Scoping the Duals: Structural Challenges of Combining Further and Higher Education in Post-Secondary Institutions

Dual sector universities (or duals) are a growing international phenomenon that cut across the divide that typically exists in post‐secondary education. Duals combine ‘further’ and ‘higher’ education within a single institution providing enhanced opportunities for student transition between post‐secondary sectors. This paper reports the results of an international survey of duals in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. The results indicate that duals operate divergent operational models in managing the structural challenges of cross‐sector education characterised as unitary and binary. Many duals contend that state and provincial government regulation militates against the integration of structures, processes and human resources within a dual sector context.     

The Digital Curation Centre

The JISC and the EPSRCe‐science core programme will shortly establish a Digital Curation Centre to develop key research, services and generic tools needed by institutions and archiving bodies to manage digital collections over the long term. This article sets out its implications for ALPSP members and its relationship to other initiatives in e‐science and digital preservation.     

The development of an evaluation framework

Evaluation has much to offer those in professional services. Yet, it has received less attention in this area of higher education than in teaching and learning. Drawing on the insights of professional service practitioners, this study begins by considering the case for using evaluations in the work of those in allied and support services. Besides affording a means of assessing the success of projects and programmes, and providing evidence to regulators and other stakeholders of what has been achieved, evaluation presents an opportunity to reflect on practice and learn more about those who professional service departments support. However, whilst its value was recognised amongst the practitioners surveyed, its use has been limited by uncertainties over how evaluations should be conducted. The second part of the paper introduces a framework aimed at addressing these concerns, with feedback from practitioners confirming its capability in guiding the evaluation process.     

Interval running with self-selected recovery: Physiology,performance, and perception

This study (1) compared the physiological responses and performance during a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) session incorporating externally regulated (ER) and self-selected (SS) recovery periods and (2) examined the psychophysiological cues underpinning SS recovery durations. Following an incremental maximal exercise test to determine maximal aerobic speed (MAS), 14 recreationally active males completed 2 HIIT sessions on a non-motorised treadmill. Participants performed 12?×?30?s running intervals at a target intensity of 105% MAS interspersed with 30?s (ER) or SS recovery periods. During SS, participants were instructed to provide themselves with sufficient recovery to complete all 12 efforts at the required intensity. A semi-structured interview was undertaken following the completion of SS. Mean recovery duration was longer during SS (51?±?15?s) compared to ER (30?±?0?s; p?d?=?1.46?±?0.46). Between-interval heart rate recovery was higher (SS: 19?±?9?b?min^?1; ER: 8?±?5?b?min^?1; p?d?=?1.43?±?0.43) and absolute time ≥90% maximal heart rate (HR_max) was lower (SS: 335?±?193?s; ER: 433?±?147?s; p?=?.075; d?=?0.52?±?0.39) during SS compared to ER. Relative time ≥105% MAS was greater during SS (90?±?6%) compared to ER (74?±?20%; p?d?=?0.87?±?0.40). Different sources of afferent information underpinned decision-making during SS. The extended durations of recovery during SS resulted in a reduced time ≥90% HR_max but enhanced time ≥105% MAS, compared with ER exercise. Differences in the afferent cue utilisation of participants likely explain the large levels of inter-individual variability observed.     

Using Weighted Sum Scores to Close the Gap Between DIF Practice and Theory

We make a distinction between the operational practice of using an observed score to assess differential item functioning (DIF) and the concept of departure from measurement invariance (DMI) that conditions on a latent variable. DMI and DIF indices of effect sizes, based on the Mantel-Haenszel test of common odds ratio, converge under restricted conditions if a simple sum score is used as the matching or conditioning variable in a DIF analysis. Based on theoretical results, we demonstrate analytically that matching on a weighted sum score can significantly reduce the difference between DIF and DMI measures over what can be achieved with a simple sum score. We also examine the utility of binning methods that could facilitate potential operational use of DIF with weighted sum scores. A real data application was included to show this feasibility.     

Universal museums, museum objects and repatriation: The tangled stories of things

This paper discusses the contribution of the 2003 ‘Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums’ to the debate on repatriation. The ‘Universalist’ approach taken by the Declaration is first considered, noting the implications of its emphasis on art, the heritage of museums and objects, along with its focus on the sculpture of ancient Greece and the enlightenment origin of museums such as the British Museum. It is argued that it reveals an essentialist approach that derives from a particular Western perspective, rather than being truly ‘universal’, and then considers whether a similar problem underlies many of the arguments advocating repatriation. The second part of the paper explores the opportunities offered by an approach which emphasises the ‘biography of objects’. This demonstrates how the tangled histories of objects and their many meanings can be considered. Repatriation is shown to be able to result in an increase in knowledge and understanding, rather than its destruction, and so meets the declared aim of the Declaration to ‘foster knowledge by a continuous process of reinterpretation’.     

The Citation Cloud of a biomedical article: a free,public, web-based tool enabling citation analysis

Background:An article''s citations are useful for finding related articles that may not be readily found by keyword searches or textual similarity. Citation analysis is also important for analyzing scientific innovation and the structure of the biomedical literature. We wanted to facilitate citation analysis for the broad community by providing a user-friendly interface for accessing and analyzing citation data for biomedical articles.Case Presentation:We seeded the Citation Cloud dataset with over 465 million open access citations culled from six different sources: PubMed Central, Microsoft Academic Graph, ArnetMiner, Semantic Scholar, Open Citations, and the NIH iCite dataset. We implemented a free, public extension to PubMed that allows any user to visualize and analyze the entire citation cloud around any paper of interest A: the set of articles cited by A, those which cite A, those which are co-cited with A, and those which are bibliographically coupled to A.Conclusions:Citation Cloud greatly enables the study of citations by the scientific community, including relatively advanced analyses (co-citations and bibliographic coupling) that cannot be undertaken using other available tools. The tool can be accessed by running any PubMed query on the Anne O''Tate value-added search interface and clicking on the Citations button next to any retrieved article.