Search

The COVID-19 pandemic forced universities worldwide to move their teaching online within an unprecedentedly short timeframe. Whilst the move online learning has increased the reach of tertiary educational delivery it has also raised significant issues of equity, accessibility and student engagement. This includes concerns around access to technology and reliable internet connectivity, academic and digital literacy, and other factors such as mental health and work-life balance. This paper examines two studies of student engagement with online learning during 2020 when then pandemic began. One study was conducted in South Africa the other in a small regional university in South-Eastern Australia. A mixed method approach was used in both studies and then student responses were analysed using the student engagement framework presented by Kahu and Nelson (2018). A key focus in this analysis is the critical importance the educational interface and shared mutually formative experience of learning between students and universities. Findings show that despite the two different contexts, student concerns around digital literacy and engagement in an online learning environment share many similarities.

The article informs about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on higher education, focusing on challenges faced by academic literacy practitioners. Topics include the shift to online learning, preservation of academic continuity, disruptions to the academic calendar, and research papers covering various aspects of academic literacy development in higher education during the pandemic.

A finite-element model for the generation of single fiber action potentials in a muscle undergoing various degrees of fiber shortening is developed. The muscle is assumed fusiform with muscle fibers following a curvilinear path described by a Gaussian function. Different degrees of fiber shortening are simulated by changing the parameters of the fiber path and maintaining the volume of the muscle constant. The conductivity tensor is adapted to the muscle fiber orientation. In each point of the volume conductor, the conductivity of the muscle tissue in the direction of the fiber is larger than that in the transversal direction. Thus, the conductivity tensor changes point-by-point with fiber shortening, adapting to the fiber paths. An analytical derivation of the conductivity tensor is provided. The volume conductor is then studied with a finite-element approach using the analytically derived conductivity tensor. Representative simulations of single fiber action potentials with the muscle at different degrees of shortening are presented. It is shown that the geometrical changes in the muscle, which imply changes in the conductivity tensor, determine important variations in action potential shape, thus affecting its amplitude and frequency content. The model provides a new tool for interpreting surface EMG signal features with changes in muscle geometry, as it happens during dynamic contractions. Index Terms--Electromyography, finite elements, modeling.

The disruption that accompanied the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 also affected the administration of academic literacy tests. These are employed to place incoming students at institutions of higher education in appropriate courses for the development of their ability to handle the demands of academic discourse. For many students the conventional tests, deployed online, were inaccessible. We reflect here on how possible alternatives might be employed to identify students who are at risk as a result of low levels of academic literacy. The first is an algorithm that aims to predict whether the student might be a candidate for an intensive academic literacy course, and the other, constituting the primary focus of this paper, is a conventional post-admission academic literacy test available in-house, which had the potential of being refined for such a purpose. Since the test had initially been designed to assess prospective postgraduate students' preparedness to engage in academic writing, and had been piloted on a range of undergraduate students, this presented an opportunity to explore whether it might be possible to use it more widely. Analyses generated by programs yielding both descriptive, inferential and probability statistics are presented to show that this test was indeed capable of being employed thus, and could be refined further. At the same time, this exploration has had the further benefit of enhancing the assessment literacy of those presenting the actual academic literacy interventions. We envisage a further exploration of adapting tests of similar design for assessments that are more field-specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Nutrición Clínica y Dietética Hospitalaria is the property of Sociedad Espanola de Dietetica y Ciencias de la Alimentacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)