Sustainability and distance learning: a diverse European experience?

Higher Education (HE) is experiencing disruption from technologies, demographics, the globalising world and longer life expectancy. Historically Higher Education has had a legacy of being seen as the requirement for an educated ‘elite’, there has been a policy ambition set in various countries (including the UK) for it to become the expectation for much wider segments of the population as a whole. As students become ‘everyone’ and learning becomes ‘all the time’ Distance Teaching and Research Institutions have a tremendous opportunity but there are also many disruptions and barriers to overcome. Higher Education institutions have an important role within Education for Sustainable Development and sustainable lifestyles; one of the important goals and targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development goals for 2030. Higher Education can contribute to sustainability in many ways – social, technical and environmental; globally and locally. In particular distance-learning universities due to the flexibility in the learning process, use of technologies, and inter-disciplinary approach to teaching and learning, constitute key factors in education for sustainable development. But what will this contribution look like? In this paper, the responses from senior leaders in four major European distance-learning universities are presented, compared and discussed. The tentative conclusions draw out some strategic imperatives for sustainable higher education in the twenty first century.     

History of Spanish Mathematics Education Focusing on PhD Theses

This article offers an overview of mathematics education in Spain, analyzing the production of PhD theses over the last 30 years. This period has been divided into four cycles that describe the evolution of Spanish research in the field of mathematics education, together with changes in university and social politics. This paper also includes a forecast of the number of theses that will be produced over the next 7 years, thus predicting the future progress and development of this area of research.     

Polytopic invariant and contractive sets for closed-loop discrete fuzzy systems

In this work a procedure for obtaining polytopic λ-contractive sets for Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy systems is presented, adapting well-known algorithms from literature on discrete-time linear difference inclusions (LDI) to multi-dimensional summations. As a complexity parameter increases, these sets tend to the maximal invariant set of the system when no information on the shape of the membership functions is available. λ-contractive sets are naturally associated to level sets of polyhedral Lyapunov functions proving a decay-rate of λ. The paper proves that the proposed algorithm obtains better results than a class of Lyapunov methods for the same complexity degree: if such a Lyapunov function exists, the proposed algorithm converges in a finite number of steps and proves a larger λ-contractive set.     

Indexing and Self-indexing sequences of IEEE 754 double precision numbers

Succinct data structures were designed to store and/or index data with a relatively small alphabet size, a rather skewed distribution and/or, a considerable amount of repetitiveness. Although many of them were developed to handle text, they have been used with other data types, like biological collections or source code. However, there are no applications of succinct data structures in the case of floating point data, the obvious reason is that this data type does not usually fulfill the aforementioned requirements.     

From England with love… ARK,heterarchies and global ‘philanthropic governance’

The recent emergence of new venture philanthropists, social entrepreneurs and neoliberal policy advocates and the new ways in which they configure and perform their political agendas have brought important changes in the way in which education policy is enacted. This study takes some of the ideas sketched in previous work further and develops what was termed there as ‘philanthropic governance’. The first section analyses the transition to a new political framework characterised by new forms of coordination or ‘heterarchies’. These transformations represent new forms of governmentality and power regimes and are deeply rooted within the political economy and political philosophy of neoliberalism. The second section of the study focuses on a set of new policy actors, the ‘new’ philanthropists and explores the organisational model of a group of these philanthropic individuals and enterprises, their discourses, connections, ideological influences and agendas on the ground. Finally, the study reflects on the new ways through which philanthropic activity has gained an increasingly important political dimension, becoming a central explanatory variable to understand the recent changes and directions of national and international political agendas in different parts of the world.     

Black boxes in analytical chemistry： University students misconceptions of instrumental analysis

Misconceptions of chemistry and chemical engineering university students concerning instrumental analysis have been established from coordinated tests, tutorial interviews and laboratory lessons. Misconceptions can be divided into： （1） formal, involving specific concepts and formulations within the general frame of chemistry; （2） operational/topical, dealing with specific capabilities, problems and operations in chemistry; （3） methodological, associated to peculiar methods of analytical chemistry and data treatment; and （4） social, regarding the relation of analytical data with the social frame. Such misconceptions define a non-structured view of analytical methods, procedures and protocols related with analytical instrumentation. Instruments are frequently viewed as an autonomous, error-free black box providing non-structured data with no need of calibration or control, whereas weak relationships are established between data and aims along the analytical process.     

Prevalence of vulnerability and protective factors of sexual victimization

English language abstract not available at time of publication.     

Using formative assessment to promote argumentation in a university bilingual science course

Formative assessment, bilingualism, and argumentation when combined can enrich bilingual scientific literacy. However, argumentation receives little attention in the practice of bilingual science education. This article describes the effect of a formative assessment-based pedagogical strategy in promoting university students’ argumentation. It examines the written and oral arguments produced by 54 undergraduates (28 females and 26 males, 16–21 years old) in Colombia during a university bilingual (Spanish-English) science course. The data used in this analysis was derived from students’ written responses, and audio and video recordings. The first goal of this study was to determine how this teaching strategy could help students increase the use of English as a means of communication in argumentation in science. The second goal was to establish the potential of the strategy to engage students in argumentative classroom interactions as an essential part of formative assessment. The findings show that the strategy provided participants with opportunities to write their argumentation in Spanish, in English and in a hybrid version using code-switching. Educational implications for higher education are discussed.     

The physical profile of adult male basketball players: Differences between competitive levels and playing positions

This study examined the physical differences in adult male basketball players of different competitive level and playing position using a large cohort. In the middle of the regular season, 129 players from four different Divisions completed a Yo-YoIR1 and, after 3-to-8 days, they performed a 6-min continuous running test (Mognoni’s test), a counter-movement jump (CMJ) test and a 5-min High-intensity Intermittent running test (HIT). Magnitude-based inferences revealed that differences in HIT were very likely moderate between Division I and II and likely small between Division II and III. The differences in absolute peak power and force produced during CMJs between Division I and II and between Division II and III were possibly small. Differences in Yo-YoIR1 and Mognoni’s test were very likely-to-almost certain moderate/large between Division III and VI. We observed possibly-to-likely small differences in HIT and Mognoni’s test between guards and forwards and almost certainly moderate differences in absolute peak power and force during CMJs between guards and centres. The ability to sustain high-intensity intermittent efforts (i.e. HIT) and strength/power characteristics can differentiate between competitive level, while strength/power characteristics discriminate guards from forwards/centres. These findings inform practitioners on the development of identification programs and training activities in basketball.     

Baseline Intraocular Pressure Is Associated With Subjective Sensitivity to Physical Exertion in Young Males

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to (a) investigate the effect of physical effort (cycling for 60 min at 60 ± 5% of individually computed reserve heart-rate capacity), combined with 2 different levels of cognitive demand (2-back, oddball), on intraocular pressure (IOP) and subjective judgments of perceived exertion (ratings of perceived exertion [RPE]), affect (Affective Valence subscale of the Self-Assessment Manikin [SAM]), and mental workload (National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index [NASA-TLX]); and (b) ascertain whether baseline IOP, measured before exercise, is associated with individual differences in subjective assessments of effort and affective response during exercise. Method: Seventeen participants (M_age = 23.28 ± 2.37 years) performed 2 physical/cognitive dual tasks, matched in physical demand but with different mental requirements (2-back, oddball). We assessed IOP before exercise, after 2 min of active recovery, and after 15 min of passive recovery, and we also collected RPE and SAM measures during the sessions (28 measurement points). We used NASA-TLX and cognitive performance as checks of the mental manipulation. Results: (a) Intraocular pressure increased after concomitant physical/mental effort, with the effect reaching statistical significance after the 2-back task (p = .002, d = 0.35) but not after the oddball condition (p = .092, d = 0.29). (b) Baseline IOP was associated with subjective sensitivity to effort and showed statistical significance for the oddball condition (p = .03, ?_p² = .622) but not for the 2-back task (F < 1). Conclusions: Results suggest a relationship between IOP and physical/cognitive effort, which could have implications for the management of glaucoma. Additionally, a rapid measure of IOP could be used as a marker of individual effort sensitivity in applied settings.