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Generic Learning Outcomes (GLOs) are intended to enable cultural heritage organisations to be aware of the effectiveness of the environment for learning that they provide and to provide quantitative evidence of the impact of museums libraries and archives on learning, nationally. This paper presents a logical critique of their strengths and limitations and proposes an alternative approach to assessing learning impact in lifelong learning contexts based on the five key learning activity types defined by Laurillard. GLOs are subjective, post hoc measures of factors only indirectly related to learning. Using Laurillard's framework, the variety and the heterogeneity of the informal lifelong learner group can be comfortably accommodated by a small number of learning experience types that can provide the foundation for specific "predictive" learning outcomes. So the risk of developing learning activities that do not work well can be avoided. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to qualitatively describe an attempt to enhance curriculum design and delivery processes in universities through the development and introduction of new information systems and procedures. Design/methodology/approach: The author examines the experiences of five out of the total 27 institutions involved in the UK JISC Curriculum Design and Delivery programme as they attempted to implement campus-wide changes. Findings: Common themes that emerged across all five projects were the interconnectedness of university systems, proliferation of alternative "feral" systems, a tendency for project remits to drift, resistance from other parts of the institution, planning imperatives, staff turnover and dependency failures. Conclusions are that cultural change underpins effective innovation and that cultural change is harder than technical innovation. Practical implications: Change is best achieved through participatory, campus-wide approaches, although a "submarine" strategy may be necessary to deflect opposition. Stakeholders should be kept informed about benefits to them and it is important for projects to be responsive and adaptive and to recognize that participatory approaches may be institutionally risky. The paper concludes with practical recommendations for achieving lasting large-scale change in the higher education environment. Originality/value: The JISC Curriculum Design and Delivery programme was arguably the largest single co-ordinated Information and Communication Technology-based change management programme yet seen in the UK and the findings of this study provide insights into common barriers to effective change in universities and how to overcome them.

This paper reflects on challenges universities face as they respond to change. It reviews current theories and models of change management, discusses why universities are particularly difficult environments in which to achieve large scale, lasting change and reports on a recent attempt by the UK JISC to enable a range of UK universities to employ technology to deliver such changes. Key lessons that emerged from these experiences are reviewed covering themes of pervasiveness, unofficial systems, project creep, opposition, pressure to deliver, personnel changes and technology issues. The paper argues that collaborative approaches to project management offer greater prospects of effective large-scale change in universities than either management-driven top-down or more champion-led bottom-up methods. It also argues that while some diminution of control over project outcomes is inherent in this approach, this is outweighed by potential benefits of lasting and widespread adoption of agreed changes. (Contains 3 figures.)

This paper reflects on the current position of virtual learning environments (VLEs) in universities and speculates about likely future directions for e-learning. Using accepted models of technology innovation and looking at current Web trends, it considers the extent to which e-learning is truly embedded in institutions, how Web 2.0 is being used by the upcoming generation and what this might mean for teachers, learners and higher education institutions. The paper concludes that optimism about the impact of e-learning on higher education based on the market penetration of VLEs is misplaced and suggests that Ivan Illich's concept of learning webs may be a more reliable guide to future developments. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)

Aim: High heart and respiratory rates are key indicators in many published guidelines to identify and treat serious bacterial infection and sepsis in children, but the credibility of evidence underpinning what is considered abnormal is questionable. This study established the distribution of heart and respiratory rates of children using a large data set to inform debate on what the 'normal' range of these should look like. The primary aim was to compare the distribution of heart and respiratory rates measured in children recruited from non‐tertiary emergency care settings with those published by Advanced Paediatric Life Support (APLS). The secondary aim was to compare the distribution of this study's data set to other national guidance on what constitutes a severe (high‐risk) measurement and previously published data sets. Method: Prospective study using anonymised patient data, extracted from electronic patient records of children and young people 0–16 years, recruited from three Emergency Departments and one Urgent Care Centre in Northwest England, UK. Results: Heart and respiratory rates, including the reporting of values at certain centiles and comparisons of averages. Distribution of heart and respiratory rate were consistently higher than those used by the APLS guidance, resulting in a large proportion exceeding the 'severe' cut‐offs proposed. This varied greatly by age. Conclusions: This study's data set suggests normal heart rate ranges proposed by the APLS and others is too low and therefore 'abnormal' measurements encompass too large a proportion. The respiratory rate of this data set was more consistent with the guidelines and other published data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Introduction: Providing balanced information that emphasizes clinical equipoise (i.e., uncertainty regarding the relative merits of trial interventions) and exploring patient treatment preferences can improve informed consent and trial recruitment. Within a trial comparing adjuvant radiotherapy versus active monitoring following surgical resection for an atypical meningioma (ROAM/EORTC‐1308), we explored patterns in communication and reasons why health practitioners may find it challenging to convey equipoise and explore treatment preferences. Materials and Methods: Qualitative study embedded within ROAM/EORTC‐1308. Data were collected on 40 patients and 18 practitioners from 13 U.K. sites, including audio recordings of 39 patients' trial consultations, 23 patient interviews, and 18 practitioner interviews. Qualitative analysis drew on argumentation theory. Results: Practitioners acknowledged the importance of the research question that the trial aimed to answer. However, they often demonstrated a lack of equipoise in consultations, particularly with eligible patients who practitioners believed to be susceptible to side effects (e.g., cognitive impairment) or inconvenienced by radiotherapy. Practitioners elicited but rarely explored patient treatment preferences, especially if a patient expressed an initial preference for active monitoring. Concerns about coercing patients, loss of practitioner agency, and time constraints influenced communication in ways that were loaded against trial participation. Conclusions: We identified several challenges that practitioners face in conveying equipoise and exploring patient treatment preferences in oncology, and particularly neuro‐oncology, trials with distinct management pathways. The findings informed communication about ROAM/EORTC‐1308 and will be relevant to enhancing trial communication in future oncology trials. Qualitative studies embedded within trials can address difficulties with communication, thus improving informed consent and recruitment. ROAM/EORTC‐1308 RCT: ISRCTN71502099. Implications for Practice: Oncology trials can be challenging to recruit to, especially those that compare treatment versus monitoring. Conveying clinical equipoise and exploring patient treatment preferences can enhance recruitment and patient understanding. This study focused on the challenges that practitioners encounter in trying to use such communication strategies and how practitioners may inadvertently impede patient recruitment and informed decision making. This article provides recommendations to support practitioners in balancing the content and presentation of trial management pathways. The results can inform training to optimize communication, especially for neuro‐oncology trials and trials comparing markedly different management pathways. Recruitment of enough eligible patients to randomized controlled clinical trials can be challenging. Within the context of an active clinical trial, this study explored communication strategies, especially how practitioners conveyed equipoise, explored and responded to patient treatment preferences, and the challenges encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few cities in the UK lack an 'authentic' Irish bar, be it O'Neill's, Scruffy Murphy's or Shifty O'Shea's. Theme pubs, like theme parks, theme hotels and theme restaurants, are very big business. Yet the marketing academy seem somewhat reluctant to investigate such establishments, professionally at least. This essay examines the theme pub phenomenon and offers some reflexive reflections on the recent, rapid rise of themed environments. It concludes with some lessons for marketing scholars, contending that excess is the essence of our field. As William Blake observe, the road of excess may lead to the palace of wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives To take a motivational approach, testing an idea derived from self-determination theory ( SDT) that the pursuit of intrinsic life and professional aspirations is associated with enhanced subjective well-being. Methods A cross-sectional survey of a cluster sample of 583 dentists in England provided data on the subjective importance of their intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations and their perceived likelihood of achieving those aspirations. The dependent variable was a four-domain measure of subjective well-being. Results Controlling measures of core self-evaluations and trait emotional intelligence, the perceived importance and likelihood of achieving intrinsic aspirations were uniquely related to positive affect; the perceived likelihood of achieving intrinsic aspirations was uniquely related to job and life satisfaction and positive affect, and the perceived likelihood of achieving extrinsic aspirations was uniquely related to life satisfaction. No aspiration variables uniquely predicted negative affect. Conclusions These findings lend support to self-determination theory and provide a platform for the future development of interventions that can promote and maintain well-being in dentists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on challenges universities face as they respond to change. It reviews current theories and models of change management, discusses why universities are particularly difficult environments in which to achieve large scale, lasting change and reports on a recent attempt by the UK JISC to enable a range of UK universities to employ technology to deliver such changes. Key lessons that emerged from these experiences are reviewed covering themes of pervasiveness, unofficial systems, project creep, opposition, pressure to deliver, personnel changes and technology issues. The paper argues that collaborative approaches to project management offer greater prospects of effective large-scale change in universities than either management-driven top-down or more champion-led bottom-up methods. It also argues that while some diminution of control over project outcomes is inherent in this approach, this is outweighed by potential benefits of lasting and widespread adoption of agreed changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In adults, alcohol-related stimuli prime aggressive responding without ingestion or belief of ingestion. This represents either experiential or socially-and culturally-mediated learning. Using a laboratory-based competitive aggression paradigm, we replicated adult findings in 103 11–14year old adolescents below the legal UK drinking age. Using a two-independent group design, priming with alcohol-related imagery led participants to deliver louder noise punishments in a competition task than priming with beverage-related images. This effect was stronger in participants scoring low on an internalization measure. Priming effects in relatively alcohol-naïve participants could constitute evidence of socio-cultural transmission of scripts linking alcohol use and aggression. The enhanced effect in lower internalization scorers suggests that alcohol priming might undermine behavioral inhibition processes in otherwise stable adolescents. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

There has been dramatic growth in information communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure for the arts and humanities research community in recent years in the UK and elsewhere. No domain-wide survey of how researchers are using ICT and what they perceive their future needs to be has been undertaken previously and consequently what is needed in terms of a generic ICT infrastructure to support arts and humanities research is not well understood. The RePAH (Research Portals for the Arts and Humanities) Project is an AHRC funded study into the user needs for information portals to support research in the Arts and Humanities. It uses a combination of questionnaires, focus groups and Delphi opinion gathering, combined with server log-analysis data, to identify users’ information discovery strategies, Internet usage patterns, awareness and attitudes towards current services and technologies and responses to what future portal developments can deliver. Responsibility for funding this kind of infrastructure is split between a number of different agencies. This makes sector-wide information gathering for strategic planning and development difficult. The results of this study may help providers to understand where the priorities lie for the arts and humanities research community and help users to appreciate some of the possibilities within their grasp. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A major new full-scale laboratory test facility for railway trackbeds is described. The equipment was designed and developed by the research team at the University of Nottingham, and has been used initially for two projects concerned with the performance of railway ballast. One dealt with the application of geogrid reinforcement to reduce the rate of settlement under repeated vehicle loading, and the other was concerned with ballast degradation both under loading and tamping. The facility allows application of cyclic loads of up to 94kN directly to the sleepers using a loading system constructed in a laboratory test pit. Three sleepers are involved, and loads are applied by servo-controlled hydraulic actuators with their inputs phased to simulate a moving wheel. A tamping bank can be attached to the loading frame to perform the normal maintenance operation. Instrumentation is used to measure the permanent track settlement and the transient deflection of the central sleeper. Earth pressure cells can be installed in the subgrade to monitor transient stresses. Facilities are incorporated to determine the degree of particle degradation and to control the subgrade water table level. The design and performance of the equipment are described, together with some typical results from early experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Re-engineering the university describes an attempt to introduce network-based learning on an institution-wide scale in a UK university. It covers the background leading up to the high level, strategic decision to develop an e-Campus, the rationale for this initiative, the development methodology and the outcomes. It goes on to review the lessons learned, with recommendations for practical implementation of such projects by others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the attempt to justify punishment in terms of its ability to restore the breached rights of the crime victim. It examines the arguments put forward by Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel and contends that their theories, having followed similar patterns linguistically and stylistically, each founder though for different reasons, at the key stage of demonstrating how punishment restores rights. Kant relies upon an inappropriate analogy while Hegel resorts to an over-extended metaphor. Neither demonstrates how punishment 'undoes' the wrong inherent to crime. Within the con-temporary literature there is a move from punishment as the restoration of right towards punishment as the reaffirmation of right. However, the article argues that the theories following this path fail to demonstrate why punishment is necessary to the reaffirm-ation of right. For the above reasons, there is, as yet, no satisfactory 'justificatory' link between punishment and victims' rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the association between acquisition-related provision-taking behavior and post-acquisition performance for a sample of firms in Great Britain. Until 1998, British accounting standards allowed firms to write off goodwill arising on consolidation directly to shareholders' equity, bypassing the income statement entirely. Internationally, debate over the direct write-off method has tended to focus on whether goodwill is an asset, and if it is an asset, whether it should be amortized and over what horizon. Critics commonly asserted that the direct write-off method enabled managers to inflate profits in the post-acquisition period by taking unwarranted write-downs and provisions when adjusting the book value of the acquirers separable net assets to their fair values. Here the authors focus on the interrelationship between these write-downs and provisions and the post-acquisition performance of acquirers. They present evidence of a negative association between post-acquisition abnormal stock returns and acquisition-related provision-taking up to three years after the close of the accounting period in which the acquisition occurred.

Discusses the value of and the problems raised by multimedia-based training approach adopted by British Telecommunications to deal with the changes brought about by privatization. Element of the training strategy to support tutor-led learning in the classroom; Problems with multimedia training; Applicability to the field of education.

Just as retailers' initial reactions to significant innovations are somewhat predictable, so too new forms of retailing appear to evolve in a very distinctive fashion. So much so, indeed, that a substantial body of theory now exists on the nature of retailing evolution[4]. Albeit celebrated and widely cited, these conceptualisations are very poorly integrated and have attracted relatively little in the way of empirical investigation. Furthermore, there is some debate over the extent of their applicability outside the United States[5,6]. This article, accordingly, will outline and attempt to integrate the major theories of retail evolution, and examine the applicability of this "combined model" to one of the most important, and reviled, post-war innovations in UK retailing -- the retail warehouse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of retailing in the United Kingdom has tended to be empirical rather than conceptual in nature. By bringing together three well known but poorly integrated models of retail institutional change, this exploratory article endeavours to provide a theoretical basis for future discussion. The multi-polarisation model maintains that developments along one or more dimensions of retail activity eventually give rise to counterbalancing actions elsewhere in the commercial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents study that examined classificatory choices within an explicit, incentives-based framework. The results obtained will provide an insight into the general applicability of positive accounting theory by evaluating its explanatory power in a hithero untested choice situation. The assumed object of smoothing in this study is the reported profit after tax, but before extraordinary items. This is chosen because, under U.K. GAAP, it provides the basis for the calculation of the earnings per share figure, a statistic regarded by many as a key financial ratio. The instrument of smoothing which we examine is the classification of items either above the line or below the line. In this study, we refer to exceptional and extraordinary items as discretionary classification items. We will show that in U.K. financial reporting they occur frequently and are of significant magnitude. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In the next section we (i) define earnings management, (ii) review positive accounting theory, which provides the general theoretical framework for this study, (iii) discuss the relationship, within this framework, between the accounting choice, earnings management and income smoothing literatures, and (iv) develop our model and hypotheses. In the third section we describe our measure of smoothing and detail our sample and methods. The fourth section contains results and discussion. The final section presents the conclusions.

Examines the bones in chronic anorexia nervosa in Great Britain. Evidence of osteoporosis; Density measurement by photon absorptiometry; Prevalence of osteoporosis.

The article presents abstracts of marketing. They include "The Marketing Concept: Putting the Theory Into Practice," "Innovation and Evolution in UK Retailing: The Retail Warehouse," "Measuring Inherent Product Values," and "'Project Dropstrat': Product Elimination and the Product Life Cycle Concept."

Background: To evaluate the results of the tension-free vaginal tape procedure (TVT) from a patient's perspective., Methods: Between May 1999 and January 2002, 90 patients underwent a TVT for genuine stress incontinence (GSI) and mixed incontinence. Prior to the procedure, GSI was confirmed by clinical examination and urodynamic studies. Results were then audited from patient notes and the same patients were sent questionnaires to examine results from a patient perspective., Results: Overall response rate to the questionnaire was 70 (77%). The mean age of the patients was 50.4 years (range 31-83 years). Sixty-one patients had spinal anesthesia, seven had general anesthesia and two had local anesthesia. Mean hospital stay was 3.36 days (range 2-14 days) and mean period from the operation to the time of the survey and audit was 16.34 months (range 3-28; SD 6.92). Thirty-nine (56%) of the 70 patients who answered said that the operation had cured their incontinence, 16 (23%) had an improvement in their symptoms, 7 (10%) had worsening of their symptoms and 8 (11%) felt that the operation did not make any difference. The overall success rate according to the patients' perspective was 79%, whereas our audit showed an overall success rate of 86% (77% and 82%, respectively, when we compared only the 66 patients who had both notes and replies available for analysis)., Conclusion: Although a patient's perception regarding the success of TVT tends to differ from that of a clinician, it was not found to be statistically significant (P = 0.22, McNemar test). The TVT is a very successful operation, but realistic cure rates should be offered to patients.