Transforming Learning Through Online Storytelling: : 'Making the News' Evaluation Report

This report presents the findings from an independent evaluation undertaken by the University of Hertfordshire of the ‘Making The News project’ as it functioned within the East of England Broadband Network region (E2BN). Making the News represents a set of simple tools that allow teachers and students to rapidly produce ‘news’ stories and publish them on line. It was developed by the Centre for New Media at the Open University in conjunction with E2BNFinal Published versio

Creating a framework for systems-based graphic analysis and the assessment of college-level introductory biology textbooks

Ecological literacy in students has become an increasing concern for educators. Mounting environmental problems along with a growing amount of nature deficit disorder seen in children and adults alike provides the impetus for research in this area. Since many college biology classes are modeled around the same style and emphasis found in the textbooks used for those courses, this provided an avenue for an examination of these materials. This research involved the selection of five popular introductory, college-level biology textbooks for analysis. Three rubrics were created to assess the graphical components of the introductory and ecology chapters in each textbook. The Systems-based Rubric (SR) was created to quantitatively assess the systems-based components of each graphic. The Tuftian Rubric (TR) was created to assess how well graphics comply with Tuftian rules of good graphics. The Ethnographic Systems-based Rubric (ESR) was created to qualitatively assess the systems-based nature of each graphic. The results of this analysis revealed that all of the textbooks examined, based upon analyzed graphics, could be classified as strongly Tuftian in nature. The results of this analysis also suggested that none of the textbooks assessed could be quantitative nor could they be qualitatively classified as strongly systems-based. Even when examining individual chapters of each book, all of the chapters were classified quantitatively and qualitatively as primarily reductionistic

Stories of the Skin: Exploring Women’s Skin through Oral History

The purpose of this oral history thesis is to examine women’s relationship with their skin, focusing on tattoos and scars that tell stories that are considered essential to a narrator’s identity. My initial research demonstrated that skin is inherently linked with the idea of self and the presentation of self to the outside world. I began this project with an interest in exploring the skin’s potential as a permanent physical archive, canvas, protective barrier and more. In order to do so, and to build on my academic research, it seemed obvious that oral history was an ideal vehicle because it would allow me to insert actual women’s voices into the conversation. While every narrator would have an individual story to tell, living with and interpreting the stories of our skin is a universal experience. The concentration on scars and tattoos (explained in greater detail below) would serve to narrow the focus. The project would be an attempt to give voice and agency to women who have something to say about what their skin says about them. My original interest in skin and tattoos and scars came about organically, from conversations about my own tattoos, entertaining story swapping about “battle scars”, and an extremely compelling article from the New York Times about young Israelis getting tattoos to match their grandparents’ Holocaust tattoos. The article struck me especially, because of the diverse reactions and charged conversations that the tattoos inspired. It left me thinking about tattoos and scars, and tattoos as scars, and what it means to have these memories permanently marked on our bodies. As I began my oral history work I was motivated by the potential that oral history had to bring these stories and themes to light and now I am excited to present them publicly through the project website (www.storiesoftheskin.com) and to start a larger conversation about skin and embodiment

Associations between physical activity in adolescence and health behaviours, well-being, family and social relations.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in International Journal of Health Promotion and Education on 16 September 2014, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14635240.2014.923287Across Europe and North America, few young people meet the recommended levels of physical activity (PA) of 1 hour of moderate to vigorous PA per day. However, the lives of young people cannot simply be polarised as either completely sedentary or active. Drawing on findings from the World Health Organization Health Behaviour in School-aged Children cross sectional international study, this paper examines the domains of adolescent life associated with young people's participation in overall PA, including health behaviours, social relationships and family activities. Consideration is also given to gender differences. Information in England was collected from 4404 students aged 11, 13 and 15 years, using anonymised self-completed questionnaires. Physical aspects of lifestyle were determined using internationally validated items for measuring PA that met international guidelines for activity and the frequency and duration of vigorous exercise undertaken during leisure activities. Separate analyses were conducted for boys and girls. Levels of PA and vigorous exercise were compared using the chi-squared test for trend. The findings draw attention to the value for the health and well-being of young people participating in some form of PA, even if they do not meet the recommended levels. Medium levels of PA appear to be associated with high levels of life satisfaction, self-rated health and an improved sense of body image. Significant health gains are likely to be made for adolescents in encouraging sedentary young people to undertake some form of PAPeer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Do grandparents matter? : The impact of Grandparenting on the wellbeing of children

This timely and important report shows the immense value of grandparents in 21st century family life. It reveals a unique relationship that exists between the older generation and the youngest: a relationship of love and trust that enables the children to use their grandparents as confidantes and counsellors as well as playmates and cookery instructors. The report shows that children value the non-critical support, emotional advice and guidance that grandparents offer and enjoy the quality time their grandparents give them. It also found that the relationship has benefits for grandparents adding to their raison d’être and contributing to their health and longevity. The report also notes the change in the nature of family relationships in Britain throughout the 20th century, from the extended family to the nuclear family to the current variety of relationships, formal and informal, in which both the elderly and the young suffer neglect. With today’s increased incidence of divorce and family breakdown, grandparents can sometimes provide the only stable family relationship in a child’s life, and yet grandparents often lose contact with their grandchildren during or after a divorce or relationship breakup and have no legal rights through the Family Court to continue offering loving care and support to their grandchildren. The report concludes that there is need for much greater understanding of the role and function of grandparents in family life today.Final Published versio

Eliminating bovine tuberculosis in cattle and badgers: insight from a dynamic model.

Bovine tuberculosis (BTB) is a multi-species infection that commonly affects cattle and badgers in Great Britain. Despite years of study, the impact of badgers on BTB incidence in cattle is poorly understood. Using a two-host transmission model of BTB in cattle and badgers, we find that published data and parameter estimates are most consistent with a system at the threshold of control. The most consistent explanation for data obtained from cattle and badger populations includes within-host reproduction numbers close to 1 and between-host reproduction numbers of approximately 0.05. In terms of controlling infection in cattle, reducing cattle-to-cattle transmission is essential. In some regions, even large reductions in badger prevalence can have a modest impact on cattle infection and a multi-stranded approach is necessary that also targets badger-to-cattle transmission directly. The new perspective highlighted by this two-host approach provides insight into the control of BTB in Great Britain.The work and E.B.-P.’s fellowship was funded by the EPSRC (EP/H027270/1). J.L.N.W. is supported by the Alborada Trust, the RAPIDD program of the Science & Technology Directorate, US Department of Homeland Security, the Fogarty International Center, US National Institutes of Health, the European Union FP7 project ANTIGONE (contract number 278976) and by BBSRC grant BB/I012192/1.This is the final version. It was first published by Royal Society Publishing at http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1808/20150374

Flint of Outrage

Officials replaced safe water sources with contaminated water sources for tens of thousands of people living in Flint, Michigan, from April 2014 to October 2015. Overwhelming evidence indicates that the officials knew the water was potentially harmful to residents’ health and property. This unfathomable disregard for the residents of Flint sparked national outrage and prompted criminal charges as well as multiple civil suits. Residents’ civil claims included two strands of substantive due process: that the actions infringed residents’ fundamental liberty rights to bodily integrity and to state protection from harmful acts by third parties, and that the government actions “shocked the conscience.” The litigants also raised equal protection arguments that government targeted the community based on race and poverty. This Article makes three claims. First, it asserts that fundamental rights and equal protection arguments that challenge the denial of uncontaminated water face the serious, perhaps insurmountable obstacles that plague any call for new or expanded constitutional rights. Constitutional law is clunky and often formalistic. Doctrine and principles of judicial restraint here militate against categorically elevated judicial scrutiny—which we call thick rights strategies—of these and similar public officials’ actions. Moreover, the thick rights strategies may entail liability questions that are not—as yet—judicially manageable. Second, it asserts that “shocks the conscience” arguments offer a viable alternative to a thick rights strategy. Properly understood, this test enforces a liberty baseline, even absent a fundamental right or suspect classification. This thin rights test is properly reserved for worst-case scenarios, not for garden-variety government blunders. Flint qualified. Third, it argues that this constitutional baseline liberty may apply to all environmental cases in which shocking government conduct elides established fundamental rights or suspect classification categories. Invoking it would not open judicial floodgates or risk undue judicial intrusion into regulatory matters better left to other government branches. It would maintain a difficult-to-flunk but critical liberty limit on extreme official disregard for human wellbeing and environmental justice. It also would provide space for the development of a potential fundamental right to uncontaminated water while allowing public airing of the serious harms to life, the failure of government processes, the citizen powerlessness, and the grave environmental harms that threaten multiple communities but impose their most horrific costs on the most vulnerable people. The Flint tragedy offers a constitutional cautionary tale that should be noted and heeded. “The Flint water crisis is a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction, and environmental injustice.

The language of pain ? better requirements for pain tools

We describe a co-design method for development of an assessment tool for chronic pain. Here, by taking a "research through design" approach, we visualized and shared various strands of our domain knowledge. From this, a common understanding of the relevant issues was seen to emerge, which in turn facilitated creativity among the group. Thereafter, a collective proposal for a pain assessment tool was formulated After outlining this proposal, we move on to argue that, based on our experience this method provides a useful platform for interdisciplinary collaboration in healthcare technology development