Graduate students’ self-reported perspectives regarding peer feedback and feedback from writing consultants

This study reported how ten Taiwanese Master’s students perceived their experiences of receiving feedback given by their peers and writing consultants to revise a shortened version of their thesis proposals. Collected over the course of one semester, data included students’ writing portfolios and interviews with them. Analysis of the data revealed three major themes: (1) The participants felt quite positive about providing and receiving peer feedback, although they seemed cautious toward language-related peer comments; (2) they generally had positive experience with the writing consultants, although the perceived usefulness of the consultants’ feedback varied with individual consultants and (3) the two types of comments served different functions for students, and questions arose from the peer editing process could serve as prompts for writing consultation sessions. Possible future research directions as well as pedagogical implication are outlined to conclude the paper.     

Social Presence in Synchronous Virtual Learning Situations: The Role of Nonverbal Signals Displayed by Avatars

Social factors play an important role in determining whether instructional communication in computer-supported settings will be successful. Social presence is a social factor, specifically addressing the feeling of being present with another person in a virtual environment. This article describes possibilities to influence the feeling of social presence in synchronous learning scenarios using desktop collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). Desktop CVEs are technically simple compared with immersive CVEs and can be adapted according to the needs of the users. In this article, possible adaptations are described using the example of the desktop CVE virtual team room. In CVEs, users are represented as avatars. Avatars may or may not convey nonverbal signals. The focus of the article is on whether the actual use of nonverbal signals can affect the sense of social presence and thus help to establish and maintain the learner's motivation and provide support for structuring social interaction in learning situations. The paper provides a review of exploratory studies and experiments as well as a report on the author's own studies. Future research questions concerning learning in CVEs are discussed.     

Using Electroencephalography to Measure Cognitive Load

Application of physiological methods, in particular electroencephalography (EEG), offers new and promising approaches to educational psychology research. EEG is identified as a physiological index that can serve as an online, continuous measure of cognitive load detecting subtle fluctuations in instantaneous load, which can help explain effects of instructional interventions when measures of overall cognitive load fail to reflect such differences in cognitive processing. This paper presents a review of seminal literature on the use of continuous EEG to measure cognitive load and describes two case studies on learning from hypertext and multimedia that employed EEG methodology to collect and analyze cognitive load data.     

Effectiveness on Mental Health of Psychological Debriefing for Crisis Intervention in Schools

The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of evidence for the effectiveness and safety of commonly used crisis interventions in schools, such as critical incident stress debriefing (CISD), critical incident stress management (CISM), and psychological debriefing (PD). Two researchers independently searched relevant databases for reviews and meta-analyses in English language peer-reviewed journals using identified keywords. The database search was supplemented by hand searches of the reference lists of database-identified reviews. Selected reviews were compared and analyzed for the effectiveness of CISD/CISM/PD interventions. Research findings suggest that these interventions are ineffective and may be harmful. Evidence of effectiveness of CISD/CISM/PD interventions in schools is very limited. Given evidence of ineffectiveness and potential harm of CISD/CISM/PD interventions in adults and limited evidence of these interventions in schools, there is no compelling reason to implement CISD/CISM/PD following crisis events in schools.     

Cultural Endangerment and Education: Educational Analysis of Changes in Cultural Transmission of the Dongba Dance Tradition of the Naxi People in Lijiang,Yunnan, China

Many traditional ethnic cultural items are being endangered in China. Using the Dongba dance culture of the Naxi people as a case study, this paper seeks to analyze and interpret the endangerment of culture from an educational perspective, based on an analysis of the interaction between the cultural transmission mechanism of Dongba dance and the formal schooling of the Naxi people in Lijiang, China. By describing and comparing the traditional and current forms of Dongba dance transmission, the paper shows how the institution of formal education competes with older modes of cultural transmission, resulting in the endangerment of Dongba dance as a living cultural relic. So, in order to truly realize and improve the function of education in transmitting cultural heritage and to guarantee educational equity, we should prioritize sophisticated ethnic minority cultural items in the assessment and selection phases of education, grant them institutional cultural capital, and put greater effort into developing an appropriate school-based curriculum so that ethnic minority culture may be transmitted and inherited via formal schooling.     

China-ASEAN Relations in Higher Education: An Analytical Framework

China’s dramatic economic rise has tended to overshadow other wider perspectives on the developing China and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) relationship, including in higher education. The article examines contemporary relations between China and ASEAN, set against the longer term development of cultural and trade relations. It is argued that, notwithstanding current territorial disputes, and a history of discrimination against ethnic Chinese in several parts of ASEAN, prospects for a deepening of relations in higher education remain strong. Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam are selected as three instances of the developing relationship in higher education and some of the links traced, with the former assessed as best placed to take advantage of its China relations in higher education. The developing sense of regionalism is seen as likely to further enhance China-ASEAN relations in higher education.     

The effect of acceleration signal processing for head impact numeric simulations

Brain injury research in sport employs a variety of physical models equipped with accelerometers. These acceleration signals are commonly processed using filters. The purpose of this research was to determine the effect of applying filters with different cutoff frequencies to the acceleration signals used as input for finite element modeling of the brain. Signals were generated from reconstructions of concussion events from American football and ice hockey in the laboratory using a Hybrid III headform. The resulting acceleration signals were used as input for the University College Dublin Brain Trauma Model after being processed with filters. The results indicated that using a filter with a cutoff of 300 Hz or higher had little effect on the resulting strain measures. In some cases there was some effect of the filters on the peak linear (8–30g) and rotational measures (1000–4000 rad/s²), but little effect on the finite element strain result (approximately 2–6 %). The short duration and high magnitude accelerations, such as the puck impact, were most affected by the cutoff frequency of different filters.     

Der Sportwissenschaftler als Unternehmer im Wissensmarkt

Creative ideas are the driving force behind knowledge production, the producers of which are generally domesticated at universities for the purposes of ensuring the methodological credibility of the knowledge produced, in order to minimise the impact of chance in the creation of new knowledge. The status of producers is determined by indicators designed to simulate the demand for knowledge, precipitate a quantitative and qualitative comparison of elements which are not comparable, and establish legitimacy for the means of control used. Furthermore, incentives for competitive sport research and the symbolic recognition of scientists via sport practice play a particular role for knowledge production in sports science. In order to compensate for the practical world’s unwillingness to pay for sports science expertise relevant to competitive sport, the German Federal Institute of Sports Science (BISp) functions as a simulator of demand for knowledge generated by universities, while the Institute for Applied Training Science with its services exclusively available to umbrella organisations limits the range of incentives to produce (competitive) sporting knowledge. Sports scientists are thus faced with a market situation which favours routine research and standard methods, creates legitimacy at a central level, does not necessarily tackle actual issues faced by (competitive) athletes, stimulates demand for monitoring services, and all in all leaves monoculture-driven gaps which could most likely only be avoided by advocating and applying individual scope for action throughout the research ethos.