List Of Best Practices Research Articles

Bringing the Illusion of Reality Inside Museums—A Methodological Proposal for an Advanced Museology Using Holographic Showcases

The basic idea of a hologram is an apparition of something that does not exist but appears as if it was just in front of our eyes. These illusion techniques were invented a long time ago. The philosopher and alchemist Giovanni Battista della Porta invented an effect that was later developed and brought to fame by Prof. J. H. Pepper (1821–1900) and applied in theatrical performances. The innovation nowadays consists in the adopted technology to produce them. Taking advantage of the available digital technologies, the challenge we are going to discuss is using holograms in the museum context, inside showcases, to realize a new form of scenography and dramaturgy around the exhibited objects. Case studies will be presented, with a detailed analysis of the EU project CEMEC (Connecting Early Medieval European Collections), where holographic showcases have been designed, built and experimented in EU museums. In this case, the coexistence in the same space of the real artifact and the virtual contents, and interior setup of the showcase, its dynamic lighting system, the script and the sound, converge to create an expressive unity. The reconstruction of sensory and symbolic dimensions that are ‘beyond’ any museum object can take the visitor in the middle of a lively and powerful experience with such technology, and represents an advancement in the museological sector. User experience results and a list of best practices will be presented in the second part of the paper, out of the tests and research activities conducted in these three years of the project.

Reflective Practice on Social Loafing in College-Level Group Projects

While reflecting on my teaching strategies and researching social loafing for my dissertation, I realized this endeavor has given me a stronger grasp of the pedagogical approaches to facilitate cooperative learning. Observing, sharing, and reflecting on specific social loafing experiences using Gibbs’ reflective framework allowed me, with time, to better conceptualize the dynamics of university-level group projects. Leveraging my experience and insightful research analysis on group dysfunctionalities inside and outside the classroom has gradually reshaped my understanding of the social loafing phenomenon. Nurturing my professional development through this reflective practice allowed me to create an ongoing coaching relationship with students (and later with faculty), and to generate a list of best practices for cooperative learning that can result in higher group achievements and improved learning outcomes. Key words: Teaching, learning, Graham Gibbs’ reflective framework, reflective practice, social loafing, team-based learning, cooperative learning, groups, teams, John Dewey reflective theory, group projects, Stephen Brookfield lenses.

Reflective Practice on Social Loafing in College-Level Group Projects

While reflecting on my teaching strategies and researching social loafing for my dissertation, I realized this endeavor has given me a stronger grasp of the pedagogical approaches to facilitate cooperative learning. Observing, sharing, and reflecting on specific social loafing experiences using Gibbs’ reflective framework allowed me, with time, to better conceptualize the dynamics of university-level group projects. Leveraging my experience and insightful research analysis on group dysfunctionalities inside and outside the classroom has gradually reshaped my understanding of the social loafing phenomenon. Nurturing my professional development through this reflective practice allowed me to create an ongoing coaching relationship with students (and later with faculty), and to generate a list of best practices for cooperative learning that can result in higher group achievements and improved learning outcomes. Keywords: Teaching, learning, Graham Gibbs’ reflective framework, reflective practice, social loafing, team-based learning, cooperative learning, groups, teams, John Dewey reflective theory, group projects, Stephen Brookfield lenses

Reflective Practice on Social Loafing in College-Level Group Projects

While reflecting on my teaching strategies and researching social loafing for my dissertation, I realized this endeavor has given me a stronger grasp of the pedagogical approaches to facilitate cooperative learning. Observing, sharing, and reflecting on specific social loafing experiences using Gibbs’ reflective framework allowed me, with time, to better conceptualize the dynamics of university-level group projects. Leveraging my experience and insightful research analysis on group dysfunctionalities inside and outside the classroom has gradually reshaped my understanding of the social loafing phenomenon. Nurturing my professional development through this reflective practice allowed me to create an ongoing coaching relationship with students (and later with faculty), and to generate a list of best practices for cooperative learning that can result in higher group achievements and improved learning outcomes.

Distributed Co-simulation of Maritime Systems and Operations

Here, we present the concept of an open virtual prototyping framework (VPF) for maritime systems and operations that enables its users to develop reusable component or subsystem models, and combine them in full-system simulations for prototyping, verification, training, and performance studies. This framework consists of a set of guidelines for model coupling, high-level and low-level coupling interfaces to guarantee interoperability, a full-system simulation software, and example models and demonstrators. We discuss the requirements for such a framework, address the challenges and the possibilities in fulfilling them, and aim to give a list of best practices for modular and efficient virtual prototyping and full-system simulation. The context of our work is within maritime systems and operations, but the issues and solutions we present here are general enough to be of interest to a much broader audience, both industrial and scientific.

A reanalysis of crossed-dimension “Who Said What?” paradigm studies, using a better error base-rate correction

Abstract Cognitive and evolutionarily-minded researchers have increasingly adopted the Who Said What? memory-confusion paradigm, a powerful and sensitive paradigm originating from social psychology which allows researchers to unobtrusively measure social categorization. The paradigm has been particularly important over the past two decades for arbitrating between different functionalist hypotheses about the evolved social mind. XXXX (this volume) has pointed out, however, that the simple arithmetic base-rate correction inherited from social psychology for this paradigm is problematic. This standard base-rate correction—in use since 1992 and in over a dozen studies—creates a mathematical artifact in which the calculated magnitude of categorization by one dimension can affect the calculated magnitude of categorization by a second, crossed dimension, even when the two dimensions are in fact fully independent from one another. No one had noticed this in 25 years. Worryingly, this means that all previously-reported Who Said What? studies featuring two crossed dimensions have reported potentially-biased estimates of the true magnitude of categorization. Here, a reanalysis of four large research projects is presented, involving 56 effect sizes across 31 between-subjects conditions (Pietraszewski, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2014; Pietraszewski & Schwartz, 2014; Pietraszewski, Curry, Peterson, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2015; Pietraszewski, 2016). In all cases, the previously reported results from those papers hold or are even strengthened by the reanalysis. In particular, the previously-reported experimental reductions in racial categorization were in fact underestimates. This reanalysis also reveals that the most common artifact of the previously-used error correction was to artificially-inflate categorization by the weaker of the two dimensions—at least among the studies reported here. Finally, a succinct list of best practices for use of the Who Said What? paradigm in the future is presented, including but not limited to this new base-rate correction.

Overcoming Legacy Processing in Photographic Collections through Collaboration and Digital Technologies

In the 1960s, a Louisville photography studio began donating its negatives, prints, and invoices to the University of Louisville Photographic Archives. The Caufield & Shook collection remains a significant primary source for local history and a prime candidate for digitization. Unfortunately, on its receipt, nonarchivists processed the collection with little documentation of original order or organizational decision making. Additionally, workflow choices were determined largely by the desire to maximize student labor. In 2017, the digital initiatives librarian worked with in-house application developers and archives staff to create a workflow that has significantly sped up the process of making this valuable photographic collection accessible online. This article describes how archivists recovered from the poor processing decisions, used technology to enhance the digitization workflow, and developed a list of best practices for future processing and digitization of large photographic collections.

The Ethics Resistance

Legal ethics complaints have been filed against several of the high-ranking lawyers in the Trump Administration. While individual complaints have caught the public eye, the collective movement to use legal ethics to resist Trumpism has escaped attention. This is not altogether surprising: legal ethics rules have not historically been an attractive tool for political change. Perhaps, desperate times have called for desperate measures. This “Ethics Resistance” will face significant opposing forces. Legal ethics complaints seldom result in punishment. Further, the agencies that are asked to investigate these high-profile and controversial matters will not be eager to leave their comfort zone; they are accustomed to complaints from clients who are unhappy with their lawyers over straightforward matters like unreturned phone calls or high fees. There will also be loud dissenting voices from those who will see the movement as the weaponization of a tool designed for the modest task of lawyer self-governance. Finally, the complaints will have to navigate between powerful constitutional protections of lawyer speech and federal power. But we should not dismiss this movement simply because it is unusual or challenging. The wisdom of the Ethics Resistance can only be judged after we understand its distinctive qualities and consider how they further or hinder our legal, institutional, and pragmatic interests. In this Article, I undertake that analysis and conclude that the movement has the capacity to be legally permissible, institutionally sound, and prudent. I further offer a list of best practices for future complaints.

Expanding the Intellectual Property Knowledge Base at University Libraries: Collaborating with Patent and Trademark Resource Centers.

Patent and Trademark Resource Centers are located in libraries throughout the U.S., with 43 being in academic libraries. With the importance of incorporating a knowledge of intellectual property (IP) and patent research in university curricula nationwide, this study developed and evaluated a partnership program to increase the understanding of IP and patent searching methods at universities that do not headquarter a PTRC. This article describes the methods for establishing those partnerships, summarizes their results, and offers a list of best practices and lessons learned for establishing future partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The State of Software for Evolutionary Biology.

With Next Generation Sequencing data being routinely used, evolutionary biology is transforming into a computational science. Thus, researchers have to rely on a growing number of increasingly complex software. All widely used core tools in the field have grown considerably, in terms of the number of features as well as lines of code and consequently, also with respect to software complexity. A topic that has received little attention is the software engineering quality of widely used core analysis tools. Software developers appear to rarely assess the quality of their code, and this can have potential negative consequences for end-users. To this end, we assessed the code quality of 16 highly cited and compute-intensive tools mainly written in C/C++ (e.g., MrBayes, MAFFT, SweepFinder, etc.) and JAVA (BEAST) from the broader area of evolutionary biology that are being routinely used in current data analysis pipelines. Because, the software engineering quality of the tools we analyzed is rather unsatisfying, we provide a list of best practices for improving the quality of existing tools and list techniques that can be deployed for developing reliable, high quality scientific software from scratch. Finally, we also discuss journal as well as science policy and, more importantly, funding issues that need to be addressed for improving software engineering quality as well as ensuring support for developing new and maintaining existing software. Our intention is to raise the awareness of the community regarding software engineering quality issues and to emphasize the substantial lack of funding for scientific software development.

Implicit assumptions of conceptual diagrams in environmental science and best practices for their illustration

AbstractIn the earth and environmental sciences, many fundamental processes are explained through conceptual illustrations—a powerful medium for scientific communication. The processes depicted are generally highly complex, spatially and temporally variable, subject to high degrees of uncertainty, and non‐linearly impacted by anthropogenic actions. Conceptual illustrations necessarily simplify these processes, but also often suffer from a preventable lack of visual clarity, and/or are based on implicit assumptions that are mismatched to key conclusions in published literature. In this Innovative Viewpoint paper, we highlight considerations of conceptual and visual clarity relevant to illustrations in earth and environmental sciences. Using the water cycle as an example, we examine a range of conceptual illustrations of this process to assess what ideas they convey. An exploratory survey of 32 water cycle diagrams shows that they tend to depict generalized, well‐defined processes. Anthropogenic influences are included and/or implied in only half the diagrams, and none depict uncertainty in any form. The concept of the water cycle conveyed by these diagrams is therefore not quite the same as the concept of the water cycle as understood by hydrologists. This mismatch may negatively impact decision‐making related to water resources management, because the parties involved may unknowingly hold significantly different conceptual models of the processes at work. Other concepts in the earth and environmental sciences may be susceptible to similar issues. Our analysis highlights the importance of carefully assessing the assumptions and simplifying choices inherent in the process of translating a concept into an illustration. We conclude with an example of how these issues can be remedied by presenting a modified water cycle diagram designed to address common misconceptions associated with dryland systems, account for uncertainty in fluxes, and include key anthropogenic effects. A general list of best practices, many of which were used to develop this diagram, is included to help increase awareness among environmental researchers of strategies for increasing the conceptual and visual clarity of illustrations.

A"I Never Knew I Could Be a Teacher": A Student-Centered MLIS Fellowship for Future Teacher-Librarians

The Research and Teaching Fellowship (RTF) of the University of Maryland Libraries in College Park is a three-semester teacher training program for students seeking a master's of library and information science (MLIS) degree. This article provides details of the program's content, organization, administration, and assessment. It also includes results from a mixed methods and longitudinal study identifying the successful components of RTF and charting the development of teacher efficacy and identity among participants. Findings indicate that a strong sense of community, sustained engagement with teaching, and the integration of evidenced-based practice prepare MLIS students to succeed in a competitive job market. The authors provide a list of best practices in the development of mentorship and training programs, including considerations for librarians and administrators.

Standard Area Diagrams for Aiding Severity Estimation: Scientometrics, Pathosystems, and Methodological Trends in the Last 25 Years.

Standard area diagrams (SAD) have long been used as a tool to aid the estimation of plant disease severity, an essential variable in phytopathometry. Formal validation of SAD was not considered prior to the early 1990s, when considerable effort began to be invested developing SAD and assessing their value for improving accuracy of estimates of disease severity in many pathosystems. Peer-reviewed literature post-1990 was identified, selected, and cataloged in bibliographic software for further scrutiny and extraction of scientometric, pathosystem-related, and methodological-related data. In total, 105 studies (127 SAD) were found and authored by 327 researchers from 10 countries, mainly from Brazil. The six most prolific authors published at least seven studies. The scientific impact of a SAD article, based on annual citations after publication year, was affected by disease significance, the journal's impact factor, and methodological innovation. The reviewed SAD encompassed 48 crops and 103 unique diseases across a range of plant organs. Severity was quantified largely by image analysis software such as QUANT, APS-Assess, or a LI-COR leaf area meter. The most typical SAD comprised five to eight black-and-white drawings of leaf diagrams, with severity increasing nonlinearly. However, there was a trend toward using true-color photographs or stylized representations in a range of color combinations and more linear (equally spaced) increments of severity. A two-step SAD validation approach was used in 78 of 105 studies for which linear regression was the preferred method but a trend toward using Lin's correlation concordance analysis and hypothesis tests to detect the effect of SAD on accuracy was apparent. Reliability measures, when obtained, mainly considered variation among rather than within raters. The implications of the findings and knowledge gaps are discussed. A list of best practices for designing and implementing SAD and a website called SADBank for hosting SAD research data are proposed.

Engaging Patients and Caregivers Managing Rare Diseases to Improve the Methods of Clinical Guideline Development: A Research Protocol.

BackgroundClinical guidelines provide systematically developed recommendations for deciding on appropriate health care options for specific conditions and clinical circumstances. Up until recently, patients and caregivers have rarely been included in the process of developing care guidelines.ObjectiveThis project will develop and test a new online method for including patients and their caregivers in this process using Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) care guidelines as an example. The new method will mirror and complement the RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method (RAM)—the gold standard approach for conducting clinical expert panels that uses a modified Delphi format. RAM is often used in clinical guideline development to determine care appropriateness and necessity in situations where existing clinical evidence is uncertain, weak, or unavailable.MethodsTo develop the new method for engaging patients and their caregivers in guideline development, we will first conduct interviews with experts on RAM, guideline development, patient engagement, and patient-centeredness and engage with Duchenne patients and caregivers to identify how RAM should be modified for the purposes of patient engagement and what rating criteria should patients and caregivers use to provide their input during the process of guideline development. Once the new method is piloted, we will test it by conducting two concurrently run patient/caregiver panels that will rate patient-centeredness of a subset of DMD care management recommendations already deemed clinically appropriate and necessary. The ExpertLens™ system—a previously evaluated online modified Delphi system that combines two rounds of rating with a round of feedback and moderated online discussions—will be used to conduct these panels. In addition to developing and testing the new engagement method, we will work with the members of our project’s Advisory Board to generate a list of best practices for enhancing the level of patient and caregiver involvement in the guideline development process. We will solicit input on these best practice from Duchenne patients, caregivers, and clinicians by conducting a series of round-table discussions and making a presentation at an annual conference on Duchenne.ResultsThe study protocol was reviewed by RAND’s Human Subjects Protection Committee, which determined it to be exempt from review. Interviews with RAM experts have been completed. The projected study completion date is May 2020.ConclusionsWe expect that the new method will make it easier to engage large numbers of patients and caregivers in the process of guideline development in a rigorous and culturally appropriate manner that is consistent with the way clinicians participate in guideline development. Moreover, this project will develop best practices that could help involve patients and caregivers in the clinical guideline development process in other clinical areas, thereby facilitating the work of guideline developers.

ФУНКЦІОНУВАННЯ АКАДЕМІЧНИХ І ДОСЛІДНИЦЬКИХ МЕРЕЖЯК ПРИКЛАДИ КОНСОЛІДАЦІЇ НАУКОВЦІВ УКРАЇНИ ТА ДІАСПОРИ

The article analised the use of the potential of the scientific diaspora is one of the modern approaches to the modernization and integration into the world scientific space of the scientific systems of many countries, including posttotalitarian, in which the transformation of the social system is accompanied by a decrease in the financing of science, theof science, thereduction of the scientific and technical branch and exit promising young scientists into research centers of richer countries. Such negative tendencies for many years are inherent in Ukrainian science, as evidenced by a number of studies. The authors considered the role of cooperation with the scientific diaspora as a factor in the consolidation of high-ranking Ukrainians. The activity of the Ukrainian Academic International Network is analyzed and examples of best practices of scientific cooperation are presented. The importance of attracting the intellectual potential of the scientific diaspora to the processes of reforming and developing education and science in Ukraine is emphasized. It is concluded that the list of best practices of scientific cooperation initiated by our scientific diaspora testifies to its desires and possibilities to contribute to the development of science and education in Ukraine and to promote their inclusion in the European and world research field. Given the current difficult financial situation in the country, this contribution can be a powerful determinative stimulus to ensure further reform and development of the country's economic and intellectual environments. Functioning of academic networks created by academics unites scientists in Ukraine and beyond, and is an example of the consolidation of high-class Ukrainians in general. The role of cooperation with scientific diaspora as consolidation factor of highly professional Ukrainians is discussed in the article. Activity of the Ukrainian Academic International Network is analysed and the examples of best practices of research cooperation are presented. The emphasis is put on the importance of attraction of scientific diaspora intellectual potential to reforming and development of education and science in Ukraine.

A study of best management practices for enhancing productivity in building projects: construction methods perspectives

This research investigates management practices that have the potential to enhance productivity in building projects by focusing on construction methods. In phase 1 of the study, face-to-face interviews with nineteen experts were conducted to identify the best management practices for construction methods. The qualitative data analysis reached saturation and resulted in a list of best practices for construction methods that are relevant to the local industry. The second phase used an industry-wide survey to prioritize the best practices. Accordingly, project start-up plan, traffic control plan, machinery positioning strategy, project completion plan, and dynamic site layout plan were shown to be the top five best practices for construction methods. The study also revealed that high levels of implementation of best practices are associated with low levels of project delays. The use of best practices also varied according to the project costs. There were no discernible differences between the top five best practices. The authors suggest that they should be implemented jointly to improve productivity in building projects. Contractors could use the logistic regression model developed, to predict the probability of exceeding a baseline productivity factor and, on that basis, implement corrective actions to achieve the desired level of productivity.

Digital Native Meet Friendly Visitor: A Flexner-Inspired Call to Digital Action

ABSTRACTA century ago, Abraham Flexner offered his perspective on the nascent field of social work, describing the field as educationally unfocused, too diversified in its practices, and too relational or assistive to other fields to meet the criteria for professional status. Using the example of the imperative to integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) into social work practice, we examine the ways these 100-year-old challenges persist as well as how they are being challenged and reworked. Drawing on three central themes from Flexner—education, diversity of professional settings and functions, and the relational nature of the work—we examine the absence of ICTs in social work practice, arguing that a lack of curricular exposure to ICT tools, strategies, and thinking at the BSW and MSW levels and a failure to incorporate these technologies with clients, agencies, and communities leads to a damaging disjunction between professionals and a changing culture. We suggest that the challenge proffered to social work by technology provides a radical opportunity to create a more socially just practice, offer a preliminary list of best practices for approaching ICT integration, and make suggestions for further inquiry.

ITech in library instruction: tips and best practices

Purpose – This paper aims to describe some best practices and tips for librarians who will be teaching in iPad classrooms. Design/methodology/approach – California State University Northridge librarians recently began teaching information literacy sessions to freshmen seminar students in a dedicated iPad classroom. Prior to this, they scoured the literature to find information on how to use the iPads to enhance their instruction. The kinds of papers they were looking for did not seem to exist so they began a process of trial and error during their instruction sessions to formulate their own best practices which are enumerated in this paper. Findings – A list of best practices for teaching information literacy sessions with iPads. Originality/value – This paper will be of value to instruction librarians who will be teaching in iPad or tablet classrooms. A search of the library literature shows there are no similar articles with practical tips and best practices for librarians.

Best practice in Ecopath with Ecosim food-web models for ecosystem-based management

Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) models are easier to construct and use compared to most other ecosystem modelling techniques and are therefore more widely used by more scientists and managers. This, however, creates a problem with quality assurance; to address this we provide an overview of best practices for creating Ecopath models. We describe the diagnostics that can be used to check for thermodynamic and ecological principles, and highlight principles that should be used for balancing a model. We then highlight the pitfalls when comparing Ecopath models using Ecological Network Analysis indices. For dynamic simulations in Ecosim we show the state of the art in calibrating the model by fitting it to time series using a formal fitting procedure and statistical goodness of fit. Finally, we show how Monte Carlo simulations can be used to address uncertainty in input parameters, and we discuss the use of models in a management context, specifically using the concept of ‘key runs’ for ecosystem-based management. This novel list of best practices for EwE models will enable ecosystem managers to evaluate the goodness of fit of the given EwE model to the ecosystem management question.

Ghostwriters in the cloud

Abstract Ghostwriters are “hired guns” who complete online tests, write term papers, or even take entire courses on behalf of others. Several surrogate indicators suggest that the market for ghostwriting is growing. This paper explores the antecedents, ethical considerations, and legal issues involved with ghostwriting, and discusses the authentication techniques, identity-management methodologies, and proctoring options that can help control ghostwriting activities. It also describes a pilot study that the authors conducted of a promising authentication system. Both institutions of higher learning and accounting educators can adopt policies and procedures to deal with ghostwriters, and we include a list of best practices for this problem.