6277 research outputs found
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Designing an inclusive toolkit to empower early career academics in their educational practice
No full textEarly career academics (ECAs) face substantial pressures in establishing their academic careers, often prioritising research outputs over teaching. While much focus has been placed on supporting ECAs’ research-related development, less attention has been given to enhancing their teaching practices, particularly in supporting student writing. The expertise required to teach and support student writing only compounds the difficulty of this situation, especially if learning development support is not available to students. This presentation reported on the findings of a SEDA-funded project that responded to calls to equip ECAs with the skills needed to foster confidence and self-efficacy across multiple academic activities (Dore and Richards, 2022). The project contributes to ongoing discussions about the role of ECAs in supporting student learning alongside learning development while ensuring their own professional development and wellbeing. Focusing specifically on writing support within the context of generative AI – a growing challenge in higher education – we have been working on developing a practical toolkit for ECAs to better support students in academic writing while addressing issues of AI integrity. Exploring ECAs’ needs and perspectives through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions has informed our understanding of what such a toolkit might look like and how generalisable and transferable it might be. During the session, we shared our observations, designs and hopes for this toolkit, which aims to assist ECAs in balancing student support with their own wellbeing, thereby protecting them from overwork and enhancing their teaching practice
Exploring “lone woman” coaches’ experiences and opportunities in men’s football settings
No full textThis paper explores the experiences and opportunities of "lone woman" coaches (i.e. the only woman coach) working in men's English football settings. Thirteen women football coaches who were qualified at UEFA B Licence participated in this study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants, who completed a timeline booklet prior to the interviews to facilitate reflection on their experiences. Following thematic analysis, results showed three higher-order themes: (a) considering early football and coaching influences, shaped by family role models and a passion for football; (b) experiencing discrimination due to gender, including sexism and inequality, and feelings of loneliness; and (c) encountering limited forms and sources of learning, such as insufficient mentorship and formal coach education. The findings highlight the need for targeted interventions to support women coaches, such as increased mentorship programs and adaptations towards coach education. This study contributes to the existing literature by providing insights into the specific challenges faced by women coaches within men's football. This study is the first to focus specifically on the experiences of "lone woman" coaches in men's football
Circulating microRNAs as potential diagnostic tools for asthma and for indicating severe asthma risk
No full textAsthma places a significant burden at individual and societal levels, but there remains no gold-standard objective test for asthma diagnosis or asthma severity risk prediction. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short non-coding RNA sequences that are attracting interest as biological signatures of health and disease status. We sought to construct serum miRNA panels that could serve as potential biomarkers to aid in the diagnosis of asthma and predict asthma severity. Thirty-five asthma-related miRNAs were screened in the serum of three patient groups (never-asthma, mild-asthma, and severe-asthma; n = 50/group) drawn from two well-characterised cohorts. miRCURY LNA technology was used, followed by GeneGlobe analysis. The associations of miRNA expression with clinical outcomes of interest and diagnostic value of the proposed miRNA panels were assessed. We identified an asthma diagnosis panel comprising upregulated miR-223-3p, miR-191-5p, and miR-197-3p (area under curve (AUC) = 0.813, sensitivity 76% and specificity 72%). Compared with mild-asthma individuals, we also identified an asthma severity risk panel comprising upregulated miR-223-3p plus downregulated miR-30a-5p, miR-660-5p, and miR-125b-5p (AUC = 0.759, sensitivity 78%, specificity 64%). Individual miRNAs showed associations with worse clinical asthma severity and impaired quality of life. miRNA panels with high sensitivity and specificity offer potential as biomarkers for asthma diagnosis and asthma severity
Women’s leadership development through higher education
No full textThis study investigates how higher education shapes women’s pathways to executive leadership positions, examining the role of educational interventions, role models, and organisational culture in supporting women’s leadership development and career advancement in contemporary professional contexts. A design-based research (DBR) methodology, integrated with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, was employed. Data collection included semi-structured interviews, participant journals, focus groups, and validated leadership assessments. An MBA Women’s Leadership course was developed and implemented across two iterative cycles with 45 participants. Statistically significant improvements were observed across all leadership dimensions (p<0.001, Cohen’s d=0.89-1.45). At six-month follow-up, 42.9% of participants received promotions, 59.5% gained new leadership opportunities, and 83.3% pursued additional professional development activities. Findings inform the design of leadership development programmes in higher education institutions, organisational diversity and inclusion initiatives, policy development for gender equity in leadership, and evidence-based approaches to women’s professional advancement in educational and corporate contexts. This research provides the first systematic integration of Design-Based Research with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis for women’s leadership development, offering both theoretical insights into leadership identity formation and practical intervention models for educational institutions
Grow through what you go through: a multiple-case study of competitive bodybuilders’ experiences of learning to manage the demands of their engagement in the sport
No full textTo date, most research amongst competitive bodybuilders has focused on highlighting the demands of competitive bodybuilding, competitors’ emotional and behavioural responses to these demands, and the subsequent psychosocial outcomes, with limited attention to the process of coping. The current study aims to address this gap in the literature by providing insight into how competitors learn to manage and cope with the demands of their sport. Using a multiple-case study design, five high-profile competitive bodybuilders (with over 211,000 Instagram followers and 82,000 YouTube subscribers combined) engaged in semi-structured interviews and provided Instagram and personal journal data. Using reflexive thematic analysis, three overarching themes were constructed: (a) learning by trial and error, (b) understanding the self, the substances and the process, and (c) flexible guiding priorities. These findings have implications for informing future harm reduction initiatives amongst competitive bodybuilders (e.g. accelerating the experiential learning process), as well as enhancing social support for competitors (e.g. encouraging communal coping). Furthermore, this study illustrates the value of combining traditional methods (e.g. semi-structured interviews, journals) and social media data (e.g. Instagram posts, vlog-style videos) when conducting qualitative case studies in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of interest
Metadata and archival discoverability: driving use of the Philip Mackie collection at Southampton Solent University
No full textPurpose This descriptive paper aims to focus on the role of metadata for archival discoverability, highlighting a project the authors completed in 2023 at Southampton Solent University Library to describe the Philip Mackie Collection, a collection that had long lacked proper archival description. The authors explain the motivation for the project and discuss the rationale behind key decisions, such as which systems to use and who should create the descriptions. Ultimately, the authors decided to create the descriptions themselves, and thus the authors are able to describe their experience as bibliographic cataloguers adapting to archival standards (specifically ISAD(G) and EAD). On completion of this project, the library witnessed an increase in usage of the Mackie Collection. It is hoped that by describing some of the issues this project faced and highlighting its positive impact, we can encourage others to attempt similar projects and provide a (necessarily loose) framework for them to follow. Design/methodology/approach The aims of this project were to describe the collection according to archival standards; encode the description in a format that facilitates portability; where feasible, use URIs for entities in the description; publish the description online in a user-friendly format; publish the description in an archival discovery space; attain good visibility in search engine results. The major steps or decisions that the authors took to achieve these aims can be enumerated as follows: research archival theory and practice, especially in relation to description; select software for creating archival descriptions; decide who should create the descriptions; and choose spaces for publishing the descriptions. Findings In conclusion, it is clear that describing the collection according to archival standards and publishing it in Archives Hub have had a major impact on the usage of this collection. This is likely to be because of Archive Hub’s prominent presence in search engine results and its status as one of the major shared archival discovery spaces for the UK. Bearing in mind that the collection was already catalogued (for the most part), the increased usage provides evidence not only of the value of metadata itself but specifically of the importance of appropriately structured metadata exposed in appropriate locations. The collection’s old MARC records had only a minimal presence in search engine results, and so effectively our cataloguing was confined to the silo of library catalogues. It was bad enough being in a silo, but our records were not even in the right silo: they were archival records in a library catalogue. This failing has now been corrected. Research limitations/implications As an outcome of this work, the overall usage of the archive has improved. Originality/value The collection itself is unique to Southampton Solent University, and the process is informed by several standards and best practices
Dialectical search: a cognitively inspired framework for balancing solution quality and computational cost in global optimization
No full textThe field of global optimization faces the persistent challenge of developing metaheuristics that are both highly effective and computationally efficient. Motivated by the limitations of many nature-inspired algorithms, which are often susceptible to premature convergence, this research explores formal intellectual processes to create a more robust search mechanism. We propose and formalize the Dialectical Search (DS) framework, a metaheuristic inspired by the philosophical principle of Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis. The framework’s efficacy was validated in a comprehensive empirical study where two primary variants, DS-Original and DS-Hybrid, were benchmarked against a diverse suite of seven other classical and state-of-the-art algorithms on multiple real-world datasets. The benchmark revealed that the DS-Original variant consistently achieves a solution quality that is statistically indistinguishable from top-performing algorithms; for instance, on the Breast Cancer Wisconsin dataset, it achieved a cross-validation error of 0.02415, matching the performance of far slower methods. Critically, it delivers this state-of-the-art performance with exceptional computational efficiency, executing approximately 20% faster than the Genetic Algorithm and an order of magnitude faster—48.14 s versus 481.25 s—than the Firefly Algorithm. Furthermore, the simpler DS-Original’s superior practical performance over its more complex hybrid counterpart provides a valuable insight into the No Free Lunch (NFL) theorem. Therefore, we conclude that the Dialectical Search framework, particularly the DS-Original variant, represents a significant contribution to the field, offering a validated and highly advantageous balance of solution accuracy and computational efficiency for solving complex optimization problems
Cabane
No full textThis art exhibition is dedicated to the concept of cabane, a French word that designates playhouse, treehouse, log cabin, hut, or shelter. The exhibition aims to bring together a series of works by contemporary artists that deal with this object or theme. Among other things, it refers to architecture and its history, to the pastoral and agricultural world, to the ethnographic study of the varieties of living environments, to chosen or forced nomadism, to fictional literature and to childhood. Cabane also refers to our experience of the world and the permanent renegotiation of one’s relationship to it, which existence imposes almost by nature, often keeps the need for a shelter alive: that is, a place or room where it is possible to withdraw temporarily from the world ; a space of one’s own where one can think
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