Student Drivers and the Fiduciary Duty of School Boards

Following E.D.G. v. Hammer, Canadian law has held that school boards, although they have a fiduciary duty to their students, do not guarantee the safety of their students from the acts of their employees. The scope of that fiduciary duty is narrow, restricted to a board acting with disloyalty, in bad faith, or in a conflict of interest to its students, which causes them injury. This paper takes the position that the scope of that duty should include cases where a school board’s policy allows students to use their own cars to drive fellow students to school-sponsored functions.     

Sustainability,Higher Education and the Learning Society

The Dearing Report emphasised the idea of a 'learning society' as the new context of UK higher education, but conceived this on a model of adaptivity to economically- and technologically-driven change. While there are real shifts in their social relations here with which universities have to reckon, they can also be understood on a much richer model of exploratory social intelligence. The growing concern for environmental sustainability is both a recognition of the need for this alternative model, and a major ground of its importance.     

The probability distribution for a biased spinner

This article advocates biased spinners as an engaging context for statistics students. Calculating the probability of a biased spinner landing on a particular side makes valuable connections between probability and other areas of mathematics.     

Evaluation of best practices in the design of online evidence-based practice instructional modules

Objectives:

The research determined to what extent best practices are being followed by freely available online modules aimed at teaching critical thinking and evidence-based practices (EBPs) in health sciences fields.

Methods:

In phase I, an evaluation rubric was created after reviewing the literature. Individual rubric questions were assigned point values and grouped into sections, and the sections weighted. Phase II involved searching Internet platforms to locate online EBP modules, which were screened to determine if they met predetermined criteria for inclusion. Phase III comprised a first evaluation, in which two authors assessed each module, followed by a second evaluation of the top-scoring modules by five representatives from different health sciences units.

Results:

The rubric''s 28 questions were categorized into 4 sections: content, design, interactivity, and usability. After retrieving 170 online modules and closely screening 91, 42 were in the first evaluation and 8 modules were in the second evaluation. Modules in the first evaluation earned, on average, 59% of available points; modules in the second earned an average of 68%. Both evaluations had a moderate level of inter-rater reliability.

Conclusions:

The rubric was effective and reliable in evaluating the modules. Most modules followed best practices for content and usability but not for design and interactivity.

Implications:

By systematically collecting and evaluating instructional modules, the authors found many potentially useful elements for module creation. Also, by reviewing the limitations of the evaluated modules, the authors were able to anticipate and plan ways to overcome potential issues in module design.     

Students' Perspectives on Gatekeeping in Counselor Education: A Case Study

Through in‐depth interviews, the authors examined 10 master's‐level counseling students' perceptions of gatekeeping. Case analysis resulted in 3 major themes pertaining to the necessity of gatekeeping, vital components, and counseling student characteristics. Implications of the findings are also discussed.     

Libraries in the shadow of history: the Dominican Republic

This paper focuses on problems of accelerated staff turnover by looking in retrospect at the staffing phases that the University of Zimbabwe Library went through. Between 1991 and 1993, staff turnover culminated in a loss of over 55% of the professional staff from an establishment of 25 (professional staff). The paper discusses three categories of problems and situations that led to the accelerated staff turnover, and the turnover's impact on the library service. Suggestions are made on ways in which the situation could be remedied and possibly prevented from recurring. Staff retention strategies discussed include among others, human resources planning and development, staff motivation, organizational redesign, and competitive remuneration packages. This paper concludes that human resources are perhaps the most vital resource required to run an institution, and as such, should be given a corresponding priority in the strategic planning process.     

The Impact of Subjective Camera in Sports on Arousal and Enjoyment

Although scholars have generated much research examining enjoyment of mediated sports, much of it has failed to explore how visual production elements shape viewer response. This study examines the impact of one increasingly common technique, subjective camera, on viewer arousal and enjoyment of game play. Participants viewed multiple plays from a college football game that varied in excitatory potential as well as viewing angle. Game play viewed via subjective camera elicited a greater sense of presence in the mediated environment and elicited more frequent arousal responses compared to traditional sideline perspectives of game play. However, the impact of viewing angle on enjoyment as well as self-reported arousal was dependent upon the exciting or dull nature of game play. Invoking the dynamics of excitation transfer theory, we discuss the potential explanations for this relationship as well as its implications for sports broadcasters.     

Making the Critical Appraisal for Summaries of Evidence (CASE) for evidence-based medicine (EBM): critical appraisal of summaries of evidence

Objectives:

Standards for evaluating evidence-based medicine (EBM) point-of-care (POC) summaries of research are lacking. The authors developed a “Critical Appraisal for Summaries of Evidence” (CASE) worksheet to help assess the evidence in these tools. The authors then evaluated the reliability of the worksheet.

Methods:

The CASE worksheet was developed with 10 questions covering specificity, authorship, reviewers, methods, grading, clarity, citations, currency, bias, and relevancy. Two reviewers independently assessed a random selection of 384 EBM POC summaries using the worksheet. The responses of the raters were then compared using a kappa score.

Results:

The kappa statistic demonstrated an overall moderate agreement (κ = 0.44) between the reviewers using the CASE worksheet for the 384 summaries. The 3 categories of evaluation questions in which the reviewers disagreed most often were citations (κ =  0), bias (κ = 0.11), and currency (κ = −0.18).

Conclusions:

The CASE worksheet provided an effective checklist for critically analyzing a treatment summary. While the reviewers agreed on worksheet responses for most questions, variation occurred in how the raters navigated the tool and interpreted some of the questions. Further validation of the form by other groups of users should be investigated.

Highlights

• Few critical appraisal tools have been evaluated with inter-rater reliability testing.
• The ways that users of evidence-based medicine (EBM) point-of-care (POC) tools interpret how to appraise an evidence summary—particularly when defining the grading of evidence, currency, and bias—may vary even when a standard evaluation sheet is used.
• The Critical Appraisal for Summaries of Evidence (CASE) worksheet had a moderate level of inter-rater reliability, similar to previous evaluative studies of critical appraisals tools.

Implications

• Medical librarians can develop tools useful for librarians, students, and clinicians to guide them in appraising clinical evidence summaries.
• The CASE worksheet can be a valuable tool to consider the quality of individual evidence summaries and to see patterns of overall quality in EBM POC tools.

     

Development of a Learning Progression for the Formation of the Solar System

This study describes the process of defining a hypothetical learning progression (LP) for astronomy around the big idea of Solar System formation. At the most sophisticated level, students can explain how the formation process led to the current Solar System by considering how the planets formed from the collapse of a rotating cloud of gas and dust. Development of this LP was conducted in 2 phases. First, we interviewed middle school, high school, and college students (N?=?44), asking them to describe properties of the current Solar System and to explain how the Solar System was formed. Second, we interviewed 6th-grade students (N?=?24) before and after a 15-week astronomy curriculum designed around the big idea. Our analysis provides evidence for potential levels of sophistication within the hypothetical LP, while also revealing common alternative conceptions or areas of limited understanding that could form barriers to progress if not addressed by instruction. For example, many students' understanding of Solar System phenomena was limited by either alternative ideas about gravity or limited application of momentum in their explanations. Few students approached a scientific-level explanation, but their responses revealed possible stepping stones that could be built upon with appropriate instruction.