Evaluating hierarchical organisation structures for exploring digital libraries

Search boxes providing simple keyword-based search are insufficient when users have complex information needs or are unfamiliar with a collection, for example in large digital libraries. Browsing hierarchies can support these richer interactions, but many collections do not have a suitable hierarchy available. In this paper we present a number of approaches for automatically creating hierarchies and mapping items into them, including a novel technique which automatically adapts a Wikipedia-based taxonomy to the target collection. These approaches are applied to a large collection of cultural heritage items which is formed through the aggregation of other collections and for which no unified hierarchy is available. We investigate a number of novel user-evaluated metrics to quantify the hierarchies’ quality and performance, showing that the proposed technique is preferred by users. From this we draw a number of conclusions as to what makes a hierarchy useful to the user.     

School Schedules Affect Sleep Timing in Children and Contribute to Partial Sleep Deprivation

Although the environmental light/dark cycle is the main zeitgeber for the human species, the social cues seem to be important in the synchronization of circadian rhythms. In Brazil, the existence of two school schedules—one with only morning classes (MG) and other with only afternoon classes (AG)—allows the investigation of the effect of school activities on light exposure and sleep/wake patterns in children. Forty‐seven children wore wrist actimeters for a week for registration of light and sleep data. MG children presented shorter sleep duration on school days than the children from the AG. The results showed that during school days MG children were exposed to bright light earlier in the morning when compared to AG children. Nevertheless, there were no differences in light exposure after sunset. The results reflect the role of school schedules and artificial light in shaping light exposure, and its association with sleep timing in children.     

Identifying the information management process and knowledge creation in technology-based companies: a Brazilian comparative case study

Knowledge Management Research & Practice - Information and knowledge have been cited over the last two decades as competitive advantage tools. Recently, the use of them has been discussed to...     

Spanish savings banks: a view on intangibles

We study Spanish savings banks from the point of view of their efficiency, transparency in the disclosure of financial information through the net, and the provision of electronic banking services. Performance indicators are developed using data envelopment analysis and the tools of multivariate statistical analysis. The choice of indicators is framed within the theory of intangible assets. An attempt is made rank savings banks according to their level of achievement in each indicator. Savings banks are shown to be classified into four groups according to the level of achievement in the indicators of transparency and e-service. The relationship between efficiency and profitability is also discussed.     

Ten Years of Peer‐Reviewed Articles in Counselor Education: Where,What, Who?

Although counselor educators may be called on to justify publication venues, authorship order, and types of articles for purposes of promotion and tenure, there are few sources of data regarding norms for publication in counselor education. The current study examined peer‐reviewed publication venues, article types, and authorship order of 317 faculty members who were employed by 49 doctoral programs in counselor education accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. The study reviewed 1,547 articles published between January 1997 and December 2006. Results are presented, and implications for counselor education are discussed.     

School experiences of Children in Need: Learning and support

Children in Need (CIN) have received little attention in education circles. These are children who are usually living at home but where there are concerns over their health or development due to abuse or neglect, or they are disabled. Like Children in Care (CIC, who mostly live away), educational attainments for CIN are lower than for the general pupil population, with higher levels of special educational needs. This article draws on additional analysis from a recently completed, mixed methods study into this educational attainment gap for CIN and CIC. The overall research involved quantitative analysis from official statistics of a whole-birth cohort of children (n = 471,688) born in 2000/2001 and tracked through to their General Certificate of Secondary Education exams in 2017. This was complemented by semi-structured interviews with 18 CIN and 23 CIC, parents and associated professionals. This article focuses on interviews with CIN, their parents and professionals. Two main themes emerged from this further analysis of the qualitative data. One concerned children’s problems with learning. Children said that they often struggled with their schoolwork and received insufficient classroom support to help. The second theme was that pupils and parents reported more positive experiences of learning and support in Pupil Referral Units compared with secondary schools. The overall conclusion is that attention should rightly address the social, emotional and mental health difficulties of CIN, but this should be coupled with adequate support for classroom learning.     

Student satisfaction in higher education: a meta-analytic study

This paper discusses the results of a meta-analysis performed to identify key antecedent and consequent constructs of satisfaction in higher education. We offer an integrated model to achieve a better understanding of satisfaction in the context of higher education. To accomplish this objective, we identified 83 studies that were valid and relevant to the research objective of the current study, generating a total of 469 observations. We identified studies published from 1986 to 2016 and analyzed six antecedent dimensions (perceived value of educational services, resources provided to the student, service quality perception, marketing orientation, identity of the higher education institution, university environment) and one consequent dimension related to satisfaction. The 7 dimensions exhibited a total of 51 relationships. We believe that the originality of the findings clearly contributes to future academic research in higher education.     

Science and Literature: Towards a Conceptual Framework

Teachers of science and the history of science may wish to enliven and contextualise their subject matter by citing literary references to scientific ideas; similarly, teachers of literature may wish to examine the impact of science on their own field. Both groups of scholars may wish to examine how science and literature inform each other in their common social and cultural context. The question that arises is whether or not the relationship between science and literature has stable features that can give structure to such studies? There are various possibilities: the study of ‘science and literature’ could chart the impact of science on literature, or the impact of literature on science, or both; or look at how both science and literature have historically responded in similar or different ways to a common historical context. Amid this melee of options, the primary purpose of this paper is to sketch a conceptual framework to assist the science educator to explore the literary response to scientific ideas. For the sake of brevity, science will be taken to include the natural sciences (including the pseudo sciences of alchemy and astrology since they were once regarded as authentic) but not technology or medicine. Literature will be taken to mean fictive writing – poems, plays, novels – but will not include here science fiction. These exclusions are partly for reasons of space, but also because science fiction has its own literature of critical analysis within literary scholarship.