Searching for New Answers: The Application of Task‐Technology Fit to E‐Textbook Usage

Students have been slow to adopt e‐textbooks even though they are often less expensive than traditional textbooks. Prior e‐textbook research has focused on adoption behavior, with little research to date on how students perceive e‐textbooks fitting their needs. This work builds upon Task‐Technology Fit (TTF) and Consumer Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) theory to present a student‐perspective model of e‐textbook usage. By contextualizing TTF and UTAUT2 to e‐textbooks, the research fills a gap in the literature and provides guidance to researchers and practitioners. The goal of the research is to understand how students perceive their task of learning to fit with e‐textbook technology, and how that fit influences e‐textbook usage and expected performance in their classes. To achieve this goal, the research develops a model to test the relationship between perceived TTF of e‐textbooks and UTAUT2‐defined user characteristics that encourage adoption behaviors, thus facilitating student learning. The findings show that four factors impact a student's perceived TTF: substitution, habit, hedonic motivation, and facilitating conditions. Furthermore, perceived TTF positively correlates with students’ e‐textbook usage and expected performance in classes when using e‐textbooks. While price value exhibits a measurable effect on e‐textbook utilization, it is a minor factor.     

A qualitative study of the impact of the London 2012 Olympics on families in the East Midlands of England: lessons for sports development policy and practice

The dynamics and culture of families are central to individual and community sport and physical activity participation. This research project examined the lived experiences and day-to-day realities of the London 2012 Olympics from the perspectives of five families in the East Midlands region of England. The aims of the project were to assess the influence the Games had on shaping family sports participation, influencing social and health relationships within the families through sports and reactions to the 2012 Olympics. The study was conducted through the generation of rich qualitative data from pre- and post-Games interviews as well as production of video diary data by the families and young people themselves to gather micro-level information on the realities of ‘legacy’ for families. Findings from this research project illustrate that prior parental socialisation into sport shaped current attitudes to legacy and children and mothers and fathers had mixed reactions to the actual presence of legacy. There are also clear sports development challenges around accessibility, cost, project design, the non-family-friendly nature of some schemes present during the potential consumption of legacy that have consequences for future research in this embryonic area. Implications from the study include the need to locate the family as a more central concern for policy makers in sports development practice. The study has questioned the assumed virtuous legacy of the London 2012 Games from the perspective of families on a day-to-day micro-level. Instead, a far more complex and diverse picture from the perspective of the family has been presented that requires further critical research on this little explored topic of policy and practice in sports development.     

Next generation network environments in Europe — The significance of the EU as a policy actor

The relatively new topic of Next Generation Networks (NGN) is one which is ascending rapidly communications policy agendas in Europe and beyond. How these networks might be created and, beyond that, how they might function in a sustained and broadly useful manner, and the implications of this, are issues which crystallise a raft of often complex policy concerns that have emerged, for at least a decade, in historically distant though increasingly connected quarters of electronic network communications. This article breaks new ground in the analysis of the emerging role of the EU by exploring EU NGN policy from a convergence infrastructural and content perspective. Whilst at this stage, despite new ‘policy packaging’, the EU's NGN policy activity is resonant of past telecommunications and audiovisual policies, the article contends that there are key areas where the EU can exercise considerable policy leverage through utilising a combination of formal legal and soft governance capacities. This has a greater chance of materialising how the more transnational NGN networks and services become.     

Multimodal biomedical image indexing and retrieval using descriptive text and global feature mapping

The images found within biomedical articles are sources of essential information useful for a variety of tasks. Due to the rapid growth of biomedical knowledge, image retrieval systems are increasingly becoming necessary tools for quickly accessing the most relevant images from the literature for a given information need. Unfortunately, article text can be a poor substitute for image content, limiting the effectiveness of existing text-based retrieval methods. Additionally, the use of visual similarity by content-based retrieval methods as the sole indicator of image relevance is problematic since the importance of an image can depend on its context rather than its appearance. For biomedical image retrieval, multimodal approaches are often desirable. We describe in this work a practical multimodal solution for indexing and retrieving the images contained in biomedical articles. Recognizing the importance of text in determining image relevance, our method combines a predominately text-based image representation with a limited amount of visual information, in the form of quantized content-based visual features, through a process called global feature mapping. The resulting multimodal image surrogates are easily indexed and searched using existing text-based retrieval systems. Our experimental results demonstrate that our multimodal strategy significantly improves upon the retrieval accuracy of existing approaches. In addition, unlike many retrieval methods that utilize content-based visual features, the response time of our approach is negligible, making it suitable for use with large collections.     

How Birth Doulas Help Clients Adapt to Changes in Circumstances,Clinical Care,and Client Preferences During Labor

This study examined how doulas adapt to challenges in client’s labors. There were 104 Canadian and 92 American doulas who responded to a survey distributed at a doula conference. We report results from open-ended questions in which doulas describe how they manage changes deviating from the mother’s birth plan and how they navigate differences of opinion between themselves and providers. Four themes emerged: giving nonjudgmental support, assisting informed decision making, acting as a facilitator, and issues with advocacy. Although 30% of doulas said that advocacy and information giving could result in conflict with providers, doulas reported working within their scope of practice and striving to be part of the team. Issues in doula responsibility and patient advocacy remain, and ongoing role clarification is needed.     

Impact of grade retention and school engagement on student intentions to enrol in higher education in Portugal

Grade retention and inequalities that derive from grade retention can influence student school trajectories and careers. Grade retention can discourage students from education, and increase school failure and dropout. This study explored the relationship between grade retention and student intentions to enrol in higher education. We also studied the role of school identification and behavioural engagement in this relationship. The analysis is based on a sample of 1,089 students (grades 6 to 10) from Portugal, one of the European countries with the highest rates of grade retention. We employed multilevel probit regression modelling with random intercept and fixed slopes to explore both the individual and school level effects of grade retention. The analyses showed that retained students had a lower probability of intent to enrol in higher education and that there was a contextual effect of the number of retained students in the school, on students' probability of intent to enrol in higher education. This association was partially explained at the individual level by students' school identification. Retained students presented lower levels of school identification, which in turn results in lower probabilities of enrolling in higher education. Student behavioural engagement was not associated with grade retention nor student intentions. Our findings suggest the need for interventions that foster students' school identification to overcome the adverse effects of grade retention.     

Proximity effects on the dynamics and outcomes of scientific collaborations

This paper uses path overlap, an innovative measure of functional proximity, to examine how physical space shaped the formation and success of scientific collaborations among the occupants of two academic research buildings. We use research administration data on human subject protection, animal use management, and grant funding applications to construct new measures of collaboration formation and success. The “functional zones” investigators occupy in their buildings are defined by the shortest walking paths among assigned laboratory and office spaces, and the nearest elevators, stairs, and restrooms. When two investigators traverse paths with greater overlap, both their propensity to form new collaborations and to win grant funding for their joint work increase. This effect is robust across two very differently configured buildings. Implications for scientific collaboration and the design and allocation of research space are considered.