The Farm to Fork project: Community-engaged scholarship from community partners' perspective

Higher education institutions have traditionally largely ignored their role in identifying and addressing issues that their communities face. In an attempt to tackle this situation, models such as community-engaged scholarship (CES) have been developed and used to illustrate the active roles higher education institutions can play in sustainable social change. CES is guided by principles of mutually beneficial collaboration and reciprocity to address issues faced by the community. CES can guide the development of an in-depth understanding of social issues and can promote long-term and sustainable solutions. CES literature focuses largely on the impacts and benefits to students and faculty, but often ignores assessment of CES projects based on their impact on community partners and the community overall.This article illustrates the experiences of community partners in a Farm To Fork project and the impact of the project on community partners and the community at large. Developed at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, the Farm To Fork project is helping increase the quantity and quality of food donated to emergency food providers, such as food banks and food pantries, via the use of online tools. Based on a survey questionnaire, the experiences of community partners are summarised under four categories: mutual benefit, resources, networking and collaborations, and raising awareness and addressing social issues. The results demonstrate that community partners greatly appreciate the effort and dedication of students and faculty. Through the project, community partners gained experience and access to university resources and formed networks with academics as well as other community organisations that will benefit them in the future. In addition, the Farm To Fork project helped to raise awareness about food insecurity, not only among students and faculty working on the project, but also in the Guelph-Wellington area.Keywords: community-engaged scholarship, food insecurity, community impacts, Farm To Fork, Guelph-Wellingto

Influence of Parenting Practices on Eating Behaviors of Early Adolescents during Independent Eating Occasions: Implications for Obesity Prevention

Among early adolescents (10–14 years), poor diet quality along with physical inactivity can contribute to an increased risk of obesity and associated biomarkers for chronic disease. Approximately one-third of United States (USA) children in this age group are overweight or obese. Therefore, attention to factors affecting dietary intake as one of the primary contributors to obesity is important. Early adolescents consume foods and beverages during eating occasions that occur with and without parental supervision. Parents may influence eating behaviors of early adolescents during eating occasions when they are present or during independent eating occasions by engaging in practices that affect availability of foods and beverages, and through perceived normative beliefs and expectations for intake. Therefore, the purpose of this article was to describe the influence of parenting practices on eating behaviors in general and when specifically applied to independent eating occasions of early adolescents. This information may be helpful to inform parenting interventions targeting obesity prevention among early adolescents focusing on independent eating occasions

The co-evolution of networked terrorism and information technology

This thesis describes for the first time the mechanism by which high-performing terrorist networks leverage new iterations of information technology and the two interact in a mutually propulsive manner. Using process tracing as its methodology and complexity theory as its ontology, it identifies both terrorism and information technology as complex adaptive systems, a key characteristic of whose make-up is that they co-evolve in pursuit of augmented performance. It identifies this co-evolutionary mechanism as a classic information system that computes the additional scale with which the new technology imbues its terrorist partner, in other words, the force multiplier effect it enables. The thesis tests the mechanism’s theoretical application rigorously in three case studies spanning a period of more than a quarter of a century: Hezbollah and its migration from terrestrial to satellite broadcasting, Al Qaeda and its leveraging of the internet, and Islamic State and its rapid adoption of social media. It employs the NATO Allied Joint Doctrine for Intelligence Procedures estimative probability standard to link its assessment of causal inference directly to the data. Following the logic of complexity theory, it contends that a more twenty-first century interpretation of the key insight of RAND researchers in 1972 would be not that ‘terrorism evolves’ but that it co-evolves, and that co-evolution too is arguably the first logical explanation of the much-vaunted ‘symbiotic relationship’ between terrorists and the media that has been at the heart of the sub-discipline of terrorism studies for 50 years. It maintains that an understanding of terrorism based on co-evolution belatedly explains the newness of much-debated ‘new terrorism’. Looking forward, it follows the trajectory of terrorism driven by information technology and examines the degree to which the gradual symbiosis between biological and digital information, and the acknowledgment of human beings as reprogrammable information systems, is transforming the threat landscape

An exposition on Hansen's method of partial anomalies

Perturbations of highly eccentric orbital bodies determined by Hansens method of partial anomalie

The Impact Of Online Quizzing On Student Success In An Introductory Financial Accounting Class

We document the impact of transitioning to online quizzing in an introductory Financial Accounting course.  Results show significantly increased course pass rates, significantly increased individual exam averages, and lower overall drop rates

Constructing Confidence Intervals For Flexible Budget Cost Estimates

A multiple-cost flexible budget can be constructed using either the Aggregate Cost Analysis Method or the Component Flexible Budget Method.  This paper derives and illustrates the use of a confidence interval formula for an annual cost estimate that is developed by summing 12 monthly flexible budget estimates

Image-based dietary assessment ability of dietetics students and interns

Image-based dietary assessment (IBDA) may improve the accuracy of dietary assessments, but no formalized training currently exists for skills relating to IBDA. This study investigated nutrition and dietetics students’ and interns’ IBDA abilities, the training and experience factors that may contribute to food identification and quantification accuracy, and the perceived challenges to performing IBDA. An online survey containing images of known foods and serving sizes representing common American foods was used to assess the ability to identify foods and serving sizes. Nutrition and dietetics students and interns from the United States and Australia (n = 114) accurately identified foods 79.5% of the time. Quantification accuracy was lower, with only 38% of estimates within ±10% of the actual weight. Foods of amorphous shape or higher energy density had the highest percent error. Students expressed general difficulty with perceiving serving sizes, making IBDA food quantification more difficult. Experience cooking at home from a recipe, frequent measuring of portions, and having a food preparation or cooking laboratory class were associated with enhanced accuracy in IBDA. Future training of dietetics students should incorporate more food-based serving size training to improve quantification accuracy while performing IBDA, while advances in IBDA technology are also needed. © 2017 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Embedding anti-racism in the teaching, learning and assessment of the Community Development and Youth Work programme: Lessons learned to date.

The Black Lives Matter movement has placed a spotlight on racism, not just as a global phenomenon but as a feature of Irish society. Research conducted with Community Development and Youth Work students on the TU Dublin Blanchardstown campus found that some had encountered racism on placement and felt ill-equipped to deal with it. As a group of white lecturers working with diverse students, we sought and received funding to conduct a project during the academic year 2020/21 which aimed to embed anti-racism in the teaching, learning and assessment of that programme. An action-research methodology using a mixed-methods approach was employed, and focus groups, surveys and reflections were used to gather the evidence base. Following an overview of the theoretical framework underpinning the work, this article charts the journey to achieve the proposed objectives: namely, to change the programme content/delivery, to increase the racial literacy and reflective practice of lecturers in terms of anti-racism, and to enable students to identify racism and empower them to respond to it. The article concludes with an analysis of some lessons learned and emerging issues from the ongoing work

Embedding Anti-Racism in the Community Development and Youth Work Programme (CDYW) 2020/2021

The Community Development and Youth Work (CDYW) programme team received funding from the IMPACT project as part of the Le Chéile award application during the academic year 2020/2021. The overall aim of the CDYW Le Chéile journey was to embed anti-racism in the teaching, learning and assessment of the programme. Changes were introduced to modules in terms of new content, students were exposed to different perspectives and voices, and new workshops were designed for placement preparation around identifying and responding to racism. With regard to assessment, case studies were used to develop responses to the lived experiences of racism in community development, youth work and higher education settings. Lecturing staff increased their racial literacy through participation in anti-racism training and attending webinars. They developed their reflective practice with regard to anti-racism during a staff workshop and through the changes subsequently introduced in various modules. Students were supported to identify and respond to racism through the space created for discussion around race, racism, racial inequalities and responses with lectures in their modules, through engaging in anti-racism training and attending and participating in events such as the Le Chéile project anti-racism seminar. Lecturers and students co-created the knowledge and outputs - workshops, events, government submissions, and an anti-racism charter are some of the numerous examples of proactive anti-racism emanating from this project. The team partnered with the EDI Directorate on the project to inform TU Dublin strategy on race equity. A summary can be viewed at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbVdEMNjGn