Evaluating social connectedness online: the design and development of the Social Perceptions in Learning Contexts Instrument

Learners’ feelings of social connectedness may be a key factor in predicting online course success. However, students attempting to perceive and process the social context in online courses often find themselves engaging in unfamiliar, technology-mediated communication channels. While there have been several empirically based strategies published for creating and maintaining social connectedness online, presently there are no validated instruments available to evaluate the success or failure of the pedagogical methods employed. This article reports on the development and initial technical validation of the Social Perceptions in Learning Contexts Instrument (SPLCI), a research tool for measuring students’ perception of social connectedness with participants in online courses. Findings demonstrated strong validity and reliability evidence that collectively supports continued development of the SPLCI.     

Evaluation and Opportunities in Overtraining Approaches

Overtraining (OT) as a sports phenomenon can be caused by stressors on various levels (physical, emotional, psychological, and social) and evokes responses on these levels. This study evaluated research and new opportunities in the field of OT by introducing an integrated multidisciplinary approach, based on the single and multistressors approach. The single stressor approach focuses on the training load-recovery imbalance, which results in a stagnating performance, excluding the etiology by nonsport-related factors. The multistressors approach includes all factors as relevant in the etiology of a stagnating performance. In future studies on OT, an integrative approach should not only highlight changes in training regimes and specific responses to training stressors but also focus on the role of training-related recovery, the impact of stressors, and personality factors influencing stress appraisal. This will provide a better insight into the etiology and consequences of OT, necessary for prevention and treatment in sport practice, and enhance the focus on adequate recovery (good sleep, sufficient rest periods) and athletes' stress-related responses.     

The Organisation of Marathons in Divided Cities: Brussels,Belfast, Beirut and Jerusalem

The organisers of city marathons want to involve a large number of participants and to mobilise the support of local neighbourhoods. This is a particularly difficult challenge in a divided city, especially when the route crosses dividing lines in disputed territories – in which case, organising a marathon carries the risk of generating fresh conflict. But it is possible to avoid such an outcome. Brussels, where the dispute about the city boundaries has always been a peaceful one, has a city marathon that crosses these boundaries, and Belfast, a city with a long history of intercommunal violence, has successfully organised a marathon every year since 1982. Despite the segregation of Beirut's neighbourhoods, the participants in its marathon have run through the whole city since 2003. In Jerusalem, by contrast, a political row over the route of the first marathon in 2011 broke out in the municipal council long before the starter pistol was fired. To examine the reasons for these different outcomes, this article looks at the different types of territorial division in these cities, the types of relationship developed between the marathon organisers and the authorities, and the values the organisers have chosen to promote.     

Second Life: A Tool for Reference and International Understanding

The challenges that virtual reference staff volunteers in Second Life (SL) are facing are opportunities at the same time. There are a lot of differences between doing reference work in Real Life (RL) and in SL, but for the most part reference work in-world is quite the same as in the daily life of any reference specialist. In essence, that is. Of course new skills are needed, but this is just for now. In the end, working at a virtual reference desk, especially as one member on a team of international pioneers, is as exciting as it is new!     

Tapping into existing information flows: The transformation to compliance by design in business-to-government information exchange

Transforming Business-to-Government (B2G) information exchange is a next frontier for reducing government spending while improving performance. This paper examines two different B2G information exchange architectures that reflect continuing transformations that empower some government agencies to do better compliance monitoring tasks with fewer resources. The win for the reporting companies is the lower cost of compliance. Instead of focusing on collecting compliance information from individual companies, the government agencies in this study focus on collecting information on the supply chain level, allowing for automated data reconciliation. Our findings reveal that pushing controls (automated checks) upstream (in company software and data sources) results in more efficiency, higher information quality and reduces redundant controls. The examined architectures exhibit high levels of compliance by design, meaning that many control objectives are by default encompassed in the design. This requires a well-aligned combination of data standardization (using shared syntax and semantics) and automated information processing (using an intelligent gateway between businesses and government agencies). However, achieving such an alignment is a difficult challenge; especially when taking into account that such transformations require solid governance, trust and high initial investments — prerequisites that are rare in many public-private partnerships.     

A Plea for a Poor Man’s HCI Component in Software Engineering and Computer Science Curricula; After all: The Human-Computer Interface is the System

Most software development approaches and curricular guidelines seem to ignore the fact that in many software systems the user interface is a decisive factor for product quality. As a result, it is often designed rather independently of the system’s functionality. Chances are then that it does not get the attention it deserves. In the approach to software development we sketch, the design of the user interface and the design of the functionality go hand in hand. We give a number of examples of user interface problems, and illustrate how these can be caught early if a more integrated approach is taken. We conclude with an outline of a minimal course on humancomputer interaction that we feel should be part of everyone’s software engineering or computer science curriculum.     

Specificity and overlap in skills underpinning reading and arithmetical fluency

The aim of this study was to examine unique and common causes of problems in reading and arithmetic fluency. 13- to 14-year-old students were placed into one of five groups: reading disabled (RD, n = 16), arithmetic disabled (AD, n = 34), reading and arithmetic disabled (RAD, n = 17), reading, arithmetic, and listening comprehension disabled (TRIPLE, n = 9), and typically developing students (NON-LD, n = 40). Multivariate analyses of covariance and variance component analyses showed that reading problems are characterised by difficulties with phonological processing and with rapid automatic naming. Problems with executive functioning and with digit span were typical for students with arithmetical fluency difficulties. RAD students had problems with phonological processing, rapid naming, executive functioning, and digit span. Impairments in number fact fluency, digit span, loudness perception, speeded sound manipulation, and coding, which all share a fluency component were common to problems with reading and arithmetical fluency.     

Effects of metacognitive strategy instruction and instruction time on reading comprehension

Ten-year-old students in an experimental group and a control group were tested for metacognitive abilities in reading comprehension before and after implementation of treatment in the experimental group. The teachers of the students in the experimental group were trained in metacognitive strategy instruction and in optimizing instruction time for reading comprehension. The learning gains made by the students in the experimental group in metacognitive abilities for reading comprehension turned out to be significantly greater than those made by the students in the control group. In the next school, year the students in the former experimental group and the former control group were tested for reading comprehension. It turned out that the students in the former experimental group had significantly better results on reading comprehension than the students in the former control group.