Spot the Difference! Visual plagiarism in the visual arts.

Over recent years there has been considerable investment in the use of technology to identify sources of text-based plagiarism in universities. However, students of the visual arts are also required to complete numerous pieces of visual submissions for assessment, and yet very little similar work has been undertaken in the area of non-text based plagiarism detection. The Spot the Difference! project (2011-2012), funded by JISC and led by the University for the Creative Arts, seeks to address this gap by piloting the use of visual search tools developed by the University of Surrey and testing their application to support learning and teaching in the arts and specifically to the identification of visual plagiarism. Given that most commonly used search technologies rely on text, the identification and evidencing of visual plagiarism is often left to the knowledge and experience of academic staff, which can potentially result in inconsistency of detection, approach, policies and practices. This paper outlines the work of the project team, who sought to investigate the nature, scope and extent of visual plagiarism in the arts education sector

Despite some progress, the Olympics is still an uneven playing field

First paragraph: In just a few days, over 200 nations will gather in Rio for the opening ceremony of what is, without doubt, the biggest sporting party in the world. The greatest athletes will be gearing up to demonstrate their abilities and countries will be eager to see if their investment in elite sport over the last four years pays off and produces medals.  Access this article on The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/despite-some-progress-the-olympics-is-still-an-uneven-playing-field-6285

Regionalisation - Change in the Amateur Swimming Association

At the ASA Annual Council in 2002, a paper was presented which dealt with the government’s commitment to the regionalisation of government in England. This paper set out an intention to decentralise Sport England. The most significant impact of this to swimming was that most funding would subsequently be devolved to, and allocated by, the Sport England regions. ASA Council recognised that the ASA districts were not aligned to Sport England regions and in order to maximise direct and indirect benefits of funding, it was felt necessary to review the Boundaries of the then existing districts. The review process led to a proposal of 8 new regions. These were: South East South West East London East Midlands West Midlands North East North West It was proposed that each of the new regions would be coterminous with a Sport England region with the exception of the North East Region which would reflect two. A 12 month ‘shadowing period’ was proposed and regionalisation became operation on October 1st 2005. This report sets out the process followed and evaluates this process and the initial impacts of regionalisation from a variety of stakeholder viewpoints. It is recognised that regionalisation is in its infancy and the intention is not to determine whether regionalisation has been successful, rather to provide an evaluation of the process followed

Keeping swimmers swimming: The capacity of swimming clubs

The Department of Culture Media and Sport has signed a Public Service Agreement (PSA) with Sport England with explicit targets to increase participation in sport and active recreation. Sport England is now directing funding towards organisations and programmes which help to meet the relevant PSA target. As a consequence, the asa has worked towards increasing the number who participate in active sports at least 12 times a year by 3 per cent, and increasing the number who engage in at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity level sport, at least three times a week by 3 per cent. It is not anticipated that this PSA target will change significantly moving into the next funding agreement 2009 –13

Stakeholder Satisfaction with the ASA

Stakeholder satisfaction is of natural concern to all organisations that wish to function effectively. It is of greater concern to those organisations, such as NGBs who need to consider the satisfaction of both member and non-member groups as this often leads to diverse and conflicting stakeholder objectives. It is therefore important that solid research evidence is available regarding stakeholder satisfaction in order for the ASA to understand stakeholder requirements and to plan effectively. In order to do this, the ASA commissioned the Institute of Sport and Leisure Policy at Loughborough University to carry out a five year longitudinal assessment of satisfaction with the services of the ASA. This report sets out the findings of the first stage of the research, which primarily constitutes a benchmarking of levels of member satisfaction in order to identify areas for development and to provide a standard against which to assess future levels of satisfaction. The report begins with an introduction to the concept of satisfaction and how it is formed and then presents the methods followed in this first phase. This is followed by a presentation of the results of the initial work on expectations and the results of the membership survey. Recommendations from this are presented and the report concludes with an outline of the work for the next two years

How sports get chosen for the Olympics

First paragraph: A spokesperson for the ancient sport of jousting recentlymade a casefor its inclusion in the Olympic Games based on the technical skills and physical prowess required to be successful. She suggested these were as high or higher than many sports already included in the programme. If only it was that simple.  Access this article on The Conversation website: https://theconversation.com/how-sports-get-chosen-for-the-olympics-6291

From Jeu DEsprit to Exact Science: Speculation, Science, and Literary Expression in the US, 1870-1895

From Jeu D’Esprit to Exact Science: Speculation, Science, and Literary Expression in the US, 1870-1895 argues that as the nineteenth century closes, speculative prerogatives become practically forbidden as a motive for scientific inquiry, yet more common in literary writing and other imaginative extrapolations. Linking this development to two metascientific concepts, gradualism and descriptionism, which come to fruition in the second half of the century, I explore how a variety of texts, including novels, short stories, editorials, and scientific reports of the 1870s, 80s, and 90s, advance and confront these concepts. The introduction establishes 1870-1895 as a period of diverse definitions, prerogatives, and print mediations of science. Each subsequent chapter examines an element of this cacophony. Chapter two, “Speculation, Extraction, and Polytechnical Education in The Gilded Age,” reads Twain and Warner’s The Gilded Age as a critique arising from the gold and silver rushes of the 1850s and 60s in which the authors recommend organized, professional, systemic science over haphazard prospecting activity. Chapter three, “Demarcation Problems: Speculation, Extrapolation, and Pseudo/science in the Works of Ignatius Donnelly,” argues Donnelly’s pseudoscientific writing on broadly geological topics urges his readers to reimagine humanity’s place in the universe. Moving from her earliest writing to her superlative treatment of the individual as document in A Country Doctor, chapter four, “The Value of an Individual: Sarah Orne Jewett as Statistician,” suggests that Jewett’s regionalist fiction responds to statistically-driven social science by doing another kind of statistical description, rather than rejecting statistics outright. Finally, in chapter five, “‘Speculation Has Exhausted Itself’: Iola Leroy, Social Con/science, and Racial Uplift,” I contrast the sentimentalism of Francis Ellen Watkins Harper’s historical romance, Iola Leroy, to ethnologies by Alexander Crummell, William Wells Brown, and George Washington Williams. I argue that Harper’s narrative envisions a Christian humanism that champions affective certitude over propositional scientific truth, making individual experience the arbiter of sociological description rather than the other way around

The Modern Gay & Lesbian Civil Rights Movement in the United States

Historians and classroom teachers have long avoided researching and teaching society about the modern Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights Movement in the United States. This research examines parts of the movement and is divided into three parts. The first part involves examining the national movement beginning in 1950 with the establishment of homophile organizations to the period of Gay Liberation in the 1970s. Second, the movement is studied in Rochester, New York through the examination of issues between 1971 and 1975 of the gay and lesbian publication The Empty Closet. Lastly, the information and discoveries made in the first two parts are used in part 3 to show how gay and lesbian history can be taught effectively in a high school social studies classroom using several teaching strategie

How skateboarding made it to the Olympics: an institutional perspective

Utilizing new institutionalism and resource-dependency theory this paper examines the organisational context within which skateboarding has developed and is continuing to develop. As a radical lifestyle activity, many within the sport of skateboarding have sought to distance themselves from the institutionalized competitive structure exemplified by the modern Olympic Games, despite a steady growth in competitive skateboarding within increasingly formal structures. The aim of this paper is to explore how the sport has operationally evolved and how, as a major youth sport, Olympic inclusion has impacted on its organisational arrangements. Data were collected through a series of semi-structured interviews and supplemented by selected secondary sources including social media analysis, sport regulations and policy statements. The conclusions of the research are: 1) unlike many other sports, skateboarding has always functioned as a network which includes event organizers, media companies, and equipment producers, with governing bodies playing a more peripheral role; 2) there was a strong lobby from elite skateboarders in support of inclusion in the Olympics although only on skateboarders terms; 3) interest from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which eventually led to the inclusion of skateboarding in the 2020 Olympic Games, has affected the organisational evolution of skateboarding over the last decade and has stressed issues of organisational legitimacy in this sport

An investigation into talent identification and development in English Netball

The Institute of Sport and Leisure Policy (ISLP) at Loughborough University was pleased to respond to a request by Cathy Partridge, Regional Talent Officer for the East Midlands, and Kelly Parkyn, Talent Manager for England Netball, to investigate talent identification and development in netball. The context of the evaluation is the recent change in Sport England’s strategy from a policy of Long-term Athlete Development (LTAD) to one in which National Governing Bodies and sports clubs will be charged with ensuring that they Grow participation in their sport, that they Sustain participation in their sport and also to ensure that talent progresses to an elite level, that is Excel