Multiobjective Line Balancing Game:Collaboration and Peer Evaluation

We introduce a spreadsheet-based game, the multiobjective line balancing (MOLB) game, to teach assembly line balancing as a common topic of discussion in operations research, operations management, supply chain management, or management science courses at the undergraduate or graduate level. The MOLB game was designed based on the triple bottom line framework, in which the economic, social, and environmental aspects of line balancing decisions are simultaneously taken into account. The MOLB game can be played in teams of three or four students. First, each team receives unique information for balancing an assembly line. Each team should find as many feasible balances as possible in a collaborative form and then send the Pareto solution set and the best found solution to a peer team. In the second round of the game, the teams assess the results of a peer team first by trying to find infeasible or non-Pareto solutions and second by attempting to improve on the provided solutions. Finally, the reviewer team presents the results of the peer-review process to the entire class.</p

An analysis of the environment and competitive dynamics of management research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper examines some of the controversies facing business schools in their future evolution and pays particular attention to their competitive positioning as centres of management research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper combines and builds on current literature to provide an analytic overview of the environment and competitive challenges to management research in business schools. Findings – The paper assesses the impacts of a globalized environment and ever-changing competitive dynamics, for example in terms of the supply of high-quality faculty, on the activity of management research in business schools. It points out that research impacts must be judged not only in terms of theoretical development but also managerial and policy impact. However, managerial impact is difficult to measure and the “voice of practice” must be carefully identified. Originality/value – The paper identifies the current challenges for undertaking innovative research in business schools in light of their competitive environment. Three interrelated conjectures focusing particularly on managerial impact are raised which identify problems and limitations of current debates on management research in business schools

Solved! Making the case for collaborative problem-solving

This report argues that the ability to solve problems with others is a crucial skill for our young people in the workplace of the future but the current education system does little to support it. Key findings Collaborative problem-solving (CPS) is an increasingly important skill to teach young people in order to prepare them for the future. Despite strong evidence for its impact, CPS is rarely taught in schools but if structured well it can reinforce knowledge and improve attainment. Significant barriers exist for teachers implementing this practice, from behaviour management to curriculum coverage, to task-design. For CPS to gain ground, a concerted shift is needed including teacher training, better resources and system level support. This report is part of Nesta’s ongoing commitment to equipping young people with the skills they need to succeed. It makes a series of recommendations on how organisations and policymakers can help support and embrace the implementation of CPS. Nesta is following this up with a series of small-scale pilots of aligned programmes in order to evaluate impact and explore how CPS can be implemented in a range of practical settings. Policy recommendations Stimulate production of quality collaborative problem-solving (CPS) resources and training, from primary education onwards. Fund existing, aligned programmes to scale and evaluate impact. Educate and involve the out-of-school learning sector and volunteer educators. Develop smarter collaborative problem-solving assessment methods. Help higher education organisations and MOOCs to track what works

Shedding Rights, Shredding Rights: A Critical Examination of Students\u27 Privacy Rights and the Special Needs Doctrine After Earls

On June 27, 2002, the United States Supreme Court held that all students participating in extracurricular activities in public schools may be subjected to random, suspicionless drug testing. The holding, in itself, is not terribly remarkable, as the decision in Board of Education of I.S.D. 92 of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma v. Earls follows a developing pattern among public schools in this country. Further, the Earls case simply broadens the right of the state to randomly drug test students, without individualized suspicion, that this same court announced a mere seven years earlier in Vernonia v. Acton. What is remarkable about Earls, and what may be disconcerting to those clinging to the notion that students\u27 rights entitle them to Fourth Amendment protection at school, is that Earls undoubtedly will be the necessary link between testing those engaging in voluntary activities, as the athletes in Vernonia and the Academic Team member in Earls, to the true target of such expansive suspicionless testing policies: all public school students. Earls represents a problematic break with past application of the Fourth Amendment in school cases. Earls goes beyond the holding in Acton by broadening the application of the special needs doctrine to all students. The justifications underlying Acton--safety in athletic competition and a demonstrated drug problem among students athletes--were not present in Earls. Rather, Earls breaks with precedent by allowing the liberalization of the special needs doctrine in school cases and finding that drug use among American teens and elementary students serves as an appropriate special need to support suspicionless drug testing.\u27 In this manner, Earls is not true to Acton and ignores crucial policy justifications for dispensing with the Fourth Amendment warrant and probable cause requirements that the Acton majority underscored. Likewise, Earls breaks with precedent in the special needs area by allowing the global problem of drug use generally to provide ample basis for the suspicionless drug testing of an identifiable group: elementary and secondary public school students. Accordingly, Earls represents two problematic departures from stare decisis. In addition, the Earls case, written in seemingly limitless breadth, provides the requisite step between testing those involved in athletics and other extracurricular activities and those in the general student population that we fear, due to self-disclosed surveys or medical data, must be using illicit drugs. For this reason, Earls single-handedly sounds the death knell of the assurance that students do not shed their Constitutional rights at the school house gate. Post- Earls, students absolutely shed their constitutional right to be free from suspicionless searches regardless of whether the student\u27s school has any demonstrated drug problem and regardless of whether there is any demonstrated safety or special need attendant to the search. Thus, while the special needs doctrine has consistently been limited to prevent full-scale devaluation of the Fourth Amendment\u27s warrant and probable cause requirements, Earls suggests that students and youth fall outside this general limitation. Neither Acton\u27s limited holding and requirement that a compelling drug or safety problem be actually present at the school nor the special needs doctrine requirement for some specific demonstration of a special safety need as to a particular group will delimit application of the Fourth Amendment at public schools after Earls. With the resurrection and strengthening of the in loco parentis concept, the Supreme Court has given license to schools to continue invading the personal privacy of public school children to ensure that these wards are not using or abusing illicit drugs--either on campus or in the privacy of their homes. This article will trace the devolution of students\u27 rights to privacy, pursuant to the Fourth Amendment, beginning with T.L.O. v. New Jersey. Next, the article will consider the elastic application of the court-created special needs doctrine, particularly as applied in drug testing cases and in school settings. In this section, the author will note the traditional requirements for application of the special needs doctrine and distinguish the Supreme Court\u27s approach to special needs cases when the subjects are children. Finally, the article will consider the recent application of the special needs doctrine in the school setting by comparing the Vernonia and Earls opinions and project their future application. While at one time the Supreme Court assured society that [t]he prisoner and schoolchild stand in wholly different circumstances, that pronouncement is subject to challenge in both letter and spirit. Post-Vernonia, post-Columbine, and now, post-Earls, schools have become a place where safety concerns reign paramount to challenges against zero tolerance policies and Fourth Amendment protections. Schools are increasingly becoming places where police and state presence are both seen and felt. And while safety concerns for students and teachers remain valid, we cannot, we must not, lose sight of the pronouncement in Brown v. Board of Education, that [today, education [remains] perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. The lessons we teach our children--particularly those relating to the protection of their rights in times of fear and crisis--will eventually have broad consequences on our society. After all, we are today educating the leaders of tomorrow

Criminal intent or cognitive dissonance: how does student self plagiarism fit into academic integrity?

The discourse of plagiarism is speckled with punitive terms not out of place in a police officer's notes: detection, prevention, misconduct, rules, regulations, conventions, transgression, consequences, deter, trap, etc. This crime and punishment paradigm tends to be the norm in academic settings. The learning and teaching paradigm assumes that students are not filled with criminal intent, but rather are confused by the novel academic culture and its values. The discourse of learning and teaching includes: development, guidance, acknowledge, scholarly practice, communicate, familiarity, culture. Depending on the paradigm adopted, universities, teachers, and students will either focus on policies, punishments, and ways to cheat the system or on program design, assessments, and assimilating the values of academia. Self plagiarism is a pivotal issue that polarises these two paradigms. Viewed from a crime and punishment paradigm, self plagiarism is an intentional act of evading the required workload for a course by re-using previous work. Within a learning and teaching paradigm, self plagiarism is an oxymoron. We would like to explore the differences between these two paradigms by using self plagiarism as a focal point

Leading the Local: Teachers Union Presidents Speak on Change, Challenges

Presidents of 30 local teachers unions in six states speak candidly about their views on a number of education issues, revealing that they are focused on far more than the traditional union priorities of wages, hours, working conditions, and due process for their members

Induction of humoral immune response to multiple recombinant Rhipicephalus appendiculatus antigens and their effect on tick feeding success and pathogen transmission

BACKGROUND: Rhipicephalus appendiculatus is the primary vector of Theileria parva, the etiological agent of East Coast fever (ECF), a devastating disease of cattle in sub-Saharan Africa. We hypothesized that a vaccine targeting tick proteins that are involved in attachment and feeding might affect feeding success and possibly reduce tick-borne transmission of T. parva. Here we report the evaluation of a multivalent vaccine cocktail of tick antigens for their ability to reduce R. appendiculatus feeding success and possibly reduce tick-transmission of T. parva in a natural host-tick-parasite challenge model. METHODS: Cattle were inoculated with a multivalent antigen cocktail containing recombinant tick protective antigen subolesin as well as two additional R. appendiculatus saliva antigens: the cement protein TRP64, and three different histamine binding proteins. The cocktail also contained the T. parva sporozoite antigen p67C. The effect of vaccination on the feeding success of nymphal and adult R. appendiculatus ticks was evaluated together with the effect on transmission of T. parva using a tick challenge model. RESULTS: To our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of the anti-tick effects of these antigens in the natural host-tick-parasite combination. In spite of evidence of strong immune responses to all of the antigens in the cocktail, vaccination with this combination of tick and parasite antigens did not appear to effect tick feeding success or reduce transmission of T. parva. CONCLUSION: The results of this study highlight the importance of early evaluation of anti-tick vaccine candidates in biologically relevant challenge systems using the natural tick-host-parasite combination