How Journalists and Social Media Users Perceive Online Fact-Checking and Verification Services

While services for fact-checking and verification to counter fake news in social media have increased, little research has investigated how journalists and the public perceive such services. This study reflects the outcomes of REVEAL, a three-year European Union research project investigating the use and impact of services for fact-checking and verification. Based on interviews with 32 young journalists and content analysis of social media users’ online conversations, we contribute new knowledge about the ways that journalists and social media users perceive online fact-checking and verification services. The findings suggest that, while young journalists were largely unfamiliar with or ambivalent about such services, they judged them as potentially useful in the investigative journalistic process. Yet, they were unwilling to rely exclusively on these tools for fact-checking and verification. A comparison of journalists’ perceptions with those of social media users reveals social media users are similarly ambivalent. Some accentuated the usefulness of such services, while others expressed strong distrust. However, the journalists displayed a more nuanced perspective, both seeing these services as potentially useful and being reluctant to blindly trust a single service. Design strategies to make online fact-checking and verification services more useful and trustworthy are suggested.     

Research assessment by percentile-based double rank analysis

In the double rank analysis of research publications, the local rank position of a country or institution publication is expressed as a function of the world rank position. Excluding some highly or lowly cited publications, the double rank plot fits well with a power law, which can be explained because citations for local and world publications follow lognormal distributions. We report here that the distribution of the number of country or institution publications in world percentiles is a double rank distribution that can be fitted to a power law. Only the data points in high percentiles deviate from it when the local and world μ parameters of the lognormal distributions are very different. The likelihood of publishing very highly cited papers can be calculated from the power law that can be fitted either to the upper tail of the citation distribution or to the percentile-based double rank distribution. The great advantage of the latter method is that it has universal application, because it is based on all publications and not just on highly cited publications. Furthermore, this method extends the application of the well-established percentile approach to very low percentiles where breakthroughs are reported but paper counts cannot be performed.     

Conduct problems in a sample of institutionalized minors with previous mistreatment

PURPOSE: The present study tries to analyse the maltreatment effects and the expected relation, according to the reviewed literature, with behaviour problems in a sample of children in residential care in a protection centre in Seville county (Spain). METHOD: The sample was conformed by a group of maltreated subjects in a protection setting (n = 30) and two groups of equivalent comparison (n = 30 and n = 30). The first group was conformed by subjects living in a marginal area of Sevilla, similar to the origin setting of the study group, and the second group comes from a wealthy area of this city. The behaviour problems index CBC of Achenbach (1978; 1979; Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983) was used. RESULTS: No significant differences between groups in the CBC total score was found. However, significant differences were found in the extemalising dimension and in the delinquency, somatic anxiety, somatic problems, and social withdrawal dimensions. Victims of corruption presented higher scores on the CBC total score, extemalising dimension, and delinquency. CONCLUSIONS: Young people, victims of child maltreatment and living in an institution, showed problems of withdrawal. Victims of corruption or emotional abuse presented more psychopathological problems.     

Working models about mother-child relationships in abandoned children

OBJECTIVE: The main purpose of the research was to find the differences between normal and abandoned children's conceptions about mother-child relationships in positive affect attribution, sense of fairness, and locus of responsibility in punishment. METHOD: Two groups of abandoned (N = 60) and one group of non-abandoned (N = 36) school-aged children were told six (kind/unkind, mother to child/child to mother) short stories, and were required to answer some questions about the reasons, reactions, and attributions of both protagonists. Children's answers were classified into categories for each question, and proportions of responses were analyzed. RESULTS: Significant differences between abandoned and non-abandoned children's response categories were found as predicted. Data indicate that abandoned children's working models could be described as showing less positive affect attribution to the mother, more compliant behavior in the child, more justification of the mother when her behavior was unfair, and less successful resources in the child to be on good terms again in the relationship. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that abandoned children's conceptions about child-mother relationships present certain peculiarities that may contribute to their present and future difficulties in adapting successfully to their social environment and in developing a healthy sense of self respect.     

Online Faculty Development and Assessment System (OFDAS): A Study of Academic Learning

The rapid growth of online learning has led to the development of faculty inservice evaluation models that are geared towards the demands of quality improvement of degree programs. Based on the best practices of student online assessment, the Online Faculty Development and Assessment System (OFDAS) created at the Canary Islands was designed to serve the dual purpose of faculty development and classroom learning environment assessment. Results of analyses showed that OFDAS maximized the potential of online faculty development to encourage staff to reflect on Curriculum and Teaching Capacities (CTC). Implications were discussed in terms of emphasizing the process of online CTC learning and incorporating perspectives to capture a comprehensive view of faculty teaching attitudes and their association with student classroom learning perceptions.     

Higher education students’ learning challenges and regulatory skills in different learning situations / Desafíos de aprendizaje y habilidades de regulación en distintas situaciones de aprendizaje en estudiantes de educación superior

First-year higher education (HE) students experience different challenges during their studies. These challenging learning situations can trigger self-regulated learning (SRL) skills, which students use to handle these situations. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate (a) first-year HE students’ cognitive, motivational and emotional challenges experienced in both individual and collaborative learning situations and (b) the relationship between SRL skills and experienced learning challenges. Participants included 107 first-year pre-service teachers. Data consisted of students’ self-reports via (a) open-ended answers on a challenge questionnaire and (b) Likert-scale items from MSLQ and MRS questionnaires. Based on students’ SRL profiles, differential effects on the challenging experiences were investigated. The results show that different aspects related to students’ cognition, motivation, emotions and well-being were challenging for students. Also, connections were found between students’ SRL skills and the types of experienced learning challenges. Students with high SRL reported fewer learning challenges related to motivational aspects and more challenges related to cognitive aspects than students with low SRL.     

Difficulties in Learning Thermodynamic Concepts Are They Linked to the Historical Development of this Field?

Students' misunderstanding of basic thermodynamic concepts is analysed on historicalgrounds. The persistence of some ideas from the caloric model are found to be reinforced bymagnitude names and unit definitions that were brought up at the early stages of thermodynamic development. The failure of many popular textbooks to make a clear distinction between internal energy and heat is also explored and related to Students' learning difficulties. Some hints that may help to improve Students' understanding are presented.     

Gender discourse about an ethic of care: nursery schoolteachers' perspectives

In this paper we will show some of the results of research which took place in the Principality of Asturias (Spain). Its purpose was finding out the gender discourses used by nursery teachers. Although we will not provide an exhaustive list of all the conclusions reached so far, we will put forward one of the aspects which has been developed throughout the investigation; that is, we will discuss some of our observations and hypotheses on the differences observed by the teachers in boys and girls' caring and supporting behaviours. In order to do so, we focus on the type of discourse related to the ethic of care. We consider it a tool which allows teachers to build a type of narrative in which boys and girls are presented as opposites, relational and different from one another.