Batting last as a home advantage factor in men's NCAA tournament baseball

In baseball and softball, there is a rule that allows the home team to have the last at-bat and thus the final opportunity to win the game. However, in tournament play, this rule is often set aside and, instead, batting order is decided by other means (e.g. tournament rules, the flip of a coin). The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the batting last rule on game outcome in NCAA men's regional tournament baseball. It was hypothesized that host (i.e. home) teams would win a greater percentage of the games in which they batted last compared with when they batted first. This hypothesis was not supported. Closer examination of the last inning of play showed home teams were no more likely to have won the game during their last bat than visitors playing other visitors. The results suggest that the batting last rule contributes minimally, if at all, to home advantage in NCAA tournament baseball.     

Effects of knowledge and display design on comprehension of complex graphics

In two experiments, participants made inferences from weather maps, before and after they received instruction about relevant meteorological principles. Different versions of the maps showed either task-relevant information alone, or both task-relevant and task-irrelevant information. Participants improved on the inference task after instruction, indicating that they could apply newly acquired declarative knowledge to make inferences from graphics. In Experiment 1, participants spent more time viewing task-relevant information and less time viewing task-irrelevant information after instruction, and in Experiment 2, the presence of task-irrelevant information impaired performance. These results show that domain knowledge can affect information selection and encoding from complex graphics as well as processes of interpreting and making inferences from the encoded information. They also provide validation of one principle for the design of effective graphical displays, namely that graphics should not display more information than is required for the task at hand.     

Parental mediation during the U.S. 2016 presidential election campaign: How parents criticized,restricted, and co-viewed news coverage

Presidential election campaigns provide opportunities for parents to socialize their children to become politically engaged citizens. However, news coverage of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign contained inappropriate content, leading parents to possibly restrict or denigrate rather than encourage child campaign news consumption. This study built on literatures in political socialization and parental mediation to explore mediation of campaign news coverage. Data from a representative sample of American parents during the Autumn of 2016 revealed that co-viewing, active mediation, and restrictive mediation were relatively common. The predictors of mediation included political variables, parenting orientations, and child factors, with the latter two often interacting with one another. The results have implications for how we conceptualize both political socialization and parental mediation.     

Parshanut Through Art: The High School Student as Biblical Commentator

The following research study presents data drawn from an arts-based qualitative research study from 2013. Students created artistic interpretations of biblical texts using a variety of media. One of the significant findings of the study was that learning through the arts provided students with an opportunity to take on the role of parshan, or biblical commentator. Three examples of artwork is presented and combined, they show that by taking on the role of parshan, students were able to craft original interpretations of text and develop new connections with the text. Learning in this way demonstrated the significance of integrating the arts into Bible curricula as a vehicle for developing new types of positive and educational experiences for students.     

Aspiring to include versus implicit ‘othering’: teachers' perceptions of inclusive education in Wales

Wales, one of the four nations of the UK, is currently undergoing major education system-level reform. From the curriculum, through to a new additional learning needs (ALN) system, there is a renewed focus on inclusive education. Research has shown the importance of teachers' attitudes towards inclusion in creating inclusive learning environments. This research study is based on data from a survey of teachers in Wales (n = 253) exploring their perceptions of inclusive education. Thematic analysis of open-text responses revealed that while teachers were able to articulate the ‘ideal’ of inclusion, these positive ideals were often caveated by both implicit othering of learners with ALN and by the explicit limitations of behaviour, training, and finance and resources. This article critically evaluates the implications of teacher perceptions of inclusive education in Wales, suggesting that without a change in teacher attitudes, the vision of an inclusive education system may be compromised.     

Lockbox: mobility,privacy and values in cloud storage

This paper examines one particular problem of values in cloud computing: how individuals can take advantage of the cloud to store data without compromising their privacy and autonomy. Through the creation of Lockbox, an encrypted cloud storage application, we explore how designers can use reflection in designing for human values to maintain both privacy and usability in the cloud.     

网格技术:改进数据访问的性能

<正>谈起网格,肯定要涉及数据、信息以及如何在分布式的基础设施上对二者进行智能化处理。而这个时候似乎更让大家着迷的是网格的计算能力,而数据在以计算为重点的网格中仅能占据次席。这是为什么呢?通常,我们从媒体对网格计算方面的报道就可以看出。例     

Economic returns to education: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and Where We Are Going—Some brief pointers

The estimation of the economic return to education has perhaps been one of the predominant areas of analysis in applied economics for over 50 years. In this short note we consider some of the recent directions taken by the literature, and also some of the blockages faced by both science and policymakers in pushing forward some key issues. This serves by way of introduction to a set of papers for a special issue of the Economics of Education Review.     

The European university landscape: A micro characterization based on evidence from the Aquameth project

This paper provides a new and systematic characterization of 488 universities, from 11 European countries: Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and UK. Using micro indicators built on the integrated Aquameth database, we characterize the European university landscape according to the following dimensions: history/foundation of university, dynamics of growth, specialization pattern, subject mix, funding composition, offer profile and productivity.     

The discourse of design: Patterns of TPACK Contribution during pre-service teacher learning design conversations

Education and Information Technologies - Analysing pre-service teachers’ learning design conversations in relation to Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework to...