Supporting Content-Based Feedback in On-Line Writing Evaluation with LSA

This paper describes tests of an automated essay grader and critic that uses Latent Semantic Analysis. Several methods which score the quality of the content in essays are described and tested. These methods are compared against human scores for the essays and the results show that LSA can score as accurately as the humans. Finally, we describe the implementation of the essay grader/critic in an undergraduate course. The outcome showed that students could write and revise their essays on-line, resulting in improved essays. Implications are discussed for the use of the technology in undergraduate courses and how it can provide an effective approach to incorporating more writing both in and outside of the classroom.     

Style,stamina and mobile masculinities: the reinvention of Savate in the Anglosphere

ABSTRACT

The roots of Savate in France stretch back at least 200 years, and there is extensive interdisciplinary research in French showing changing interpretations of its meaning and purpose. Savate is now a globalised combat sports with potential to enter the Olympic Games. To help remedy the lacuna of English-language research, this paper considers: (1) Documentaries and rare instructional literature; (2) online videos and discussions of archival Savate footage; (3) contemporary documentation from the Great Britain Savate Federation; and, (4) ongoing fieldwork in one UK Savate school. Through our multimodal study of printed, televised, digital and physical action, we add to the discussions to the constant reinvention of Savate to a modern, seemingly inclusive combat sport. Using John Urry’s framework of mobilities, we introduce the notion of ‘mobile masculinities’ underpinned by a European sense of relatively elite individualistic cosmopolitanism. Savate provides a rich case study of gender inclusivity in sport – how a previously male-dominated activity incorporates women in positions of power and responsibility and teaches men to acquire elegance in style and elite levels of stamina.     

Precision Education Initiative: Moving Toward Personalized Education

This article propose the Precision Education Initiative, which is the tailoring of education to the specific characteristics of the individual student. Mirroring precision medicine, the author lays out both near‐term and longer term goals that educational research, and importantly educational practice, should follow.     

The role of social competence in predicting gifted enrollment

The purpose of this study is to examine how children's starting level and development of social competence (i.e., task orientation and peer sociability) during kindergarten and first grade predict gifted program enrollment by third grade, even after considering children's cognitive ability. A second purpose is to examine the extent to which the relationship between children's social competence and gifted program enrollment differs depending on children's socioeconomic status (SES), ethnicity, and gender. Latent growth curve analyses conducted on 347 children revealed that students enrolled in gifted programming were not only those high in cognitive ability, but also those showing early task orientation. Neither peer sociability's initial status nor growth was a significant predictor of gifted enrollment. Multigroup comparisons demonstrated different predictive paths for higher versus lower SES groups. Implications are discussed including important questions raised by this study and the need for teacher training in the identification of giftedness. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Healthcare career intervention with youth in a predominantly Latinx rural community: a pilot study of a creative approach

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - The present study discusses a pilot intervention for youth in a predominantly Latinx rural community in the U.S. The intervention...     

Multimodal Interaction Analysis: a Powerful Tool for Examining Plurilingual Students’ Engagement in Science Practices

Research in Science Education - Science teaching and learning are discursive practices, yet analysis of these practices has frequently been grounded in theorizations that place language at the...     

From scraps to reams to mobile screens? An update on printing services in academic libraries

As a follow-up to their 2001/2002 study on printing services in academic libraries, the authors explore how the provision of printing services has changed over the last twelve years. This article explores how libraries are choosing to fund printing services as well as how technology, such as scanning and mobile devices, has changed the way printing services are provided. The results of the 2013 survey find a greater percentage of libraries are using a fee-based system for printing, and, while some technology is providing greater data and control for printing services, other technological advances are having unintended consequences for libraries’ printing infrastructure.     

The role of executive functions and transcription skills in writing: a cross-sectional study across 7 years of schooling

Reading and Writing - Findings around the cognitive resources needed to compose text have helped shape current models of writing. Some of these models predict that text generation is constrained by...     

From Book to Screen: Adopting Cinematic Adaptations of Literature in the EFL Classroom to Hone Students’ Critical Thinking Skills

In light of the paramount value placed on critical thinking (CT) in higher education and the scarcity of research into the use of cinematic adaptations to this end, this study investigated the incorporation of film into the source literature to hone students’ cognitive skills in the areas of analysis, inference, evaluation, induction, and deduction. Participants were 50 third-year students of English as a foreign language (EFL) enrolled in a university in eastern Algeria for academic year 2015–2016. During the fall semester, the treatment group (n = 24) and the control group (n = 26) took a regular literature course. In the spring semester, the treatment group took a film-literature course and the control group, a reading-only course that drew on Facione's IDEAS critical thinking model. The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) was used as a pretest and posttest. Empirical findings indicated that both groups performed on par in all cognitive areas of CT with the exception of inference, wherein the film group outperformed the reading-only group in this dimension.