A Reflective Evaluation of Group Assessment

There is a general agreement in the literature that groupwork helps to develop important interpersonal and personal skills (Race, 2001; Visram & Joy, 2003; Elliot & Higgins, 2005; Kench et al, 2008). However, one of the problems with groupwork for both students and lecturers is how the work should be assessed (Parsons & Kassabova, 2002). The possibility of having ‘free-riders’ and the difficulty of fairly awarding marks to reflect the level of students’ contribution to a group output are some of the key problem areas in groupwork assessment (Race, 2001). Peer assessment is seen as one of the methods to deal with these problems. It can generally involve students assessing each other’s level of contribution to the group’s output (Visram & Joy, 2003). This paper provides our reflection on the use of peer assessment on a student group project

The Sweet Smell of Subsidies Revisited

Agricultural and Food Policy,

We haven't got a seat on the bus for you or All the seats are mine: Narratives and career transitions in professional golf

In this article we explore how the stories an athlete tells throughout life in sport affect her career transition experiences. We base our enquiry on a social constructionist conception of narrative theory which holds that storytelling is integral to the creation and maintenance of identity and sense of self. Life stories were gathered through interviews with two professional women golfers (Christiana and Kandy) over a six‐year period. Through a narrative analysis of structure and form we explored each participant’s stories of living in and withdrawing from professional golf. We suggest Christiana told monological performance‐oriented stories which, while aligning with the culture of elite sport, resulted in an exclusive athletic identity and foreclosure of alternative selves and roles. On withdrawal, Christiana experienced narrative wreckage, identity collapse, mental health difficulties and considerable psychological trauma. In contrast, Kandy told dialogical discovery‐oriented stories which, while being in tension with the dominant performance narrative, created and sustained a multidimensional identity and self. Her stories and identity remained intact, authentic and continuous on withdrawal from tournament golf and she experienced few psychological problems

Management Intensive Rotational Grazingin Wisconsin: the 1990s

Growing numbers of Wisconsin dairy farmers have reported success using management intensive rotational grazing (MIRG) techniques that rely on pastures as the primary source of forage for their milking herds. The Program on Agricultural Technology Studies (PATS) has been tracking the use and performance of MIRG systems in Wisconsin since the early 1990s through periodic large-scale, random sample surveys of Wisconsin dairy farmers. This fact sheet incorporates recent results from PATS 1999 Dairy Farmer Poll into an overall summary of PATS grazing research

The Use and Performance of IntensiveRotational Grazing Among Wisconsin Dairy Farms in the 1990s

Growing numbers of Wisconsin dairy farmers have reported success using management intensive rotational grazing (MIRG) techniques that rely on pastures as the primary source of forage for their milking herds. The Program on Agricultural Technology Studies (PATS) has been tracking the use and performance of MIRG systems in Wisconsin since the early 1990s through periodic, large-scale, random sample surveys and on-farm interviews with Wisconsin farmers. Utilizing recent results from the PATS 1997 and 1999 Wisconsin Dairy Farm Polls, this report provides an important update to previous PATS reports. In our surveys, the dairy farmers who report utilizing pastures for forage are a diverse group. Grazing practices ranged from moving livestock several times a day through an extensive network of improved pasture paddocks to grazing the same large field all summer long. For purposes of maintaining consistency, in analyzing our data we defined MIRG as a system in which dairy farmers rely on pastures for at least part of the forage ration of their milking cows and move these cows to fresh pastures at least once a week. Farms that utilized pastures to obtain forage for their milking cows, but did not rotate their cows to a fresh pasture at least once a week, were classified as non-intensive grazing operations. Farm operations that did not rely on pasture for any part of their forage ration were categorized as confinement systems. On our 1999 survey, 22 percent of farmers reported using MIRG systems, 22 percent used pastures non-intensively, and 56 percent used full confinement systems

Implementing Wellness into Mental Health and Addiction Recovery: The Addressing Wellness Through Organizational Change (AWTOC) Approach [English and Spanish versions]

A Spanish translation of this publication is available to download under Additional Files below. There are many opportunities for clinicians and leaders in mental health and addiction treatment programs to champion more discussion about wellness and integrate evidence-based treatments that can decrease patient morbidity and mortality. However, many clinicians and staff may not feel trained and prepared to help individuals adequately address wellness goals, to integrate wellness into their routine clinical practice, or to make appropriate referrals to community resources. To address this service and training gap, the UMass Department of Psychiatry developed the Addressing Wellness Through Organization Change (AWTOC) approach, based upon the Addressing Problems Through Organizational Change (APTOC) model developed by Douglas Ziedonis, M.D., M.P.H. which has been used previously to address tobacco cessation (Ziedonis et al., 2007)

How Wisconsin Farmers Feed theirCows: Results of the 1999 Wisconsin Dairy Herd Feeding Study

The Wisconsin dairy industry has seen dramatic changes over the last 20 years (Jackson- Smith and Barham, 2000). Overall, dairy farm numbers have been cut in half since the early 1980s, and the average size of remaining herds has increased by more than 60 percent (from roughly 40 cows to over 65 cows per herd). Despite these changes, most dairies are still single-family businesses, relying on household members for virtually all their farm labor requirements (Buttel et al., 2000). In 1998, state statistics suggested that over 70 percent of Wisconsin dairy operations were milking between 30 and 99 cows, and that these herds produced approximately 62 percent of the state’s milk. At the same time, there are growing numbers of relatively large dairy operations in the state, many of which milk cows in new parlor/freestall facilities and use a wide range of modern dairy production technologies and management practices. Farms with over 100 cows account for just 11 percent of all herds, but produce over onethird of the state’s milk