How I Got My Head in the Cloud … But Forgot to Bring an Umbrella

The Association of College and Research Libraries developed information literacy standards and associated performance indicators for undergraduate psychology students. A survey of tenure-track faculty members and full-time lecturers in the Psychology Department at Eastern Michigan University was conducted to discover how those professors viewed the importance of these indicators, and how those professors perceived their role, as well as the role of librarians, in supporting instruction that develops those skills. The psychology faculty acknowledged the curricular value of the information literacy performance indicators and perceived librarians as having a supportive role relative to their own more primary role in developing the skills.     

Learning Analytics: Insights Into the Natural Learning Behavior of Our Students

The literature of gerontology may be found in the journals of many disciplines and in the popular press. Only journals published in the U.S. and devoted exclusively or in large part to the literature of social gerontology are described here. Journals intended primarily for the layman rather than for the professional worker are not included, even though they may contain some material of interest to the professional. All available bibliographic information is given, and special features of each journal are described. Newsletters of more than local significance are listed but not individually described.     

Cyber Ethics: Bodies or Bytes?

Information ethics requires: (1) an ethical theory that recognizes the importance of the body; and (2) a materialist theory of information. Alasdair MacIntyre's ethics of acknowledged dependence is an example of the former. It holds that the virtues we need to achieve both personal and common moral goods recognize networks of dependence based upon bodily vulnerability and disability. Pierre Lévy's theory of collective intelligence is an example of a view that disregards both requirements. Based upon a secular appropriation of medieval angelology, it holds that in cyberspace, social relations are dematerialized, and that information is an incorporeal substance flowing between disembodied minds. The new anthropological space of virtuality that Lévy holds to be ushered in by new electronic information technologies proposes a radical rethinking of ethics. But on close inspection, his information ethics turns out to be stripped of any serious moral dimension. To address serious moral issues, information ethics cannot abstract from our bodily animal nature. Several recent studies recognize that information is an effect of social relations between embodied subjects. They provide the materialist information theory required for meaningful information ethics.     

Automated processes in tennis: Do left-handed players benefit from the tactical preferences of their opponents?

Abstract

Previous research on laterality in sport suggests an over-representation of left-handers in interactive sports such as tennis and cricket. These findings potentially reflect left-handers' advantage over their right-handed competitors in those sports. Although considered crucial for successful performance, the tactical component of their superiority has yet to be analysed. Two studies were conducted to test for a side bias in tennis players' tactical preferences. In the first study, 108 right- and left-handed players of varying skill watched rallies on a computer screen and had to indicate where they would place the ball in the opposing half. The results showed the tactical preference of players to place more balls on a left-handed opponent's mostly stronger forehand side compared with when faced with a right-hander. In the second study, 54 professional tennis matches involving right- and left-handers were analysed with respect to ball placement frequencies on the opponent's backhand side. Significantly fewer balls were hit to the backhand side of a left-handed opponent, thus replicating the findings of Study 1 in on-court situations. Both studies indicate players' preference to place shots to their right irrespective of their opponent's handedness. Findings support the assumption that left-handers might enjoy a strategic advantage in tennis.     

Testing foreign language impact on engineering students’ scientific problem-solving performance

This article investigates the influence of English as the examination language on the solution of physics and science problems by non-native speakers in tertiary engineering education. For that purpose, a statistically significant total number of 96 students in four year groups from freshman to senior level participated in a testing experiment in the Degree Programme of Aviation at the FH JOANNEUM University of Applied Sciences, Graz, Austria. Half of each test group were given a set of 12 physics problems described in German, the other half received the same set of problems described in English. It was the goal to test linguistic reading comprehension necessary for scientific problem solving instead of physics knowledge as such. The results imply that written undergraduate English-medium engineering tests and examinations may not require additional examination time or language-specific aids for students who have reached university-entrance proficiency in English as a foreign language.     

Inequality and School reform in Bahia,Brazil

This article compares public and community schools in Salvador, the state capital of Bahia, Brazil. Based on quantitative data analysis and qualitative research conducted on-site during three research trips in 2001, 2003 and 2005, the author finds that Brazil’s extreme inequality and the associated concentration of state power in a few hands stand in the way of an effective reform. In 1999, the state of Bahia started to reform its basic education cycle, but the author’s research shows that Bahian elites use access to basic education to defend their inherited privilege. The analysis of community schools further demonstrates that inequality also blocks effective community and parental involvement in school management, as schools tend to distance themselves from neighbourhoods portrayed as poor and black, and thus “dangerous”.     

On the relationship between economic competence and the individual level of agreement with market economy

A series of studies in several countries tested the economic understanding of people, particularly students. The performance of the subjects is typically conceived as showing ＂deficits＂. These alleged deficits seem to correspond with scepticism towards market economy. Better test scores in general correlate with higher appraisal of market society. Could therefore a better understanding influence the attitudes towards phenomena of economic life, like competition, unequal income distribution and other characteristics of market economy？ This paper identifies different factors influencing both the levels of economic understanding and the attitudes towards economy. It analyzes results of empirical studies and, as a conclusion, develops an ＂influence model＂ reflecting the connection between the form of perception of market-induced phenomena, i.e. economic competence, and the evaluation of these phenomena. The model is the fundament for the design of forthcoming studies.