A Wolf in Sheep���s Clothing? An analysis of student engagement with virtual learning environments.

The article is freely available on-line via The Higher Education Academy website.The growth in the use of virtual learning environments to support learning and teaching should be accompanied by research to examine their effectiveness. The aim of this study was twofold: a) To explore the views, opinions and experiences of student engagement or non-engagement in online learning activities; b) To use this knowledge to develop learning and teaching strategies that enhance student engagement with online learning activities. Focus groups were conducted with students studying leisure and tourism degree programmes to explore reasons for usage and non-usage of the online activities in the Wolverhampton Online Learning Framework (WOLF). Results identified issues related to student awareness, motivation, behaviour and learning approaches, assessment and technical factors. Findings from the study have implications for practice, including how to enhance the relevance of information, technical factors, enhancing awareness and links with assessment

Nominal Abstraction

Recursive relational specifications are commonly used to describe the computational structure of formal systems. Recent research in proof theory has identified two features that facilitate direct, logic-based reasoning about such descriptions: the interpretation of atomic judgments through recursive definitions and an encoding of binding constructs via generic judgments. However, logics encompassing these two features do not currently allow for the definition of relations that embody dynamic aspects related to binding, a capability needed in many reasoning tasks. We propose a new relation between terms called nominal abstraction as a means for overcoming this deficiency. We incorporate nominal abstraction into a rich logic also including definitions, generic quantification, induction, and co-induction that we then prove to be consistent. We present examples to show that this logic can provide elegant treatments of binding contexts that appear in many proofs, such as those establishing properties of typing calculi and of arbitrarily cascading substitutions that play a role in reducibility arguments.Comment: To appear in the Journal of Information and Computatio

The Uptake and Expected Impact of Electronic Stability Control (ESC) amongst the Australian Passenger Vehicle Fleet

Electronic Stability Program (ESP) is an in-vehicle active control system which acts in loss of control situations to stabilise a vehicle. Several studies have shown the road safety benefits of ESP in international contexts. However, little consideration has been given for factors which may inhibit the uptake and potential effectiveness of ESP amongst the Australian vehicle fleet. This study highlights some of these potential factors including the rate of uptake of ESP into the Australian new vehicle market, purchasing patterns, driver behaviour, culture and the media. Conclusions are drawn in terms of future research directions and good public policy to maximise the effects of ESP in Australia

Mining Measured Information from Text

We present an approach to extract measured information from text (e.g., a 1370 degrees C melting point, a BMI greater than 29.9 kg/m^2 ). Such extractions are critically important across a wide range of domains - especially those involving search and exploration of scientific and technical documents. We first propose a rule-based entity extractor to mine measured quantities (i.e., a numeric value paired with a measurement unit), which supports a vast and comprehensive set of both common and obscure measurement units. Our method is highly robust and can correctly recover valid measured quantities even when significant errors are introduced through the process of converting document formats like PDF to plain text. Next, we describe an approach to extracting the properties being measured (e.g., the property "pixel pitch" in the phrase "a pixel pitch as high as 352 {\mu}m"). Finally, we present MQSearch: the realization of a search engine with full support for measured information.Comment: 4 pages; 38th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR '15

Perceptions of and Experiences with the Indiana Teacher Evaluation System in Physical Education

Physical educators face a difficult task of using limited time and resources to fully impact students in the gymnasium. Physical education is labeled as a noncore subject with no standardized test to evaluate student learning. In Indiana, multiple types of teacher evaluation models are used in schools across the state, causing concerns of reliability and validity for educators. The purpose of this study was to describe physical educators’ perceptions of and experiences with the teacher evaluation system in the state of Indiana. Additionally, this research examined challenges faced by teachers as they adapted to teacher evaluation systems. Solutions to the evaluative mandates were sought to address the shortcomings of Indiana teacher evaluations in physical education

Comparing Mississippi\u27s Public University Graduation Rates for Community College Completers and Non-Completers

This study is based on the notion that in Mississippi, a large number of Mississippi community college academic students transfer to 4-year universities in-state, as is the case in Alabama (Sacksteder LaClair, 2010). Mississippi community colleges have had a hard time tracking students who leave the institution without graduating. This study sought to document the most accurate numbers in community college completers and discover how many of Mississippi’s community college students are successful at the university level. Data were collected on former community college students at five of the state’s eight public four-year universities. The study revealed that 82% of Mississippi community college students who transfer to the university achieve a level of success by either earning an Associate’s degree, a Bachelor’s degree or completing at least 30 hours of university coursework

The Oceanography and Modelling of the Pontevedra Ria (NW Spain)

A multidisciplinary study the oceanography of the Pontevedra Ria (NW Spain), including hydrography, biogeochemistiy and biogeochemical modelling, has been performed. The hydrographical variability of the Pontevedra Ria was dependent on freshwater inputs and upwelling of nutrient-rich East North Atlantic Central Water from the shelf. Intrusions of the Poleward Current were also detected during winter. A stratified box model approach predicted that upwelling water fluxes into the ria of 2-4x10³ m³ s-1, of which >30% rises to the surface waters inside the ria. Freshwater residence time varied from ~4-9 d in the central ria and 1-4 d in the internal ria. Nutrients concentrations showed a strong fluvial and oceanic signal, with a clear zone of near-bed aerobic remineralisation in the internal ria. Nutrient flux experiments showed that high nutrient fluxes, particularly ammonium (3.5 mg N mˉ² hˉ¹), coincided with period of high water influx to the ria. These were related to stirring of quasi-benthic phytodetrital fluff. Denitrification was a major fate for particulate organic nitrogen in the sediment, averaging 2.5 mg N m ˉ² h ˉ¹ for the spring and dry season. A non-steady state nutrient budget revealed that the central and internal zones of the Pontevedra Ria display different biogeochemical characteristics. Net community production (NCP) based on phosphate uptake was spatially and temporally variable, with rates of 9.6 and 20.2 mg C m ˉ² h ˉ¹ in central and internal rias in spring, respectively, and 30.3 and 29.0 mg C m ˉ² h ˉ¹ in the dry season. Previously unquantified benthic nutrient inputs were important, and up to 25% of NCP was due to the sediment nutrient flux in the dry season. Denitrification calculated with the nutrient budget equalled 1.82 and 5.66 mg N m ˉ² h ˉ¹ in the dry season in the central and internal ria, respectively, and was equal to 27 and 42% of dry season NCP. The robustness of the box model was questioned, and found to be an unsuitable modelling approach for the Rias Bajas. This had clear implications for predicting NCP and net nutrient budgets to the coastal zone. Salinity and temperature were simulated with the commercially-available simulation shell, ECoS, to within the analytical error of the observed data. Inorganic nutrient concentrations and benthic effluxes were qualitatively and quantitatively agreeable with observed data. Phytoplankton growth in ECoS was limited by up to 30% by phosphorus rather than nitrogen, as previously believed. The annual evolution of NCP was successfully reproduced by examining the chlorophyll-normalised rate of organic carbon production. Mean NCP In the spring and dry season was 46.5 and 147 mg c m ˉ² h ˉ¹, which agreed well with the literature. There were clear discrepancies between box model and ECoS-derived nutrient export to the Atlantic ocean. The definitions of constituent uptake and remineralisation processes between the two approaches were examined In the context of biogeochemical modelling and environmental management of the Rias Bajas