What Are We Doing with the Website: Transition, Templates, and User Experience in One Special Collections Library

[Excerpt] At the Eberly Family Special Collections Library (SCL), we have found that our website is often the first place a researcher will look to learn about our repository. Our online web presence is a business card, our chance to make a positive first impression. While our library, among others, has devoted time and resources to the development of new access tools and discovery layers, we have learned that our online presence also needs updates, revisions, and improvements. New tools and access points are valuable, but we can also improve existing tools even as we look forward to new developments in access and discovery. Through conscious efforts to include end users’ feedback in our website design decisions, we create more effective online tools. Our website is a crucial component of our efforts to direct users to our collections, and to publicize our services and programs. In this same vein, our end users can contribute to this design partnership through dedicated user experience testing. The SCL experimented with collaborative decision-making with its website committee, as well as with user experience testing in order to support our requests for additional web development work from the Libraries’ Information Technology department (I-Tech). Through this process, our library gained a more holistic understanding of the needs of online special collections and archives users; we also learned how to communicate more effectively between the department who worked with end users (SCL) and the department performing the actual web development work (I-Tech). While development work was limited to working within the mandatory web template, our user experience testing and the efforts of our internal website committee resulted in a better online experience for our stakeholders, based on the feedback we received from usability testing. Although our website is always a work in progress, we feel that we were able to develop practical ways to adjust to a website migration within in a dispersed and hierarchical information technology environment

Assessing Mechanical Performance of Dissimilar Steel Systems Made Via Wire-Arc Additive Manufacturing

Hot stamping is part of a specific type of metalworking procedure widely used in the automotive industry. This research seeks to help make hot stamp tooling component production more cost-effective by using large-scale additive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing can produce dissimilar steel components that can be more cost-effective and time-efficient and allow for complex geometries to be made. A dissimilar steel system consisting of 410 martensitic stainless steel and AWS ER70S-6 mild steel is proposed to make hot stamps, making them more cost-efficient. However, the material interface\u27s mechanical behavior in 410SS-mild steel additively manufactured material systems is not well understood. This research seeks to find how these dissimilar hot stamps can potentially fail during service. To assess the mechanical behavior of the material interface, mechanical testing by way of hardness testing, thermal expansion testing, fatigue testing, and microscopic imaging were performed. Samples were heat-treated, and fatigue tests were designed to run for 1200 cycles at a temperature range of 200-600$^{\circ}$C. Fatigue test results show that, as expected, all four samples went through plastic deformation, with hardness test results used to confirm this behavior. Microscopy was done to show the post-test microstructure that shows potential evidence of plastic deformation sites. One of the materials in the dissimilar system did not meet the hardness requirements for hot stamping applications, but recommendations are made to address this

The What, The Why and The How of Testing in The Teaching and Learning of English

Testing is the most important component of the English teaching and learning mechanism. It paves the ground for the teacher to evaluate the effectiveness of the syllabus as well as the methods and materials he is employing. It also engages, in a systematic fashion, all the factors that affect learning process. This study proposes dynamic views on the prevalent concepts of testing with a special focus on the matter of Classroom Tests. Moreover, the study aims to make a significant attempt to examine the vital problems concerning test-construction, test-management and test-evaluation, and suggest some practical clues for the redress of emerging problems. The study also puts forth contributory recommendations for making testing procedures more effective and more rewarding. It tends to establish a firm opinion that approaches to testing procedures do not have any demarcation boundary, particularly in view of an array of language testing alternatives and emerging new language testing formats. Therefore, they need to be reviewed, systematized and streamlined from time to time, so that they may pragmatically serve the teaching and learning goals of English as FL/SL. In this study, it is intended to postulate that it is on the basis of the classroom environment, the level of learners, their degree of motivation, and their parameter of interests that the English teacher must make final decisions in promoting modifications and innovations to the ways of testing. Our institutions and universities must also organize training programs and workshops in the areas of testing to offer opportunities to concerning teachers to upgrade their knowledge in the what, why and how of testing

Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Lung Cancer Screening Health Belief Scales

Background: Lung cancer screening is a recent recommendation for long-term smokers. Understanding individual health beliefs about screening is a critical component in future efforts to facilitate patient-provider conversations about screening participation. Objective: The aim of this study was to describe the development and psychometric testing of 4 new scales to measure lung cancer screening health beliefs (perceived risk, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, self-efficacy). Methods: In phase I, 4 scales were developed from extensive literature review, item modification from existing Breast and Colorectal Cancer Screening Health Belief Scales, focus groups with long-term smokers, and evaluation/feedback from a panel of 10 content experts. In phase II, we conducted a survey of 497 long-term smokers to assess the final scales’ reliability and validity. Results: Phase I: content validity was established with the content expert panel. Phase II: internal consistency reliability of the scales was supported with Cronbach’s α’s ranging from .88 to .92. Construct validity was established with confirmatory factor analysis and testing for differences between screeners and nonscreeners in theoretically proposed directions. Conclusions: Initial testing supports the scales are valid and reliable. These new scales can help investigators identify long-term smokers more likely to screen for lung cancer and are useful for the development and testing of behavioral interventions regarding lung cancer screening. Implications for Practice: Development of effective interventions to enhance shared decision making about lung cancer screening between patients and providers must first identify factors influencing the individual’s screening participation. Future efforts facilitating patient-provider conversations are better informed by understanding the perspective of the individual making the decision

Developing game awareness, perception and decision-making in elite youth footballers

In football, elite players appear to have more time and space, understand the pattern of the game, make better decisions with the ball and be one step ahead of their opponents. Some players are anecdotally believed to ‘just have it’. This study examined the process of perception-decision-execution during skill acquisition within football and whether training focussed on cognition and perception leads to players’ decision-making being improved. There appears to be a gap in both the research and application in the sporting context as to the role and trainability of decision-making in football and whether greater perception of the in-game environment contributes to better decision-making. The aim of the study was to examine the effects of multi-task and cognitive effort training during football practice and to determine the impact of these methods on perception and decision-making regarding a player’s first touch in the match environment. The study involved an experimental design using a control trial during the intervention. Players from two teams (N=31, age M=14.18, SD=0.55), competing in the NSW National Youth Premier League (NYPL) were divided into control and intervention groups and completed testing at three time points (pre-, post-intervention and retention). A training intervention was conducted replacing the 20 minute traditional passing practice component of the training. The intervention consisted of cognitive load exercises based on first touch ball manipulation and movements commonly found in football. The effectiveness of the training intervention was assessed via three methods; a video-based decision-making test using 20 video clips with players depicting their first touch, a questionnaire self-assessing decision-making and expert analysis of individuals’ game performance from footage of games. Results indicate that the altered training environment was equally effective to traditional passing practices in all three measures used in the study. There was a significant difference in the video-based testing (p < .01), for both the control and intervention groups between pre-test (M=7.196) and post-test (M=10.714) and between pre-test (M=7.196) and retention test (M=10.750) supporting previous studies that on field training positively influences decision-making in video-based tests. The questionnaire revealed players self-assessed their decision-making ability at a constant level across both the control and intervention groups. Game performance in the match environment indicated players made less poor decisions leading to losing possession, but did not improve decision-making to create more scoring chances. The impact of the altered training environment on players across the three measures are discussed along with the implications of the results for the development of decision-making in youth football. Recommendations are made for the scope and focus of future research into training and testing decision-making through cognitive load training

Designing The English Argumentative Essay Writing Test Based on Critical Thinking Skills

Designing the argumentative essay test instrument based on critical thinking skills is the step to produce the writing test instrument used for measuring the students’ performance in writing the argumentative essay with critical thinking skills. This study aimed at measuring the validity and reliability of the argumentative essay writing instrument test with critical thinking skills. The procedure to create the writing test instrument credible was conducted by testing the instrument valid and reliable. The process of validating is through content validity and expert validation. The process of making the instrument reliable was done by checking the score of the students tested in trying out. The result of validating and making the instrument reliable was stated effective for use to get the data collection. Either pretest or posttest of the instrument in each component is stated reliable and it affirms the reliability of the instrument. The notes from the validator of the instrument are in line with the statistics stating that the instrument can be used for collecting the data. As a result, the writing test instrument was ready to use for the research. It is suggested that this instrument can be used for other relevant issues and studied more deeply for the next relevant studies

Classical Out-of-Distribution Detection Methods Benchmark in Text Classification Tasks

State-of-the-art models can perform well in controlled environments, but they often struggle when presented with out-of-distribution (OOD) examples, making OOD detection a critical component of NLP systems. In this paper, we focus on highlighting the limitations of existing approaches to OOD detection in NLP. Specifically, we evaluated eight OOD detection methods that are easily integrable into existing NLP systems and require no additional OOD data or model modifications. One of our contributions is providing a well-structured research environment that allows for full reproducibility of the results. Additionally, our analysis shows that existing OOD detection methods for NLP tasks are not yet sufficiently sensitive to capture all samples characterized by various types of distributional shifts. Particularly challenging testing scenarios arise in cases of background shift and randomly shuffled word order within in domain texts. This highlights the need for future work to develop more effective OOD detection approaches for the NLP problems, and our work provides a well-defined foundation for further research in this area.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, Association for Computational Linguistic

The assessment of perceptual-cognitive and decision-making abilities for the prediction of talent in Australian rules football

Talent identification (TID) is a vital component within the recruitment process for all sporting bodies and organisations. Given the considerable influence it may have on the success of a team, substantial resources are invested in identifying young athletes with the most potential for the development of expertise. Successful performance in team sports requires an athlete to have a unique combination of physical, technical and tactical skills. Such a combination allows athletes to compensate for different areas of weaknesses in the dynamic nature of game play. However, traditional TID does not allow athletes to showcase this multi-factorial element, but instead utilises mono-dimensional approaches, such as testing only physical fitness. Thus, forecasting longitudinal performance based upon one element of effective play (e.g. physical), fails to provide sufficient information for selectors to make informed decisions and leads to biased identification. In addition, TID uses a subjective assessment for the tactical decision-making performance, whereby recruiters watch game footage to determine a player’s decision-making ability based on their own perspectives and experiences. This type of assessment is problematic as it leaves assessments open to conscious or below conscious biases, due to conflicting opinions of what constitutes good play. The purpose of the current Doctoral study was to address the current limitations in talent identification practices and explore accessible additions to the current battery of tests, with an emphasis on decision-making. This thesis examines the tactical decision-making skill requirements within Australian Rules (AR) football to identify underlying mechanisms of elite decision-making. To achieve this, we measured eye-movement behaviour and related verbal explanations for decisions. The research presented in this thesis is divided into three studies. The first study (Chapter 2) explores perceptual-cognitive and decision-making skills in elite senior AR football players. This is followed by a longitudinal study (Chapter 3) which examines perceptual-cognitive and decision-making skill for elite junior AR football players across an eighteen-month time period. These studies form the foundation for the proposed testing items in study three which is a proof of concept, outlining a protocol design that quantifies perceptual-cognitive and decision-making skill in a manner not used in current AR football TID testing programs. The research findings contribute an important body of research to the study of TID by providing a conceptually translatable means through which the development of an objective protocol design approach can be undertaken in the future, thus ensuring that objective measurements of all determinants of game play are assessed and in turn creating a more comprehensive TID procedure

Software component testing : a standard and the effectiveness of techniques

This portfolio comprises two projects linked by the theme of software component testing, which is also often referred to as module or unit testing. One project covers its standardisation, while the other considers the analysis and evaluation of the application of selected testing techniques to an existing avionics system. The evaluation is based on empirical data obtained from fault reports relating to the avionics system. The standardisation project is based on the development of the BC BSI Software Component Testing Standard and the BCS/BSI Glossary of terms used in software testing, which are both included in the portfolio. The papers included for this project consider both those issues concerned with the adopted development process and the resolution of technical matters concerning the definition of the testing techniques and their associated measures. The test effectiveness project documents a retrospective analysis of an operational avionics system to determine the relative effectiveness of several software component testing techniques. The methodology differs from that used in other test effectiveness experiments in that it considers every possible set of inputs that are required to satisfy a testing technique rather than arbitrarily chosen values from within this set. The three papers present the experimental methodology used, intermediate results from a failure analysis of the studied system, and the test effectiveness results for ten testing techniques, definitions for which were taken from the BCS BSI Software Component Testing Standard. The creation of the two standards has filled a gap in both the national and international software testing standards arenas. Their production required an in-depth knowledge of software component testing techniques, the identification and use of a development process, and the negotiation of the standardisation process at a national level. The knowledge gained during this process has been disseminated by the author in the papers included as part of this portfolio. The investigation of test effectiveness has introduced a new methodology for determining the test effectiveness of software component testing techniques by means of a retrospective analysis and so provided a new set of data that can be added to the body of empirical data on software component testing effectiveness