Leading,managing and participating in inter-university teaching grant collaborations

In this paper we examine the leadership and management of multi-university collaborations funded by national teaching grants. The paper commences with a review of literature relating to stages of project development, key operational issues, impediments to collaboration and the leadership and management of teaching grant collaborations. Finally, we explore critical success factors in teaching grant collaborations from three perspectives – those of leader, manager and team member.     

An Empirical Study of Geahigan's Inquiry Model in Learning Art at Senior Secondary School Level

The philosophical foundation for teaching art criticism in schools has been dominated by formalist and expressionist aesthetics, while from a practical point of view it has been influenced by art criticism models that emphasise observation and linguistic practices. Instead of asking students to observe an artwork and make verbal or written statements, George Geahigan proposed an inquiry‐based art criticism learning model that engages students in personal response, research, and aesthetic concept and perceptual skill acquisition activities. Using inquiry‐based art criticism as a foundation for curriculum development and connecting the model to authentic situations in schools, the present study investigated the effectiveness of the model on student learning. Fifteen secondary school teachers were invited to participate. Eight teachers taught the experimental group (n=85) with inquiry‐based curriculum plans and the other seven teachers taught the control group (n=82) with their own school curriculum plans. Students of both groups were asked to write an art criticism essay before and after the implementation of the curriculum plans. The results demonstrated that the overall improvement of the experimental group after one academic year was significantly greater than that of the control group. This article reports on the theoretical framework, methodology and results of the study. It was found that the inquiry‐based approach was a successful strategy in improving students’ skills in analysing, judging and using aesthetic and contextual knowledge in art criticism writing. The discussion focuses on the improvements that were made in the art criticism essays of the experimental group.     

Harnessing collective intelligence of Web 2.0: group adoption and use of Internet-based collaboration technologies

Along with the advent of Web 2.0, mass collaboration is of paramount importance in knowledge exploration and diffusion. However, the extent to which Internet-based collaboration technologies can be used to develop new knowledge and to leverage the wisdom of crowds heavily depends on the collective willingness to adopt such tools together. In this study, the adoption and use of instant messaging has been conceptualized as a group-referent intentional social action. The concept of ‘we-intention’, which refers to one's perception of the group acting as a unit, is the focus of our interest. The cognitive, affective and social dimensions that contribute to ‘we-intention’ to adopt and use instant messaging were investigated. A survey was conducted and the findings provided empirical evidence supporting the idea that cognitive, affective and social factors jointly lead to the development of we-intention. This study is expected to provide some useful insights to both researchers and practitioners.     

South African Deaf education and the Deaf community

In a special section of the american Annals of the Deaf, Deaf education and the Deaf community in South Africa are discussed. The special section is organized into 7 segments: a historical overview to establish context, the educational context, educators and learners, postgraduate education and employment, perspectives of Deaf children and their parents, sport and the arts, and spiritual lives and mental health. Throughout the entire section, however, the central focus is on the overall foundation (or lack thereof) of education for Deaf learners in South Africa.     

Student contribution in asynchronous online discussion: a review of the research and empirical exploration

The increasingly prevalent use of Internet in schools and homes has resulted in asynchronous online discussion becoming an increasingly common means to facilitate dialogue between instructors and students, as well as students and students beyond the boundaries of their physical classrooms. This article is organized into two main sections. In the first section, we review 50 empirical studies in order to identify the factors leading to limited student contribution. Limited student contribution is defined as students making few or no postings, or students exhibiting surface-level thinking or low-level knowledge construction in online discussions. We then identify the various empirically based guidelines to address the factors. In the second section, we discuss three potential guideline dilemmas that educators may encounter: (a) use of grades, (b) use of number of posting guideline, and (c) instructor-facilitation. These are guidelines where previous empirical research shows mixed results when they are implemented. Acknowledging the dilemmas is essential for educators and researchers to make informed decisions about the discussion guidelines they are considering implementing. Finally, we report two exploratory case studies on student-facilitation that we conducted. Using students as facilitators may be an alternative solution to educators who wish to avoid the instructor-facilitation guideline dilemma.     

Towards a schools funding policy to ameliorate poverty and disadvantage

As a society we now have the means to identify regional areas of disadvantage, and the knowledge of what needs to be done to ameliorate intergenerational transfer of poverty. The missing ingredient is the political will² and commitment, and the capacity to convince all Australians that an increasingly divided society is to everyone’s disadvantage.     

2004雅典奥运会对希腊妇女体育的影响

本文试图介绍希腊女子体育的发展和职业体育的发展。此外,还要介绍非竞技体育的参与情况和女性以观众、球迷或志愿者身份来参加比赛的这一新的兴趣增长情况。2004年奥运会对所有这些发展都起到了积极的推动作用。     

Complexity Reduction in Lattice-Based Information Retrieval

Though lattice-based information representation has the advantage of providing efficient visual interface over textual display, the complexity of a lattice may grow rapidly with the size of the database. In this paper we formally draw the analogy between Vector Space Model and Concept Lattice, from which we introduce the notion of Term-Document Lattice as a model for information retrieval. We then propose to use the idea of quotient lattice to reduce the complexity of a Term-Document Lattice. The equivalence relation required to construct the quotient lattice is obtained by performing a Singular Value Decomposition on the original term-document matrix.     

Great experiments in physics

In Part 1 of this article, we described masers. In this part, we describe lasers, their optical counterpart.     

First catch your indexer*

Indexes are essential for many learned publications, yet often overlooked because those responsible for the publications do not realize the value of an index or know how to commission one. This article provides basic guidelines for coping with indexes.