Exploring educators’ professional learning ecologies in a blended learning environment

In recent years the concept of learning ecology has been interpreted in different ways to highlight its potential for learning and professional development. However, there are several aspects that still deserve to be understood such as, eg, the role that the different contexts come to play within a learning ecology. For this purpose, this paper presents and discusses the results of a study exploring the learning ecologies of educators in a blended programme delivered in higher education. The participants in the study were 85 professionals in the field of education aged between 28 and 58 years. The research design adopted here can be defined as a convergent mixed method where both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through an e-portfolio. The study found that educators in the sample had different postures, of whom some more aware of their professional roles or Self than others. Moreover, different professional identities seemed to be linked to different learning ecologies, where elements like formal or informal education, cultural artefacts, personal experiences, colleagues or work experiences played a different role. Formal education emerged as having a questionable function, while colleagues came up as a crucial resource.     

Measuring scientific performance of public research units for strategic change

This research presents a new metrics to measure and assess the scientific performance of public research institutes, which improves models based on standard multivariate techniques. These models called Research Lab Evaluation (RELEV) adjusted are successfully applied to Italian public research institutes, operating in five scientific fields. In addition, the paper presents a comparison between this method and the Data Envelopment Analysis to show some analogies and differences in the results.     

Low energy availability in exercising men is associated with reduced leptin and insulin but not with changes in other metabolic hormones

Low energy availability, defined as low caloric intake relative to exercise energy expenditure, has been linked to endocrine alterations frequently observed in chronically energy-deficient exercising women. Our goal was to determine the endocrine effects of low energy availability in exercising men. Six exercising men (VO_2peak: 49.3 ± 2.4 ml · kg^?1 · min^?1) underwent two conditions of low energy availability (15 kcal · kg^?1 fat-free mass [FFM] · day^?1) and two energy-balanced conditions (40 kcal · kg^?1 FFM · day^?1) in randomised order. During one low energy availability and one balanced condition, participants exercised to expend 15 kcal · kg^?1 FFM · day^?1; no exercise was conducted during the other two conditions. Metabolic hormones were assessed before and after each 4-day period. Following both low energy availability conditions, leptin (?53% to ?56%) and insulin (?34% to ?38%) were reduced (P < 0.05). Reductions in leptin and insulin were independent of whether low energy availability was attained with or without exercise (P > 0.80). Low energy availability did not significantly impact ghrelin, triiodothyronine, testosterone and IGF-1 (all P > 0.05). The observed reductions in leptin and insulin were in the same magnitude as changes previously reported in sedentary women. Further research is needed to understand why other metabolic hormones are more robust against low energy availability in exercising men than those in sedentary and exercising women.     

Interrupting commemoration: thinking with art,thinking through the strictures of Argentina's Espacio para la memoria

Recently, a few buildings within the Espacio para la memoria in Buenos Aires have been designated as a UNESCO Centre where, amongst other educational activities, evidentiary materials of the past repression are to be stored and displayed. Another building in the complex houses a Community Centre operated by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, where the mandate is to learn about and continue the revolutionary ideals of those disappeared during the repression. Amid these commemorative projects, designating a space for exhibiting art presents a significant opportunity for posing difficult questions, which go beyond the terms of information and idealization. Through a close reading of Diana Dowek's art exhibit, ‘A Long March’, the paper invites us to consider how art can draw out a particular haunting temporality that holds the present open to provocative questions that are difficult to pose and sustain amid the strictures of this commemorative site.     

An illustration to assist in comparing and remembering several multiplicity adjustment methods

There are many well‐known or new methods to adjust statistical tests for multiplicity. This article provides an illustration helping lecturers or consultants to remember the differences of three important multiplicity adjustment methods and to explain them to non‐statisticians.     

Business Informatics and the Information Systems Perspective: Implementing the IS 2010 Curriculum

This article describes how the Business Informatics program at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) has evolved and, in so doing, has addressed the call from the IS 2010 Curriculum Design Committee listed below. The article initiates this discussion with a discussion of the basic systems perspective that underlies the information systems discipline. The next section presents a review of the creation of a College of Informatics (COI) at NKU that included the strategic decision of structurally moving the Information Systems Department from the College of Business. The authors then document the perceptual shift this decision created as the Information Systems Department changed its name to Business Informatics and took on the goal of expanding the discipline beyond the business domain with partnerships across campus. A short discussion on the progress made in implementing this vision is detailed. The article closes with a discussion of problems and opportunities generated.