A longitudinal study of state government homepage accessibility in Maryland and the role of web page templates for improving accessibility

It is well documented that government agencies, at all levels, continue to have problems ensuring that government web sites follow laws related to web accessibility for people with disabilities. Although there are a number of published studies on government web accessibility that are point-in-time, there are no published studies consisting of a longitudinal analysis of state-level government web site accessibility. This paper contributes to the research literature in three ways: 1) an accessibility inspection of 25 Maryland state government homepages in 2012 which involved 150 human inspections of web pages, 2) a comparison of the results from 2012 to a similar accessibility evaluation in 2009, and 3) a discussion of the role of a web page template, which was introduced in Maryland state government shortly after the 2009 evaluation. The data from this longitudinal evaluation leads to the conclusion that web page templates do tend to result in more accessible sites within state government.     

Audience Motivations for Using Interactive Features: Distinguishing Use of Different Types of Interactivity on an Online Newspaper

This study examines audience uses of three types of interactivity, user motivations for visiting an online newspaper, and the relationship between user motivations and use of the different types of interactive features. There are three types of interactivity on a continuum: medium, human/medium, and human interactivity. In an online survey of 542 respondents, results indicate that medium interactive features were used most frequently and human interactive features used the least. Three motivations for using online newspapers emerged—information seeking/surveillance, socialization, and entertainment. In addition, further analysis found that although all three motivations were predictors of use of medium interactive features, the information seeking/surveillance motivation was not a significant predictor of use of human/medium and human interactive features.     

Gender portrayal in Hong Kong and Korean children's TV commercials: A cross‐cultural comparison

This study examined gender portrayal in a sample of 345 television commercials broadcast during children's programmes in Hong Kong and Korea using content analysis. Literature suggests that Hong Kong culture differs from Korean culture on the dimension of Masculinity/Femininity proposed by Hofstede. The differences between the two countries provide a valid test of theory, and suggest hypotheses about the gender portrayal in children's advertising. The results of the study showed, contrary to expectations from Hofstede's framework, that the gender portrayal of central characters and the level of gender stereotyping in Hong Kong commercials was similar to those of Korean commercials. Possible explanations include the emerging homogeneous youth market using a standardized advertising strategy, and the rising concern for women's rights in Korea.     

Communication research in Hong Kong: Problematics,discoveries and directions 1

This paper first analyses the communication research environment in Hong Kong in regard to its socio‐political context, the media industry and more direct factors such as research freedom, financial‐institutional support, incentives, size and quality of trained personnel While the overall environment is facilitative, the small size of the research community in Hong Kong is limiting the volume of research output and scope of specialization. In reviewing researches in the last decade, it is found that commercial researches are generally more concerned about opinion distribution and media consumption. Government policy researches‐centre around media evaluations, preferences, programme standards and other regulatory issues. Academics pay most attention to political communication, international communication and, less so, information technology. As to future research, the author argues for more frequent use of longitudinal and comparative methods, the search for an original theoretical contribution to communication, an urban research agenda in development communication, the study of dependent communication development, interaction between mass media and political formation, regional cultural integration, advertising, media management, information technology and policy. The establishment of a communication policy forum is also called for to promote exchanges among academics, policy‐makers, media practitioners and interest groups. The expansion of the research community in Hong Kong hinges on successful faculty recruitment, the establishment of a doctoral communication programme and the relief of some staffs teaching overload.     

全国电大图工委在京成立

<正> 在国家教委有关部门和全国高校图工委的支持下,1992年10月29日至11月7日,全国电大图工委在京举行了成立大会,来自中央、省、市、自治区、计划单列市及部分电大分校图书馆馆长50余人参加会议。会议由中央电大副校长舒子佳同志主持,全体代表一致通过了《全国广播电视大学图书馆情报工作委员会章程》和第一届全国电大图工委常委单位组成名单。全国高校图工委副秘书长李晓明同志出席成立大会,并代表全国高校图工委致贺词,并就电大图工委的性质和今后的任务做了重要讲话。中央电大副校长方和忠同志代表中央电大党政领导支     

转型时期英国农业经济形态特点探析

18世纪中叶到19世纪中叶是英国历史上的转型时期,工业革命正在开展,城市化也在进行,整个国家由农业文明向工业文明过渡.在工业革命发生和扩展的同时,农业领域也取得了重大成就,农业结构内部经历着变动重组.农业经济形态一方面呈现出资本主义性质及市场化、现代性的特点,另一方面残留了封建性、传统性、封闭性的特质,整个农业经济形态中许多异质的成分同时存在,交错重叠,十分复杂.这种两面性和多元特点贯穿了工业革命时期的农业经济形态中.     

Understanding Chinese online users and their visits to websites: Application of Zipf's law

Competition for consumers to visit company websites has intensified in recent years. An important indicator of website popularity (and consequent survival) is the extent to which the website can draw consumer visits vis-à-vis other websites. A majority of the current understanding on consumer visits is limited to a single website, and leaves little knowledge on the performance of one website compared with others. In tracking the Internet usage behavior of 200 individuals in Mainland China for 30 consecutive days, we applied Zipf's law to identify the divergence points separating popular websites from non-popular ones. Two measurements were used, namely, visit traffic (number) and visit engagement (time spent). We observed that 94.87% of the entire visit traffic is devoted to 15.08% of all visited websites, whereas 84.63% of engagements are on the top 6.16% visited websites. These findings suggest that few websites accounted for the bulk of online traffic and time. Further, we segmented the dataset based on two key proxy variables of user demographics, which are gender and occupation. The findings on visit traffic remained salient after considering user segments, but the findings on website engagement varied across different user segments. Our further analysis, which categorized the visited websites by their main service, revealed the type of Internet users attracted to popular websites.     

Contribution of discourse and morphosyntax skills to reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic and typically developing children

This study aimed at identifying important skills for reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic children and their typically developing counterparts matched on age (CA controls) or reading level (RL controls). The children were assessed on Chinese reading comprehension, cognitive, and reading-related skills. Results showed that the dyslexic children performed significantly less well than the CA controls but similarly to RL controls in most measures. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that word-level reading-related skills like oral vocabulary and word semantics were found to be strong predictors of reading comprehension among typically developing junior graders and dyslexic readers of senior grades, whereas morphosyntax, a text-level skill, was most predictive for typically developing senior graders. It was concluded that discourse and morphosyntax skills are particularly important for reading comprehension in the non-inflectional and topic-prominent Chinese system.     

Pedagogical influence of interaction with cooperating teachers on the efficacy beliefs of student teachers

Abstract

Cooperating teachers are often identified as some of the most important figures in the preparation of new teachers, and the reasons are not difficult to understand. Surprisingly, however, very little research has been conducted to quantify the effects of cooperating teachers on student teachers. This study examines the impact of student teachers' perceived interactions with their cooperating teachers and the influence that interaction has on student teachers' self‐efficacy for teaching. Results indicate a moderate correlation between perceptions of teaching efficacy and cooperating teacher‐student teacher interactions. Differences were found in the frequency of interaction based on the certification level of the student teacher, with elementary level student teachers perceiving a greater amount of interaction with their cooperating teachers. However, no differences based on certification level were detected in perceived efficacy. Student teachers' perceptions of the level of guidance offered by their cooperating teachers provided the most reliable predictor for their efficacy belief.     

Confucius,Mao and modernization: social studies education in the People's Republic of China

Around the middle years of this century, American progressive educators formulated a vision of general education for the secondary school that would afford all youth common opportunities to integrate and apply knowledge toward the resolution of personal-social problems. This progressive vision of general education was consistent with principles of the US common school ideal and predated the heyday of general education at the college level. This progressive vision of general education can serve today both as a conceptual tool to analyse and as a practical alternative to the national standards movement in the US. This vision of general education also provides common ground for deliberation among reconceptualist-social reconstructionist and progressive-experimentalist curriculum theorists.