75,483 research outputs found
Constructing experimental indicators for Open Access documents
The ongoing paradigm change in the scholarly publication system ('science is
turning to e-science') makes it necessary to construct alternative evaluation
criteria/metrics which appropriately take into account the unique
characteristics of electronic publications and other research output in digital
formats. Today, major parts of scholarly Open Access (OA) publications and the
self-archiving area are not well covered in the traditional citation and
indexing databases. The growing share and importance of freely accessible
research output demands new approaches/metrics for measuring and for evaluating
of these new types of scientific publications. In this paper we propose a
simple quantitative method which establishes indicators by measuring the
access/download pattern of OA documents and other web entities of a single web
server. The experimental indicators (search engine, backlink and direct access
indicator) are constructed based on standard local web usage data. This new
type of web-based indicator is developed to model the specific demand for
better study/evaluation of the accessibility, visibility and interlinking of
open accessible documents. We conclude that e-science will need new stable
e-indicators.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure
An Arakawa and Gins experimental teaching space : a feasibility study
This essay discusses the benefits of Arakawa and Gins procedural architecture for the development of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary learning environments. the discussion of how the body is engaged in knoelwdge acquisition leads to a feasibility study undertaken at an Australian University to determine how an experimental, sensory and perceptually-based learning space might be built given the T&L priorties and the fiscal climate in which universitioes curently operat
Making judgements about students making work : lecturersâ assessment practices in art and design.
This research study explores the assessment practices in two higher education art and design departments. The key aim of this research was to explore art and design studio assessment practices as lived by and experienced by art and design lecturers. This work draws on two bodies of pre existing research. Firstly this study adopted innovative methodological approaches that have been employed to good effect to explore assessment in text based subjects (think aloud) and moderation mark agreement (observation). Secondly the study builds on existing research into the assessment of creative practice. By applying thinking aloud methodologies into a creative practice assessment context the authors seek to illuminate the âin practiceâ rather than espoused assessment approaches adopted. The analysis suggests that lecturers in the study employed three macro conceptions of quality to support the judgement process. These were; the demonstration of significant learning over time, the demonstration of effective studentship and the presentation of meaningful art/design work
How can we measure Scotlandâs footprint? (and, once we have, what do we do with it?)
Recent months have seen a great deal of interest and consultation in Scotland regarding environmental and carbon accounting in general, and the calculation and use of ecological and carbon footprints in particular. Ecological footprints are concerned with the global impacts of our consumption decisions in terms of resource use (most commonly focussing on land use), while carbon footprints are concerned with the pollution side of the equation, carbon emissions around the world engendered by our consumption activities. Footprint measures are powerful pedagogic tools for raising interest in, and awareness of, ecological and sustainability issues, and have some valuable characteristics
Software tools for conducting bibliometric analysis in science: An up-to-date review
Bibliometrics has become an essential tool for assessing and analyzing the output of scientists, cooperation between
universities, the effect of state-owned science funding on national research and development performance and educational
efficiency, among other applications. Therefore, professionals and scientists need a range of theoretical and practical
tools to measure experimental data. This review aims to provide an up-to-date review of the various tools available
for conducting bibliometric and scientometric analyses, including the sources of data acquisition, performance analysis
and visualization tools. The included tools were divided into three categories: general bibliometric and performance
analysis, science mapping analysis, and libraries; a description of all of them is provided. A comparative analysis of the
database sources support, pre-processing capabilities, analysis and visualization options were also provided in order to
facilitate its understanding. Although there are numerous bibliometric databases to obtain data for bibliometric and
scientometric analysis, they have been developed for a different purpose. The number of exportable records is between
500 and 50,000 and the coverage of the different science fields is unequal in each database. Concerning the analyzed
tools, Bibliometrix contains the more extensive set of techniques and suitable for practitioners through Biblioshiny.
VOSviewer has a fantastic visualization and is capable of loading and exporting information from many sources. SciMAT
is the tool with a powerful pre-processing and export capability. In views of the variability of features, the users need to
decide the desired analysis output and chose the option that better fits into their aims
Measuring measuring: Toward a theory of proficiency with the Constructing Measures framework
This paper is relevant to measurement educators who are interested in the variability of understanding and use of the four building blocks in the Constructing Measures framework (Wilson, 2005). It proposes a uni-dimensional structure for understanding Wilsonâs framework, and explores the evidence for and against this conceptualization. Constructed and fixed choice response items are utilized to collect responses from 72 participants who range in experience and expertise with constructing measures. The data was scored by two raters and was analyzed with the Rasch partial credit model using ConQuest (1998). Guided by the 1999 Testing Standards, analyses of validity and reliability evidence provide support for the construct theory and limited uses of the instrument pending item design modifications
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Effects of an mHealth intervention for community health workers on maternal and child nutrition and health service delivery in India: protocol for a quasi-experimental mixed-methods evaluation.
INTRODUCTION:Millions of children in India still suffer from poor health and under-nutrition, despite substantial improvement over decades of public health programmes. The Anganwadi centres under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) provide a range of health and nutrition services to pregnant women, children <6âyears and their mothers. However, major gaps exist in ICDS service delivery. The government is currently strengthening ICDS through an mHealth intervention called Common Application Software (ICDS-CAS) installed on smart phones, with accompanying multilevel data dashboards. This system is intended to be a job aid for frontline workers, supervisors and managers, aims to ensure better service delivery and supervision, and enable real-time monitoring and data-based decision-making. However, there is little to no evidence on the effectiveness of such large-scale mHealth interventions integrated with public health programmes in resource-constrained settings on the service delivery and subsequent health and nutrition outcomes. METHODS AND ANALYSIS:This study uses a village-matched controlled design with repeated cross-sectional surveys to evaluate whether ICDS-CAS can enable more timely and appropriate services to pregnant women, children <12 months and their mothers, compared with the standard ICDS programme. The study will recruit approximately 1500 Anganwadi workers and 6000+ mother-child dyads from 400+ matched-pair villages in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. The primary outcomes are the proportion of beneficiaries receiving (a) adequate number of home visits and (b) appropriate level of counselling by the Anganwadi workers. Secondary outcomes are related to improvements in other ICDS services, and knowledge and practices of the Anganwadi workers and beneficiaries. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION:Ethical oversight is provided by the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects at the University of California at Berkeley, and the Suraksha Independent Ethics Committee in India. The results will be published in peer-reviewed journals and analysis data will be made public. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER:ISRCTN83902145
Alexandria: Extensible Framework for Rapid Exploration of Social Media
The Alexandria system under development at IBM Research provides an
extensible framework and platform for supporting a variety of big-data
analytics and visualizations. The system is currently focused on enabling rapid
exploration of text-based social media data. The system provides tools to help
with constructing "domain models" (i.e., families of keywords and extractors to
enable focus on tweets and other social media documents relevant to a project),
to rapidly extract and segment the relevant social media and its authors, to
apply further analytics (such as finding trends and anomalous terms), and
visualizing the results. The system architecture is centered around a variety
of REST-based service APIs to enable flexible orchestration of the system
capabilities; these are especially useful to support knowledge-worker driven
iterative exploration of social phenomena. The architecture also enables rapid
integration of Alexandria capabilities with other social media analytics
system, as has been demonstrated through an integration with IBM Research's
SystemG. This paper describes a prototypical usage scenario for Alexandria,
along with the architecture and key underlying analytics.Comment: 8 page
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