Online mathematics enrichment: an evaluation of the NRICH project

This Executive Summary forms part of the final report of the findings of the independent external evaluation of the NRICH online mathematics project. The evaluation was commissioned by the University of Cambridge, UK as represented by the Millennium Mathematics Project. The evaluation was carried out by the evaluation team from the University of Southampton, UK, during 1998-99. Data collection took place between April and September 1999. An interim report, based on one element of the evaluation, was presented at the NRICH conference held in July 1999.1. The NRICH online mathematics enrichment project began in 1996 with the aim of establishing a permanent national UK centre for curriculum enrichment in mathematics. The project aims to provide mathematical learning support for very able children of all ages through the publication of a regular web-based ‘magazines’ featuring mathematical problems, puzzles, articles and games. University mathematics students act as peer teachers providing an electronic answering service. The centre also offers support, advice and inservice training to teachers, and resources for mathematics clubs. The NRICH website can be found at http://nrich.maths.org.uk/2. Internal evaluations of the project, carried out in 1997 and 1998, suggested that an increasing number of people were accessing the NRICH project website. The evaluations also indicated that teachers using the NRICH materials were generally satisfied with the type of problems presented, and that pupils who worked on the problems developed a richer view of mathematics. 3. The objectives of the external evaluation were to assess how the use of the NRICH website facilities enhances the mathematical development of children who have the potential to go on to study mathematical subjects at university, how the features of the website are used by teachers to help meet the special educational needs of exceptionally able children in mathematics, and the particular contribution of Information Communications Technology to the above. These objectives were derived from the aims of the NRICH project.4. The evaluation design incorporated a range of methods to provide data on the evaluation objectives. The various elements of the evaluation were an analysis of the responses to questionnaires completed by pupils, teachers, and other interested parties (such as parents) who access the NRICH website, a critical review of the NRICH website, together with selected case studies of school, classroom and pupil use of the NRICH project facilities. 5. Analysis of questionnaires completed by 199 pupils, 450 teachers, and 67 ‘friends of NRICH’ (such as parents) revealed that most NRICH users lived in England. This was particularly true of teachers. Over two-thirds of the pupils using NRICH were boys. Approximately the same proportion was white. A large proportion of users accessed NRICH at home. The majority of teachers worked in the state sector (both primary and secondary); ten percent were from private schools. The majority of users of all types were relatively new to NRICH, having been accessing the website for six months or less. The most frequent reason for accessing the NRICH website was to use it as a source of interesting mathematical problems. Most users were not registered with NRICH (a no-fee option open to all). The NRICH site was complimented by all categories of user as providing interesting problems, being attractively presented and generally easy to navigate. 6. The NRICH website was judged by the evaluation team to score highly on each of the website evaluation criteria. The new design of the site, launched in July 1999, was judged to be attractive, functional, easy to navigate, and contain high-quality materials. NRICH compared very favourably with other sites that provide mathematical puzzles, games and problems, and/or an answering service. The NRICH server statistics showed an increase in accesses to the site which was likely to be the result of more people accessing the NRICH site more often.7. In each of the three case study schools, at least one teacher made regular and often frequent use of the NRICH website, though none made use of the wider NRICH facilities available to registered teachers. NRICH was mainly used a source of interesting mathematical problems. Pupil usage of NRICH in the schools was much more varied. Only a very few pupils were aware of NRICH and had accessed the site themselves. While there was some evidence of impact on more able pupils, none of the teachers were able to quantify this impact but all praised NRICH as a very valuable resource.8. The three selected case profiles of pupil usage of NRICH revealed that these particular pupils accessed NRICH no more than once a month. All found the ‘one-to-one’ facility, where they could pose questions to University students, helpful and informative. Such exchanges often left the pupils wanting to know more, a situation the pupils viewed as positive. While few of the exchanges were related to the mathematical problems provided on the NRICH site, all these pupils valued the opportunity of being able to ask questions and receive replies.9. The main impact of NRICH on the more able pupils was in terms of helping them to gain a wider appreciation of mathematics and raising the profile of mathematics as a subject that could be interesting enough to pursue either within or outside school or for further study. Quantifying this impact was beyond the scope of this evaluation. Teachers mostly accessed NRICH to find problems to use in their teaching. The teachers used a variety of approaches to meet the needs of their more able pupils. Some used the NRICH problems with groups of more able children withdrawn from their regular classrooms. Some teachers used NRICH problems as extension material once regular classwork was complete. For some, NRICH was one resource amongst many. Only a few organised an extra-curricular mathematics club based solely around NRICH. The contribution of information communications technology (ICT) to both the enhancement of pupils’ mathematical development and to how teachers made use of the NRICH facilities was associated with the functionality and accessibility of the NRICH site. The interaction that was possible through using ICT was seen as a particular advantage of the NRICH project

TTA school-based research consortium initiative, the evaluation, final report

This is the final report of the evaluation of th School-Based Research Consortium Initiative which ran in England from 1998 to 2001. The initiative was sponsored via a public/private partnership between the Teacher Training Agency (TTA), a UK Government agency, and the Centre for British Teachers (CfBT), a private not-for-profit company. The aim of the initiative was to create local infrastructures of support and action for teachers to engage ‘in and with’ research. Those infrastructures were made up of consortia, consisting in each case of a small number of schools together with a university department of education and at least one local education authority (LEA). Over the three years that it ran, the initiative spawned a considerable range and volume of research activities, including peer observation of teaching, peer review of videos of teaching, interview-based study, surveys measuring such things as rewards and sanctions in the classroom. In addition to well-developed teacher-university collaborations and some joint work with local education authorities, there were many examples of teacher-teacher collaboration (some of it between different schools), and also times when teachers and pupils worked together to devise, carry out or interpret research activity. In practice, the initiative created an environment in which it was possible to develop new research relationships across a range of partners, rather than merely transfer the locus of research to schools. Three aspects of teacher experience of the initiative are important to highlight. The first was the overwhelming testimony of teachers that the value of the initiative for them was the rediscovery of their professional confidence in a climate of low trust accountability, characterised by constant monitoring, target setting and bureaucratic demands. The second was the growth of familiarity with research practices that teachers gained through working collaboratively with their peers, with pupils, and with colleagues from the university. The third was how the process of research itself was necessarily situated in teachers’ own practices

Selected Feeding Techniques to Improve Nutritional Status in Handicapped Children

Food, Nutrition and Institution Administratio

Probing the mechanisms of electron capture dissociation mass spectrometry with nitrated peptides

Previously we have shown that the presence of 3-nitrotyrosine within a peptide sequence severely depletes the peptide backbone fragments typically observed following electron capture dissociation (ECD) mass spectrometry. Instead, ECD of nitrated peptides is characterised by abundant losses of small neutrals (hydroxyl radicals, water and ammonia). Here, we investigate the origin of ammonia loss by comparing the ECD behaviour of lysine- and arginine-containing nitrated peptides, and their N-acetylated counterparts, and nitrated peptides containing no basic amino acid residues. The results reveal that ammonia loss derives from the N-terminus of the peptides, however, the key finding of this work is the insight provided into the hierarchy of various proposed ECD mechanisms: the Utah-Washington mechanism, the electron predator mechanism and the Oslo mechanism

An evaluation of advanced access in general practice

Aims: To evaluate ‘Advanced Access’ in general practice, and assess its impact on patients, practice organisation, activity, and staff.Objectives: To describe the range of strategies that general practices have employed to improve access to care To determine the impact of Advanced Access on the wait for an appointment, continuity of care, practice workload, and demand on other NHS services. To explore the perceptions of different groups of patients, including both users and non-users of services, about the accessibility of care and their satisfaction with access to care in relation to different models of organisation. To explore the trade-offs that patients make between speed of access, continuity of care and other factors when making an appointment in general practice. To explore the perceptions of general practitioners and receptionists about working with the NPDT and implementing changes to practice arrangements to improve access. To assess the impact of the above changes in practice organisation on staff job satisfaction and team climate.Method and results: This research was based on a comparison of 48 general practices, half of which operated Advanced Access appointment systems and half of which did not (designated ‘control’ practices). These practices were recruited from 12 representative Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). From within these 48 practices, eight (four Advanced Access and four control) were selected for in-depth case study using an ethnographic approach. The research was comprised of several component studies. These included: • A survey of all practices in 12 PCTs. Based on this we recruited the 24 Advanced Access and 24 control practices and the 8 case study practices. • An assessment of appointments available and patients seen, based on appointments records • An assessment of continuity of care based on patients’ records • Random phone calls to practices to assess ability to make an appointment by telephone • A questionnaire survey of patients attending the practices • A postal survey of patients who had not attended the surgery in the previous 12 months • A discrete choice experiment to explore trade-offs patients make between access and other factors • A survey of practice staff • Qualitative case studies in 8 practices • Interviews with PCT access facilitators The methods and results for each of these studies are described below, in relation to each of the research objectives.<br/

Development and governance of FAIR thresholds for a data federation

The FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable) principles and practice recommendations provide high level guidance and recommendations that are not research-domain specific in nature. There remains a gap in practice at the data provider and domain scientist level demonstrating how the FAIR principles can be applied beyond a set of generalist guidelines to meet the needs of a specific domain community. We present our insights developing FAIR thresholds in a domain specific context for self-governance by a community (agricultural research). ‘Minimum thresholds’ for FAIR data are required to align expectations for data delivered from providers’ distributed data stores through a community-governed federation (the Agricultural Research Federation, AgReFed). Data providers were supported to make data holdings more FAIR. There was a range of different FAIR starting points, organisational goals, and end user needs, solutions, and capabilities. This informed the distilling of a set of FAIR criteria ranging from ‘Minimum thresholds’ to ‘Stretch targets’. These were operationalised through consensus into a framework for governance and implementation by the agricultural research domain community. Improving the FAIR maturity of data took resourcing and incentive to do so, highlighting the challenge for data federations to generate value whilst reducing costs of participation. Our experience showed a role for supporting collective advocacy, relationship brokering, tailored support, and low-bar tooling access particularly across the areas of data structure, access and semantics that were challenging to domain researchers. Active democratic participation supported by a governance framework like AgReFed’s will ensure participants have a say in how federations can deliver individual and collective benefits for members. © 2022 The Author(s)

Frailty assessment in primary health care and its association with unplanned secondary care use:a rapid review

Background: The growing frail, older population is increasing pressure on hospital services. This is directing the attention of clinical commissioning groups towards more comprehensive approaches to managing frailty in the primary healthcare environment. Aim: To review the literature on whether assessment of frailty in primary health care leads to a reduction in unplanned secondary care use. Design & setting: A rapid review involving a systematic search of Medline and Medline In-Process. Method: Relevant data were extracted following the iterative screening of titles, abstracts, and full texts to identify studies in the primary or community healthcare setting which assessed the effect of frailty on unplanned secondary care use between January 2005–June 2016. Results: The review included 11 primary studies: nine observational studies; one randomised controlled trial (RCT); and one non-randomised controlled trial (nRCT). Eight out of nine observational studies reported a positive association between frailty and secondary care utilisation. The RCT and nRCT reported conflicting findings. Conclusion: Older people identified as frail in a primary healthcare setting were more likely to be admitted to hospital. Based on the limited and equivocal trial evidence, it is not possible to draw firm conclusions regarding appropriate tools for the identification and management of frail older people at risk of hospital admission

The Ursinus Weekly, October 12, 1964

Thespians choose Blore & Rodimer, Fall cast leads: Write me a murder heads into first stage of production • Pledging begins as sororities end last week of rushing: 61 women sign bids • Queen Jeanne Dawson, grid triumph, flavor weekend fun: Returning alumni enjoy cold day\u27s festivities • Lancaster theologian speaking tonight on Vatican Council II • Pre-meds hear members, list season speakers • Peace Corps worker to speak here • Y adds new concept to traditional retreat format: Fernbrook site of weekend\u27s activities • Editorial: Apathy or futility • Green poncho raincoats become UC fetish • UC students see touring Goldwater • Democrats meet the candidates • Young Republicans hold first caucus • Kaffee Klatch drafts variety • Human Relations Club begins work • Bears eat-up Blue Jays 38-22, exciting second half: Degenhardt wins Walker Memorial • Beta Sig, Seals lead leagues • Soccer team ties East Baptist, 2-2 • UC soccer team outplays alumni • J.V. hockey team victorious in first two season games: Crush Gwynedd 6-1, line scores at will; Defense stalwart defeat tough Penn • Answers and questions • Dear Ursala: advice column • Greek gleaningshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1229/thumbnail.jp

“It’s my dream to work with Olympic athletes”: Neophyte sport psychologists’ expectations and initial experiences regarding service delivery

We examined trainee practitioners' initial experiences of applied sport psychology practice. Semi-structured interviews (4) were conducted over 6 months with 7 full-time MSc students before, during, and after the applied sport psychology module, when they were working with clients. Participants also kept reflective diaries over an 8-week period whilst working with clients. Findings included: (a) motivations and expectations of an ASP practice career, (b) perceptions of service delivery, (c) emotional demands, and (d) pivotal experiences. Findings extend previous literature on the initial stages of practitioner development, providing micro-level detail on aspects of the intense development process during this pivotal perio