Enhancing instructor credibility and immediacy in online multimedia designs

Educational technology research and development - The design of multimedia elements used in video for online courses can increase student perceptions of their instructor’s credibility and...     

Do R&D subsidies affect SMEs’ access to external financing?

Many countries spend sizeable sums of public money on R&D grants to alleviate debt and equity gaps for small firms’ innovation projects. In making such awards, knowledgeable government officials may certify firms to private financiers. Using a unique Belgian dataset of 1107 approved requests and a control group of denied requests for a specific type of R&D grant, we examine the impact of subsidies on small firms’ access to external equity, short term and long term debt financing. We find that obtaining an R&D subsidy provides a positive signal about SME quality and results in better access to long-term debt.     

Collaborating for Success: The Digital Library of the Caribbean

This article will provide a brief overview of the successes of the Digital Library of the Caribbean, an open access, multi-institutional, multilingual, inclusive, international digital library. It will discuss factors that support the sustainability of robust technical infrastructures, collaborative partnerships, shared governance, and shared interests in advancing Caribbean scholarly research. Partner relationships and shared governance are at the heart of the creativity and solutions which continue to grow the largest Caribbean content digital library in the world.     

Information retrieval with geographical references. Relevant documents filtering vs. query expansion

This is a thorough analysis of two techniques applied to Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR). Previous studies have researched the application of query expansion to improve the selection process of information retrieval systems. This paper emphasizes the effectiveness of the filtering of relevant documents applied to a GIR system, instead of query expansion. Based on the CLEF (Cross Language Evaluation Forum) framework available, several experiments have been run. Some based on query expansion, some on the filtering of relevant documents. The results show that filtering works better in a GIR environment, because relevant documents are not reordered in the final list.     

Inquiry projects for scientific education: a good option for compulsory secondary education / Proyectos de indagación para la educación científica: una buena opción para la educación secundaria obligatoria

The approach of learning science through inquiry presents significant challenges for teachers and students. In light of this, an extensive experience has been developed in which students without any previous training or specific interests have been organized into small groups to carry out scientific inquiry projects guided by their teachers. Evaluation of the experience is clearly positive, and is based on questionnaires completed at the end of the experience by the students as well as retrospective reports provided by their teachers. Despite this, some problems are presented, such as the difficulty or repetitiveness of some scientific practices mentioned by some students, or when the inquiry or the group does not work out in some cases, as mentioned by teachers. Scientific inquiry projects like the one described here could play a key role in science education in compulsory secondary education.     

Creation of reusable open textbooks: Insights from the Connexions repository

Open textbook initiatives have appeared as an alternative to traditional publishing. These initiatives for the production of alternatively copyrighted educational resources provide a way of sharing materials through the Web. While the open model of peer‐produced materials enables the global reuse of textbooks, the combination of fragments to produce new textbooks tailored to particular needs is not easy. The heterogeneity of topics and target audiences, as well as the cultural and institutional differences of educational systems across the globe, raises the need for new compositional features, fostering—at the same time—the reuse of the newly produced combinations. This paper reviews the current models of reuse and sharing, and presents a quantitative analysis of the Connexions repository which provides evidence about the culture of reuse in open textbook initiatives.     

De la comunicación gestual al lenguaje verbal

RESUMEN

El artículo se centra en la evolución de la comunicación en el niño, desde el gesto hasta el establecimiento del lenguaje verbal. Se describen las características de la comunicación gestual (intención significativa, ausencia de límites del significante) y su evolución desde el nacimiento. La palabra forma parte de la gesticulación que acompaña a la actividad del adulto en su relación con el niño. El niño aprende el significado de las palabras porque forman parte de una gesticulación significativa. En este proceso se destaca el papel de la entonación, que parece constituir el eslabón intermedio entre el gesto y la palabra y tiene gran importancia en el posterior aprendizaje de las estructuras sintácticas y gramaticales. La intervención del adulto en el desarrollo infantil tiene una intención pedagógica: estimula, desarrolla y rectifica las emisiones del niño. El paso a la comunicación verbal se da en varias fases: comunicación afectiva, uso de apelativos o denominación, aprendizaje de la oposición (negación), expresión de la calificación de sus experiencias, invitación a la acción, designación, designación de objetos ausentes, aprendizajes sintácticos y semánticos. Con la aparición de las frases el lenguaje se separa definitivamente de la comunicación gestual.     

Impact case studies: what accounts for the need for numbers in impact evaluation?

ABSTRACT

The UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) introduced impact as an indicator in the evaluation of higher education research quality in 2014. Impact case studies (ICS) are the basis of this evaluation. ICS use narrative explanations of how research causes ‘benefits to society’. This article analyses the evolving roles of the ICS and the relationships of ICS with various stakeholders. It draws on insights from legitimacy theory, Porter’s analysis of the social meaning of objectivity, and the insight from economist Alan Goodhart on the dysfunctional transformation of indicators into targets. It highlights the challenges to ICS evaluators and shows how a spiral of mistrust can both undermine but also cause demand for numbers. It explores whether impact narratives represent an escape from dominant research evaluation metrics and concludes that they do not.