Effect of delay on search decisions in a task-oriented reading environment

The goal of this study was to determine the effect of setting a delay between reading a text and answering comprehension questions on when-to-search and what-to-search decisions in a task-oriented reading environment. Fifty-five eighth-grade students were randomly divided into two groups. One group read one text, answered comprehension questions regarding the text with the text available, and subsequently repeated the procedure with a second text (immediate condition). The other group read both texts first and then answered, with the texts available, the questions for the first text and then for the second text (delayed condition). In both conditions, the readers’ actions during the task were recorded. The results demonstrated that the students in the delayed condition made more search decisions. In addition, moderated mediation analyses indicated that setting a delay had a positive indirect effect on performance via increased searching only for the students with average and high comprehension skills. Moreover, decisions regarding what information to search for depended exclusively on comprehension skill. Instructional implications are discussed.     

What if privatising higher education becomes an issue? The case of Chile and Mexico

Over the last 30 years, Chile and Mexico have been implementing neoliberal policies to reform their higher education systems. This report compares the development and impact of those policies within three main areas in both countries, namely: (1) trends and characteristics of the growing private higher education sector, (2) commercialisation and business-like trends that private academia is experiencing and, finally, (3) it discusses how all this has created tensioning situations with assessment and accrediting agencies to ensure quality in their private higher education systems. This study shows that private higher education is facing the following challenges in both nations: (1) an uncritical implementation of neoliberal policies, (2) that there is a very unregulated legislation that has allowed many private institutions to profit within loopholes in the law, (3) that quality has become a central concern and some of the mechanisms applied to correct it have not been effective, showing a lack of a comprehensive system of quality assessment, and (4) that enrolment has grown but with several mismatches that challenge the initial goal of advancing economic development through human resources capacities. Alternative policies are discussed.     

Resource location and structural properties of the nestbox as determinants of nest-site selection in the golden hamster

Nest-site selection, an ecologically relevant behavior, was studied in the golden hamster in a model environment where the animals could choose between nestboxes differing in distance from resource or in structural features (size and illumination). Experiment 1 showed that hamsters can decrease foraging costs by setting their nests in the nestbox nearest to the food and/or nestmaterial sources, and that hoarding costs, as distinct from simple procurement costs, are taken into account in the choice process. Preferences for darker and larger nestboxes were obtained in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 revealed an internally coherent hierarchical pattern in preferences, with illumination being more important than size and resource distance, and size more important than resource distance. The results suggest that nest-site selection and foraging behaviors are parts of an integrated causal system.     

Science education through informal education

To develop the pedagogic efficiency of informal education in science teaching, promoting a close cooperation between institutions is suggested by Monteiro, Janerine, de Carvalho, and Martins. In their article, they point out effective examples of how teachers and educators work together to develop programs and activities at informal education places such as science museums. Their study explored and discussed the viability and relevancy of school visits to museums and possibilities to enhance the connection between students’ visits in informal contexts and their learning in schools. Given that students learn science by crossing the boundaries of formal and informal learning contexts, it is critical to examine ways of integrated and collaborative approach to develop scientific literacy to help students think, act and communicate as members of problem solving communities. In this forum, we suggest the importance of students’ lifeworld contexts in informal learning places as continuum of Monteiro, Janerine, de Carvalho, and Martins’ discussion on enhancing the effectiveness of informal learning places in science education.     

From adoption potential to Transformative Learning around Conservation Agriculture

Purpose: To develop a transformative learning process around the potential for innovation of technologies such as Conservation Agriculture.

Design/methodology/approach: We applied principles of Transformative Learning and Communicative Action theories to design a learning process structured by the Qualitative Expert Assessment Tool for Conservation Agriculture Adoption in Africa (QAToCA). Elements of the process include: agroecosystem health exploration, stakeholder mapping, innovation timeline, participatory video, the QAToCA exercise, and specifying change promotion. We tested this approach with a group of farmers and experts in Koumbia, Burkina Faso.

Findings: The agroecosystem in Koumbia is under demographic, economic, and climatic pressure. Conservation Agriculture has not been successfully integrated into socio-economic realities or implemented beyond a trial scale. The stakeholder mapping showed that dominant economic players and traditional means of communicating are essential to achieve innovation. Past interventions were not coordinated and focused on technical challenges. The participatory videos were rich in contextual information and created process ownership for research participants. The QAToCA provided a structure for lessons learned and suggestions for change.

Practical implications: The learning process may be applied to initiate innovation initiatives in an efficient manner.

Theoretical implications: The study shows how Transformative Learning and Communicative Action theories can be used for agricultural innovation. It also underlines the need for further work on how to address the implicit superiority of the process initiator and the integration of learning in institutional practice.

Originality: Few studies have attempted to design and test learning processes on agricultural innovation based on theories of learning and Communicative Action.     

Foreign and International Communication

Approaches to Communication Planning edited by John Middleton (1980, 300 pp.)

Communication Planning for Development: An Operational Framework by Alan Hancock (1981, 198 pp.)

Impact of Modern Communication Technology I: Australia, by Chris Duke (n.d., 122 pp.)

Impact of Modern Communication Technology II: Indonesia (n.d., 72 pp)

Flow of News in the Gulf, by Phil Harris, et al. (n.d., 70 pp.)

Protection of Journalists (no author, n.d., but 142 pp.)

82. The Book in Multilingual Countries by Abul Masan (1978, 40 pp.)

83. National Communication Polic Councils: Principles and Experiences by M.A. Rodrigues Dias, et al. (1979. 44 pp.)

84. Mass Media: The Image, Role, and Social Conditions of Women: A Collection and Analysis of Research Materials (1979, 78 pp.)

85. News Values and Principles of Cross-Cultural Communication (1980, 51 pp.)

(86) Special Issue: Mass Media Codes of Ethics and Councils: A Comprehensive International Study on Professional Standards by J. Clement Jones (1980, 80 pp.)

87. Communication in the Community (this title not yet seen)

88. Rural Journalism in Africa by Paul Ansah, et al. (1981, 35 pp.)

89. The SACl/EXERN Project in Brazil: An Analytical Case Study by Emile G. Mc- Anany et al. (1981, 46 pp.)

90. Community Communications: The Role of Community Media in Development by Frances Berrigan (1981, 50 pp.)

1. Historical Development of Media Systems–Japan by Shinichi Ito, et al. (1979, 69 pp.)

2. Historical Development of Media Systems–German Democratic Republic by Emil Dusiska (1979, 35 pp.)

3. Communication Indicators I: Communication Indicators and Indicators of Socio-Economic Development by Rita Cruise O'Brien, et al. (1979, 96 pp.)

4. Communication Indicators II: 100 Years of Mass Communication in Germany by Anton Galli, et al. (1979, 28 pp.)

5. Sccio-Economic and CommunicatioA Indicators in Development Planning: A Case Study of Iran by Majid Tehranian (n.d., 126 pp.)

6. Communication Methods to Promote Grass-Roots Participation by Jeremiah O'Sullivan-Ryan (n.d., 155 pp.)

7. Importation of Films for Cinema and Television in Egypt by Gehan Rachty (n.d., 77 pp.)

Reporting of International News and Roles of the Gatekeepers (1980) is a summary of two late 1979 meetings on the subject in Paris. (18 pp.)

Intergovernmental Conference on Communication Policies in Africa (1981, 81 pp. plus 47 page working paper for same meeting)

Intergovernmental Conference for Co-operation on Activities, Needs and Programmes for Communication Development (1980, 65 pp. plus 32 page working paper)

List of Documents and Publications in the Field of Mass Communication 1979 (no. 5 in the series, 1980, 187 pp.)

Mass Media and the Transnational Corporation by Basskaran Nair (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1980—$12.50/7.50)

Mass Media and National Cultures, by the International Association for Mass Communication Research (Leicester, U.K.: Adam Bros., and Shardlow Ltd., 1980—price not known, paper)

Organisations Internationales et Regionales de Journalistes [International and Regional Organizations of Journalists] (Prague: International Organization of Journalists, 1980—price, if any, not given, paper)

Bruce L. Cook, Understanding Pictures in Papua New Guinea (David C. Cook Foundation, Cook Square, Elgin, Ill. 60120—$8.95, paper)

Paul Lendvai, The Bureaucracy of Truth: How Communist Governments Manage the News (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981—$24.75)     

Using the Flipped Classroom Model in Your Library Instruction Course

In the flipped classroom model, the pedagogical paradigm is reversed and the students learn the class lesson at home and do homework in class. Although much of the focus of the flipped model has been on the secondary education level, this model could be a viable way to teach library instruction sessions to college-level students as well as a way to preserve scarce class time. This article examines a project that was done at LIU Post, where an instructor of the Library Competency Workshop course flipped the classroom and compared test results to sections where the class was run in a traditional lecture classroom model as well as the experiences on how the instructor flipped the classroom.     

Quantifying the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals and fields

There is an overall perception of increased interdisciplinarity in science, but this is difficult to confirm quantitatively owing to the lack of adequate methods to evaluate subjective phenomena. This is no different from the difficulties in establishing quantitative relationships in human and social sciences. In this paper we quantified the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals and science fields by using an entropy measurement based on the diversity of the subject categories of journals citing a specific journal. The methodology consisted in building citation networks using the Journal Citation Reports^® database, in which the nodes were journals and edges were established based on citations among journals. The overall network for the 11-year period (1999–2009) studied was small-world and followed a power-law with exponential cutoff distribution with regard to the in-strength. Upon visualizing the network topology an overall structure of the various science fields could be inferred, especially their interconnections. We confirmed quantitatively that science fields are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, with the degree of interdisplinarity (i.e. entropy) correlating strongly with the in-strength of journals and with the impact factor.     

A spectral analysis of team dynamics and tactics in Brazilian football

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to characterise the total space covered and the distances between players within teams over ten Brazilian First Division Championship matches. Filmed recordings, combined with a tracking system, were used to obtain the trajectories of the players (n = 277), before and after half-time. The team surface area (the area of the convex hull formed by the positions of the players) and spread (the Frobenius norm of the distance-between-player matrix) were calculated as functions of time. A Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) was applied to each time series. The median frequency was then calculated. The results of the surface area time series median frequencies for the first half (0.63 ± 0.10 cycles · min^?1) were significantly greater (P < 0.01) than the second-half values (0.47 ± 0.14 cycles · min^?1). Similarly, the spread variable median frequencies for the first half (0.60 ± 0.14 cycles · min^?1) were significantly greater (P < 0.01) than the second-half values (0.46 ± 0.16 cycles · min^?1). The median frequencies allowed the characterisation of the time series oscillations that represent the speed at which players distribute and then compact their team formation during a match. This analysis can provide insights that allow coaches to better control the team organisation on the pitch.     

Landing techniques in volleyball

Abstract

Knee injuries such as anterior cruciate ligament lesions and patellar tendonitis are very frequent in volleyball, and are often attributed to micro traumas that occur during the landing phase of airborne actions. The aim of the present study was to compare different jumping activities during official men's and women's volleyball games. Twelve top-level matches from the Italian men's and women's professional leagues were analysed. The jumps performed during the games were classified according to the landing technique used by the player (left or right foot or both feet together), court position, and ball trajectory. Chi-square analyses were performed to detect differences in landing techniques between the sexes, court positions, and trajectories when serving, attacking, blocking, and setting. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were found between the sexes for block, set, and spike but not for the jump serve. The frequency of landings on one foot was related to court position and the trajectory of the sets: when spiking faster sets, the players were more likely to use a one-footed landing. The present results should help coaches and physiotherapists to devise appropriate training and prevention programmes, and reveal the need for further detailed biomechanical investigations of the relationships between landings and knee injuries.