Disabilities Information Flow: a disabilities information management system

The Disabilities Information Flow (DIF) project at the University of St Andrews has sought to provide a means of efficiently managing all student disabilities information within the institution and provide appropriate role‐based service interfaces for all staff who need to routinely interact with this information. This paper describes the software engineering processes used for the context analysis, design and implementation of the DIF.     

The Economics and Use of Video in Education,Particularly in Teaching at a Distance

Abstract

This short article is a resumé of a paper which will be presented at the ICEM Conference, ‘Media Efficiency 90’ in Vienna in October 1990.     

The impact of library services in primary care trusts in NHS North West England: a large‐scale retrospective quantitative study of online resource usage in relation to types of service

Background: Within NHS North West England there are 24 primary care trusts (PCTs), all with access to different types of library services. This study aims to evaluate the impact the type of library service has on online resource usage. Methodology: We conducted a large‐scale retrospective quantitative study across all PCT staff in NHS NW England using Athens sessions log data. We studied the Athens log usage of 30 381 staff, with 8273 active Athens accounts and 100 599 sessions from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2007. Results: In 2007, PCTs with outreach librarians achieved 43% penetration of staff with active Athens accounts compared with PCTs with their own library service (28.23%); PCTs with service level agreements (SLAs) with acute hospital library services (22.5%) and with no library service (19.68%). This pattern was also observed when we looked at the average number of Athens user sessions per person, and usage of Dialog Datastar databases and Proquest full text journal collections. Discussion: Our findings have shown a correlation of e‐resource usage and type of library service. Outreach librarians have proved to be an efficient model for promoting and driving up resources usage. PCTs with no library service have shown the lowest level of resource usage.     

How times change: Secondary teachers' job satisfaction and dissatisfaction in 1962 and 2007

In this article we explore the level of job satisfaction and the sources of job dissatisfaction for 210 secondary school teachers in southwest England and compare our results with the results from a similar study published in 1962. Using anonymous questionnaires, we asked 210 secondary teachers in southwest England (63% female) to rate their level of job satisfaction and to rate 16 sources of job dissatisfaction that we adapted from the 1962 study. Teachers in 2007 rated their job satisfaction significantly lower and ordered the sources of job dissatisfaction significantly differently than did teachers in 1962. Whereas teachers in 1962 were most concerned with external sources of job dissatisfaction (e.g. salary, condition of buildings and equipment and poor human relations), teachers in 2007 expressed the most concern about factors relating to teaching itself (e.g. time demands and pupils' behaviour). The changes in sources of dissatisfaction hold true for male and female teachers, with no difference in rankings according to years of teaching experience.