Mandatory Student Fees and the Academic Library

As academic libraries' budgets remain flat while their expenditures rise, library leaders must seek out alternative sources of funding. One option is a mandatory student fee dedicated to the library. This article presents the results of a survey of 152 deans and directors of public R1 and R2 research universities that were asked whether their libraries benefit from mandatory student fees. While a library-specific fee is unusual, nearly half of responding libraries are eligible to receive some portion of another mandatory student fee. Study results can serve as evidence for libraries preparing to make a case for the significant, positive impact possible through even a modest library fee.     

Bringing the Law to the Library: The Importance of Librarian Mediation in Access to Justice Services

Library access to justice programs and services help people who need legal information and who cannot afford an attorney. Librarian mediation is a critical component in the provision of access to justice services. However, the value of library mediation, or assistance with using library resources, is often unrecognized, particularly where members of the public are trying to access electronic legal information sources, online legal forms, and other law technologies. This article will explore the role of librarians in providing access to justice services from the perspective of the work of Richard Susskind, which emphasizes technological approaches to providing legal services. While there is a place for technology in access to justice services, there is also a valuable role that librarians play in contributing to access to justice.     

OSTMED.DR®, an Osteopathic Medicine Digital Library

The OSTMED.DR® database provides access to both citation and full-text osteopathic literature, including the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. Currently, it is a free database searchable using basic and advanced search features.     

Retrieving and classifying instances of source code plagiarism

Automatic detection of source code plagiarism is an important research field for both the commercial software industry and within the research community. Existing methods of plagiarism detection primarily involve exhaustive pairwise document comparison, which does not scale well for large software collections. To achieve scalability, we approach the problem from an information retrieval (IR) perspective. We retrieve a ranked list of candidate documents in response to a pseudo-query representation constructed from each source code document in the collection. The challenge in source code document retrieval is that the standard bag-of-words (BoW) representation model for such documents is likely to result in many false positives being retrieved, because of the use of identical programming language specific constructs and keywords. To address this problem, we make use of an abstract syntax tree (AST) representation of the source code documents. While the IR approach is efficient, it is essentially unsupervised in nature. To further improve its effectiveness, we apply a supervised classifier (pre-trained with features extracted from sample plagiarized source code pairs) on the top ranked retrieved documents. We report experiments on the SOCO-2014 dataset comprising 12K Java source files with almost 1M lines of code. Our experiments confirm that the AST based approach produces significantly better retrieval effectiveness than a standard BoW representation, i.e., the AST based approach is able to identify a higher number of plagiarized source code documents at top ranks in response to a query source code document. The supervised classifier, trained on features extracted from sample plagiarized source code pairs, is shown to effectively filter and thus further improve the ranked list of retrieved candidate plagiarized documents.     

University Admissions and the Prediction of Degree Performance: an Analysis in the Light of Changes to the English Schools’ Examination System

The United Kingdom's Department for Education has recently changed the nature of the AS‐level examinations normally taken by students aspiring to enter higher education degree courses one year into their post‐compulsory education. In the face of protests from universities and other institutions that this would both harm students’ progression towards the A‐level qualifications, on which entry to English universities is normally based, and make it difficult for universities determining which of their applicants were best placed to benefit from their degree courses, the Department conducted research which it claimed showed that degree outcome could be predicted as well from the results of GCSE examinations taken one year before AS‐levels as from AS‐levels themselves. This paper critiques those analyses and their conclusions showing, through a re‐analysis and extended interpretation of the Department's data, that AS‐levels provide a more reliable predictor of degree performance in 2011 than GCSEs and that many students who performed better at AS‐level than at GCSE gained a place, and performed well, at a university with high entrance standards.     

Body composition differences by age and playing standard in male rugby union and rugby league: A systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to determine differences in body compositionn between playing standard and age in male rugby union and rugby league athletes. The MOOSE (Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology) guidelines for design, implementation, and reporting were followed. Studies were required to be in male rugby union or league and have body composition as the primary or secondary outcome. Data was required to be presented separately for positional groups and body composition presented as whole-body. A systematic search was performed in PubMed, Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus, and CINHAHL via EBSCOhost. 57 studies were included for meta-analysis. Results highlighted significantly higher fat-free mass in senior elite than senior sub-elite or junior elite athletes for all RU and RL forwards. Small and non-significant differences were found in fat mass between rugby union playing standards and age categories. Rugby league senior elite forwards had less fat mass than junior elite forwards. Practitioners should prioritise training and nutritional strategies that maximise fat-free mass development, especially in junior elite cohorts.     

‘Just don’t tell them what’s in it’: Ethics,edible insects and sustainable food choice in schools

Supporting young people with global crises mitigation strategies is essential, yet loaded with ethical dilemmas for the educator. This study explores whether young people will make ethical decisions regarding the sustainability of food choice in schools, and based on the processes identified, what educators’ needs are in supporting transformative learning. This study is the first of its kind, where young people under the age of 14 have been tasting edible insects and discussing their role in a more sustainable diet. The article draws on mixed-method research with over 180 young people and their teachers in three schools in Wales and examines responses to a possible introduction of edible insects into school canteens. Highlighted is the complexity of sustainable food choices—likely to be identifiable with other young people and educators in western countries. The article considers how educators and policy makers may need to frame routes to positive sustainable action and the associated impacts these may have on personal, social, political and environmental spheres.     

The debate over the National Curriculum for history in England and Wales, 198990: the role of the press

The construction of a history curriculum for England and for Wales under the terms of the 1988 Education Reform Act occasioned more debate in the media than any other subject in the National Curriculum. The links between the content of a history syllabus and perceptions within both nations of the part this plays in moulding national spirit made this inevitable. The disparity of view between the two groups charged with devising the syllabus and the government, particularly the Prime Minister, heightened the tension. This article explores the way in which consequent political, professional and public discussion was covered in the whole range of national newspapers. It is argued that the failure of the London press to comprehend the situation in Wales reduced significantly its appreciation of the processes involved in the making of the history curriculum.     

How can pre-service primary teachers' perspectives contribute to a pedagogy that problematises the ‘practical’ in teacher education?

This study examined pre-service primary teachers' perspectives on teaching and learning experiences within college-based courses in ‘practical’ subject areas within a teacher education programme. Following three individual lectures (one each in art, music and physical education), pre-service teachers (n=11) participated in focus group interviews sharing their perspectives on the teaching and learning experiences. These data were analysed thematically and supported by teacher educators' (n=3) planning and reflection documentation. Although the problematic nature of the ‘practical’ suggests appeal and peril of the ‘practical’, the important nature of negotiating the ‘practical’ to enhance student learning is apparent. Students emphasised the value of practical engagement and expressed a strong preference for working in groups to create a safe learning environment to develop confidence and competence. These insights suggest key aspects of a pedagogy of teacher education in these ‘practical’ areas. The importance of being aware of and, in some cases, challenging student perspectives on how they learn best in these curricular areas is discussed.