Part and whole practice: chunking and online control in the acquisition of a serial motor task

A four-component aiming movement was used to examine the relative effectiveness of part and whole practice. Following a pretest, participants were assigned to one of three practice groups. Participants in a "Whole" group practiced the four components together as a unit. A "No Overlap" group practiced the first two and last two components of the task, alternating every fifth trial. An "Overlap" group practiced the transition between the second and third components on every trial by alternating practice of the first three and last three components every five trials. Participants in all groups improved significantly from pretest to immediate posttest and maintained their performance over a 24-hr delay. Contrary to the "chunking hypothesis," participants in the No Overlap group improved as much as those in the other two groups. Kinematic data indicated that participants in all three groups learned to use response-produced feedback earlier in the individual movement trajectories. Moreover, participants appeared to acquire a general ability to make transitions between movement components rather than specific transitions. The results suggest that segmented or segmented "overlap" practice regimes may benefit learning movement sequences of short duration.     

RoMEO studies 4: an analysis of journal publishers' copyright agreements

This article is the fourth in a series of six emanating from the UK JISC‐funded RoMEO Project (Rights Metadata for Open archiving). It describes an analysis of 80 scholarly journal publishers' copyright agreements with a particular view to their effect on author self‐archiving: 90% of agreements asked for copyright transfer and 69% asked for it prior to refereeing the paper; 75% asked authors to warrant that their work had not been previously published although only two explicitly stated that they viewed self‐archiving as prior publication; 28.5% of agreements provided authors with no usage rights over their own paper. Although 42.5% allowed self‐archiving in some format, there was no consensus on the conditions under which self‐archiving could take place. The article concludes that author–publisher copyright agreements should be reconsidered by a working party representing the needs of both parties.     

Effects of focus of attention depend on golfers' skill

In this study, we examined the influence of internal and external attention instructions on the performance of a pitch shot by golfers who were either highly skilled (mean handicap = 4) or low skilled (mean handicap = 26). Ten golfers in each skill group used a 9-iron to pitch a ball as close as possible to an orange pylon, which was located at distances of 10, 15, 20 or 25 m from the golfer. Focus of attention was manipulated within participants (counterbalanced across golfers). Under internal focus of attention instructions, the participants were told to concentrate on the form of the golf swing and to adjust the force of their swing depending on the distance of the shot. For the external focus of attention conditions, the participants were told to concentrate on hitting the ball as close to the target pylon as possible. The most intriguing finding was an interaction of skill with focus of attention instructions for variability in performance. Similar to the findings of Wulf and colleagues, the highly skilled golfers performed better with external attention instructions than with internal focus instructions. In contrast, the low-skill golfers performed better with the internal than with the external focus of attention instructions. These findings are discussed relative to theoretical issues in motor learning and practical issues for golf instruction.     

A Model for Managing Performance Improvement Projects From Concept to Sustainable Implementation

This article presents a systematic process, or model, that will assist the practicing professional to manage new performance improvement ideas from introduction to sustainable implementation. The model identifies vetting steps that must be addressed for implemented projects to be sustainable over time. The paper concludes with 10 vital performance improvement project management lessons.     

Technology,Learning Communities and Young People: The Future Something Project

The Future Something Project (FSP), a two‐year action research project, was devised to nurture the creative and technological talent of small groups of young people at risk by creating a structured network, mentored and driven by creative professionals exploring innovative ways for the two distinct target groups to work together. The project practice is located within the new field of interaction design and takes a social and critical approach to art and design pedagogy. The external research team found that one valuable way of looking at the FSP enterprise was through the social theory of communities of practice (CoPs) developed in the 1990s by Lave and Wenger. The creation of a learning community as a pedagogical strategy is central to the conception and practice of this project. This article, therefore, sets out to apply an existing theory to a new art and design context together with more general thoughts on learning communities. It explores the potential of new technologies and different settings to effect learning within structured networks and local and virtual communities of practice.     

移动办公渐成企业主流

随着80、90后这一代在互联网浪潮中长大的年轻人渐成职场主力,随着社交网络、移动互联网、云计算等革命性IT技术的发展,人们与信息交互的方式发生了巨大的变化。在这种状况下,"移动办公"的理念无疑极其符合新一代年轻人的工作习惯:只要有专业的可移动设备以及强大的应用软件与工作平台,员工可以在任何时间、任何地点处理与业务相关的任何事情。