In 1997-8 Staffordshire University introduced two Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), Lotus Learning Space, and COSE (Creation of Study Environments), as part of its commitment to distributed learning. A wide-reaching evaluation model has been designed, aimed at appraising the quality of students’ learning experiences using these VLEs. The evaluation can be considered to be a hybrid system wi...

The purpose of this study was to analyse the developmental pathway of skilled and less skilled volleyball players by focusing on the quantity and type of sporting activities, as well as their age and height in comparison to peers in those experiences. Retrospective interviews were conducted to provide a longitudinal and detailed account of sport involvement of 30 skilled and 30 less skilled vol...

This analysis presents a conservation planning framework for decisions under uncertainty and applies it to the Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska. Uncertainty arises from variable distributional shifts of species’ ranges due to climate change. The planning framework consists of a two-stage optimization model that selects a nominal conservation area network in the first stage and evaluates its perfo...

A review of the literature (Part 1 in this series) revealed the power and pitfalls of being female and being a healer, A qualitative study of medical-surgical nurses (Part 2) gave a glimpse of the satisfaction, frustration, and confusion nurses experience as healers. In particular, participants did not engage in regular self-care behaviors and did not articulate ways to create healing environme...