A comparison of methods to determine bilateral asymmetries in vertical leg stiffness     

Sean J. Maloney  Iain M. Fletcher  Joanna Richards 《Journal of sports sciences》2016,34(9):829-835

Whilst the measurement and quantification of vertical leg stiffness (K_vert) asymmetry is of important practical relevance to athletic performance, literature investigating bilateral asymmetry in K_vert is limited. Moreover, how the type of task used to assess K_vert may affect the expression of asymmetry has not been properly determined. Twelve healthy males performed three types of performance tasks on a dual force plate system to determine K_vert asymmetries; the tasks were (a) bilateral hopping, (b) bilateral drop jumping and (c) unilateral drop jumping. Across all the three methods, K_vert was significantly different between compliant and stiff limbs (P < 0.001) with a significant interaction effect between limb and method (P = 0.005). Differences in K_vert between compliant and stiff limbs were ?5.3% (P < 0.001), ?21.8% (P = 0.007) and ?15.1% (P < 0.001) for the bilateral hopping, bilateral drop jumping and unilateral drop jumping methods, respectively. All the three methods were able to detect significant differences between compliant and stiff limbs, and could be used as a diagnostic tool to assess K_vert asymmetry. Drop jumping tasks detected larger K_vert asymmetries than hopping, suggesting that asymmetries may be expressed to a greater extent in acyclic, maximal performance tasks.  相似文献   

Perception of sign language and its application to visual communications for deaf people   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Muir LJ  Richardson IE 《Journal of deaf studies and deaf education》2005,10(4):390-401

Video communication systems for deaf people are limited in terms of quality and performance. Analysis of visual attention mechanisms for sign language may enable optimization of video coding systems for deaf users. Eye-movement tracking experiments were conducted with profoundly deaf volunteers while watching sign language video clips. Deaf people are found to fixate mostly on the facial region of the signer to pick up small detailed movements associated with facial expression and mouth shapes. Lower resolution, peripheral vision is used to process information from larger, rapid movements of the signer in the video clips. A coding scheme that gives priority to the face of the signer may be applied to improve perception of video quality for sign language communication.  相似文献   

Stressors in elite sport: a coach perspective   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0  

Thelwell RC  Weston NJ  Greenlees IA  Hutchings NV 《Journal of sports sciences》2008,26(9):905-918

We examined the varying performance and organizational stressors experienced by coaches who operate with elite athletes. Following interviews with eleven coaches, content analysis of the data revealed coaches to experience comparable numbers of performance and organizational stressors. Performance stressors were divided between their own performance and that of their athletes, while organizational stressors included environmental, leadership, personal, and team factors. The findings provide evidence that coaches experience a variety of stressors that adds weight to the argument that they should be labelled as "performers" in their own right. A variety of future research topics and applied issues are also discussed.  相似文献   

Hybrid Journals: Ensuring Systematic and Standard Discoverability of the Latest Open Access Articles     

Santiago Chumbe  Brian Kelly  Roddy MacLeod 《期刊图书馆员》2015,68(1-4):143-155

An important current challenge for research information providers is ensuring the automated discovery of Open Access (OA) content in hybrid journals. We found no evidence of discovery services that are able to systematically identify the crucially important free full-text availability of OA articles regardless of where and how such articles have been published (i.e., in fully OA journals or in hybrid journals). A solution is important because hybrid journals are proliferating and consequently the chances of missing OA articles is real and is happening. Nearly all of the major publishers now provide such journals in order to take advantage of recent changes in research funder requirements, and to be competitive in the new OA business model. By working with a group of scholarly publisher partners and by using standard metadata elements that publishers are already familiar with, we show a systematic and standardized manner to identify OA at the article level. Our proposal is to embed OA-related elements in the metadata freely exposed by publishers for aggregators and discovery services. For example, in the Table of Content (TOC) Really Simple Syndication feeds the publishers use to announce new journal issues and content. Based on the initial results obtained, we discuss the capabilities of our solution, and evaluate the impact produced by our application in the systematic discoverability of OA content from the participating hybrid journals, using an implementation done with the freely available journal current awareness service—JournalTOCs.  相似文献   

Revisiting Zhang’s scale of transactional distance: refinement and validation using structural equation modeling     

Ravi C. Paul  William Swart  Aixiu Monica Zhang  Kenneth R. MacLeod 《Distance Education》2015,36(3):364-382

Transactional distance has been defined as barriers to students’ engagement with learning in the online environment. This research updates Zhang’s (2003) scale of transactional distance, which quantified the extent of the barriers, in light of the massive changes in today’s web-based learning environment. The resulting revised scale of transactional distance (RSTD) is a parsimonious version with 12 elements (compared to 31 original) that measure the transactional distance between student and teacher, student and student, and student and content. The RSTD has excellent factorial validity and reliability, yields better fit statistics, and is easier and less time-consuming to apply. The transactional distance values are unique predictors of student satisfaction, which is correlated to learning and persistence (a major concern with massive open online courses). This information can form the basis for a systematic approach to improving the design of today’s contemporary open, flexible, distance education courses and thus serve as a valuable tool for researchers and educators alike.  相似文献   

Preface     

MacLeod  Roy 《Minerva》2007,45(1):1-2

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Teacher Appraisal,Professional Development and School Improvement: a case study     

David Hopkins  Julie Howard  Iain Johnston  Barbara Glover  Sue Woodburn 《School Leadership & Management》2013,33(1):37-53

The paper argues that in respect of the day‐to‐day work activities required in being a headteacher, and in the work relationships involved in running schools, the occupational culture of headship has changed fundamentally. Using the accounts of 20 headteachers, interviewed in respect of their career histories in 1990 and followed up by means of a postal questionnaire in 1992, the paper illustrates the changes experienced and identified by this group of heads. It is argued that a new headteacher is required; that aspects of educational leadership have diminished dramatically in the work culture of headship.  相似文献   

Teaching without a blackboard and chalk: conflicting attitudes towards using ICTs in higher education teaching and learning     

Jonathan Tummons  Cathy Fournier  Olga Kits  Anna MacLeod 《高等教育研究与发展》2016,35(4):829-840

This article, derived from a three-year ethnography of distributed medical education provision in a Canadian university, explores the ways in which information and communication technologies are used by teachers and students in their everyday work within technologically rich teaching environments. The environments being researched are two university campuses: a campus at the main university site and a satellite campus in a neighbouring province. The article seeks to contrast dominant, institutional discourses of technology use in higher education teaching with the everyday practices of staff and students. The article concludes that there is a gap between policy and practice in distributed education and that the teaching and learning experience and context of staff and students in different sites need to be analysed in depth, in terms of: whether the experience of learning across sites can be positioned as being comparable; the extent to which technology ameliorates learning and teaching; and understanding the work done by staff.  相似文献   

Letters to the editors     

Eleanor Cameron  Anne S. MacLeod 《Children‘s Literature in Education》1977,8(2):94-96

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Computer Aided Assessment and Development of Basic Skills∗     

Iain Macleod  Don Overheu 《International Journal of Disability, Development & Education》1977,24(1):18-35

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