The teaching and research relationship within an institutional evaluation

The authors present an analysis of the relationshipbetween research and teaching in universities. The aimis to determine to what extent this relationship isstrong enough to support the idea that teaching andresearch should be analyzed together from aninstitutional evaluation point of view. Two mainquestions are presented: (a) should research beevaluated from an institutional point of view? And, ifso, (b) which specific aspects of research activitiescan be evaluated within each institution?Empirical data have been obtained within the SpanishNational Program for the Evaluation of Quality ofUniversities and there are supplemented by interviews. Evidence is found of strong connections between research and teaching and in particular areasanalysis of the two dimensions together willhelp in designing better improvement strategies foruniversities.     

A shorter set reduces the loss of cardiac autonomic and baroreflex control after resistance exercise

Set configuration may affect the recovery pattern of cardiac vagal autonomic and reflex modulation after a resistance exercise, since it is closely associated with intensity and volume and determines the metabolic involvement of the session. We tested the hypothesis that longer set configurations have a higher impact on cardiac autonomic control and baroreflex sensitivity compared with shorter set configurations. We studied the effects of three set configurations with the same components of work on the cardiac autonomic control and baroreflex sensitivity. Seventeen subjects performed one control session and three experimental sessions of a leg-press exercise with the same volume (40 repetitions), resting time (720?s) and intensity (10RM load): (a) 5 sets of 8 repetitions with 3?min of rest between sets (8S), (b) 10 sets of 4 repetitions with 80?s of rest between sets (4S) and (c) 40 sets of 1 repetition with 18.5?s of rest between each repetition (1S). Longer set configurations (8S and 4S) induced greater reductions of the vagal cardiac autonomic control and baroreflex sensitivity (p?≤?.001) compared with a shorter set configuration (1S). Also, 1S had non-significant reductions versus the control session (p?>?.05). These findings suggest that a shorter set configuration can reduce the impact of resistance exercise on the post-exercise cardiac vagal autonomic control and baroreflex sensitivity.     

Online Faculty Development and Assessment System (OFDAS): A Study of Academic Learning

The rapid growth of online learning has led to the development of faculty inservice evaluation models that are geared towards the demands of quality improvement of degree programs. Based on the best practices of student online assessment, the Online Faculty Development and Assessment System (OFDAS) created at the Canary Islands was designed to serve the dual purpose of faculty development and classroom learning environment assessment. Results of analyses showed that OFDAS maximized the potential of online faculty development to encourage staff to reflect on Curriculum and Teaching Capacities (CTC). Implications were discussed in terms of emphasizing the process of online CTC learning and incorporating perspectives to capture a comprehensive view of faculty teaching attitudes and their association with student classroom learning perceptions.     

El profesor como práctico reflexivo en una cultura de colaboración

The aim was the reconstruction of a school curriculum in reflective teaching situations within a co‐operative culture. Two working assumptions were considered: (a) teacher development was based on teacher thinking and (b) school organisation followed a co‐operative culture paradigm. The process features were: (a) university team consisted of external advisers; (b) school curriculum and classroom instruction were reviewed by school teachers; (c) case study as a research approach; (d) ethnographic techniques to collect data; (e) data analysis by a computer program; (f) teachers’ reflective cycle to reconstruct practice; and (g) teachers’ portfolios: narrative vignettes, etc. Findings showed: (a) a collaborative process school‐university; (b) teachers’ thinking and attitudinal change; (c) mobilisation of teachers’ talents and values to work together: (i) teacher dyads to reflect on teaching; (ii) advisers’ writing narrative vignettes; (Hi) collegial coaching; and (iv) curriculum materials designed by teachers. Two conclusions can be accepted: (a) teachers’ pedagogical practical knowledge showed diversity of their implicit theories to design action; and (b) teachers’ grounded theory confirmed that the educational action was based on a co‐operative and reflective culture.     

Extraction of complex index terms in non-English IR: A shallow parsing based approach

The performance of information retrieval systems is limited by the linguistic variation present in natural language texts. Word-level natural language processing techniques have been shown to be useful in reducing this variation. In this article, we summarize our work on the extension of these techniques for dealing with phrase-level variation in European languages, taking Spanish as a case in point. We propose the use of syntactic dependencies as complex index terms in an attempt to solve the problems deriving from both syntactic and morpho-syntactic variation and, in this way, to obtain more precise index terms. Such dependencies are obtained through a shallow parser based on cascades of finite-state transducers in order to reduce as far as possible the overhead due to this parsing process. The use of different sources of syntactic information, queries or documents, has been also studied, as has the restriction of the dependencies applied to those obtained from noun phrases. Our approaches have been tested using the CLEF corpus, obtaining consistent improvements with regard to classical word-level non-linguistic techniques. Results show, on the one hand, that syntactic information extracted from documents is more useful than that from queries. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that by restricting dependencies to those corresponding to noun phrases, important reductions of storage and management costs can be achieved, albeit at the expense of a slight reduction in performance.     

Using Online Studio Groups to Improve Writing Competency: A Pilot Study in a Quality Improvement Methods Course

Communication skills are a significant contributor to an individual's success in the workplace. Unfortunately, students often have trouble expressing their ideas in written form and the poor quality of students’ written work often impedes the learning process. This pilot study investigates the use of online writing studios within a quality improvement methods course and the impact of this intervention on students’ writing competency and perceptions about the writing process. The impact of this approach on student performance is evaluated within and across semesters using comparative statistical analyses. Results show that students who participated in online writing studios performed better (i.e., at least one rubric level higher) on their final written assignments for the course compared to students who did not, and that this approach is associated with improved students’ perceptions about the writing process. This research suggests that the use of online writing studios within a content‐specific course can incrementally improve students’ writing competency over the course of one semester, and can positively affect the learning of written communication skills and change students’ perceptions about various aspects of the writing process.     

Reflecting on the moral bases of critical pedagogy in PETE: toward a Foucaultian perspective on ethics and the care of the self

In teacher education and in physical education teacher education (PETE), the possibilities and pitfalls of critical pedagogy (CP) for transforming society have been frequently debated. From these debates, it has become quite clear that the lines separating ‘technocrats’ from ‘radicals’ are so strongly drawn that limit the advance of PETE. In the spirit of collegiality, we offer an alternative approach to CP based on Foucault's genealogical work on the History of Sexuality. It promotes a pedagogical perspective toward the development of ethics and the care of the self. We argue that this approach, far from discrediting what non-critical pedagogues do, can not only advance the practice of CP, but also open up new ways of conceptualizing PETE that are worth considering both by critical pedagogues and by the members of other pedagogical camps. We discuss the implications of this approach in the personal, social–professional and political spheres.     

E-Government procurement observatory,maturity model and early measurements

Electronic government procurement (eGP) is quickly becoming an essential piece of national e-government programs, since it enables active transparency and favors efficient vendor relationships; however, little attention has been paid to the need for periodical measurement of eGP portals' performance and goal satisfaction. Although maturity levels schemes have been proposed for other domains, most notably IT-related, to the best of our knowledge no maturity level model of eGP has been widely deployed yet. This article presents the e-Government Procurement Observatory Maturity Model (eGPO-MM), which focuses on both legal and institutional arrangements, and portals' technical aspects; the model consists of two Leverage Domains, seven Key Domain Areas, and 25 Critical Variables, which are valued with a weighted scoring system that produces quantitative indicators about portal capabilities and allows direct comparisons. The model was used to evaluate eGP portals from 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean; the measurements are presented, and fit well with previous rank perception, leading to a good reception by participant agencies. eGPO-MM has already allowed to identify areas for joint action and fostered knowledge-sharing among governments, including identification and dissemination of e-procurement best practices; it also established clear reference points to allow each agency to determine a roadmap to higher e-procurement maturity.