Support for graphicacy: a review of textbooks available to accounting students

This Teaching Note reports on the support available in textbooks for graphicacy that will help students understand the complexities of graphical displays. Graphical displays play a significant role in financial reporting, and studies have found evidence of measurement distortion and selection bias. To understand the complexities of graphical displays, students need a sound understanding of graphicacy and support from the textbooks available to them to develop that understanding. The Teaching Note reports on a survey that examined the textbooks available to students attending two Scottish universities. The support of critical graphicacy skills was examined in conjunction with textbook characteristics. The survey, which was not restricted to textbooks designated as required reading, examined the textbooks for content on data measurement and graphical displays. The findings highlight a lack of support for graphicacy in the textbooks selected. The study concludes that accounting educators need to scrutinize more closely the selection of textbooks and calls for more extensive research into textbooks as a pedagogic tool

Collecting and using student feedback on quality and standards of learning and teaching in Higher Education

This report was prepared for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) by a project team comprising SQW Limited, the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) at the Open University and NOP Research Group. The study had two main components: to identify good practice by higher education institutions (HEIs) in collecting quantitative and qualitative feedback from students and to make recommendations on the design and implementation of mechanisms for use by individual institutions. The focus of this part of the study is quality enhancement to make recommendations on the design and implementation of a national survey of recent graduates, the results of which would be published. This part of the study is focused on providing comparative information to assist applicants to higher education (HE). Fieldwork for the study was undertaken between September and December 2002. Written information on institutional processes was requested from all HEIs in England and visits were made to 20 HEIs. During these visits, discussions were held with staff and current students on both feedback procedures within the institutions and the potential value of a national graduate survey. More focused discussions on the National Survey were held with a further 50 students and a small pilot survey was undertaken over the Christmas period

Community learning and development training for professionals engaged in community regeneration and community planning

The study was commissioned by the Scottish Executive Development Department to identify training needs and current provision of community learning and development (CLD) training for a range of professionals (other than those formally qualified in CLD) who are engaged in community regeneration and community planning (Local Government in Scotland Act 2003). It was one of a series of studies emanating from the Scottish Executive response to the review: „Empowered to Practice – the future of community learning and development training in Scotland‟. One of the themes of the report taken up by the Scottish Executive was the need for; „wider opportunities for joint training with other disciplines such as teachers, librarians, college lecturers, health workers and social workers‟

Fuzzy Logic in Clinical Practice Decision Support Systems

Computerized clinical guidelines can provide significant benefits to health outcomes and costs, however, their effective implementation presents significant problems. Vagueness and ambiguity inherent in natural (textual) clinical guidelines is not readily amenable to formulating automated alerts or advice. Fuzzy logic allows us to formalize the treatment of vagueness in a decision support architecture. This paper discusses sources of fuzziness in clinical practice guidelines. We consider how fuzzy logic can be applied and give a set of heuristics for the clinical guideline knowledge engineer for addressing uncertainty in practice guidelines. We describe the specific applicability of fuzzy logic to the decision support behavior of Care Plan On-Line, an intranet-based chronic care planning system for General Practitioners

Proving Genocide? Forensic Expertise and the ICTY

This article works towards developing a theoretical framework outlining the premises and parameters under which forensic experts operate during various stages of international criminal investigations and the presentation of expert witness testimony in court.With reference to law and science literature, the article explores the reasons for undertaking resource-intensive forensic investigations; secondly it outlines the ways in which evidence is gathered and interpreted, the process of constructing ‘forensic truth’; and finally it examines what happens to ‘forensic truth’ once it enters the legal arena. The International Criminal Tribunal for the formerYugoslavia and its activities are used to illustrate the issues involved during the ‘forensic expertise meets international law’ interface. Specifically the forensic exhumations conducted around the Srebrenica events of July 1995 and their use in the Krstic¤ trial serve to contextualize the debate

Institutional Arrangements: A Gate Towards Sustainable Land Use

Various common problems can be observed of the ongoing land management processes in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. The problems appear mainly because of conflicting legislation, performance of procedures, political unwillingness, lack of capacity of the local municipalities and other public administration, insufficiency of information and people participation, lack of skills of the professionals and in public administration. Source of all the mentioned problems is insufficient understanding of the institutional setting of the land management processes. The aim of this contribution is to introduce the reader to the theory of the institutional economics and discuss its importance for systematisation of both the regulatory framework, i.e. institutions – ‘rules of the game’ and the procedures in the fields of territorial planning and real property formation. This theory provides a vocabulary to describe the balance between the regulatory structures (public sector) and the market forces (private sector) that will allow controlled growth and will be perceived as of general economic and social well being to the populace. Thus, the paper is intended to activate and urge politicians, governmental authorities, non-governmental organizations, academic staff and managers of private firms. This contribution also can be seen as a source for further development of concepts for analysis of the observed problems. Hence combining the theory with appropriate methodology may suggest, how to deal with the stated various problems. Monographic descriptive method and logical analysis have been used in this contribution

Inception report on the Technical Assistance study (T.A. No. 1481-PAK): Crop based irrigation operations in the NWFP

Irrigation systems / Irrigation practices / Cropping systems / Water requirements / Pakistan

Rethinking multiculturalism, reassessing multicultural education report 1

This report provides insights into the current practices of multicultural education and the opinions and understandings of New South Wales (NSW) public school teachers around increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in schools and the broader Australian community. The report is the outcome of the first stage of the Rethinking Multiculturalism/ Reassessing Multicultural Education (RMRME) Project, a three-year Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project between the University of Western Sydney, the NSW Department of Education and Communities (DEC) and the NSW Institute of Teachers. Surveying teachers about these and related matters seemed a useful first step in considering the state of multicultural education some forty years after its inception (Inglis, 2009). The project as a whole involved a state-wide survey – the focus of this report – as well as focus groups with teachers, parents and students in 14 schools in urban and regional NSW, and a professional learning program informing the implementation of action research projects in each school. Read also: Rethinking multiculturalism, reassessing multicultural education report 2: http://apo.org.au/node/42670 Rethinking multiculturalism, reassessing multicultural education report 3: http://apo.org.au/node/42671 &nbsp