rude, thoughtless use of cell phones in public and have no patience with the thought of students using them to talk or text during my class. But Claire’s comment reminded me that most cell phones today are powerful little handheld computers and, like any tool, I could put them to use to facilitate and enhance several aspects of the teaching and learning I want to happen in my classroom. That was a new insight for me. It motivated me to start using cells phone in class rather than just being offended by them.

Let me share three simple ways they’ve helped my students and me:

1. Archive content from the chalk or white board by taking a picture of it, as in the vignette referenced above. Sure, interactive Smart Boards offer the same option, but for those of us who do not teach in rooms equipped with those, the cell phone camera is a fine low-tech option. Sometimes classes yield tremendous spontaneous insights that we may want to draw upon later. Claire sent the pictures to her classmates who missed class, and although I do not advocate making it easier on students who are absent, neither do I want them to miss out on crucial content. We have also used the cell phone cameras to capture 3-D structures and role-plays that have come up in class to which we know we will want to refer later without necessarily saving the original items. The real coup was using my own cell phone camera to document the board notes from a freewheeling faculty meeting that would have otherwise vanished. My most anti-technology colleagues were pleasantly taken aback.
2. Time small group activities using the built-in clock functions. In any group of three or four students, at least one (if not all) will have a cell phone. When we break out for intimate discussions or application tasks, I have the phone holders synchronize times and timers, and then let the groups do their work. This frees them from having to keep glancing at the room clock and keeps them more focused on the task. I have also experimented with all students using timers set on “vibrate” to monitor timed reading and individual in-class exercises and am pleased with the sense of calm this elicits, quite different from the tenser “countdown” atmosphere we have when I am the sole timekeeper.
3. Google it. There are times when what’s happening in class veers in an unanticipated direction and we need a fact I simply do not have at my disposal, nor does anyone in class. If it’s true that “all of us are smarter than one of us,” then literally bringing in the world via the Internet capacities of my students’ cell phones makes us collectively brilliant. We can do a quick search to find the missing details, and then move on. It has also been instructive to probe and push and ponder when diligent students come up with differing facts. These are great teachable moments that help me underscore why their research must not begin and end with Wikipedia—and the evidence is right there in their hands.

The list above is hardly exhaustive, but perhaps it can help us begin to refocus the cell-phones-in-class conversation. New technologies require us to harness our wisdom and imagination. They also challenge us to think differently about what we do and why. Based on what’s happened in my classroom I now propose that there are pedagogically defensible alternatives to silencing cell phones in our classrooms.

Karen Eifler, PhD, is an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Portland, Oregon.

Excerpted from Three Things to Do with Cell Phones (Besides Confiscate Them), The Teaching Professor, vol. 23, no. 7.

Using that definition as a common starting point, Shibley led seminar participants through a five-step process for renewing program-level learning outcomes assessment.

Step 1: Create a team – Determining who to involve in the assessment process is a critical first step, and Shibley recommends creating a team that includes those who care about learning, faculty who need scholarship, both junior and senior faculty, and possibly students.

Once the team is assembled, you need to assign a point person to lead the team. You should also provide training, so that each member understands the process. Finally, given that participation on an assessment team is an additional responsibility to an already full faculty plate, it’s always a good idea to find a way to recognize and reward team members for their contributions.

Step 2: Identify issues, problems and needs – This is where you begin the conversation about assessment, clarifying assumptions along the way. Find out how faculty in your program define student learning outcomes assessment, and what they’re currently doing. Take the time to revisit the key elements of your assessment process, review prior reports, and determine specific strengths and challenges.

Step 3: Select opportunities – During this stage you want to prioritize issues for each phase of the assessment cycle. The cycle includes defining outcomes, establishing criteria, collecting evidence, interpreting results, and taking action.

Step 4: Develop solutions – Shibley uses a learning opportunities matrix to provide an action-plan framework for addressing the deficiencies and priorities identified through the previous steps. As you begin to develop solutions, it’s important to communicate to those outside of the team what you’ve discovered and how you plan to tackle each issue.

Step 5: Update the process – The final step of the assessment renewal process is the implementation phase, where you take everything you’ve learned about what needs to be improved in your assessment processes, and make it happen.

“It’s important to think about program-level learning outcomes assessment as much more than simply meeting the demands of accountability,” says Shibley. “It’s really about quality, and about focusing on student learning, and looking for strategies to help you improve student learning.”

What a simple, straightforward definition for something often defined in much more complex ways. But problem solving doesn’t always mean the same thing. It might be the solution to a specific problem, like those that appear on math quizzes, or it might be a collection of possibilities that respond to a complex open-ended problem. But however it’s defined, problem solving is one of those skills all teachers aspire to have their students develop.

Understanding how problem-solving abilities develop is not easy, and measuring their development is even more complex. As a result, much of the research involves analysis of learners solving “knowledge-lean, closed problems that do not require any specific content knowledge to solve and that have a specific path to the answer.” (p. 866)

What this means is that “while we know a great deal about the problem-solving process in an abstract environment, we do not in fact have much insight into how students solve many types of scientific problems.” (p. 866) Not having this knowledge makes it pretty difficult to address problems that students may have as they work to solve more complex problems, like those included in an introductory chemistry course, for example.

But technology can help with the understanding of how students solve these more complex problems. The research reported in this article uses a software system that allows teachers to “track students’ movement through a problem and model their progress as they perform multiple problems.” (p. 867) The software uses case-based problems, for example, a chemistry case in which the student must identify an unknown compound based on physical and chemical tests that the student requests. There are “literally thousands” (p. 867) of possible paths that a student can take through this problem, according to the article, and the software can aggregate similar performances. Previous research has documented that the problem-solving ability of a typical student will not improve after he or she has completed about five problems using this software.

Given what other research has documented about the effectiveness of working collaboratively in groups on problems, this research team wanted to explore a “tantalizing” (p. 869) possibility: that collaborative groups might be effective in promoting the further development of problem-solving abilities. If groups were effective, would that benefit be retained when students went back to solving problems on their own? To answer those questions and another on how the nature of the group might affect the group’s effectiveness, researchers had students “stabilize” by working five problems individually; they then did five more problems collaboratively in pairs, and finally they did another five problems on their own.

Results? “Even individuals who had been given time to stabilize on a strategy adopted different strategies after solving problems in collaborative groups.” Better yet, after working with a partner, “a higher percentage of students adopted more successful strategies.” (p. 869) Based on data manipulation made possible with the software program, researchers conclude that most students improved by about 10 percent.

But that wasn’t all. Researchers grouped students according to their scores on a Group Assessment of Logical Thinking test. This instrument places students in one of three groups (based on Piaget’s theories of intellectual development) according to their level of thinking. About 50 percent of first-year college students are in the highest level. The collaborative pairs used in this research combined students from the same level for some of the pairs and students from different levels in other pairs. When a student in the lowest level was partnered with a student in the middle or high level, the lowest-level student had gains equal to those in all the other groups, “indicating that if they are paired with a student who can explain the problem and discuss it with them, they can improve their problem-solving performance significantly.” (p. 870) Interestingly, when students from the middle level were paired with those from the lower level, the middle-level students also became more proficient problem solvers.

Conclusion? “Using over 100,000 performances by 713 students on a problem, we have shown that we can improve student problem solving by having students work collaboratively in groups. These improvements are retained after grouping and provide further evidence of the positive effects of having students work in groups.” (p. 871)

Reference: Cooper, M. M., Cox Jr., C. T., Nammouz, M., Case, E., and Stevens, R. (2008). An assessment of the effect of collaborative groups on students’ problem-solving strategies and abilities. Journal of Chemical Education, 85 (6), 866-872.

Excerpted from Do Problem-Solving Abilities Develop in Groups?, The Teaching Professor, Volume 23, Number 4.

But despite the prevalence of technology on campuses, a new study indicates that computers alone can’t keep students from falling into their same weak study habits from their ink-and-paper days.

“Our study showed that achievement really takes off when students are prompted to use more powerful strategies when studying computer materials,” said the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Ken Kiewra, an expert in study methods and one of the authors of the study.

The research, published this month in The Journal of Educational Psychology, found that students tend to study on computers as they would with traditional texts: They mindlessly over-copy long passages verbatim, take incomplete or linear notes, build lengthy outlines that make it difficult to connect related information, and rely on memory drills like re-reading text or recopying notes.

Meanwhile, undergraduates in the study scored 29 to 63 percentage points higher on tests when they used study techniques like recording complete notes, creating comparative charts, building associations, and crafting practice questions on their screens.

The SOAR method of studying
Kiewra (pronounced kee-ra), a professor of educational psychology, calls the method SOAR: Selecting key lesson ideas, organizing information with comparative charts and illustrations, associating ideas to create meaningful connections, and regulating learning through practice. It complements how the brain processes information, he said.

“Learning occurs best when important information is selected from less important ideas, when selected information is organized graphically, when associations are built among ideas and when understanding is regulated through self-testing,” Kiewra said.

The study was built upon two experiments. In the first, undergraduates were questioned about how they study computer-based materials. In the second, they read an online text and then were asked to create on their computers some study materials that reflected their preferred (and likely weak) way to study. Or, they were prompted to use all or parts of SOAR study methods.

The latter group of studiers scored higher on tests measuring fact and relationship learning than the first group.

Kiewra is the author of Teaching How to Learn: The Teacher’s Guide to Student Learning (2009, Corwyn Press). He authored the new study with former UNL graduate student Dharmananda Jairam, at Penn State University, and said the study shows that as undergraduates spend more and more study time on computers, it will be vital for them to learn better ways of processing and then making use of information.

Teachers and designers of instructional software may want to take note of the study’s findings, as well.

“Teachers need to help students dispel crippling studying myths such as highlighting, outlining and rehearsal, and instead teach them strategies that help them succeed,” Kiewra said.

Steve Smith, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Office of University Communications.

The sobering fact is that less than sixty percent of the students entering four-year colleges in America today are graduating within six years. (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009.) Minority students and those from poor families have an especially difficult time reaching the graduation milestone.

Historically, faculty members have not been expected to play a major role in retaining students. Their role, instead, was to “sort” students by assigning them grades based on their performance. The common view, for quite a long time, was that “students have a right to fail.” Many institutions did not even bother keeping track of the number of dropouts from their institutions or programs. In times of plentiful students and budget surpluses, this laissez-faire approach was tenable. This view is changing, rapidly, under the current conditions.

The new thinking is that institutions have a responsibility to promote and support student learning and that they should measure their success as institutions based upon how well their students learned. Certainly, students have a great deal of responsibility for their own success, but so does the institution and, by implication, the faculty members.

The shift from “teaching” to “learning,” then, is really a shift away from measuring the success of a college or university based upon resources and processes to measuring success based upon outcomes. These imperatives are behind the current drive to collect student success data and to help faculty and staff develop strategies to raise success rates. In short, institutions are turning to their faculties for help in improving upon dismal retention numbers.

Retention is not only a growing expectation and imperative, but it is also an opportunity for faculty members to take the lead in innovating, researching, and implementing new strategies while demonstrating their effectiveness. This is both a challenge and a huge opportunity for college professors to take the lead in re-creating the college learning experience in ways that are more supportive and effective.

Faculty members are on the front-line of meeting the increasingly important retention imperative. Instructors interact with students frequently and are likely to be among the first to notice signs that a student is disengaging from college and at-risk of dropping out. By learning to recognize the warning signs and taking informed intervention action, a faculty member can play a key role in changing the course of a student’s life for the better. This is an exciting opportunity and a big responsibility, but future generations depend on our willingness to rise to the challenge.

Excerpted from What Faculty Members Need to Know About Retention, a Magna white paper. Learn more about this valuable resource »

Reference
Bowen,William, Chingos, Matthew, & McPherson, Michael. (2009.) Crossing the Finish Line:
Completing College at America’s Public Universities. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Most faculty don’t encourage students to use personal experience because it is seen as too subjective and without much intellectual substance. Mott has students in her political theory course write three personal essays. Her motivation derives partly from the need to “displace the preponderance of passivity I find in their essays.” (p. 207) Not only does the academy object to the personal, but students themselves have been trained to stay out of their writing. “High school students know from experience that the more they talk about themselves, the more will be taken away.” (p. 207)

Mott’s carefully designed writing assignments creatively weave the first-person voice and personal experience into explorations of the political theorists being read in the course. Here’s her second five-page essay assignment:

“Begin by describing a situation in which you felt at odds with a professional (a doctor, a lawyer, a therapist, a teacher, a social worker). Show us (don’t tell us) how your experience of the event differed from that of the professional. Let the details of the story convey all the confusions of this experience. Stop and breathe. In the subsequent section, use one or two passages from Montaigne to analyze this experience, to unpack the confusion, and to lay out the terms of power. Finally, what did you learn about yourself as a result of this essay? (p. 209)

“The beauty of this method is that it allows a layering of experience, first descriptive, and then analytical, so that the writer becomes both participant and judge. First the writer explores the fullness of experience and then she reflects back on it using theory.” (p. 209) All three of Mott’s essay assignments are designed so that students cannot write about just their feelings or personal experiences. The personal writing becomes a vehicle for substantive discussion of course content. The article contains excerpts from student essays, and these show how effectively this approach enables students to confront personal experience with political theories that can explain more deeply or challenge what they may have come to believe about those experiences.

This article is not particularly easy reading, as Mott describes the writing assignments in terms of very specific discipline-based content. What the article does show clearly is how powerful carefully designed writing explorations like these can be. They allow students to take what they know and what they have experienced and hold that knowledge against a light that significantly illuminates their understanding.

Reference: Mott, M. (2008). Passing our lives through the fire of thought: The personal essay in the political theory classroom. PS, Political Science and Politics, 41 (1), 207-211.

Excerpted from Use Personal Essay Assignments to Encourage Substantive Discussion of Course Content, The Teaching Professor, vol. 23, no. 3.

In June 2010, the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunication (WCET) asked the membership how institutions were doing with this issue: centralization vs. de-centralization. Twenty-three administrators (provosts, VPs, associate VPs, directors, associate directors, COOs, deans, associate deans) and faculty members provided their valuable insights on the issue.

We are experiencing an era of reduced resources. Those favoring centralization espouse the benefits of both consistent instruction and course development, as well as the avoidance of more resource-consuming stove-piping prevalent if colleges/departments are allowed to develop their own online instructional programs. Those favoring decentralization are convinced that college/departmental control is the best solution for students, faculty, and institutions. The contention of these respondents was that college deans would take on the added responsibilities of their college’s portion of centralized operations of distance learning, faculty development, and learning technologies. A key is to find distance learning champions for each college within an institution. And, that is extremely costly when supporting multiple distance learning organizations versus one.

Both centralization and decentralization of distance learning have advantages and disadvantages; causing many to favor a hybrid approach. The recognition of local control and personal engagement of decentralization must be blended with centralized services that are often more efficient, cost effective, and liberating.

Ensuring the same level of service
Technology advancements have brought new opportunities and responsibilities for instructional quality and control. (Fletcher, J., Tobias, S. and Wesher, R) The true responsibility of this lies with the faculty.

When comparing distance learning to face-to-face instruction, a number of important factors emerge, including similarity of student learning experiences, student outcomes, and employer acceptance of credentials. It is important that the instruction provided in both venues be seamless. Centralization ensures that institutions offer services specifically to the online population, while ensuring that they receive the same level of service and instruction that the onsite students receive.

A number of institutions favor decentralization, but do not (or are not willing-to) hold their institutional campus to the same standard and rigor (metrics, support, quality, rubrics, etc.) as their online courses. The ability of college deans in the decentralized modes of administration to be able to discern the differences is the crux of the issue of whether services are better (and more economical) when provided “centrally” instead of by the college or departments.

Michael T. Eskey, PhD is an associate professor of criminal justice at Park University.

References
WCET (October, 2009) Online education programs marked by rising enrollments, unsure profits, organizational transitions, higher fees, & teach training for faculty, Managing Online Education, pp. 1 – 4.

Fletcher, J., Tobias, S. and Wesher, R (2007), Learning anytime, anywhere: Advanced distributed learning and the changing face of education, Educational Research, 36 (2), 96-102

Sometimes the president will yell at you. It may be for something that is beyond your control, an oddity from another unit of the college, a decision in the faculty senate, a particularly troublesome employee, a disruptive trustee, or an evildoer from the community. It’s OK. Let the president yell at you.

Never suppose that your plans should be implemented exactly as you envision. You are not a portrait artist. People who lead academic affairs are impressionists. Mary Cassatt and Claude Monet painted people. The lines are all fuzzy, but the picture is worth a lot of money. Your work looks a lot better if it is smudged up.

Enjoy your colleagues who specialize in bacteriology, but don’t have lunch with them.

You’ll get used to the no-win feeling of leadership. When you are open and collaborative, you are an ineffective leader. When you direct activities, you are a dictatorial, top-down administrator. The little trap never goes away, but with a little time you’ll learn to balance the extremes.

Lawyers will call.

Don’t be a fathead. No child ever wants to be a vice president of academic affairs when he or she grows up. That should indicate something to you about your status in the universe. Being academic dean means that you genuinely want good things for other people. If membership in the executive cabinet seems romantic, quit.

Budget and finance are not the same thing, but they are two sides of the same coin. Be nice to the people who make money for the college. They live with the pressure of having hard jobs that are easily quantifiable. Adjust your scale; 94 percent on a test is an A, but in budgeted revenue it is probably half a million dollars in the hole.

Junior faculty members require care and feeding.

Academic quality is like a statue of the human form: An aficionado declares it art and a fanatic decries it as pornography. Don’t get sucked into their mess. Faculty members who are busy trying to find out where the naked lady’s arms went are more useful to students.

Coaches sell a lot of snake oil.

Try to keep in mind the following: ambiguity is not a weapon; always exercise patience with urgency; we get paid to make bad things go away; and always put on a little Teflon before you go to work.

English professors don’t do math.

Pay attention to the signals in voice mail greetings. Burnouts and past-due emeriti have their assistants record their greetings. Self-esteem builders create title-laden salutations that are longer than your message. Power brokers don’t answer the phone. These are the people who serve on your committees.

Business faculty “reduce ramp-up time by knocking off a corner in order to pick the low-hanging fruit”—nobody really knows what that means.

Pay attention to the directors. The good ones regulate mischief and their contributions are seldom small. The bad directors are usually inflexible and prefer policy to people. Don’t let the bad ones shoot the citizens in order to save the state.

The acronyms in teacher education are not a foreign language.

Whatever you think you are cleaning up made sense to somebody in the past. We are merely stewards passing through the institution. Keep in mind that somebody will have to correct your brilliance in the future.

Never assume that you’ve seen it all. People are like snowflakes: no two are alike, when conditions are right they stick together, and they make a mess when they melt.

Most important: keep your sense of humor.

J.A. Sheppard is academic vice president at Southwestern College in Kansas.

Excerpted from Academic Leader, vol. 25, no. 8.

How about whether projects are worth more points than exams, or vice versa?

Would you let your students decide some of the topics that will be covered in the course?

As learner-centered teaching continues to take hold, the balance of power in college classrooms is shifting from faculty to students. Not only do students have more power and choices, but they’ve become more responsible for their own learning.

If you’re used to teaching in the traditional, instructor-centered mode, sharing power with students can seem a little scary at first. And if you teach a large class of 80 or more students, the idea sounds like an invitation for chaos. Plus, let’s face it, it’s not unheard of for college students to try to “work the system” (no matter what that system is), and in some cases what they want out of your course, more than anything else, is an A (never mind if learning accompanies the grade).

And yet, learning-centered teaching can engage and motivate students in exciting ways not seen in most instructor-based classrooms, and even small, incremental changes can make a big difference in student learning, student attitudes, and class dynamics, says Carol Hurney, PhD, executive director of James Madison University’s Center for Faculty Innovation.

In the online seminar, Practicing Learner-Centered Teaching in Large Classes, Hurney presented three case studies from professors who felt something was lacking in their courses and made the conscious decision to add more learner-centered components. For example, a biology professor wanted his students to learn the basic course content on their own, so that class time could be used to tackle more complex topics.

The professor implemented a Readiness Assurance Process where each student takes a quiz on the assigned reading. The class then breaks into groups and takes the same quiz collaboratively using special IF-AT score sheets. The IF-AT sheets work a little like a scratch-off lottery ticket, and the students need to work on each question until the correct answer is revealed. The professor can then see if the group got the correct answer in one try, two tries, etc.

“I sat in and observed the students taking their group quizzes, and witnessed a lot of good discussion. At one point a student said that he thought the answer was ‘C’ because he remembered a chart from the reading that explained the process in question and I just thought ‘Wow, a student remembered a chart from the reading!’”

Not only are the students more engaged during class, and taking responsibility for their reading assignments, but the professor reports that even though quizzes take up part of the class time, he’s actually able to cover more content than in the past because the students arrive with a good foundation of knowledge, Hurney says.

Teaching philosophy statements are narrative descriptions of “one’s conception of teaching, including the rationale for one’s teaching methods. It is seen as a place to voice holistic views of the teaching process, including one’s thoughts about the definitions and interaction between learning and teaching, perceptions of the teacher’s and student’s roles, and the goals and values of education.” (p. 100)

Preparing a teaching philosophy statement can effectively promote the ongoing growth and development of teachers. Authors Beatty, Leigh, and Dean (reference below) explain why. “The process of reflection required to create and periodically revise a statement is as important as, and sometimes more important than, the actual content of the end-product statement.” (p. 100) Some of that growth benefit is lost when teaching philosophy statements are prepared for a venue in which the teacher is being judged. Then there is motivation to prepare a “correct” or “impressive” statement as opposed to one truly reflective of what the teacher believes. However, that is not the concern of these authors.

They are concerned that “philosophy” is often left out of these statements or is described with widely used buzzwords that faculty assume everyone defines the same way. Even though a teaching philosophy statement is a very personal expression reflecting a teacher’s identity, these statements do share common origins. “The building blocks for these personal statements are drawn from the lexicon of basic educational philosophies, which are shared among the community of teachers.” (p. 105)

In the first of two articles by these authors, five philosophies of education are succinctly and clearly highlighted: idealism, realism, pragmatism, existentialism, and critical theory. The review shows with concrete examples how these various philosophies result in very different beliefs and approaches to education. In the second article, the authors propose a card-sorting activity that faculty can use to start seeing how their beliefs about education connect with these fundamental philosophies of education. A set of cards for the exercise can be obtained online—a Web address is included in the article. The exercise can be completed by an individual or a small group, or in a workshop setting.

The authors note there is a benefit of doing the activity with others, because the process of verbalizing beliefs and hearing others do the same often makes those beliefs and their implications more clearly understood. And there is another benefit: “When each faculty member makes his or her teaching philosophy statement available for public discussion, it becomes possible to examine common ground and differences in philosophy across faculty in a department or college or across institutions.” (p. 112) These exchanges do need to occur in a climate of open inquiry. The objective is not to prefer one philosophy over another or attempt to convert those holding one set of views to another. “Because one’s teaching philosophy is such a core element of one’s identity as a teacher, direct criticism of one’s teaching philosophy is akin to a direct assault on the self and will shut down any kind of learning dialogue.” (p. 112)

With a philosophy in hand, the next step is to look at the alignment between these expressed beliefs and the teaching practices that occur in the classroom. The authors suggest that the course syllabus is the best place to look for this alignment. “Choices about assignments and projects, testing, and classroom dynamics should ideally be consistent with elements of one’s teaching philosophy. Philosophical views come into play as teachers cope with cases of academic dishonesty, imploding student teams, critical classroom incidents, and negative feedback on their teaching.” (p. 111)

Both of these articles show how preparing and regularly revising teaching philosophy statements provide important growth opportunities for teachers. They describe a process that can make preparing such a statement a challenging and rewarding intellectual endeavor, a process that puts the philosophy back into teaching philosophy statements. Both articles are another great illustration of really outstanding pedagogical scholarship done within the boundaries of a discipline but with relevance to every discipline. They are two of the most thought-provoking, informative, and useful articles I have read on teaching philosophy statements.

References:
Beatty, J. E., Leigh, J. S. A., and Dean, K. L. (2009). Philosophy rediscovered: Exploring the connections between teaching philosophies, educational philosophies, and philosophy. Journal of Management Education, 33 (1), 99-114.

Beatty, J. E., Leigh, J. S. A., and Dean, K. L. (2009). Finding our roots: An exercise for creating a personal teaching philosophy statement. Journal of Management Education, 33 (1), 115-130.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, June-July 2009.