Effectiveness during ball screens in elite basketball games

Ball screens are one of the most frequently used tactical behaviour in elite basketball games. The aim of the present study was to identify their predictors of success related to time, space, players, and tasks performed. The sample was composed of 818 ball screens corresponding to 20 close games (mean differences in score of 3.1 ± 0.8 points) randomly selected from the playoff games of the Spanish Basketball League (2008–2011). Classification tree analysis (CHAID) was used to analyse which variable or combination of variables, better predicts effectiveness during ball screens. The main results allowed identifying interactions with dribbler actions after the screen and the orientation of the screen on the ball. The results showed no interaction with game quarter and quarter minute temporal-related variables in both analyses. The present findings allow improving coaches’ strategic plans that involve selecting the most appropriate offensive approach when performing ball screens.     

Making It Fit: Reshaping Library Services and Spaces for Today's Students

University course assignments increasingly focus on group work and group projects to help students collaboratively discover more about their fields of study. The Thomas G. Carpenter Library realized the need to investigate means for reimagining itself to better accommodate today's researchers. The complex process of planning for the redesign of both services and space undertaken by the library is described and explained in this first of a planned series of articles.     

Deconstructing the Metanarrative of the 21st Century Skills Movement

Abstract

If Neil Postman, were alive today, what would he say to Prensky, the originator of the term, ‘digital native’, about the ways in which teachers should approach the wonders and perils of e-learning in their classrooms? As the Dean of a faculty of education which is devoted to both creating and critiquing a variety of digital teaching and learning strategies in K-12 and adult education contexts, I have kept a close eye on the developing metanarrative of the twenty-first century skills movement. Arguments and anecdotes from the movement’s proponents concerning teachers’ technological accountability and competencies are attractive and compelling to some educators at the same time as they are oppressive and disturbing to others. In order to deconstruct the technophilic discourses of Prensky, Trilling, and Fadel, I juxtapose their work with Postman’s cautionary tales about totalitarian technocracy in schools. Postman wants educators to question their taken-for-granted assumptions about the ways in which they and their students should interact with technology. Prensky and his followers wish to provide educators with effective ways to involve their students in experiential learning partnerships through the use of serious gaming, e-books, crowdsourcing, and Facebook. As the views of Prensky and Postman are contrasted, a number of interesting issues emerge. What, for instance, is the nature of moral development and cultural identity formation when collective intelligence, hypertexts, and virtual relationships displace traditional textbook and face-to-face modes of learning? In this article, therefore, I attempt to synthesize the opposing perspectives of Prensky and Postman in order to establish a balanced and yet critical theory of the nature of e-learning.     

Ten Salient Practices of Undergraduate Research Mentors: A Review of the Literature

This paper identifies salient practices of faculty mentors of undergraduate research (UR) as indicated in the extensive literature of the past two decades on UR. The well-established benefits for students involved in UR are dependent, first and foremost, on high-quality mentoring. Mentorship is a defining feature of UR. As more and different types of colleges and universities strive to meet student demand for authentic scholarly experiences, it is imperative to identify what effective UR mentors do in order to ensure student engagement, quality enhancement, retention, and degree-completion. We offer an original analysis of the literature on UR mentoring in which we identify 10 significant “lessons learned,” or evidence-based practices of effective UR mentors that apply broadly across disciplines, students, institutions, and mentoring approaches.     

Evaluating the Responsiveness of Accelerometry to Detect Change in Physical Activity

The responsiveness to change of the Actical and ActiGraph accelerometers was assessed in children and adolescents. Participants (N = 208) aged 6 to 16 years completed two simulated free-living protocols, one with primarily light-to-moderate physical activity (PA) and one with mostly moderate-to-vigorous PA. Time in sedentary, light, moderate, and vigorous PA was estimated using 8 previously developed cut-points (4 for Actical and 4 for ActiGraph) and 5-sec, 15-sec, and 30-sec epochs. Accelerometer responsiveness for detecting differences in PA between protocols was assessed using standardized response means (SRMs). SRM values ≥.8 represented high responsiveness to change. Both accelerometers showed high responsiveness for all PA intensities (SRMs = 1.2–4.7 for Actical and 1.1–3.3 for ActiGraph). All cut-points and epoch lengths yielded high responsiveness, and choice of cut-points and epoch length had little effect on responsiveness. Thus, both the Actical and ActiGraph can detect change in PA in a simulated free-living setting, irrespective of cut-point selection or epoch length.     

Temporal effects of leadership style on state communication anxiety in small task‐oriented groups

This investigation reports a typology of maintenance behaviors that were derived through inductive analyses of papers students wrote about their strategies for maintaining various relationships. Ten major strategies were inductively derived: positivity; openness; assurances; sharing tasks; social networks; joint activities; cards/letters/calls; avoidance; anti‐social; and humor. These strategies extend the previous research on relational maintenance strategies. More specifically, the latter five strategies and the subcategories of all the strategies are additions to Stafford and Canary's (1991)typology. In addition, analyses revealed the positivity, openness, assurances, sharing tasks, and cards/letters/calls differed in their frequency of use among lovers, relatives, friends and others.     

Parent and Student Voices on the First Year of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program

In January 2004 President Bush authorized the DC School Choice Incentive Act, an initiative funded at $14 million that created a scholarship program providing 1,700 low-income Washington, DC, children the opportunity to attend participating K–12 nonpublic schools in the district. In addition to offering opportunities to participating children, the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program opens a door for examining the implications when more families are given the opportunity to select private schools for their children. This article reviews the results of a qualitative assessment aimed at understanding how families experienced their first year in the program. Referencing direct quotes from families that took part in focus groups, we address the following areas of participants' experience: reaction to the choice opportunity, motivation for participation, what was valued in schools, how information was received, selection of final school, reaction to new school environment, parent responses to new challenges, student–school responses to new challenges, financial policies, and overall satisfaction. Each section contains family responses juxtaposed with popular literature on school choice. This report is the first in a series that will monitor the experiences of families during the first 5 years of this program.     

Government Information Networks - Mapping Electronic Governance cases through Public Administration concepts

Facing economic pressure, social tensions, global competition and low public confidence, governments can no longer afford to address increasingly complex and interdependent public goals alone or step back and rely on the markets. Instead, they have to work through networks of state and non-state actors to organize existing resources, knowledge and capabilities in the pursuit of public goals. The new paradigm increasingly relies on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to connect actors to the network and to build, manage and sustain relationships between them. We refer to such ICT-enabled networks as Government Information Networks. This article serves as an introduction to the current issue of Government Information Quarterly on Government Information Networks. The issue comprises twelve cases of such networks selected from the papers submitted to the 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, ICEGOV2010, held in Beijing, China, October 2010. The article also presents a conceptual framework for public administration networks, and applies the framework to describe, analyze and compare the cases, thus relating the volume to the Public Administration literature.