Online Contact,Face-to-Face Contact,and Multilingualism: Young Swedish-Speaking Finns Develop Trilingual Identities

Based on the tenets of the social context model of second language acquisition, the present article examined the combined effect of online and face-to-face contact in developing multilingual skills and identities among young Swedish-speaking Finns (N = 304). The hypotheses were tested for Finnish as a second language and English as a third language using parallel models. The results were largely identical for both languages. Specifically, online contact enhanced language confidence which, in turn, contributed to language identity. However, online contact had a more substantial effect on confidence as well as identity among those who had little face-to-face contact with speakers of the given language. Findings and their implications are discussed.     

Bringing Scale and Structure to the Online Information Literacy Program

This case study provides insights into how one academic library scaled and structured its information literacy program for a rapidly growing online learning division. Particular attention is paid to strategies for reaching learners who bypass portions of the liberal studies requirements and techniques for designing information literacy modules taught by the instructor of record. This case study demonstrates how this library’s online information literacy program reached a new population of student while creating efficiencies with staff time. Attention is also paid to aspects of the program still under development, such as additional modules and a comprehensive assessment strategy.     

Engineering a multi-purpose test collection for Web retrieval experiments

Past research into text retrieval methods for the Web has been restricted by the lack of a test collection capable of supporting experiments which are both realistic and reproducible. The 1.69 million document WT10g collection is proposed as a multi-purpose testbed for experiments with these attributes, in distributed IR, hyperlink algorithms and conventional ad hoc retrieval.WT10g was constructed by selecting from a superset of documents in such a way that desirable corpus properties were preserved or optimised. These properties include: a high degree of inter-server connectivity, integrity of server holdings, inclusion of documents related to a very wide spread of likely queries, and a realistic distribution of server holding sizes. We confirm that WT10g contains exploitable link information using a site (homepage) finding experiment. Our results show that, on this task, Okapi BM25 works better on propagated link anchor text than on full text.WT10g was used in TREC-9 and TREC-2000 and both topic relevance and homepage finding queries and judgments are available.     

Microfluidics platform for measurement of volume changes in immobilized intestinal enteroids

Intestinal enteroids are ex vivo primary cultured single-layer epithelial cell spheroids of average diameter ∼150 μm with luminal surface facing inward. Measurement of enteroid swelling in response to secretagogues has been applied to genetic testing in cystic fibrosis and evaluation of drug candidates for cystic fibrosis and secretory diarrheas. The current measurement method involves manual addition of drugs and solutions to enteroids embedded in a Matrigel matrix and estimation of volume changes from confocal images of fluorescently stained enteroids. We developed a microfluidics platform for efficient trapping and immobilization of enteroids for quantitative measurement of volume changes. Multiple enteroids are trapped in a “pinball machine-like” array of polydimethylsiloxane posts for measurement of volume changes in unlabeled enteroids by imaging of an extracellular, high-molecular weight fluorescent dye. Measurement accuracy was validated using slowly expanding air bubbles. The method was applied to measure swelling of mouse jejunal enteroids in response to an osmotic challenge and cholera toxin-induced chloride secretion. The microfluidics platform allows for parallel measurement of volume changes on multiple enteroids during continuous superfusion, without an immobilizing matrix, and for quantitative volume determination without chemical labeling or assumptions about enteroid shape changes during swelling.     

Where Youth Live,Learn, and Play Matters: Tackling the Social Determinants of Health in Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health

Abstract

The body of evidence supporting a relationship between the social determinants of health and adolescent sexual and reproductive health is vast. To advance health and have a greater impact on adolescent health outcomes, sexual and reproductive health practitioners need to take into account the relationships, community, and society within which adolescents live, learn, and play. With this review, we aim to provide practitioners with a clear understanding of the value of adopting a more comprehensive approach and we provide concrete recommendations for actualizing social determinants of health through programs and services. Recommendations are provided for each of the five social determinants of health categories outlined by Healthy People 2020, including Neighborhood and Built Environment, Economic Stability, Health and Healthcare, Social and Community Context, and Education.     

Motivations for entering and pathways of progression of disabled students in further education

Issues concerning the relevance of the human and social capital theories in further education and particularly in the inclusion of disabled people are highlighted. Data are drawn from an ongoing ethnographic study into the experiences of disabled students in two further education colleges. Extracts from 12 focus group discussions with 70 students as well as fieldnotes from observation of courses and other college activities are used to map out the pathways by which the participants entered and progressed through the college and the courses they undertook. Also explored is the significance of the college experience in the student's lives and the extent it has succeeded in enhancing their degree of social inclusion.     

Academic dissatisfaction,managerial change and neo-liberalism

This paper examines perceptions by academics of their work in the Australian state of Victoria, and places such perceptions within the context of international and Australian debates on the academic profession. A 2010 survey conducted by the National Tertiary Education Union in Victoria was analysed in light of the literature on academic work satisfaction and on corporatised managerial practice (“managerialism”). The analysis is also placed in the context of neo-liberalism, defined as a more marketised provision combined with increased pro-market state regulation. Factor analysis was used to reduce 18 items we hypothesised as drivers of work satisfaction to four factors: managerial culture, workloads, work status and self-perceived productivity. Regression models show the relative effects of these factors on two items measuring work satisfaction. This analysis is complemented by discursive analysis of open-ended responses. We found that satisfaction among academics was low and decreasing compared to a previous survey, and that management culture was the most important driver. Concern with workloads also drove dissatisfaction, although academics seem happy to be more productive if they have control over their work and develop in their jobs. Work status had little effect. In the open-ended responses the more dissatisfied academics tended to contrast a marketised present to a collegial past. While respondents seem to conflate all recent managerial change with marketisation, we pose a crucial question: whether the need for more professional management needs to be congruent with marketising policy directions.     

Attempting to predict success in the qualifying round of the International Chemistry Olympiad

The aim of this study was trying to predict success in the qualifying round for the International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) on the basis of the expectancy-value model of achievement motivation by Eccles et al. The investigation with 52 participants, including 14 females, was conducted during the third of four qualifying rounds of the IChO in Germany. The subjects filled in a questionnaire, took an intelligence test, and participated in two theoretical chemistry exams. Male and female Olympians showed large differences in parental support, motivation, and emotion as well as test performance. Ultimately, only one female participant qualified for the fourth round of the IChO. The model of Eccles et al. was well suited for predicting test performance in the competition. The strongest predictor was found to be the participation in a previous IChO. The implications for reducing gender differences and promoting scientifically talented students are discussed.     

Mature Female Entrants to Higher Education: Closing the Gender Gap in the UK Labour Market

Within the wider drive in higher education to promote students' use of information and communications technology (ICT) it is assumed that the Internet will be a key application. Popular conceptions of a 'wired' generation of students at ease with on-line learning persist through official literature and the media. From this basis, the present paper takes an empirical perspective in students' use of the Internet, via focus group interviews with 77 students in two UK universities, and explores the factors underlying their use (and non-use) of the Internet in university. Four crucial themes were identified, namely: (i) the ways in which students were introduced to using the Internet; (ii) operational problems encountered when using the Internet as an information resource; (iii) treatment of information retrieved from the Internet; (iv) the social element of learning in on-line environments. These factors are examined in detail and discussed in relation to the future presentation and organisation of students' Internet use in university settings.