Identifying student retention factors of a UK university using the concept of a learning community: a qualitative approach

The UK will need a skilled IT work force to maintain its position as a world leader in computing research and development. This study investigated the experience of learning communities amongst first year undergraduate computing students at a UK university. The concept of a learning community was used to examine its influence on student academic and social integration, the issues students need to overcome and the knowledge they need to acquire to become successful. A qualitative approach was employed using the ‘unfolding matrix’, which was completed during group interviews. The data analysis results revealed that learning communities critically affect students’ academic and social integration. Specifically, the importance of student support and guidance from academic staff was considered, as well as student relationships with other students and academic staff. Furthermore, developing a sense of personal awareness and the need to develop an effective academic skill-set to succeed were identified as critical

Broaden my Bookshelf: working with the University of Huddersfield SU to tackle the attainment gap

The article describes the origins and aims of the Broaden my Bookshelf initiative at the University of Huddersfield and details some of the successes and challenges of the project

Playful Learning for Information Literacy Development

Play is often seen as frivolous, childish, suitable only for young children. In contrast, this paper will discuss the idea that using playful learning approaches are often a good fit for the development of information literacy in all ages. To do this, it will outline the meaning of information literacy that the author takes, explain where playful learning is placed within learning theories and pedagogies, and show why and how they fit together. Examples of playful practice in library and information literacy training will be given to illustrate current practice, together with gaps within that practice. It will briefly address some of the barriers to using playful learning approaches in information literacy development, and offer some ways forward for information literacy practitioners

Keeping the Faith: A History of Northern Soul

In the 1970s, Northern Soul held a pivotal position in British youth culture. Originating in the English North and Midlands in the late-1960s, by the mid-1970s it was attracting thousands of enthusiasts across the country. This book is a social history of Northern Soul, examining the origins and development of this music scene, its clubs, publications and practices. Northern Soul emerged in a period when working class communities were beginning to be transformed by deindustrialisation and the rise of new political movements around the politics of race, gender and locality. Locating Northern Soul in these shifting economic and social contexts of the English North and Midlands in the 1970s, the authors argue that people kept the faith not just with music, but with a culture that was connected to wider aspects of work, home, relationships and social identities. Drawing on an expansive range of sources, including oral histories, magazines and fanzines, diaries and letters, this book offers a detailed and empathetic reading of a working class culture that was created and consumed by thousands of young people in the 1970s. The authors highlight the complex ways in which class, race and gender identities acted as forces for both unity and fragmentation on the dancefloors of iconic clubs such as the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, Blackpool Mecca, the Torch in Stoke-on-Trent, the Catacombs in Wolverhampton and the Casino in Wigan. Marking a significant contribution to the historiography of youth culture, this book is essential reading for those interested in popular music and everyday life in in postwar Britain

Precision Core Temperature Measurement of Metals Using an Ultrasonic Phase-Shift Method

Temperature measurement is one of the most important aspects of manufacturing. There have been many temperature measuring techniques applied for obtaining workpiece temperature in different types of manufacturing processes. The main limitations of conventional sensors have been the inability to indicate the core temperature of workpieces and the low accuracy that may result due to the harsh nature of some manufacturing environments. The speed of sound is dependent on the temperature of the material through which it passes. This relationship can be used to obtain the temperature of the material provided that the speed of sound can be reliably obtained. This paper investigates the feasibility of creating a cost-effective solution suitable for precision applications that require the ability to resolve a better than 0.5 °C change in temperature with ±1 °C accuracy. To achieve these, simulations were performed in MATLAB using the k-wave toolbox to determine the most effective method. Based upon the simulation results, experiments were conducted using ultrasonic phase-shift method on a steel sample (type EN24T). The results show that the method gives reliable and repeatable readings. Based on the results from this paper, the same setup will be used in future work in the machining environment to determine the effect of the harsh environment on the phase-shift ultrasonic thermometry, in order to create a novel technique for in-process temperature measurement in subtractive manufacturing processes

The negative influence of the entrepreneur’s level of higher education on the attractiveness of European SMEs as alliance partners in Brazil: the role of practical experience and international entrepreneurial orientation

Notwithstanding the contemporary relevance of alliance strategies for SME internationalisation, especially in the case of uncertain business environments, few studies have investigated human resource issues in the context of SMEs prior to alliance formation. Even more scarce are studies looking at the impact of a manager/entrepreneur’s characteristics on pre-alliance formation, despite recognition of the expected crucial role of the entrepreneur in this context and of the strong connection between an entrepreneur and their SME. Drawing on international entrepreneurship theory and empirical observations from an exploratory study, we propose a post hoc conceptual model. The exploratory empirical part of our study employs a sample of entrepreneurs from biotechnology SMEs in the United Kingdom and Germany intending to ally in a large emerging market (i.e. Brazil). Our empirical observations suggest an anomalous (at first glance) negative association between the entrepreneur’s level of higher education (a construct at the individual level) and the attractiveness of the SME as a partner firm vis-à-vis alliance formation (a construct at the firm level). Our post hoc model emphasises the role of practical experience and the corresponding levels of international entrepreneurial orientation as theorised variables mediating the observed empirical relationship. We develop theoretical propositions, and suggest practical implications and future research directions

Accuracy in Detecting Failure in Ballscrew Assessment Towards Machine Tool Servitization

Many manufacturers, in particular machine tool builders, aim for service innovation in order to improve their market competitiveness. Machine tool trading companies expect to create a value-added process through shifting from just selling product i.e. machine tools to selling an integrated combination of product and services, so called product-service system (PSS) which in turn competes with other developing companies. This is the process of servitization. The purpose of this work is to explore the benefits of servitizing machine tool industry and identify the effect of such an approach on the performance of engineering companies. As important, is to evaluate the accuracy of components as part of predictive maintenance, to support machine tool sevitization. This paper proposed a case study of ballscrew performance assessment. The purpose was monitoring the degradation of two parallel ball screws in a 5-Axis gantry machine tool, based on data from an acoustic emission sensor and machine learning technology. The significance of this work is that ballscrew performance as part of machine tool accuracy is critical for high value manufacturing. Machine tool users would prefer their machines to be maintained to the required tolerance by the predictive maintenance service warranty offered by the machine trader and keep their machines up to date to reduce unnecessary downtime

The internationalization of Nigerian firms: Motivations and location patterns

Despite the increased number of studies of the internationalization of emerging-market multinationals (EMNCs), Latin American and Asian firms have dominated the focus of such studies, while the study of the internationalization process of sub-Saharan African firms in the international business literature is quite limited. Therefore, this article examines the motivations and location patterns of the internationalization process of four Nigerian firms through a multiple case study approach. The findings show that the internationalization of the Nigerian firms is a recent phenomenon, but the foreign investment pattern reflects a pan-African investment strategy. However, the findings also reveal that the firm-specific advantages that had been accumulated in the domestic market, coupled with home-country factors and regional-/host-market factors, were key determinants of the motivations and location patterns in the internationalization process of Nigerian firms

“I just felt as though I had to drop something”: The implications of care for female working elder carers’ working lives.

This paper explores the challenges that female elder carers in the UK face in combining paid work with elder care, and the implications of this care for their current and future working lives. In-depth interviews with 11 working women from a large organisation were conducted, and 5 of the women were re-interviewed after a period of one year to examine any changes in their situation. The interviews revealed the precarious nature of their daily schedules, which required constant effort to maintain, the intrusion of elder care into their working lives and the impact it had upon their career development and future aspirations. The findings provide insight into the reasons why carers, especially women, are more likely to reduce their working hours, do not take advantage of training opportunities and retire early. The findings are discussed in relation to the expectation of an extended working age and gender equality

An Efficient Framework of Utilizing the Latent Semantic Analysis in Text Extraction

The use of the latent semantic analysis (LSA) in text mining demands large space and time requirements. This paper proposes a new text extraction method that sets a framework on how to employ the statistical semantic analysis in the text extraction in an efficient way. The method uses the centrality feature and omits the segments of the text that have a high verbatim, statistical, or semantic similarity with previously processed segments. The identification of similarity is based on a new multi-layer similarity method that computes the similarity in three statistical layers, it uses the Jaccard similarity and the vector space model in the first and second layers respectively, and uses the LSA in the third layer. The multi-layer similarity restricts the use of the third layer for the segments that the first and second layers failed to estimate their similarities. Rouge tool is used in the evaluation, but because Rouge does not consider the extract’s size, we supplemented it with a new evaluation strategy based on the compression rate and the ratio of the sentences intersections between the automatic and the reference extracts. Our comparisons with classical LSA and traditional statistical extractions showed that we reduced the use of the LSA procedure by 52%, and we obtained 65% reduction on the original matrix dimensions, also, we obtained remarkable accuracy results. It is concluded that the employment of the centrality feature with the proposed multi-layer framework yields a significant solution in terms of efficiency and accuracy in the field of text extraction