Recent developments in Palestinian higher education and the CEEPAT programme

Conclusions Palestinian teachers at the pre-collegiate level who participate in the CEEPAT programme will, it is hoped, learn to place new emphasis on enhancement of their students' analytical skills and discourage an identification of knowledge with memorisation. For their part, Palestinian professors who have been trained to teach in the programme will presumably constitute a growing reservoir of talent which may be expected to raise the quality of Palestinian university education. Plans are now under way to give all Palestinians teaching under the auspices of CEEPAT an opportunity to attend an annual, three-week winter seminar in Gaza and/or a summer seminar in the United States, both of which will focus on issues of pedagogy and methodology. Such professors can be expected to pass on their new understanding of teaching via discussion to their colleagues and to their university students, thereby spreading an important pedagogical method to other segments of the Palestinian... community. 7 CEEPAT clearly has the potential to make a significant contribution to the elevation of educational standards in Palestine at a time of major historical change.In Palestine, higher education of quality is obviously a very serious business. It is understood that it underlies any possibility of individual betterment, economic development, or the evolution of an independent Palestinian state. If ever the Israeli occupation is completely terminated and the present financial crisis of the universities is solved, Palestinian university and post-baccalaureate training may reasonably be expected to become fully competitive on an international scale.     

Making sense of learner and learning Big Data: reviewing five years of Data Wrangling at the Open University UK

Most distance learning institutions collect vast amounts of learning data. Making sense of this ‘Big Data’ can be a challenge, in particular when data are stored at different data warehouses and require advanced statistical skills to interpret complex patterns of data. As a leading institute on learning analytics, the Open University UK instigated in 2012 a Data Wrangling initiative. This provided every Faculty with a dedicated academic with expertise data analysis and whose task is to provide strategic, pedagogical and sense-making advice to staff and senior management. Given substantial changes within the OU (e.g. new Faculty structure, real-time dashboards, two large-scale adoptions of predictive analytics approaches, increased reliance on analytics), this embedded case study provides an in-depth review of lessons learned of five years of data wrangling. We will elaborate on the design of the new structure, its strengths and potential weaknesses, and affordances to be adopted by other institutions.     

南非大学如何应对新世纪的挑战

南非大学的历史可以追溯到1834年南非学院成立之日。继南非学院成立后，相继又有一些学院涌现出来。1858年大众考试委员会成立，这一委员会负责指导在好望角附近非洲南部的不列颠殖民地其他院校的考试事宜。1874年大众考试委员会与一所1873年新建立的大学合并，被命名为好望角大学，就是在这所大学的基础上产生了而后的南非大学。当时这所大学与英国伦敦大学的运作形式大体相似，仅仅是一个考试机构，主要是为那些准备参加大学入学考试的学习者提供服务。如今仍有一些院校保留着此种功能。 几乎是由于对邻近区域产生的直接兴趣，导致了1875…     

Longitudinal study of preadolescent sport self-concept and performance: reciprocal effects and causal ordering

Do preadolescent sport self-concepts influence subsequent sport performance? Longitudinal data (Grades 3, 4, and 6) for young boys and girls (N= 1,135; mean age = 9.67) were used to test reciprocal effects model (REM) predictions that sport self-concept is both a cause and a consequence of sport accomplishments. Controlling prior sport performance (performance-based measures and teacher assessments), prior sport self-concept had positive effects on subsequent sport performance in both Grade 4 and Grade 6 and for both boys and girls. Coupled with previous REM studies of adolescents in the academic domain, this first test for preadolescents in the sport domain supports the generalizability of REM predictions over gender, self-concept domain, preadolescent ages, and the transition from primary to secondary school.     

“Stop sending your kids across our border:” Discursively constructing the unaccompanied youth migrant

The recent migration of 65,000 children across the southwestern border, coupled with allegations of abuse by the U.S. Border Patrol, enables the investigation of an overlooked immigrant category: the unaccompanied youth migrant. Analyzing audience responses to news reports of the abuse, we find that established disparaging immigrant tropes apply, describing the children as an economic burden, disease carriers, and offspring of irresponsible families. We uncover two new themes: Youth migrants are channels whereby criminals may infiltrate the U.S., and manipulate legal authorities to remain in the U.S. Finally, we demonstrate how global compassion is strategically deployed to qualify harsh retaliatory measures.     

The Production of Tape/Slide Sequences

Tape/slide productions are essentially the arrangement of projected still pictures, often colour slides but sometimes black and white positives, into a sequence accompanied by taped sound to tell a story. This may be fiction, fantasy, documentary, experiential or reportage. Any of these forms or a compilation of them may form a magazine or audio-visual correspondence between schools, organisations or interested individuals. The usual formats are Instamatic 126 or 35mm slides. Sound is on reel to reel tapes at speeds 9–5cm per sec, or 19cms per sec, on cassette tapes.