Tracing the evolution of critical evaluation skills in students' use of the Internet

This paper documents the evolving uses of the Internet made by public health graduate students and traces the development of their search methods and critical evaluative criteria. Early in the first semester and again six months later, twenty-four graduate students in a problem-based learning curriculum, which emphasizes evidence-based critical thinking skills, were required to describe their most helpful resources and to evaluate these resources critically. The answers were coded for the types of resources the students used, how frequently they were used, and why they were used. Student perception of the usefulness of resources, especially the Internet, and ability to evaluate these resources critically changed greatly. Initially, 96% of the students stated that the Internet was their most helpful resource. Six months later, these students continued to use the Internet; however, it was not their most useful source. At the later point, students had very specific uses for the Internet. Their most frequently used evaluation criterion was the reliability and objectivity of the source of the information. By the end of the first year of study, the majority of the students demonstrated an understanding of the principles of evidence-based practice and applied them to their research and analysis of information resources.     

Thirty trends shaping the future of academic libraries

This collection of observations, insights, and strategies summarizes the findings from the Education Advisory Board's 2011 research initiative, ‘Redefining the Academic Library: Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services‘, which was conducted on behalf of its membership of over 200 provosts and vice‐presidents for academic affairs at institutions across North America. The full report is freely accessible at http://www.educationadvisoryboard.com/pdf/23634‐EAB‐Redefining‐the‐Academic‐Library.pdf     

A Response to Brian Street

This short piece is written in response to an article by Brian Street on the implications of New Literacy Studies in the last issue of English in Education.     

Correlation between maximum in-shoe plantar pressures and clubhead speed in amateur golfers

Disagreements exist in the literature regarding the manner in which weight should be dynamically shared during the golf swing, both within-feet and between the back- and target-foot, to generate maximal clubhead speed. The purpose of this study was to determine whether preferential foot-loading locations underlie weight sharing by examining the correlation between clubhead speed and maximum plantar pressure (PP) distributions. Thirty-two amateur golfers with handicap indexes ranging from 2.7 to 25 performed 10 driver swings on artificial turf following a warm-up. PP distributions were recorded at 100 Hz, and clubhead speed was recorded using a ball-tracking Doppler radar system. Maximum PPs were extracted from a 2-s window approximately centred on ball contact and were regressed against clubhead speed. Significance was assessed over the entire foot surface using statistical parametric mapping (SPM), a spatially continuous technique. SPM revealed, at relatively high anatomical resolution, significant positive correlations between clubhead speed and PPs in the lateral target-foot (P < 0.05). This suggests that not only weight transfer but also weight-transfer location may be an important determinant of clubhead speed in amateur golfers.