HND Degree 'Top-up' Students' Perceptions of Their Experience at the University of Worcester: How Can Future Students' Experiences Be Improved?

This study investigated the experiences of students on a top-up degree course in the Institute of Sport and Exercise Science. Two students on the current ‘top-up’ were interviewed after having completed a HND at a partner college which revealed some useful insights in relation to their experiences on the degree course.For example, these students noted that as well as greater demands being placed on them at University compared with College, feedback was more relaxed on the HND. The students proposed the notion of a 'move-up' day prior to studying the degree top-up in order to settle students quickly onto their degree course and to smooth a successful transition onto the top- up course

Institute of Sport and Exercise Science Students’ Perception of Library Resources and Their Availability

While students appear to find library resources difficult to understand and use, they also seem reluctant to ask for help or unwilling to persevere when searching does not yield instant results. Focusing on undergraduate students studying Sport and Exercise Science, this paper discusses the findings of focus group interviews conducted with each undergraduate year group. The students were asked about their expectations of the library service and how they had acquired the information skills needed to use library resources. Students struggled to articulate individual skills required for successful library searches and frequently identified library instruction with boredom and frustration. The findings indicate that students expect using library resources to be easy, find librarian-led library teaching to be unrealistic, and develop a strategic searching strategy whereby as little time is spent on researching as possible. While primarily the views of ISES students, the findings could be applied to the wider student body. The paper recommends further investigation into students’ strategic searching and how this relates to their information literacy needs

Appreciative Inquiry – a Research Tool for Institutional Change

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) emanated from the PhD work of David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s. Founded upon social constructionist theories (Berger & Luckmann,1966, Gergen, 2009), it is an approach to organizational change that eschews former Organization Development (OD) deficit models in favour of a positive approach to change that builds a vision for the future based upon what already works well within an existing system. It also provides a framework for researching or evaluating different forms of professional practice, including learning, teaching and the student experience. Its self-empowering philosophy, effected through the ‘4-D’ process (Discover, Dream, Design and Destiny), is realized through the collaborative working of all stakeholders within an institution; through systematic participation in a jointly constructed vision of an organization’s future, they become an integral part of its success. At its core is the unconditional positive question, which seeks out the best of ‘what is’ in order to prompt the collective imagination to envision ‘what might be’. The use of AI within higher education in the UK is not yet well-developed and existing studies of the application of AI to this context have tended to focus principally on the areas of teaching and institutional change. It is suggested that through the publication of recent books such as ‘Appreciative Inquiry in Higher Education: A Transformative Force’ (Cockell, McArthur-Blair & Schiller, 2013), it will perhaps become more widely adopted in this context

The mediating effects of ICT upon music composition in the classroom

Composing is well-embedded into statutory classroom music in English schools and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has played an Increasing role in this activity. How ICT affects the composing process and the ways in which teaching and learning might need to change to make the most of the technology's potential are, however, not well understood. Extending the view that creativity is a normal feature of human existence to composing in the classroom, this thesis considers ICT to be a means for pupils to realise their potential without having acquired formal theoretical and practical musical skills.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

'Usemyability’ (UMA). An Investigation Into Whether an Online Employability Skills Audit Can Enhance Students Understanding of the Term Employability

This project was completed as part of the students as academic partners (SAPs) initiative. The project aimed to ascertain the current level of understanding surrounding students’ employability skills and how they may be improved. It was expected that through the use of an online self-audit tool ‘usemyability’ (UMA 1) students would be able to establish a benchmark from which to track their development across a range of 16 benchmarked employability skills. A baseline questionnaire was completed by 31 University of Worcester (UW) students to investigate their existing knowledge surrounding the concept of employability. Results suggested that students had a limited understanding of the term employability. Notably, students regarded employability as simply ‘getting a job’ (9 students suggested this) or ‘having skills’ (12 students noted this). Skills listed focussed around personal attributes (including reliability and confidence) illustrating discrepancies in what students think employers look for (attributes) and what employers actually look for (skills, literacy, being ICT efficient for example) (Archer & Davison, 2008). The UMA audit allowed students to document their skills and work experiences to date, as well as further educate students on employability skills. Students stated benefits associated with completing the UMA audit and provided relevant examples in support of this. A number of limitations to the project, including timing and length of the audit were identified by students. Further limitations identified by the researchers included the timing of the study within the academic year, low participation rates and attendance of participants on the day of the presentation of employability skills. A greater response sample is required to generalise the impact of the UMA audit on a wider scale

Employability and the UseMyAbility Online Tool: Raising Sports Students’ Awareness to Inform the Development of Their Skills and Attributes

The collaborative project UseMyAbility (UMA) sought to reduce discrimination and enhance disabled graduates’ employability through equipping them with the skills to match employability skills and attributes. An outcome from the project, completed in 2011, was a web-based tool which gave students advice on how to improve their employability. Subsequently, an online self-audit questionnaire was developed, which allowed students to record and map their employability skills and attributes. This paper reports on two projects that used this UMA online questionnaire with undergraduate sports students at a UK University. The first group were students undertaking a second-year Physical Education (PE) module and the second were students undertaking internships in a variety of sporting contexts. Drawing on data gained from questionnaires and student and mentor interviews, the two projects sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the UMA questionnaire for the students in these two contexts. It aimed to enhance students’ employability profiles, enable them to benchmark and track their development, provide practical help in preparing job applications, tackle interview questions and develop evidence-based curricula vitae. It is hoped that through identifying ways of adapting the use of the questionnaire to these contexts, learning from participant data from the completion of the questionnaires, and gaining a better understanding of students’ and mentors’ perceptions of its use, that insights may be gained that will aid the wider adoption of the online tool

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children - A resource for COVID-19 research:Antibody testing results, April – June 2021

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is a prospective population-based cohort which recruited pregnant women in 1990-1992 and has followed these women, their partners (Generation 0; G0) and their offspring (Generation 1; G1) ever since. The study reacted rapidly and repeatedly to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, deploying multiple online questionnaires and a previous home-based antibody test in October 2020. A second antibody test, in collaboration with ten other longitudinal population studies, was completed by 4,622 ALSPAC participants between April and June 2021. Of 4,241 participants with a valid spike protein antibody test result (8.2% were void), indicating antibody response to either COVID-19 vaccination or natural infection, 3,172 were positive (74.8%). Generational differences were substantial, with 2,463/2,555 G0 participants classified positive (96.4%) compared to 709/1,686 G1 participants (42.1%). Of 4,199 participants with a valid nucleocapsid antibody test result (9.2% were void), suggesting potential and recent natural infection, 493 were positive (11.7%); 248/2,526 G0 participants (9.8%) and 245/1,673 G1 participants (14.6%) tested positive, respectively. We also compare results for this round of testing to that undertaken in October 2020. Future work will combine these test results with additional sources of data to identify participants’ COVID-19 infection and vaccination status. These ALSPAC COVID-19 serology data are being complemented with linkage to health records and Public Health England pillar testing results as they become available, in addition to four previous questionnaire waves and a prior antibody test. Data have been released as an update to the previous COVID-19 datasets. These comprise: 1) a standard dataset containing all participant responses to all four previous questionnaires with key sociodemographic factors; and 2) individual participant-specific release files enabling bespoke research across all areas supported by the study. This data note describes the second ALSPAC antibody test and the data obtained from it

Making open data work for plant scientists

Despite the clear demand for open data sharing, its implementation within plant science is still limited. This is, at least in part, because open data-sharing raises several unanswered questions and challenges to current research practices. In this commentary, some of the challenges encountered by plant researchers at the bench when generating, interpreting, and attempting to disseminate their data have been highlighted. The difficulties involved in sharing sequencing, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics data are reviewed. The benefits and drawbacks of three data-sharing venues currently available to plant scientists are identified and assessed: (i) journal publication; (ii) university repositories; and (iii) community and project-specific databases. It is concluded that community and project-specific databases are the most useful to researchers interested in effective data sharing, since these databases are explicitly created to meet the researchers’ needs, support extensive curation, and embody a heightened awareness of what it takes to make data reuseable by others. Such bottom-up and community-driven approaches need to be valued by the research community, supported by publishers, and provided with long-term sustainable support by funding bodies and government. At the same time, these databases need to be linked to generic databases where possible, in order to be discoverable to the majority of researchers and thus promote effective and efficient data sharing. As we look forward to a future that embraces open access to data and publications, it is essential that data policies, data curation, data integration, data infrastructure, and data funding are linked together so as to foster data access and research productivity