Request for Proposals to publish Research in Learning Technology, the journal of the Association for Learning Technology.

In addition to the PDF version we have included a .DOC version, which is made available for other organisations wishing to use the Research in Learning Technology RFP as a starting point for their own RFP. This document has an additional appendix containing some suggestions for additional or different questions for inclusion in an RFP. (Please ensure you honour the attribution requirements that we have placed on our document, and if you would like us to host a copy of your RFP for other to use we can do so alongside our own RFP). We also include a .XLS template for scoring publishing proposals which may be of value to others. Important notes 1. Responsibility for these documents rests with ALT. 2. They are provided with no warranties of any kind. 3. Individuals or organisations who use them do so at their own risk, and ALT shall not be liable for any losses or damages arising from their use or from reliance being placed upon them. [You may also be interested in http://repository.alt.ac.uk/887/ which is a guide to tendering for a publishing contract which we produced after going through the RFP process.

Factors Affecting Year 12 Retention Across Australian States and Territories in the 1990's

This paper contains a comparison of high school completion rates across Australian States and Territories from 1989 to 2002. These completion rates, known as 'retention rates', have a number of well-known deficiencies. When we adjust 'official' 2002 retention rates to take account of these measurement problems, the pattern of 'performance' across jurisdictions changes substantially. Moreover, the adjustments allow identification of the pattern of mismeasurement of national retention over the 1990s arising from the deficiencies of the retention rate calculation. We estimate that the retention rate was an especially poor measure of national school completion in the early 1990s, when it peaked. The peak in our adjusted retention measure during the early 1990s was less pronounced and the subsequent decline smaller than in the 'official' figures. Unlike those 'official' estimates, the adjusted measure of Year 12 retention was no lower in the late 1990s than it had been in the early 1990s.

A nurse-led sleep service for children and young people with disability

Aim: To evaluate the outcomes from a nurse-led, community-based sleep hygiene service for children and young people, which was designed and implemented in a community NHS trust. The project aimed to provide evidence for wider implementation of such a service across the trust. Method: The project recruited 22 participants to an eight-week programme over six months and collected quantitative and qualitative data. It included evaluating service costs and collecting information about how the child’s sleep problem affected the carer and family pre- and post-intervention. Findings: There was a significant, positive effect on quality-of-life measures, with two thirds of participants achieving 40% of their expectations by the end of the eight weeks. Parents said they felt ‘less helpless’ and they valued the support given in the home setting. Conclusion: Cost and benefit analysis showed that the service could reduce costs associated with high-cost prescriptions. It could also positively affect community paediatric waiting lists and clinic appointments

EU citizens in the UK: after the shock comes the strategy to secure status

After the initial shock and disappointment of the Brexit Referendum result in June 2016, EU citizens in the UK faced a difficult dilemma. Louise Ryan writes that quite early on many began to devise strategies to secure their status in a post-Brexit Britain, including acquiring Permanent Residency and even British Citizenship

Transcending boundaries : the arts of Islam : treasures from the Nassar D. Khalili Collection

This thesis examines and problematizes curatorial decision-making favouring the experiential encounter over interpretative/didactic modes of display when the museum’s mandate is to promote cross-cultural understanding between Muslim and Non‐Muslim communities through displays of Islamic art and culture. Based on a case study of the travelling exhibition The Arts of Islam: Treasures from the Nassar D. Khalili Collection, this investigation traces the journey of a collection of artifacts through four exhibitionary sites (Sydney, Abu Dhabi, Paris, and Amsterdam) from 2007-2011. A central aim of this study is to demonstrate the polysemic nature of artifacts when placed in the museum context by exploring the notion that objects acquire additional meanings as a result of site‐specific curatorial decision‐making. To this end, a theoretical model is developed and applied that profiles how differing practices, procedures and policies of display involve a process of (re)presentation, (re)contextualization, disruption and transformation, affected by and impacting upon particular social, political and cultural nuances in the wider public sphere. A ‘tool box’ approach to analysis is adopted, drawing on a range of theories from the fields of post-colonial studies, museology, and cultural theory. Interviews with a cross-section of stakeholders from exhibition venues provide empirical evidence for the evaluation of the experiences, opinions and perspectives of sponsors, curators and museum audiences who were involved in or attended exhibitions and their related events. Additionally, conversations with museum professionals from a range of prominent institutions are included to allow comparison with the travelling display. In conjunction with findings from primary and secondary sources, discussions will involve reference to museological challenges and dilemmas including: East/West relations historically; Orientalism and practices of Islamic collecting by individuals and organizations; the effects of patronage and sponsorship especially the influence of corporations; the material, aesthetic and commercial properties of the museum object; and questions arising from representations of cultural and aesthetic objects through particular politics of display. These issues are analysed for their interaction with discourse and debates concerning: identity politics, nation building, modernity, governmentality, colonial legacies, multiculturalism, art markets and their collectors, and influence of the media. Final conclusions evaluate the success of these cultural and artistic enterprises and recommendations include the adoption of new museological practices and policies of display that are inclusive of diverse audiences and have the potential to increase cross-cultural understanding on both the local and global level

An estimating equations approach to fitting latent exposure models with longitudinal health outcomes

The analysis of data arising from environmental health studies which collect a large number of measures of exposure can benefit from using latent variable models to summarize exposure information. However, difficulties with estimation of model parameters may arise since existing fitting procedures for linear latent variable models require correctly specified residual variance structures for unbiased estimation of regression parameters quantifying the association between (latent) exposure and health outcomes. We propose an estimating equations approach for latent exposure models with longitudinal health outcomes which is robust to misspecification of the outcome variance. We show that compared to maximum likelihood, the loss of efficiency of the proposed method is relatively small when the model is correctly specified. The proposed equations formalize the ad-hoc regression on factor scores procedure, and generalize regression calibration. We propose two weighting schemes for the equations, and compare their efficiency. We apply this method to a study of the effects of in-utero lead exposure on child development.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-AOAS226 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Peter Brook: A survey of his directorial achievement

This study seeks to describe carefully the professional accomplishments of one contemporary director, Peter Brook, in an effort to arrive at a generalized perspective through individual analysis. The first task of this study is to compile a professional biography of Brook\u27s work - to chronicle his achievements. The second objective is to separate the genre of his work in the various media and describe and analyse his treatment and philosophy of each area. This study will also examine his rehearsal technique and his work with experimental projects