A Generalized Technology Readiness Level Scale for Measuring Technology Maturity: Development and Pilot Validation Study

What is new? Trends in university technology transfer practices in the United States of America and proposed modifications to U.S. public policy underscore the need for validated instruments to assess the maturity of technologies.  The NASA TRL scale appears to be the most widely adopted instrument for measuring technology maturity but anecdotal testimony from university technology transfer practitioners and evidence in the literature indicate that the NASA TRL scale poses challenges in its use, is likely subject to idiosyncratic variation, and has not been thoroughly validated. What was the approach? Content analysis was used to develop a generalized TRL (GTRL) scale to demonstrate that the NASA TRL scale can be modified and generalized in a way that increases its practicality and minimizes idiosyncratic variation both within and across contexts.  A pilot study to assess its content validity, intra-rater reliability, and inter-rater reliability was performed to determine whether standard approaches for validating measurement instruments can be applied to validate the GTRL scale. What is the academic impact? The findings of the study suggest that the GTRL scale has promise as a potentially more useful measurement instrument for technology transfer practitioners than the traditional NASA TRL scale, demonstrate the viability of a methodology for evaluating its validity and reliability, highlight areas where the GTRL scale can be improved, and reveal potential methodological issues that researchers may encounter when conducting validity and reliability studies of the GTRL scale as well as strategies for coping with those challenges. What is the wider impact? The modifications and generalizations of the NASA TRL scale, as represented in the GTRL scale, have the potential to improve university technology transfer practices.  With a valid and reliable measurement instrument, university technology transfer practitioners will be able to better determine how much a given technology needs to be matured and provide better guidance to university researchers.  This will also enable practitioners to better allocate scarce resources

AI Literacy in the Context of Working with Sources: Pitfalls and Possibilities of Generative AI Models in Academic Writing

This study examines the integration of generative AI (GenAI), such as ChatGPT, into students’ academic writing practices, focusing on its use for finding and working with sources. Using the concept of ‘imagined affordances’ we explore how students perceive and interact with this technology in academic contexts. We tested six student-centric prompting strategies across three fields using ChatGPT 3.5 and 4o, simulating realistic academic writing scenarios. Results show significant variations in the accuracy and usability of generated references across fields, strategies, and model versions. Notably, some strategies based on students’ imagined affordances, though technically unsound, produced useful outputs for academic writing tasks. ChatGPT 4o generally outperformed 3.5, highlighting rapid advancements in GenAI’s potential role in academic writing. These findings reveal a growing gap between institutional guidance on GenAI use in academic writing and students’ potential experiences. We advocate for a nuanced approach to AI literacy in higher education that acknowledges students’ perspectives, fosters open dialogue, destigmatizes experimentation while emphasizing critical evaluation, and raises awareness of how imagined affordances shape GenAI interactions during the writing process. This study contributes to discussions on AI integration in academic writing, offering insights for writing instructors, librarians, and policymakers

The EU migration law simulation: Enriching higher education through a gaming tool for knowledge exchange

Developing, testing and applying an educational simulation tool preparing our students for a complex legal practice in which cooperation with European member states is essential resulted in the EU Migration Simulation. The simulation was designed to have students engage with strategies for protecting human rights, guarding national borders, or facilitating safe migration channels for a sustainable future under EU migration Law. This contribution presents the development of and working of the EU Migration Simulation as well as student evaluations from law schools across Europe, testing existing theories of educational simulation. This education project aimed to deploy a hybrid educational simulation off-line and online to offer European law and migration studies students opportunities for new forms of knowledge exchange. We found that off-line simulation was most successful for knowledge exchange and systems insight. The simulation requires a modest but well informed facilitator, which confirms existing knowledge on educational simulations. Furthermore, legal cultures had a decisive impact on the way students understood their roles, and thus in the developing of the roles during the stage of game design and testing. Moreover, we found that legal professionals were just as keen on engaging in the simulation as university students as it took them outside their professional ‘tunnel vision’ on problem solving and generating novel systems insight

Introducing the Journal Article Structure Template (JAST) Approach to Getting Your Paper Published

This paper introduces a new approach to support academic writing: the Journal Article Structure Template (JAST). In an ever-more competitive publishing landscape, academics face increasing pressure to produce high-quality papers quickly. The writing process can be time-consuming and being faced with a blank page can prove daunting. While submission guidelines typically outline formal requirements, the more nuanced stylistic and structural expectations of journals can be harder to discern. This is particularly apparent for the growing number of researchers working across disciplines. Shifting publishing trends within journals, evolving editorial orientations and tacit knowledge add further complexity. This article outlines the development of JAST, a set of Open Educational Resources designed to support researchers, particularly those new to academic writing,  to identify, explore and understand journal expectations in a more nuanced way beyond author guidelines. The paper provides an overview of the rationale for, and development of, JAST. Guidance is offered on how to use the stepwise template-based approach, along with the tool’s applications to date and feedback from scholars across a range of disciplines. Users consistently report that JAST is effective, time-efficient and flexible, helping them navigate structural conventions, stylistic preferences and content trends

Student Evaluative Judgements of Writing and Artificial Intelligence: The Disconnect between Structural and Conceptual Knowledge

This paper reports on how undergraduate students evaluated writing outputs created with and without generative artificial intelligence (AI). The paper focuses specifically on two aspects of writing and AI: how prior writing knowledge influenced students’ thinking about AI tools, and how the writing skills to which they were exposed in the writing classroom helped them work with AI-generated materials. This research builds upon Bearman et al.’s (2024) work on evaluative judgement as a pedagogical tool to support learners as they work with AI-mediated texts. The paper uses this lens to identify challenges that learners have in applying writing knowledge to AI-mediated situations and to devise pedagogical means to support student learning in these contexts. We found that, while students could typically evaluate structural components of writing, they struggled to evaluate conceptual ideas both for AI and human generated texts. The findings speak more generally to the need for students to develop their evaluative abilities, as well as ways that AI may reveal and amplify existing challenges that learners have with evaluating the quality of writing, engaging with source materials, and applying genre knowledge to create meaning

Opportunities and Constraints in Advancing Research Management: An Account of Ghanaian Tertiary Institutions

What is new? The objective was to assess the opportunities that abound and constraints that militate against the advancement of Research Management (RM) in policy advancement, sufficient resources and investment and highly trained Research Managers and Administrators in Ghanaian Tertiary Institutions (GTIs). What was the approach? A mixed methods survey with a concurrent triangular strategy method was employed. Questionnaires and interview guides were used in gathering data and a tree-stage analysis technique was used. Data were analyzed using Stata v16 into descriptive results. Ethical approval was sought from the Committee on Human Research Publication Ethics (CHPRE) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi (CHRPE/AP/453/21). What is the academic impact? The study showed that RM in GTIs offers opportunities to researchers and other clients through the services that research administrators and managers render. Among these services are searching funding opportunities, proposal development, interpreting the terms and conditions of grants, monitoring project budget during implementation, etc. RM is bedeviled with challenges despite efforts to navigate the RM pathway. These challenges include professional development plan, mentorship programme, technological infrastructure, and policies. What is the wider impact? The study established that there are RM opportunities that could be leveraged and there are factors that militate against the effective delivery of RM services in GTIs. The paper recommends a deeper appreciation and effective use of RM services, and the adoption of effective measures to address the constraints identified to maximize research output and impact in GTIs.

Civic responsibility and civic engagement: An innovative approach to skill development for law students

UNESCO’ s in-progress reflections series identifies, among other focus areas for competencies and skills development, a citizenship curriculum that would encompass content such as peace, human rights, sustainability, development, values and ethics. These themes pertain adequately to legal education and practice. From an interdisciplinary approach, they offer opportunities for introducing experiential learning, when there is willingness to innovate. This paper presents a student civic initiative devised to translate theoretical knowledge acquired into direct civic engagement at the service of society. The initiative is an integral complement to the knowledge of law and basic legal skills. It puts students face to face with societal needs like human rights, development, cultural values and the diversity of their communities. At the same time, it cultivates in them a sense of personal responsibility to remedy societal inequalities in new ways, demonstrating how theory should inform practice. Their capacity to observe and analyse matters at hand sharpens faster and their critical reasoning improves. For instance, from real problems they see in society, they start looking at laws in a more critical manner. The attempt in presenting this paper is to show how the conceptual framework of unity of knowledge, from which true interdisciplinary approach stems, guided the idea of the civic initiative as a skill development opportunity for law school students. The paper will state the multifaceted problem the initiative set out to solve, its main aim and objectives, as well as the results of its initial phase of execution. The paper also envisages the scalability of the initiative as well as the investigative potential it opens up, regarding the many ways in which experiential learning enhances competencies and skills development in legal learning