The PLRB\u27s New Jurisdiction for Police and Firemen

The author examines a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court case conferring jurisdiction upon the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board to conduct policemen and firemen representation elections. The article notes that the decision did not define the parameters of the PLRB\u27s new jurisdiction and explores possible ranges of jurisdiction that may result

Assessing Pennsylvania\u27s Police and Fire Collective Bargaining as Its Silver Anniversary Approaches

In 1977, the Duquesne Law Review published an article by the author entitled The PLRB\u27s New Jurisdiction for Police and Firemen, 16 Duquesne L Rev 185 (1977-78). That article predicted how the Police and Firemen Collective Bargaining Act (Act 111) would evolve after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court\u27s Decision in Philadelphia Fire Officers\u27 Assn. v PLRB, 470 Pa 550, 369 A2d 259 (1977). Since that article\u27s publication, much of what was suggested has occurred. This article revisits the Fire Officers\u27 decision along with how Act 111 has progressed into a common law collective bargaining statute. It suggests a legislative solution to these problems, which may be more feasible now in light of almost 25 years of police and fire collective bargaining experience

Understanding and Improving the Culture of Hackathons: Think Global Hack Local

Hackathons bring developers, artists and designers together around a shared challenge: ideate, plan and create an application in a highly constrained time frame. A way to socialize, solve problems, and strengthen soft and hard skills, hackathons have grown tremendously in popularity in the last half decade. Despite this growth, it has been noted that females do not participate in hackathons with the same frequency as males. Some theorize that the hackathon culture is intimidating, does not appeal to women, or that it acts to amplify pre-existing cultural biases in computing. In this paper we introduce an alternative format for hackathons to address these issues. Think Global Hack Local (TGHL) is a non-competitive, community-based hackathon that connects non-profit organizations with student developers. Students donate a weekend to solve problems that these organizations otherwise lack the resources to solve. To date, there have been two TGHL hackathons, and we have observed many interesting divergences within the culture of TGHL in comparison to other hackathons. Response has been positive, and nearly all of them indicate that they would do it again. By adopting some of these ideas, we believe that hackathons can become an environment that is more inclusive and fun for all

No Tests Required: Comparing Traditional and Dynamic Predictors of Programming Success

Research over the past fifty years into predictors of programming performance has yielded little improvement in the identification of at-risk students. This is possibly because research to date is based upon using static tests, which fail to reflect changes in a student's learning progress over time. In this paper, the effectiveness of 38 traditional predictors of programming performance are compared to 12 new data-driven predictors, that are based upon analyzing directly logged data, describing the programming behavior of students. Whilst few strong correlations were found between the traditional predictors and performance, an abundance of strong significant correlations based upon programming behavior were found. A model based upon two of these metrics (Watwin score and percentage of lab time spent resolving errors) could explain 56.3% of the variance in coursework results. The implication of this study is that a student's programming behavior is one of the strongest indicators of their performance, and future work should continue to explore such predictors in different teaching contexts