Academic Identity during COVID-19

: The recent Coronavirus pandemic triggered a global shift in higher education to fully embrace online platforms. With such a significant shift of academic workload and focus, we explore potential issues arising about how this shapes academic identity. Our interest is on how the adoption of a flexible pedagogy shapes an academic’s sense of work and place and whether this is for some a readjustment of what is believed to be a normative view of an academic as teacher, while for others it may be a challenge to their values. Through a sampling of academics at a UK Higher Education Institution (HEI) we determine that the rapid move to remote teaching has resulted in the establishment of a transient identity that has yet to be consolidated as the sector moves from crisis-respondent transactional delivery models, to one of permanency that reflects the skills, competencies, and values of the digitally literate academic 4.0

What factors determine the development of employability skills in Nigerian higher education?

Employability is a set of skills, knowledge and personal attributes that make an individual adapt to changes in the labour market. This study applies “Human Capital Theory” (HCT) and the “theory of Interrole Learning Transfer” (ILT) to examine factors which affect the attitudes, motivations and actions of learners towards their future employability. A qualitative approach enabled in-depth interviews with 36 participants drawn from academics, students, company managers and policymakers. Our findings reveal that there is a disconnect between the teaching of theoretical knowledge and employability skills. Higher education (HE) is presented to Nigerians as if young people must achieve a degree certificate to have a chance to succeed in life. Also, it appears that students have a notion that the certificate is enough to evidence ability. The findings lead to the development of ‘employability model’ which proposes that individual orientation and institutional factors determine the enactment of employability skills

Critiquing The Crit – the influence of technology and creative professional practice on the 21st Century peer learning environment.

This paper explores the importance of the group critique in practice-based arts education and how it is evolving through the digital age citing the development of the College of Arts Digital Crit Room at the University of Lincoln. Through the observation of how the rapid development of technology has potentially impacted negatively upon the usage of the traditional art and design ‘studio’, the Digital Crit Room project identified how technology may have threatened teaching practices that are critically reliant on a ‘studio culture’ with peer learning at their centre. Laptops, wireless and mobile technology have encouraged and enabled students to study and create anywhere, but a critical place of peer learning is potentially being eroded. One of the most effective forms of peer learning in practice-based arts subjects is ‘the crit’ in which students display their work alongside each other’s so that criticism, discussion, comparison and feedback can be offered. The crit is a vital part of arts learning and teaching, offering live feedback from students and staff alike on work-in- progress or completed creative work, but given the potential erosion of the studio where else can this pedagogically valuable activity take place? Through the definition of a set of design values to inform the creation of a ‘destination’ learning environment that felt different to other learning spaces on campus, the project team researched into the working environments of the creative industries and compared them to the design of the usual higher education learning spaces. Informed by this activity, the College of Arts Digital Crit Room was created as a new learning space with participatory learning at its heart, that reflected the working behaviours and environments of the professional creative industries

Feeding the Worlth Healthily: the Challenge of Measuring the effects of Agriculture on Health

Agricultural production, food systems and population health are intimately linked. While there is a strong evidence base to inform our knowledge of what constitutes a healthy human diet, we know little about actual food production or consumption in many populations and how developments in the food and agricultural system will affect dietary intake patterns and health. The paucity of information on food production and consumption is arguably most acute in low- and middle-income countries, where it is most urgently needed to monitor levels of under-nutrition, the health impacts of rapid dietary transition and the increasing ‘double burden’ of nutrition-related disease. Food availability statistics based on food commodity production data are currently widely used as a proxy measure of national-level food consumption, but using data from the UK and Mexico we highlight the potential pitfalls of this approach. Despite limited resources for data collection, better systems of measurement are possible. Important drivers to improve collection systems may include efforts to meet international development goals and partnership with the private sector. A clearer understanding of the links between the agriculture and food system and population health will ensure that health becomes a critical driver of agricultural change

Liminality in Practice: A Case study in Life Sciences Research

Contemporary health challenges (e.g. diabetes, climate change, antimicrobial resistance) are underpinned by complex interrelationships between behavioral, cultural, social, environmental and biological processes. Current experimental systems are only partially relevant to the problems they investigate, but aspirations to embed interdisciplinary working and community engagement into life scientists’ work inresponse to this partiality have proven difficult in practice. This paper explores one UK university-based life sciences initiative as it seeks to develop modes of working which respond to this complexity. Drawing on ‘liminal hotspots’ as a sensitizing concept, we explore how participating academics articulate complex problems, knowledge-making, interdisciplinary working and community engagement. Our analysis shows they become recurrently ‘trapped’ (institutionally and epistemologically) between fixed/universalized cosmologies of biology/disease, and more contemporary cosmologies in which biology and disease are conceptualized as situated and evolving. Adopting approaches to community organizing based on ‘process pragmatism’ we propose ways in which life scientists might radically reorganise their practice and move beyond current limiting enactments of interdisciplinary and community engaged working. In doing so we claim that the relevance and ‘humanness’ of life scienceresearch will be increased

Connecting Health and Technology (CHAT): protocol of a randomized controlled trial to improve nutrition behaviours using mobile devices and tailored text messaging in young adults

Background: Increasing intakes of fruits and vegetables intake, in tandem with reducing consumption of energy-dense and nutrient poor foods and beverages are dietary priorities to prevent chronic disease. Although most adults do not eat enough fruit and vegetables, teenagers and young adults tend to have the lowest intakes. Young adults typically consume a diet which is inconsistent with the dietary recommendations. Yet little is known about the best approaches to improve dietary intakes and behaviours among this group. This randomised controlled trial aims to evaluate the effectiveness of using a mobile device to assess dietary intake, provide tailored dietary feedback and text messages to motivate changes in fruit, vegetable and junk food consumption among young adults

Improving higher education standards through reengineering in West African universities–A case study of Nigeria

This article examines the context of higher education (HE), policies and challenges in the West African context. A multi-level framework and analysis of reengineering, leading change in complexity, activity-based view of the University Business Model and Pedagogical Content Knowledge enable the development of deep connections between the macro- and meso-level and -micro challenges of Higher Education System (HES). These include elements of effective leadership, structures and curriculum and learning pedagogies. Drawing on the analyses of interviews from 25 overseas trained senior academics from Nigerian universities, a preliminary refinement of the philosophy of reengineering, re-thinking and revaluing the higher education system (HES) is offered. These have traditionally been addressed in a piecemeal perspective in HE policy and the academic literature; such a traditional approach has not been the systematic rethinking advocated in the philosophy of reengineering

Supermarket Healthy Eating for Life (SHELf): protocol of a randomised controlled trial promoting healthy food and beverage consumption through price reduction and skill-building strategies

Background: In the context of rising food prices, there is a need for evidence on the most effective approaches for promoting healthy eating. Individually-targeted behavioural interventions for increasing food-related skills show promise, but are unlikely to be effective in the absence of structural supports. Fiscal policies have been advocated as a means of promoting healthy eating and reducing obesity and nutrition-related disease, but there is little empirical evidence of their effectiveness. This paper describes the Supermarket Healthy Eating for LiFe (SHELf) study, a randomised controlled trial to investigate effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a tailored skill-building intervention and a price reduction intervention, separately and in combination, against a control condition for promoting purchase and consumption of healthy foods and beverages in women from high and low socioeconomic groups.Methods/design: SHELf comprises a randomised controlled trial design, with participants randomised to receive either (1) a skill-building intervention; (2) price reductions on fruits, vegetables and low-joule soft drink beverages and water; (3) a combination of skill-building and price reductions; or (4) a control condition. Five hundred women from high and low socioeconomic areas will be recruited through a store loyalty card program and local media. Randomisation will occur on receipt of informed consent and baseline questionnaire. An economic evaluation from a societal perspective using a cost-consequences approach will compare the costs and outcomes between intervention and control groups.Discussion: This study will build on a pivotal partnership with a major national supermarket chain and the Heart Foundation to investigate the effectiveness of intervention strategies aimed at increasing women&rsquo;s purchasing and consumption of fruits and vegetables and decreased purchasing and consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. It will be among the first internationally to examine the effects of two promising approaches - skill-building and price reductions - on diet amongst women.<br /

The Gene Ontology knowledgebase in 2023

The Gene Ontology (GO) knowledgebase (http://geneontology.org) is a comprehensive resource concerning the functions of genes and gene products (proteins and noncoding RNAs). GO annotations cover genes from organisms across the tree of life as well as viruses, though most gene function knowledge currently derives from experiments carried out in a relatively small number of model organisms. Here, we provide an updated overview of the GO knowledgebase, as well as the efforts of the broad, international consortium of scientists that develops, maintains, and updates the GO knowledgebase. The GO knowledgebase consists of three components: (1) the GO-a computational knowledge structure describing the functional characteristics of genes; (2) GO annotations-evidence-supported statements asserting that a specific gene product has a particular functional characteristic; and (3) GO Causal Activity Models (GO-CAMs)-mechanistic models of molecular "pathways" (GO biological processes) created by linking multiple GO annotations using defined relations. Each of these components is continually expanded, revised, and updated in response to newly published discoveries and receives extensive QA checks, reviews, and user feedback. For each of these components, we provide a description of the current contents, recent developments to keep the knowledgebase up to date with new discoveries, and guidance on how users can best make use of the data that we provide. We conclude with future directions for the project