Does the Great Firewall Really Isolate the Chinese? Integrating Access Blockage With Cultural Factors to Explain Web User Behavior

The dominant understanding of Internet censorship posits that blocking access to foreign-based websites creates isolated communities of Internet users. We question this discourse for its assumption that if given access people would use all websites. We develop a conceptual framework that integrates access blockage with social structures to explain Web users’ choices, and argue that users visit websites they find culturally proximate and that access blockage matters only when such sites are blocked. We examine the case of China, where online blockage is notoriously comprehensive, and compare Chinese Web usage patterns with those elsewhere. Analyzing audience traffic among the 1000 most visited websites, we find that websites cluster according to language and geography. Chinese websites constitute one cluster, which resembles other such geolinguistic clusters in terms of both its composition and its degree of isolation. Our sociological investigation reveals a greater role of cultural proximity than access blockage in explaining online behaviors.     

Evaluating the Responsiveness of Accelerometry to Detect Change in Physical Activity

The responsiveness to change of the Actical and ActiGraph accelerometers was assessed in children and adolescents. Participants (N = 208) aged 6 to 16 years completed two simulated free-living protocols, one with primarily light-to-moderate physical activity (PA) and one with mostly moderate-to-vigorous PA. Time in sedentary, light, moderate, and vigorous PA was estimated using 8 previously developed cut-points (4 for Actical and 4 for ActiGraph) and 5-sec, 15-sec, and 30-sec epochs. Accelerometer responsiveness for detecting differences in PA between protocols was assessed using standardized response means (SRMs). SRM values ≥.8 represented high responsiveness to change. Both accelerometers showed high responsiveness for all PA intensities (SRMs = 1.2–4.7 for Actical and 1.1–3.3 for ActiGraph). All cut-points and epoch lengths yielded high responsiveness, and choice of cut-points and epoch length had little effect on responsiveness. Thus, both the Actical and ActiGraph can detect change in PA in a simulated free-living setting, irrespective of cut-point selection or epoch length.     

‘For the Recreation of Gentlemen and Other Fit Persons of the Better Sort’: Tennis Courts and Bowling Greens as Early Leisure Venues in Sixteenth- to Eighteenth-Century London and Bath

By looking at sports facilities for non-professional players in England, this article explores early commercialization tendencies in sports that proceeded the process driven by the professionalization of sports in the eighteenth century. A growing demand for purpose-built sporting facilities gave rise to commercialized tennis courts, bowling alleys and greens in London as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century which mainly addressed upper class ‘gentlemen’. These facilities were not mere sports venues but created semi-public leisure venues where particularly men could meet outside their homes and enjoy sports, gambling, drinking and other entertainments together. They were also strongly embedded in a wider network of similar semi-public facilities such as alehouses, taverns and inns that offered multi-functional services. Taking the examples of London and Bath, the article explores the growth and organization of tennis courts, bowling alleys and greens on a local level, and how these were interlinked with other contemporary leisure and entertainment businesses.     

Temporal effects of leadership style on state communication anxiety in small task‐oriented groups

This investigation reports a typology of maintenance behaviors that were derived through inductive analyses of papers students wrote about their strategies for maintaining various relationships. Ten major strategies were inductively derived: positivity; openness; assurances; sharing tasks; social networks; joint activities; cards/letters/calls; avoidance; anti‐social; and humor. These strategies extend the previous research on relational maintenance strategies. More specifically, the latter five strategies and the subcategories of all the strategies are additions to Stafford and Canary's (1991)typology. In addition, analyses revealed the positivity, openness, assurances, sharing tasks, and cards/letters/calls differed in their frequency of use among lovers, relatives, friends and others.     

Parent and Student Voices on the First Year of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program

In January 2004 President Bush authorized the DC School Choice Incentive Act, an initiative funded at $14 million that created a scholarship program providing 1,700 low-income Washington, DC, children the opportunity to attend participating K–12 nonpublic schools in the district. In addition to offering opportunities to participating children, the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program opens a door for examining the implications when more families are given the opportunity to select private schools for their children. This article reviews the results of a qualitative assessment aimed at understanding how families experienced their first year in the program. Referencing direct quotes from families that took part in focus groups, we address the following areas of participants' experience: reaction to the choice opportunity, motivation for participation, what was valued in schools, how information was received, selection of final school, reaction to new school environment, parent responses to new challenges, student–school responses to new challenges, financial policies, and overall satisfaction. Each section contains family responses juxtaposed with popular literature on school choice. This report is the first in a series that will monitor the experiences of families during the first 5 years of this program.     

A peer-assisted teaching scheme to improve units with critically low student satisfaction: opportunities and challenges

This paper outlines a peer-assisted teaching scheme (PATS) which was piloted in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Australia to address the low student satisfaction with the quality of information and communication technology units. Positive results from the pilot scheme led to a trial of the scheme in other disciplines. The trial was supported by an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Teaching Fellowship grant. Specifically, this fellowship was designed to (a) improve the quality of student satisfaction within identified units and (b) build leadership capacity using currently recognised outstanding teachers. PATS builds on the current research that highlights the benefits of peer-assisted learning programmes and draws on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory and Lave's situated learning literature but applies it to academic teaching staff. Data are collected via unit evaluation instruments and focus group sessions. The effectiveness of the scheme is measured via changes in unit evaluation ratings and a thematic analysis of the focus group data. Results show an overall improvement in student satisfaction of the quality of units and highlight both the opportunities and challenges PATS provides academics for teaching improvement.     

PUBLIC APPROVAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND OTHER NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENT GOALS IN WESTERN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES

The environmental movement is one of the most successful socialmovements of the twentieth century, and a key reason for itssuccess has been strong public approval of the movement's goalof environmental protection. This paper reports cross-nationaldata on public approval of environmental protection relativeto approval of the goals of other major ‘new social movements’—theanti-nuclear power movement, the nuclear disarmament movement,the women's movement, the human rights movement and the animalrights movement—in Western Europe and the United States.The data come from a 1990 ‘lifestyles and attitudes’survey conducted by Gallup for Reader's Digest, based on nationallyrepresentative samples in the United States and seventeen Europeannations, and show higher public approval for environmental protectionthan for the goals of other new social movements.     

Advanced,Analytic, Automated (AAA) Measurement of Engagement During Learning

It is generally acknowledged that engagement plays a critical role in learning. Unfortunately, the study of engagement has been stymied by a lack of valid and efficient measures. We introduce the advanced, analytic, and automated (AAA) approach to measure engagement at fine-grained temporal resolutions. The AAA measurement approach is grounded in embodied theories of cognition and affect, which advocate a close coupling between thought and action. It uses machine-learned computational models to automatically infer mental states associated with engagement (e.g., interest, flow) from machine-readable behavioral and physiological signals (e.g., facial expressions, eye tracking, click-stream data) and from aspects of the environmental context. We present 15 case studies that illustrate the potential of the AAA approach for measuring ensgagement in digital learning environments. We discuss strengths and weaknesses of the AAA approach, concluding that it has significant promise to catalyze engagement research.