Towards graduate employment: exploring student identity through a university-wide employability project

Students have expectations of their university education leading to graduate careers, with universities investing considerable resources in institution-wide initiatives designed to enhance opportunities for student work placements and work-related learning. However, there are large variations between courses and disciplines in student uptake of these opportunities, with limited evidence explaining why this might be the case. Recognising recent approaches which consider student identity in transitions, this study explored student attitudes to work-related learning across a range of subject disciplines. The first phase of the study used in-class surveys (N = 199) to focus on students’ self-identification and perceptions of employability initiatives. Follow-up interviews were conducted to further explore themes emerging in the survey data. The study found that, while some students drew on resources for identity work in their recognition of and approach to work-related learning, access was limited, and university resources were not always recognised or effective. The findings have implications for the design of effective graduate employability initiatives.     

排名的困境

分析了大学排行榜产生的原因,指出了大学排名活动中存在的问题,如评估指标的选取、大学的不同定位等,进而指出世界范围内的排名活动会加大英语国家大学的强势,不利于发展中国家大学的发展,并认为大学排名活动应以准确的评估和科学的指标体系作为基础。     

Relation between reading problems and internalizing behavior in school for preadolescent children from economically disadvantaged families

This longitudinal study of 105 economically disadvantaged children examined the relation between reading problems and internalizing behavior in 3rd- and 5th-grade assessments (8- to 12-year olds). The variable-centered results showed that reading problems predicted change in internalizing behavior in the context of child and family predictors. The person-centered results showed that children with reading problems in both grades had higher internalizing scores in 5th grade but not in 3rd grade than children with reading problems in 3rd grade or no problems. Child-reported negative emotion experiences varied similarly across grade. The results tie reading problems to emotional distress in school and support conclusions about the direction of effects and the internalization of academic difficulty for disadvantaged children.     

Relationships between student characteristics and self‐, peer and tutor evaluations of oral presentations

There are many influences on how assessors grade themselves and others. Oral presentations are useful for exploring such factors in peer, self‐ and tutor marked assessments, being rapidly completed and assessed, commonly used in HE and very difficult to anonymize. This opportunistic study examined the effects of gender and level of attainment on the triangulation of marks awarded to student presenters. Grades generated by peer assessment were associated more strongly with tutor‐awarded marks than those from self‐assessment. For self‐assessment there was a strong effect of gender (female students undervalued their performance compared with tutor grades). Peer assessment produced higher marks than from tutors, perhaps because of the close‐knit community developed during residential courses. For tutor marks, the greatest variability was at the lower end of the scale, whereas peer assessors were most variable when marking students who self‐evaluated or peer assessed highly. Students awarded a narrower range of marks to peers compared with tutors, but when self‐assessing used a larger range. Presentations by students who admitted to little sleep the night before received lower grades from both peers and tutors, but this was not reflected by self‐assessments, suggesting they were unaware of their poorer performances. Sessions with fewer talks (four rather than seven) reduced the ‘dip’ in marks previously observed in the middle of sessions. Findings are discussed in the context of bias in this mode of assessment.     

报纸公信力的定义和测量:指标建立

根据《韦伯新学院词典》的注释,"令人可信的(to be credible)"被定义为:能够提供一些合乎逻辑的,使人信服的理由。然而,一些报社的编辑表达了另外的思考。他们认为,"公信力"这个概念应该增加一个额外的维度,即报纸在社区中保持和谐和领导地位。     

Synthesizing the Indexing and Propaganda Models: An Evaluation of US News Coverage of the Uprising in Ecuador,January 2000

This is a study of US-based print media coverage of the indigenous-led uprising in Ecuador which occurred in January 2000. As a result of having mobilized tens of thousands of Ecuadorans, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador managed to peacefully force the resignation of a President who had presided over one of the worst recessions in Ecuador's modern history. Nevertheless, most US news dailies covered the affair as if it was purely a military coup and a threat to democracy, in spite of the existence of hundreds of citizen-led, participatory governing councils (called the “People's Parliament,” by Ecuadorans). Previous scholarship on media performance in relation to US foreign policy has proven in a variety of cases to serve as a useful analytical tool and predictive device. This article evaluates the extent that the propaganda model by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, as well as the indexing model by W. Lance Bennett, are instructive in the case of the news media performance of US which covered the uprising in Ecuador.     

The Media Audience

Philip Zimbardo and Ebbe B. Ebbeson's Influencing Attitudes and Changing Behavior: A Basic Introduction to Relevant Methodology, Theory, and Applications. (Addison-Wesley, $2.25 paper)     

Introduction to the special issue on teaching and learning in information retrieval

We present an overview of the special issue in this paper. The main objective is to provide information for lecturers on how to improve the student experience, using current knowledge in the field. To this end we present an overview of six papers covering areas as diverse as tools and methods used to support teaching and learning, pedagogical challenges in teaching mathematics for search, etc.     

Relative shank to thigh length is associated with different mechanisms of power production during elite male ergometer rowing

The effect of anthropometric differences in shank to thigh length ratio upon timing and magnitude of joint power production during the drive phase of the rowing stroke was investigated in 14 elite male rowers. Rowers were tested on the RowPerfect ergometer which was instrumented at the handle and foot stretcher to measure force generation, and a nine segment inverse dynamics model used to calculate the rower's joint and overall power production. Rowers were divided into two groups according to relative shank thigh ratio. Time to half lumbar power generation was significantly earlier in shorter shank rowers (p = 0.028) compared to longer shank rowers, who showed no lumbar power generation during the same period of the drive phase. Rowers with a relatively shorter shank demonstrated earlier lumbar power generation during the drive phase resulting from restricted rotation of the pelvic segment requiring increased lumbar extension in these rowers. Earlier lumbar power generation and extension did not appear to directly affect performance measures of the short shank group, and so can be attributed to a technical adaptation developed to maximise rowing performance.