Evaluating intelligent interfaces for post-editing automatic transcriptions of online video lectures

Video lectures are fast becoming an everyday educational resource in higher education. They are being incorporated into existing university curricula around the world, while also emerging as a key component of the open education movement. In 2007, the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) implemented its poliMedia lecture capture system for the creation and publication of quality educational video content and now has a collection of over 10,000 video objects. In 2011, it embarked on the EU-subsidised transLectures project to add automatic subtitles to these videos in both Spanish and other languages. By doing so, it allows access to their educational content by non-native speakers and the deaf and hard-of-hearing, as well as enabling advanced repository management functions. In this paper, following a short introduction to poliMedia, transLectures and Docència en Xarxa (Teaching Online), the UPV’s action plan to boost the use of digital resources at the university, we will discuss the three-stage evaluation process carried out with the collaboration of UPV lecturers to find the best interaction protocol for the task of post-editing automatic subtitles.     

Girls at risk. Early school‐leaving and early marriage in the 1950s

Britain in the 1950s offered increased opportunities for secondary education leading to better career prospects at a time of full employment. A government report into early leaving in 1954 noted that it was girls of all social classes who were most ‘at risk’ of not staying the course. The following article discusses first the nature of risk and suggests that for girls perhaps, staying at school and delaying marriage, at a time when unequal pay and opportunities were the norm, was perceived as more of a risk than the safety of marriage and dependent domesticity. It then considers the concerns of the Early Leaving Report in more detail. Despite the attempts by policy makers to encourage girls into education, there were rival discourses which persuaded girls into domesticity and the article concludes by indicating the varied and pervasive nature of some of this rhetoric.     

Word-learning abilities in deaf and hard-of-hearing preschoolers: effect of lexicon size and language modality

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children's ability to rapidly learn novel words through direct reference and through novel mapping (i.e., inferring that a novel word refers to a novel object) was examined. Ninety-eight DHH children, ranging from 27 to 82 months old, drawn from 12 schools in five states participated. In two tasks that differed in how reference was established, word-learning abilities were measured by children's ability to learn novel words after only three exposures. Three levels of word-learning abilities were identified. Twelve children did not rapidly learn novel words. Thirty-six children learned novel words rapidly but only in the direct reference task. Forty-nine children learned novel words rapidly in both direct reference and novel mapping tasks. These levels of word-learning abilities were evident in children who were in oral-only and in signing environments, in children with cochlear implants, and in deaf children of deaf parents. Children's word-learning abilities were more strongly correlated to lexicon size than age, and this relation was similar for children in these different language-learning environments. Acquisition of these word-learning abilities seems based on linguistic mechanisms that are available to children in a wide range of linguistic environments. In addition, the word-learning tasks offer a promising dynamic assessment tool.     

The “Logos” Bible Study: An Experience of Building a Model of Effective Religious Education in the 21st Century

Abstract

New models for prison ministry are crucial during the current era of mass incarceration in America—a time when the potential reach of prison ministries can grow as the population of incarcerated individuals grows. In this article, I lift up one prison ministry in New Jersey as an example of how Christian evangelicals who are engaged in traditional prison ministry can bravely open their minds and hearts to models of religious education that go beyond individual conversion toward communal transformation.     

The effect of mountain bike wheel size on cross-country performance

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of different wheel size diameters on indicators of cross-country mountain bike time trial performance. Nine competitive male mountain bikers (age 34.7 ± 10.7 years; stature 177.7 ± 5.6 cm; body mass 73.2 ± 8.6 kg) performed 1 lap of a 3.48 km mountain bike (MTB) course as fast as possible on 26″, 27.5″ and 29″ wheeled MTB. Time (s), mean power (W), cadence (revs · min^?1) and velocity (km · h^?1) were recorded for the whole lap and during ascent and descent sections. One-way repeated measure ANOVA was used to determine significant differences. Results revealed no significant main effects for any variables by wheel size during all trials, with the exception of cadence during the descent (F_{(2, 16)} = 8.96; P = .002; P² = .53). Post hoc comparisons revealed differences lay between the 26″ and 29″ wheels (P = .02). The findings indicate that wheel size does not significantly influence performance during cross-country when ridden by trained mountain bikers, and that wheel choice is likely due to personal choice or sponsorship commitments.