Emotional design application to evaluate user impressions of library information desks

To evaluate the quality of service it is critical to know the concepts on which such evaluations are made from the user point of view. Differential semantics was applied in an emotional design framework to identify these concepts, or dimensions, and an equation was devised to discover the influence they have in the acceptance of a service by users. Some 53 users evaluated the tangible elements of 28 library information desks. Five latent concepts emerged from the analysis: modern, welcoming, professional, simple, and accessible. The most influential concepts influencing willingness to interact at library information desks were, in descending order, modernity, professionalism, welcoming environment, and accessibility. Finally, a comparative semantic profile was developed to explore the perception differences between the most and the least desirable information desks. Understanding the concepts that users consider when evaluating information desks and the influence of those concepts on user behavior can help designers improve overall service quality impressions.     

Acquisition of schedule-induced polydipsia by rats in proximity to upcoming food delivery

Food-deprived rats that receive intermittent delivery of small amounts of food develop excessive drinking--specifically, schedule-induced polydipsia (SIP). A main characteristic of SIP is its occurrence at the beginning of interfood intervals. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that SIP can be developed toward the end of interfood intervals, in closer proximity to upcoming than to preceding food delivery. In Experiment 1, two groups were exposed to a fixed-time (FT) 30-sec food schedule with water available during the first or the last 15 sec of each interfood interval. Two additional groups, which had access to water throughout, were exposed to FT 30-sec or FT 15-sec schedules of food presentation. The FT 30-sec group with free access to water developed the highest level of intake; similar and intermediate levels were induced in all the remaining groups. In Experiment 2, three groups of rats were exposed to an FT 90-sec food schedule with water available during the first, the second, or the last 30 sec of each interfood interval. One additional group with access to water throughout was exposed to the FT 90-sec schedule of food presentation. The group with free access to water developed a higher level of consumption than did the other groups, but by the end of training none of the four groups showed statistical differences in polydipsic drinking. Results show that adjunctive drinking can be developed in proximity to upcoming food delivery even with long interfood intervals.     

The teaching and research relationship within an institutional evaluation

The authors present an analysis of the relationshipbetween research and teaching in universities. The aimis to determine to what extent this relationship isstrong enough to support the idea that teaching andresearch should be analyzed together from aninstitutional evaluation point of view. Two mainquestions are presented: (a) should research beevaluated from an institutional point of view? And, ifso, (b) which specific aspects of research activitiescan be evaluated within each institution?Empirical data have been obtained within the SpanishNational Program for the Evaluation of Quality ofUniversities and there are supplemented by interviews. Evidence is found of strong connections between research and teaching and in particular areasanalysis of the two dimensions together willhelp in designing better improvement strategies foruniversities.     

A shorter set reduces the loss of cardiac autonomic and baroreflex control after resistance exercise

Set configuration may affect the recovery pattern of cardiac vagal autonomic and reflex modulation after a resistance exercise, since it is closely associated with intensity and volume and determines the metabolic involvement of the session. We tested the hypothesis that longer set configurations have a higher impact on cardiac autonomic control and baroreflex sensitivity compared with shorter set configurations. We studied the effects of three set configurations with the same components of work on the cardiac autonomic control and baroreflex sensitivity. Seventeen subjects performed one control session and three experimental sessions of a leg-press exercise with the same volume (40 repetitions), resting time (720?s) and intensity (10RM load): (a) 5 sets of 8 repetitions with 3?min of rest between sets (8S), (b) 10 sets of 4 repetitions with 80?s of rest between sets (4S) and (c) 40 sets of 1 repetition with 18.5?s of rest between each repetition (1S). Longer set configurations (8S and 4S) induced greater reductions of the vagal cardiac autonomic control and baroreflex sensitivity (p?≤?.001) compared with a shorter set configuration (1S). Also, 1S had non-significant reductions versus the control session (p?>?.05). These findings suggest that a shorter set configuration can reduce the impact of resistance exercise on the post-exercise cardiac vagal autonomic control and baroreflex sensitivity.     

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.     

El profesor como práctico reflexivo en una cultura de colaboración

The aim was the reconstruction of a school curriculum in reflective teaching situations within a co‐operative culture. Two working assumptions were considered: (a) teacher development was based on teacher thinking and (b) school organisation followed a co‐operative culture paradigm. The process features were: (a) university team consisted of external advisers; (b) school curriculum and classroom instruction were reviewed by school teachers; (c) case study as a research approach; (d) ethnographic techniques to collect data; (e) data analysis by a computer program; (f) teachers’ reflective cycle to reconstruct practice; and (g) teachers’ portfolios: narrative vignettes, etc. Findings showed: (a) a collaborative process school‐university; (b) teachers’ thinking and attitudinal change; (c) mobilisation of teachers’ talents and values to work together: (i) teacher dyads to reflect on teaching; (ii) advisers’ writing narrative vignettes; (Hi) collegial coaching; and (iv) curriculum materials designed by teachers. Two conclusions can be accepted: (a) teachers’ pedagogical practical knowledge showed diversity of their implicit theories to design action; and (b) teachers’ grounded theory confirmed that the educational action was based on a co‐operative and reflective culture.     

Extraction of complex index terms in non-English IR: A shallow parsing based approach

The performance of information retrieval systems is limited by the linguistic variation present in natural language texts. Word-level natural language processing techniques have been shown to be useful in reducing this variation. In this article, we summarize our work on the extension of these techniques for dealing with phrase-level variation in European languages, taking Spanish as a case in point. We propose the use of syntactic dependencies as complex index terms in an attempt to solve the problems deriving from both syntactic and morpho-syntactic variation and, in this way, to obtain more precise index terms. Such dependencies are obtained through a shallow parser based on cascades of finite-state transducers in order to reduce as far as possible the overhead due to this parsing process. The use of different sources of syntactic information, queries or documents, has been also studied, as has the restriction of the dependencies applied to those obtained from noun phrases. Our approaches have been tested using the CLEF corpus, obtaining consistent improvements with regard to classical word-level non-linguistic techniques. Results show, on the one hand, that syntactic information extracted from documents is more useful than that from queries. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that by restricting dependencies to those corresponding to noun phrases, important reductions of storage and management costs can be achieved, albeit at the expense of a slight reduction in performance.