Crux of time management for students

At the beginning of each academic session, I typically devote a class or two to share my tips on time management and personal productivity with newly admitted students at the Central University of Punjab. I believe this is a crucial first step for students, as the curriculum hardly contains any information on either. I also notice that an article on this important theme is altogether non-existent. In this write-up, some of the most important methods of time management and personal productivity are thoroughly reviewed before concluding with a few pedagogical suggestions for teachers to ensure that their students manage time efficiently and be more productive with their studies and research.     

Effect of resistance training regimens on treadmill running and neuromuscular performance in recreational endurance runners

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of heavy resistance, explosive resistance, and muscle endurance training on neuromuscular, endurance, and high-intensity running performance in recreational endurance runners. Twenty-seven male runners were divided into one of three groups: heavy resistance, explosive resistance or muscle endurance training. After 6 weeks of preparatory training, the groups underwent an 8-week resistance training programme as a supplement to endurance training. Before and after the 8-week training period, maximal strength (one-repetition maximum), electromyographic activity of the leg extensors, countermovement jump height, maximal speed in the maximal anaerobic running test, maximal endurance performance, maximal oxygen uptake ([V·]O(?max)), and running economy were assessed. Maximal strength improved in the heavy (P = 0.034, effect size ES = 0.38) and explosive resistance training groups (P = 0.003, ES = 0.67) with increases in leg muscle activation (heavy: P = 0.032, ES = 0.38; explosive: P = 0.002, ES = 0.77). Only the heavy resistance training group improved maximal running speed in the maximal anaerobic running test (P = 0.012, ES = 0.52) and jump height (P = 0.006, ES = 0.59). Maximal endurance running performance was improved in all groups (heavy: P = 0.005, ES = 0.56; explosive: P = 0.034, ES = 0.39; muscle endurance: P = 0.001, ES = 0.94), with small though not statistically significant improvements in [V·]O(?max) (heavy: ES = 0.08; explosive: ES = 0.29; muscle endurance: ES = 0.65) and running economy (ES in all groups < 0.08). All three modes of strength training used concurrently with endurance training were effective in improving treadmill running endurance performance. However, both heavy and explosive strength training were beneficial in improving neuromuscular characteristics, and heavy resistance training in particular contributed to improvements in high-intensity running characteristics. Thus, endurance runners should include heavy resistance training in their training programmes to enhance endurance performance, such as improving sprinting ability at the end of a race.     

The Patterning of Collaborative Behavior and Knowledge Culminations in Interdisciplinary Research Centers

Minerva - Due to investments in interdisciplinary research endeavors, the number and variety of interdisciplinary research centers have grown exponentially during the past decades. While...     

Evaluating the effectiveness of relevance feedback based on a user simulation model: effects of a user scenario on cumulated gain value

We propose a method for performing evaluation of relevance feedback based on simulating real users. The user simulation applies a model defining the user’s relevance threshold to accept individual documents as feedback in a graded relevance environment; user’s patience to browse the initial list of retrieved documents; and his/her effort in providing the feedback. We evaluate the result by using cumulated gain-based evaluation together with freezing all documents seen by the user in order to simulate the point of view of a user who is browsing the documents during the retrieval process. We demonstrate the method by performing a simulation in the laboratory setting and present the “branching” curve sets characteristic for the presented evaluation method. Both the average and topic-by-topic results indicate that if the freezing approach is adopted, giving feedback of mixed quality makes sense for various usage scenarios even though the modeled users prefer finding especially the most relevant documents.     

Adult Questions and Children's Responses: Coordination of perspectives in studies of children's theories of other minds

The main aim of this study is to shed light on the issue of how children learn to identify what is meant by what is said in communicative practices. The study replicates and extends the well-known work on what is referred to as children's 'theories of other minds'. The focus in the present study is on the interplay between the adult and the child, the nature of the task and the child's position in the communicative encounter. Rather than assuming that children have or do not have 'theories of other minds', we explore the communicative conditions under which children can be made sensitive to the nature of other people's (mistaken) beliefs. The empirical work was carried out amongst children aged three to five, since this is the critical age at which it is claimed that children become sensitive to the fact that other people's perspectives of a situation may differ from their own. The results show that whether or not children 'are able' to adopt other people's perspectives is very much a situated affair and reflects the manner in which they are brought into a position where they can share the framing of the adult. The questions posed are interpreted differently by the children in ways that go beyond the intended difference that concerns perspectivity. The test situation is polysemous in many respects and the variation in responses cannot be reduced to such a simple distinction as the one implied in the theory of mind research paradigm, which represents a monological conception of communication.     

Parents’ Participation in Their Child’s Schooling

The present study set out to survey Finnish parents’ participation in their child’s schooling and related experiences. The subjects were a nationally representative group of academically and vocationally educated fathers and mothers (N = 391) who had a child on the fifth grade. A great majority of the parents reported that they attended the parent evenings and saw them in a positive light. Most parents helped their child in her/his schoolwork, though some of them were doubtful of their own competence for it. The choice of schools, which was considered mainly by urban parents and academically educated parents, seemed to introduce a new private element into parental participation without changing the existing communal forms of participation.     

The Experienced Meaning of Working with a PhD Thesis

There is a variation in terms of how researchers perceive the nature of research work. Previous research has mainly looked at the members of academia who already have established themselves in the scholarly community. We aimed at exploring the ways in which doctoral students perceived their thesis project and further, the relations of such perceptions to well-being and study engagement. The participants were 669 doctoral students from medicine, humanities, and behavioral sciences from a Finnish university who answered a questionnaire, including both structured and open-ended questions. The analysis was conducted by triangulating qualitative and quantitative data. The results showed that students' perceptions varied, ranging from perceiving the thesis as a product to viewing it as a process of developing expertise. Further, the results indicated that perceiving work on the thesis as a process was most advantageous in terms of experienced well-being and study engagement.     

Language and Mathematical Performance: a Comparison of Lower Secondary School Students with Different Level of Mathematical Skills

This study investigated the connection between language (i.e., word comprehension, reading comprehension and spelling skills) and mathematical performance. The sample consisted of grade nine students (N?=?810) in 14 lower secondary schools in the Swedish speaking areas of Finland. Standardized tests for reading and writing skills, and mathematical performance were used. Based on the mathematics test the students were categorized into eight performance groups. Many students had problems in both mathematics and language performance. On the whole data level reading skills were a powerful predictor for math performance, the reading factor explained 52% of the variance in the model. Hence, the reading skills focusing on understanding of the text are important in solving mathematical tasks at the end of compulsory school.     

The Role of Regulation and Processing Strategies in Understanding Science Text Among University Students

The aim of the study was to investigate the role of regulation and processing strategies in understanding science text. A total of 91 student teachers answered open-ended questions concerning photosynthesis before and after reading either a traditional or a refutational science text. After this, they also answered parts of the Inventory of Learning Styles. Understanding of photosynthesis increased after the text reading among all the students. However, deep and independent learners reached a better understanding than reproductive and support-dependent students. The refutational text seemed to promote understanding more than the traditional text. The study supports the assumption that personal characteristics play a role in learning complex scientific concepts. Further, refutational texts seem to facilitate high quality learning.     

Quality of Vocational Literacy: how Finnish vocational school students learn from text

The article concentrates on the essential prerequisite for future continuing education—the skill of independent learning from text in the light of an evaluation study carried out in Finnish vocational schools. The research task was to elucidate how learning from text can be explained, what kinds of results students achieved and above all what kinds of learning strategies they applied. Furthermore, students’ learning orientation was studied. The results of the empirical study indicated that learning from text is a transactional process of many factors related to cognition and motivation. Seventy‐five percent of the qualitative level of the learning outcomes could be explained. The qualitative level of the results proved on average fairly low even though individual differences were notable. Information processing in the learning process was mostly superficial. Such processing was generally related to atomistic structuring of knowledge, limited and text‐bound use of knowledge as well as haste. With the help of cluster analysis of the learning process variables students were placed in five groups relating to their learning orientation. The groups differed from each other in relation to the aims of activities, learning process and results.