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Department of Public and Environmental Law, School of Law, Faculty of Management and Law, University of Limpopo, South Africa
Received Date: Oct 26, 2018; Accepted Date: Nov 05, 2018; Published Date: Nov 12, 2018
Citation: Odeku Kola O. Awareness creation and Effective Communication are Impetus for Entrenching Outcomes Based Education in Law Pedagogy in South Africa. Global Media Journal 2018, 16:31.
Copyright: © 2018 Odeku Kola O. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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South Africa's higher educational sector is resolute on high standard of teaching, learning and assessment which are components of Outcome Based Education (OBE). However, to a greater extent, this this new paradigm is not effectively communicated to both the role players. Similarly, there is insufficient awareness that have been created so as to make the law schools in South Africa imbibe this new culture of pedagogy and as such, there is disparity in the mode of providing pedagogy to the law students. Against the backdrop of this, the Department responsible for university education has decided to widely create awareness in this regard by insisting that all law schools must tow the path of OBE. This awareness is necessary so that both the educators and students will be doing what is required in order to make the learners competent lawyers when they graduated from the law school. More importantly, this system will enable learners to learn, understand and be competent to use the education received practically and significantly in various ways. In order to achieve this outcome, having competent educators and teachers are some of the components essential to deliver cutting-edge high quality pedagogy and assessment that will produce the desired result of certifying the competency of learners. It is against the backdrop of this OBE that this article highlights the significance of communicating the intention of the government and the Department of Higher Education by creating overwhelming and widespread awareness that will enable all the role players and stake holders to effectively implement the OBE.
Communication; Enlightenment; Media platforms; University; Outcome based Education; Competency
It is imperative that when there is a policy shift and change it should be communicated effectively to those who would be affected. Regrettably, when it comes to OBE in South Africa, especially regarding law pedagogy, there is paucity of information on how the law schools should integrate this method into their teaching and learning hence creating awareness gap. This is said against the backdrop that in order to become a lawyer or a legal practitioner in South Africa, it is mandatory to have a law degree which is only offered in universities. Undoubtedly, law degree is the foundation for legal sojourn and as such, law learners must be well taught in order for them to be competent lawyers. In order to achieve this outcome, law teachers have the responsibility to teach appropriate law modules at the university. It is pertinent to point out that law teachers are products of an educational process which trained them to be lawyers but not educationists [1]. But the challenge is that, most law teachers did not receive training in teaching for purposes of delivering law pedagogy [2]. Before the introduction of OBE, the previous systems and practices of teaching, learning and assessment by law teachers were orthodox, sacrosanct, and psychometric usually done through the personal skill, experience and the mood of the teacher at any point in time. In other words, teaching, learning and assessment were based on the usual teacher-based curriculum, which simply lists the topic for teachers to cover [2]. Then, with regard to assessment, law teachers used to underpin their assessment methods on the psychometric model such as "teacher assessment, standard tasks, coursework, records of achievement as well as practical and oral assessments, written examinations and standardized tests" [3]. These types of pedagogy and assessments resonate perfectly well with teaching and assessment methods used in the universities which focused mainly on ranking students according to the knowledge that they gained in a subject or course without necessary bothering whether the students have acquired the requisite skills which will enable high quality performance in the workplace [4]. This type of pedagogy was predicated on assessment methods which were designed to enable students demonstrate their knowledge in easily measurable ways so that comparisons between them were facilitated. Achievements and outcomes were also predicated quantitatively on how much they know on what was taught generally. Hence the students were merely evaluated and assessed by the assessor based on a definitive statement of the student's ability [5].
The foregoing explanation depicts what law teachers used to do. And to a greater extent, the practice is still ongoing because there is no widespread awareness on shifting to the OBE. This is the reason why this article makes a modest contribution to the body of knowledge on why there should be wide coverage and extensive information disseminated through different medial platforms to sensitize those involved in law pedagogy on the need to integrate OBE in their pedagogy. This is because there is wave of shifting towards OBE which is now crucially significant because it enables learners to be competent in whatever course or degree they studied. More importantly, OBE is very unique because with regard to assessment, learners have "knowledge and expectations of what will be assessed and that largely determines what they will learn" [5]. This new system is as a result of the integration and alignment of education and training through the introduction of the South Africa Qualification (SAQA) and the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) which laid the solid foundation toward Outcome Based Education and as such this means that all universities' teaching, learning and assessment have to be conducted using OBE.
At the international sphere, because of the massive awareness created around OBE, it has received overwhelming acceptance and it is highly favored to foster educational renewal. As such, South Africa should participate and very active as part of the movement to effectively implementing the OBE just like countries such as Canada, the United States and New Zealand where the system is robustly entrenched [4]. The significance of OBE is that it utilizes variety of assessment approaches to holistically and totally assess the competence of a learner in order to establish whether the learner has learnt and acquired the requisite knowledge, skills and values that will enable the performance of the job. Malan quoting Spady defines OBE as a "comprehensive approach to organizing and operating an education system that is focused on and defined by the successful demonstrations of learning sought from each learner. Outcomes are very clear learning results that we want students to demonstrate at the end of significant learning experiences. These outcomes are actions and performances that embody and reflect a learner's competence in using content, information, ideas, and tools successfully" [6]. The overall objective of OBE is therefore to ensure and confirm that during the course of teaching considerable learning took place.
As part of the campaign to expose the shortcomings of the old systems, it was observed that the problem of the old and orthodox method of assessment is that appraisals were not based on what had been learnt but on what the lecturers considered comfortableor believed should be assessed. This method has been found to produce low quality law graduates and consequently incompetent lawyers and legal practitioners because the person delivering the pedagogy and the assessment did not have the requisite skill and competency to deliver high quality teaching and learning that will produce the desired leaning outcomes.
The campaign against the old method had been intensified widely through the dissemination of the need to adopt OBE in South Africa by the professional educators, employers and the judicial institutions because these institutions and employers have continually complained about the poor quality of law graduates being produced through the university systems. Realizing the ineffectiveness of the old orthodox methods and techniques, the South African government introduced policies to foster the implementation of OBE in South Africa universities where all learners would have to be educated to be competent in their chosen discipline [7]. Therefore, the focus upon OBE which encompasses of competence-based teaching, learning and assessment is making all disciplines in the university to radically re-examine their teaching, learning and assessment practices in order to align them to OBE.
Considering all these setbacks, it is therefore imperative to use all available media platforms such as the print media, the Department of Higher Education websites, Radio, Television, Facebook, Media journals to drive cohesive and coherent information about the new method in a bid to shift to good teaching, learning and assessment by the university and particularly teaching, learning and assessment of law by law teachers, contemporary OBE becomes critically imperative because the sustenance of the university law school depends on the good products being produced and released to the employers and society. Therefore, in order to correct the past system, OBE is now mandatory and it is against the backdrop of this that Malan shares the sentiment of Reddy by asserting that in South Africa, curriculum compilers and educators have overwhelming accepted OBE as a major paradigm shift in education [8].
Awareness creation and sensitizing on OBE is crucial because OBE is a critical function of the university's wide infrastructure where teaching, learning and assessments are certain and the teachers are able to plan teaching events in order to ascertain to what extent learners have acquired the intended competences. Therefore, law learners depend largely on the qualified and competent teaching staff to discharge these responsibilities. However, if the teaching staffs are incompetent, automatically they will produce incompetent law graduates and lawyers. The OBE is "a planned process for gathering and judging evidence of competence, in relation to pre-determined criteria within an outcomes-based paradigm, for various purposes including further development and recognition of learning achievements." When a learner is found to be competent, this confirms that the learner has acquired education and skill that will enable him or her to be employable, become self-employed and also have the capacity to employ others [9]. This is contrary to the old practice of merely declaring that a student has passed or failed. This type of education is restrictive and the student might pass but might not have acquired the requisite skills to make him or her competent to perform the job. While the word 'student' is used to describe those who were taught in the psychometric model, the word 'learner' is used to describe those who are found competent or not competent because being a learner means that one must have been taken through the processes that would have made him acquire quality skills to enable him become competent on the job.
Widespread information duly disseminated to role players should be the drive towards the strategic changes made in South Africa to tow the path of OBE for several reasons. These changes should be made in order to "broaden university education, to develop and consequently to assess a much broader range of learner abilities. Also, these changes are necessary to harness the full power of assessment and feedback in support of learning. The third arises from the belief that education should lead to a capacity for independent judgment and an ability to evaluate one's own performanceand these abilities can only be developed through involvement in the assessment process" [5]. The OBE is beneficial to law education and learners hence the paradigm is now shifting toward competency based legal education. Therefore, by the time a law learner receives a law degree, he or she must have acquired requisite quality skills to make him or her competent as a legal practitioner. More so, the assessment that would have been conducted during the course of the law degree study must have been aligned and fall within the ambit of the OBE. To this end, the law teacher would have ensured that both formative and summative assessments were conducted in line with the OBE. So, to be able to effectively and efficiently implement these assessments, law teachers need to be educated in the proper methods of applying and delivering OBE. Against the backdrop of ensuring proper, effective, efficient and adequate implementation and application of the OBE, it is pertinent to point out that "professional development continues throughout a teacher's career. As such, teachers should have the disposition and the skills to develop new understandings of teaching, to learn new instructional skills, and to expand their knowledge base for teaching" [10]. It is against the backdrop of this shift that law teachers are being trained in order to be certified and competent in delivering OBE to law learners. Universities also recognizes the need for high quality teaching and because this is not static but evolving and contemporary, the continual development of teaching competence in the university is crucially imperative. To this end, universities should strive to provide development opportunities for teaching staff. For instance, at the University of Limpopo, the Centre for Academic Excellence as well as faculty and school are ensuring that their teaching staff are being trained to acquire requisite skills to enable them understand and deliver high quality OBE and become top-notch teachers. The university also encouraged scholarship in all aspects of OBEwherein teachers are encouraged to research and investigate the most favorable environments to foster and support learning in specific fields of study in order to enhance their skills and become prominently competent.
Over and above, awareness creation and effective communication of the significance of OBE have been the reasons for South Africa to strategically adopt the OBE. This system is the roadmap which indicates what law learners in a university should go through and achieve, and it is based on a set of learning criteria which is derived from the content-based programme and specific level outcomes [4]. A course outcome guideline being one of the components of OBE tells us how a teacher would recognize if or how well learners have learned what is intended they should learn and be able to do.
The only information mostly readily available to lawyers is that the legal profession is very conservative and as such should stick to the old methods and systems of doing things including pedagogy at the university. To become a lawyer, one needs a law degree from a University. This presupposes that training to become a lawyer starts from the University. Unfortunately, even OBE was not generally embraced by law teachers because of the conservatism ideology and this problem is caused mainly by lack of proper awareness and cogent information regarding the importance of the OBE in legal pedagogy. This is the reason why law teachers in South Africa still believed that they were trained as lawyers and as such will provide pedagogy as lawyers not educators. Most of the law teachers lack requisite skill in OBE because there was no awareness or information to that effect even where information is available, no one was able to sensitize them to shift from their old systems to the new ones. This lack of information and awareness of the OBE in law pedagogy was a major setback for law learners because their lecturers keep providing pedagogy in the old fashion thereby depriving the learners from acquiring skills which will equip them to be competent lawyers after their studies.
Therefore, it is highly imperative that there should be strong awareness creation that will educate and inform that pedagogy and assessment have changed and have become very contemporary and pragmatic in view of the introduction of OBE coupled with modern day technology and other innovations that are cropping up in all aspects of disciplines of teaching, learning and assessment. Law is not an exception and as such, it must fit into the contemporary modern way of pedagogy and assessment in order to achieve the desired outcomes. This is said against the backdrop that there has been widespread concern by employers, industries, courts and the society regarding the quality of law graduates being produced at the universities. Part of the reasons for incompetent graduates is poor teaching, learning and assessment activities during the course of study. Law teachers are mostly to be blamed for these because most of them lack capacity to deliver high quality pedagogy and assessment thereof.
More so, the overwhelming information and feedback being received from the educationists and pundits is that the previous systems have dismally failed to meet the contemporary modern educational needs and expectations required to make learners to be competent in the workplace. The competency-based movement has now metamorphosed into OBE which certifies the competency and skills of the learners in performing the job in the workplace. It is against the backdrop of improving pedagogy and assessment that the Department of Higher Education in South Africa (DoHE) had rolled out massive awareness creation to make all tertiary institutions to subject their educators and in particular, law teachers to go through intensive OBE and OBA courses which would helped make them become effective, good teachers and assessors [11].
In order to successfully implement the OBE, it is also important to ensure that stake holders and role players are on the same page and in order to achieve this, it requires robust and effective awareness creation and effective communication of the significance of assessment in OBE. This is said against the backdrop that the ultimate imperative of assessment is to validate learning outcomes whereby the learner is found to be competent having been subjected to both formative and summative assessments. Therefore, it is pertinent to point out that assessment plays a major role in OBE because it is an integral part of achieving OBE [12]. This is said against the backdrop that the main reason for pedagogy is not in the dissemination of knowledge but the impartation of knowledge. Therefore, it is important to identify whether learning had taken place during the course of teaching by conducting an assessment to establish competency in what had been taught [13]. In this instance, assessment is used as a tool of evaluation to ascertain learning [14]. Furthermore, assessment is considered an important element of all formal education and has a remarkable influence on learning and teaching [15].
Also, OBE and assessment methods are not one size fits all, therefore creating awareness and educating teachers on the diverse methods are equally important as part of a wide range of methods for evaluating pupil performance and attainment including formal testing and examinations, practical and oral assessments, classroom based assessment carried out by teachers, formative assessment, summative and performance based assessment [3]. All these methods make assessment to be very dynamic and pragmatic these days because they are being used to determine whether a learner is competent or not [16]. It is against the backdrop of this that Gipps indicates that "assessment is undergoing a paradigm shift, from psychometrics to a broader model of educational assessment, from a testing and examination culture to an assessment culture" [16]. Also, assessment is being used to achieve a wide range of purposes and outcomes to improve and strengthen pedagogy for both teachers and learners. All these pragmatic new modes of conducting assessments indicate that the traditional method which is psychometric model is no longer adequate. In other words, the focus is now on what it is that law teachers in particular subjects at particular stages of a program of study really want their learners to learn. This technique talks to the desired outcomes of learning. This is said against the backdrop that good assessment practice and technique allow teachers to demonstrate the quality of their learners' learning to others because teachers now take responsibility and accountability for the outcome of pedagogy. Therefore, the credibility of teaching and learning and more importantly, good assessment underscores that the outcome is credible and authentic.
Teachers are also being sensitized by informing them that any knowledge to be assessed must be based on the unit standard and this can be done through assessment of the specific outcomes in terms of the assessment criteria which is generally referred to as unit standard essential embedded knowledge. Remarkably, OBE has profound implications for assessment in the sense that assessments should reflect academic integrity and ethics including the upholding of the rights of the learners, Therefore, there are the principles of assessments which good assessments should meet and as such, in order to meet this standard, assessment techniques and practices in all teaching and learning situations for all modules, their unit standard and programs should be based on basic principles. Against the backdrop of this, assessment must be consistent in the sense that the outcome must be the same regardless of whether same assessor or another assessor conducts the assessment again. Assessment must be reliable and produce consistent results at all times anywhere irrespective of who the assessor is or will be. Assessment must be valid and fair and to be measured based on the agreed unit standard. More importantly, assessment must be of high quality and good standard. Before the commencement of any pedagogy and assessment, the law teacher has the responsibility to gather all evidence to be used for assessment against agreed criteria for purposes of making judgment of competency for developmental and recognition purposes. Therefore, applying this principle in law pedagogy, assessment activities should show what the candidate does or is involved in as a means of producing evidence for examples analysis of case law, writing a brief, writing legal opinion, examining principles of law, applying principles of law, advocating for clients in courts and effective law practices, answering questions, solving problems [17]. More importantly is the role of the assessment facilitator or evidence facilitator or a law teacher who had been duly certified to help learners gather, produce and organize evidence for assessment. Also importantly is the role of assessment criteria which is the overall description of the necessary and different types and qualities of evidence required against which learners are to be assessed [10]. Assessment design is critically important as it gives detailed description using assessment guide of how an assessment should take place, including all instructions and information regarding the assessment activities and assessment methods. Assessment guide is a complete and comprehensive package which is based on a thorough analysis of specified learning outcomes. Assessment guide produces two prong benefits because it is designed primarily for use by assessors to conduct an assessment in order to establish a significant and coherent outcome of learning in order to fulfill the contents of the unit standard or in the module [18]. Against the backdrop of this, it is important that an assessment guide should address the following key aspects in detail namely; how will the assessment take place? What is needed to make the assessment happen? How will evidence be gathered, recorded, reviewed? How will feedback be disseminated to the learners in order to establish learning outcome and competency.
The key contents of an assessment guide are the clear descriptions of the approach to the assessment, the assessment conditions thoroughly explained, all assessment activities that will be conducted, comprehensive instructions to the assessors and learners in order to establish certainty and focus, type of assessment methods which is what the law teacher does in order to gather and evaluate evidence in order to establish competency. These methods include observing candidates, questioning candidates, interviewing, supervision of learners, listening to learners. The assessment instruments are very significant and these are items that an assessor uses and could be role-plays, case studies, description of tasks to be performed, descriptions of role play situations questions, tasks. All the resources required to conduct the assessments should be listed and be provided during the course of the assessment, the learners must have foreknowledge of the assessment outcomes and criteria to establish the trust inherent in OBE assessment. An assessment plan gives general overview of timeframes and responsibilities for assessment and moderation for the agreed delivery period. The plan provides comprehensive information on the practical implementation of the whole modules and outcomes that must be met in order to establish competency.
Validating all the assessments are also important and as such, the role of a moderator is equally significant because moderation is used in order to support and evaluate the assessment environment, process and instruments in order to establish and confirm the reliability and authenticity of the assessment results. Moderation is also useful in improving the quality of assessments and the assessors themselves. The outcome of all these activities will result to good performance by the learners because they would be able to demonstrate the skills, knowledge, understanding and attitudes, and the ability to transfer these to new situations.
The processes of assessment must be systematic in order to ensure that the overall process is fair, effective consistent and sustainable and manageable. It must also be transparent. For example, assessment candidates should understand the assessment process and the criteria that apply and can contribute to the planning and accumulation of evidence [19]. It is pertinent to point out that assessment must also be authentic and this connotes that the work being assessed belong to the learner being assessed. It also confirms that teaching and learning are holistic and that during the course of assessment, nothing that is essential about teaching is left out of the assessment. The learners should be involved and carried along during the course of the pedagogy and assessment and the outcomes must be given to the learners as feedback. In other words, being authentic is a reflection of performance in the real work situation where the learner is able to use the skill acquired to perform the job in the workplace. This is the reason why those who have the responsibility to deliver pedagogy and conduct assessment have to be adequately skilled to carry out these responsibilities [20].
Therefore, what qualifies a person to be a good law teacher is not the experience in the work of a lawyer's office nor the experience in the trial or argument of cases in courts but skill acquired during training as assessor which would make the teacher competent in order to be a very good teacher. This is said against the backdrop that "practice of law for any length of time has marked intellectual disadvantage and that a school conducted chiefly by persons drawn from the bar after many years of practice would lack the scientific intellects essentially to a first-rate law teacher." Therefore, assessment is a process in which evidence of all the activities of a learner is gathered, interpreted and evaluated against agreed criteria. The significant of this is that it enables the teacher to be able to make formative and summative judgments during the course of study in order to declare whether the learner is competent or not.
The introduction of the OBE at the institutions of higher learning is gaining the necessary support, however, while some disciplines have embraced it because it was properly communicated, the law pedagogy is lagging behind because of lack of ample awareness and purposeful communication on the need to integrate OBE in law pedagogy. In OBE, assessment is a major tool that is being used to ascertain whether a learner understood what had been taught by the teacher or not but such assessment method must meet the requirements and principles of OBE which seek to give the learner the skill that will make him competent and employable [20]. Disseminating information on contemporary assessment method is important because it regulates learners' educational activities [21]. It is against the backdrop of this that "it is not the curriculum which shapes assessment, but assessment which shapes the curriculum and embodies the purposes of higher education" [21]. Therefore, assessment is described as "a systematic basis for making inferences about the learning and development of learners the process of defining, selecting, designing, collecting, analyzing, interpreting and using information to increase students' learning and development" [16]. Equally important is the fact that assessment is used as a basis to ascertain the skills acquired and the ability to perform what had been taught. This is the reason why the reform brought by the OBE is embraced because the university will now be able to showcase achievements made thus far. The news on the achievements is an indication to validate the university's educational activities [16].
Due to vigorous awareness creation and intensive campaign, it is welcoming and impressive that there have been attempts by some law schools to imbibe and integrate OBE by ensuring that law teachers conduct both summative and formative assessments. Summative assessment is done at the end of each semester where learners' assessment is conducted in order to measure and sums up learners' achievement. This assessment technique merely describes what has been achieved. However, formative assessment involves continuous assessment within the period of a semester. The purpose is to measure and get the overall estimate of achievement and use it to assist the learners in the learning process. Formative assessment is very helpful in law pedagogy because the learners have to perform series of tasks and the teacher has the responsibility to give feedback on each task so that the learners would know how they are performing in their study and use the feedback to improve their next performance. Tutorials and discussion between appointed tutors and the learners are also critical aspects of formative assessment because the tutor assists to clarify areas that are difficult during pedagogy and learners receive good feedback from the tutors. Formative assessment prepares the learners for summative assessment because series of formative assessments undergone would have prepared learners to be able to sit for summative assessment. It has been observed that "formative assessment is a central element of learning, in that the feedback students receive enable them to develop and extend themselves in ways that summative assessment cannot" [16].
More importantly, the reason why the previous systems are considered inadequate is continuously being dissemination of information through different media platforms to the role players by showcasing how the past mode of law teaching and assessment were fraught with many problems because most of the law teachers did not have formal teacher's education training [22]. Most of them got appointed to teach law at the university after their first degree or post graduate degree. To this end, there have been series of concerns being raised by employers of law graduates because it has been established that most of the law graduates produced through this system are found to be performing poorly in the workplace largely due to poor teaching, learning and assessment at the university. It is now generally acceptable that in order to produce highquality law graduates, law teachers' should be subjected to rigorous training in OBE and assessment techniques in order to be competent to teach law and produce adequately equipped and skilled law graduates [23]. This is an important educational transformation that is being embraced in South Africa and as such all University teachers must undergo this training [24].
Continuous sensitization and awareness on the need for the law teachers themselves to be competent have been the outlets chosen by stake holders to ensure that those who have responsibility to provide pedagogy are equipped with one of the basic requirements of possessing skills on how to compile portfolio of evidence. Portfolio of evidence is a carefully compiled, organized and complete collection of all evidence by the law teacher to prove competence in teaching, learning, assessment, moderation and evaluation. Employers and the society are also interested in the forms of assessments a learner have been subjected to during the course of teaching and learning at the undergraduate periods in order to ascertain whether the graduate had been equipped with the required skills to make him or her competent enough to perform a specified job very well [2].
This article accentuates that the Department of Higher Education is responsible for the shaping of university education in South Africa and as such needs to continue to provide leadership which must be adequately communicated to all role players in order to bring all disciplines at the university on board. To this end, teaching and learning particularly law education, is now being presented through an exploration of transformational alternatives to the current theories and practices of teaching and learning the law. Paradigm has now shifted from the orthodox assessment practices by law teachers to the OBE which is being used to equip law learners for future challenges in the workplace and wherever they may find themselves [25]. Therefore, the essence of the OBE is to ensure that learners are equipped with skills needed by would-be-clients, companies, industries and society at large. Undoubtedly this technique offers meaningful access to lifelong learning opportunities because the assessments were based on what had been designed, taught. Hence, the DHE and have now compelled all universities to implement the OBE with all its techniques in order to produce the desired outcomes. University teachers and in particular, law teachers are at the receiving end of this instruction because they never had any training on how to become educators but only trained to be lawyers. Therefore, the DHE now insisted that paradigm must shift and all law teachers have to undergo OBE training in order to acquire the requisite skills to deliver OBE and OBA. This intervention is imperative because most of the learners have a good display of theoretical knowledge but demonstrate poor quality in the execution of practical skills when they get to the workplace. Workplaces in this context refer to courts, law firms, industry and the society at large. Paradigm is now being changed as the learners are being taught not only the theoretical aspects of law but holistic teaching and learning which is based on authentic assessments that will enable a law graduate deliver wherever he or she finds himself or herself.
It is important that information regarding the shift to OBE should not reside only on the paper it is written, there must be a concerted effort by the stakeholder to ensure that it is widely disseminated. It is generally acceptable that teachers will continue to assess and grade learners in order to determine competency. Therefore, the strategic goal of universities is to ensure that all educators providing teaching and learning in the universities irrespective of their disciplines undergo training that will enable them deliver full blown OBE. These are the most powerful factors that are now influencing universities' assessments and as such, the learners are the overall beneficiaries. Crucially important is the policy and financial supports being given by the national government, employers, professional associations and educational theorists. There is overwhelming support for integrating OBE in South Africa by the academia because of its immense characteristics of skilling and equipping university graduates "not only to acquisition of a body of knowledge but also to mastery of the technical skills of a discipline, development of abilities such as problem solving, critical thinking and effective communication as well as development of attitudes and dispositions such as a commitment to working in groups and to ethical practice within one's discipline" [5]. OBE is informed by a very strong assessment in order to achieve the desired outcomes hence robust assessment is having significant impact and effect on learning and outcomes. In this regard, "assessment then becomes a learning experience in which learners are prepared to apply their knowledge, skills and values in an integrated manner. Assessment of knowledge, values and skills relates to assessing elements in the cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning domains" [4].
What is remarkable in the OBE is that the student's knowledge and expectations of what will be assessed largely determines what they will learn. Prior to the use of OBE law learners were used to be put in suspense and the whole pedagogy shrouded in secrecy. The law teacher used to be a mini-god because he determined what is to be taught and assessed. Learners were never involved. In other words, other activities might have cropped up during the course of pedagogy, this is good for general learning but if they are not assessed they cannot form part of the desired learning outcomes for a learner to determine the level of competency. However, it is the opinion of the author that undergraduate education should strive to develop a broad range of abilities and as such, the assessment and documentation of students' achievements over the full range is also crucially important. This is because the use of a much broader range of assessment methods could also be beneficial to the learners as it will strengthen their competency.
Due to the ongoing awareness being created, law teachers are now designing and implementing OBE wherein they now have capacity to design different kinds of assessment tasks and implement them during the course of learning. The feedback enables learners to become more skilled in each task. This system is making pedagogy very interesting and it has created the desire in the learners to perform all the tasks in order to become competent. Law teachers are also making learners to learn how to be responsible by involving them in the assessment process and allowing them to consciously attempt to develop self-assessment skills. Brown and Kniglxt, succinctly describe learners as being increasingly involved "in their own and each other's assessment and we argue strongly for this practice as a means not only of providing feedback to students but also of developing within students the capability better to judge their own abilities and performance, providing them with the opportunities to develop skills for learning that will be of value long after they leave the university" [17].
Because of awareness being created, OBE have enabled learners to know their progress status the outcome and feedback of each assessment will also enable the learner to know whether he is meeting the required standard for competency. Documented assessments are critically important to learners because they serve as credible evidence to the employers or for further studies where scholarship is sought. Therefore, the intrinsic role of the teachers is to establish whether learners are achieving the intended learning outcomes, particularly at the subject level. To this end, teachers benchmark the assessment criterion with the outcome in order to show whether learners are meeting the standard set. It is pertinent to point out that teachers are now using portfolio of assessments of learner's evidence as source of documentation for promotion. This portfolio of evidence showcases that the teacher is tailoring pedagogy and assessments towards OBE. As a matter of fact, law teachers are now coming to grips with the new dimensions of assessment as a broad range of goals required to support learning and promote personal responsibility. OBE is open, clear and unambiguous. The university environment is where all these pedagogy and assessments activities are taking place. As such, the universities have very strong vested interest. They will want to know whether students are achieving the intended learning outcomes based on the unit standards in the modules and whether the modules are effective to make learners achieve competency, and to show whether the teachers are effective in their teaching and assessment responsibilities. Declaring that a graduate is found competent after the whole course of study is a proof that the graduate has achieved what the institution claims they will do in order to develop the learner to a full grown competent graduate. Undoubtedly, the government and the departments will continue to fund universities as a result of this success. The essence of OBE is to ensure that learners are adequately equipped and skilled in order to enhance their employment prospects and at the same time make resounding contribution to the society at large. Employers have reasonable and legitimate expectations that the university graduate employed should be able to apply skills and knowledge acquired during the periods of education to perform the job with minimum supervision. This is the reason why OBE becomes critically imperative because by the time of completing the study, the learner would have been found competent in the area of study and ready to use the skills and learn new skills in the workplace. Also, competent university graduates are able to make meaningful contribution to the society at large based on the experience and skills acquired at the university. To this end, they are able to respond intelligently and competently to challenges facing the society and offer enduring and sustainable solutions. These are all the attributes of a learner found competent using OBE.
In order to achieve the desired result of the OBE and assessment thereof, widespread awareness and robust communication to all the stake holders and role players are very significant otherwise the result intended would not be achieved. This article demonstrates the potent of vigorous awareness, information and communication of the overall benefits of OBE and assessments in South African where the universities are now required to tow the paths of these forms of pedagogy and assessments in order to make learners competent on graduation. Consequently, law teachers are now becoming amenable and making frantic efforts to be adequately trained in order to be found competent in OBE. Over and above, the benefits of OBE are extremely overwhelming because the learners are adequately equipped and skilled to perform what had been taught, learned and assessed anywhere anytime. These feats will become reliable effectively and efficiently by using appropriate media platforms to disseminate the information in order to create awareness.


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It's the Stanley Cup Playoffs, so I haven't been doing anything except watching a ton of hockey for the last month or so. I have tons to catch up on here, and I know it.
It's Mother's Day tomorrow and Betty White is hosting SNL tonight, along with an insane amount of returning female, former cast members. Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey, Molly Shannon, Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, and Ana Gasteyer are all going to be joining the lovely Betty and it is going to be epic. Oh yeah, and some guy named Jay Z is going to be the musical guest. With all that star-power, this could be his big break!
So catching up on shows I have seen this year, in January I saw Asobi Seksu do an acoustic set with openers Friendship and the Fawn at the Media Club. It was a nice, mellow show – intimate, to say the least. There was no flailing drum solo from Yuki this time around.
Jay Farrar & Ben Gibbard with opener John Roderick from The Long Winters gave occasion for me to take my first trip to Portland. They had a star-studded backup band, including Ben's bassist buddy, Nick Harmer. "You Remind Me of Home" was a nice surprise in the set list that made me smile since I was there with my olde timey buddies from back home. Portland, despite the usual PNW showers, was pretty nice. We hit Voodoo Doughnut and partook of their fine fares at Burnside on our last morning before hitting the road back North. We had to take the opportunity to swing by Cannon Beach to hit Haystack Rock. This year is the 25th anniversary of the Goonies, so it was only fitting. It was really beautiful down there and I would love to go back sometime and just chill out for a little while.
Thanks to some last-minute plans, I got to catch the Stars and Hey Rosetta show. It was part of the craziness that came with the Olympics and it was a really great night. Hey Rosetta actually stole the show. I've never seen an opening band have such demand for an encore! They didn't oblige, sadly, but they really blew everyone away. I've seen Stars before and, for some reason, this time it felt like something was lacking. Don't get me wrong, they sounded great, but it felt like it was missing heart. It felt a bit empty. A good show and an awesome night, nonetheless.
Got to see Cymbals Eat Guitars in March at the Biltmore with killer openers Bear In Heaven and Freelance Whales. This was a wicked show. Both openers were solid and I have never seen anyone even come close to sweating as much as Jim Adkins before Joseph Ferocious. That kid is a youngin', but he has done his homework on late 90's emo stage-presence.
After two cancelled shows, Passion Pit finally played at the Commodore on April 11th. It was quite a night, as other bands with shows that night included Spoon and Beach House. I would have been really pissed if PP cancelled again, because I would have totally gone to the Spoon show, but they showed up this time so all was well. Bear Hands and Mayer Hawthorne & the County opened for this one. Let me just say, Mayer Hawthorne, you are real, and you are SPECTACULAR. They were so much fun and he embodies what the old Detroit sound and feel are in my head. A super good time, all around.
PP was awesome, as expected. They had the heavily-hipster crowd jumping and singing along from the second they hit the stage. H&M and Urban Outfitters attire could not be avoided, no matter where you looked, but my friends and I couldn't stop watching the meathead in the tight white Ed Hardy gear trying to grind on his girlfriend and "dance" in front of the bar. It was like a bad version of a Girls Gone Wild commercial. You couldn't look away and you couldn't stop laughing either. Lots of holding his drink in the air and thrusting of the general crotch area – you know what I'm talking about.
The one thing I did not like was that Michael Angelakos made mention of having to postpone their last show here, but said it was due to sickness. He could easily have gotten his wires crossed, but they did NOT cancel due to sickness – it was because they decided to play Jimmy Kimmel instead. Kind of a burn, but then to not only claim it was due to sickness, but ALSO to not even mention that the December show was actually a rescheduling of their October show on top of that was pretty lame. I know they're huge right now and touring can turn into a blur of cities and days, but it definitely put me a bit off. Still a great show, overall.
More to come between games…

subset: commoncrawl


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Cloud World: Recap on the August event in San Francisco
This year's Cloud World conference was a mashup of three industry conferences-  Open Source World, Next Generation Data Center (NGDC), and Cloud World.  Even with the combining of three (formerly) major industry events, the attendance volume still only merited the West wing of the Moscone Center.
It's easy to blame the low attendance on the economy, but the low attendance could also have been the rather trite content of the conference sessions.  While I of course did not attend all the sessions, those that I did attend left me reminiscing about earlier conferences where there was thought provoking and informative presentations.  It's not that the presenters were not informative.  It's just that there was very little that seemed new or thought provoking.  Many of the NGDC sessions, while sporting different titles, were actually covering very similar and overlapping subject matter.
My real mission at the conference was to target those in attendance who are genuinely interested in acquiring Cloud resources, are in the process of building Cloud-based services, or who have been spending time analyzing the Cloud marketplace.  Of those that I spoke to, the following is a summary of their opinions and points of view:Details


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- Home
- Government
- Departments
- Public Services
Public Services
Mission Statement
Our mission is to develop and maintain the optimum public infrastructure system, secure adequate resources and foster planned quality growth, to promote the welfare of the community.
About the Department
The Public Services Department is a multi-functional department that provides supervision and operation of streets, roads, alleyways, easements maintenance, water, sewer, building / property maintenance and fleet operations. The department provides continuous operation of all water and sewer distribution systems and oversight of a 320-acre solid waste treatment plant and irrigated spray field.
This is accomplished by evaluating and assessing community needs, providing for programs consistent with the goals and objectives outlined by the City Council, setting the standards to achieve long term economic progress and developing programs that address target goals and minimize maintenance costs.
The Public Services Department is committed to providing an environment that encourages private investment in the community and promotes creative solutions for complex problems.
The Public Services Department is the largest department in the city, organized into 7 different divisions, staffed by approximately 50 employees. The responsibilities of each division are outlined as follows:
Water Department
The Water Division manages and operates the city's eight water wells and elevated storage tanks. In addition, the division maintains, constructs, and manages the distribution system that currently serves the city's utility customers. The division produces reports on all monthly meter readings to the billing department, while providing safe, aesthetically pleasing water. View our Annual Drinking Water Quality Report.
To Report a Water Leak or Sewer Issue, Please Call:
Mon-Thurs 6:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (850) 682-6132
After Hours: (850) 682-2055 Police Dispatch
(850) 305-8242 Sewer On-Call (850) 305-2969 Water On-Call
Utility Maintenance & Sewer Department
The Utility Maintenance and Sewer Division maintains, constructs, and operates over fifty sewer lift stations as well as the sewer collection system and manholes. In addition, the division provides utility location information to protect the infrastructure from damages caused from excavation. The division also provides all electrical related construction maintenance for all city owned buildings.
Crestview Beautification Crew (CBC) Department
In conjunction with the Street Division, the CBC provides maintenance of all R.O.W.'s and coordinates with the Parks and Recreation Department to provide maintenance for all of the City's parks and ball fields. The CBC also provides support for all parades held within the city limits.
Solid Waste & Garbage Department
The Solid Waste and Garbage Division services are contracted out and are currently provided by Waste Pro, Inc. View the pick-up days schedule (PDF).
Street & Storm Water Management Department
The Street and Storm Water Management Division maintains, engineers, designs, constructs, and manages many miles of streets, right of ways, and storm water infrastructure within the city.
Fleet Maintenance Department
The Fleet Maintenance Division maintains, repairs, and services all of the motor vehicles and heavy equipment for the entire City of Crestview, including the Fire and Police Departments.
Sewer Treatment Plant Department
The Sewer Treatment Plant Division services are contracted out and are currently provided by CH2M HILL OMI, Inc.


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Photography Classes in Archer IA
Are you ready to take photography classes in Archer IA? No matter if you are a professional, beginner, or hobbyist, the most effective approach to improving your photography skills is through hands-on training with professional instructors.
Iowa has numerous accredited and recognized photography schools. Photography classes teach techniques such as digital capture, lighting techniques, exposure, composition, outdoor photography, and many other basic and advanced camera techniques. Maturing into an accomplished photographer can lead to a prosperous professional career or lifelong hobby.
There are many Photography Classes in Archer IA:
- Archer Studio Photography Classes
- Archer Photography 101
- Archer Digital Photography Classes
- Archer Nature Photography Classes
- Archer Editorial Photography Classes
Archer IA Photography Classes
Northwest Iowa Community College
603 W Park St
Sheldon, Iowa 51201
Phone: (712) 324-5061
8.41 miles away


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Carey Business School – Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School opened in January 2007. It was built using a $50 million donation from William Polk Carey, who wished to name the school after his great-great-great grandfather, a businessman in Baltimore. However, business education at Johns Hopkins dates back to 1916, when the school first began offering classes in Business Economics. The school earned accreditation by the AACSB in February 2017.
The campuses of the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School span the corridor that stretches from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Located on Massachusetts Avenue in downtown Washington D.C., just blocks away from many embassies and government offices, the school's DC campus provides the sort of insight into the policy-making and regulatory communities that only proximity can bring. The state-of-the-art Harbor East flagship campus is located on the Baltimore harbor, just off of the Jones Falls Expressway.
Part-time students have the opportunity to fulfill their core courses in two additional locations: Columbia and Montgomery County.
The Baltimore-based program is located in the state-of-the-art Legg Mason building overlooking the Inner Harbor. The 28,000-square-foot visitor center houses an alumni board room in addition to the admissions office. The building serves as the Homewood campus' front door.
Carey Business School students have the opportunity to study with faculty across the university, including the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab as well as the Schools of Engineering, Public Health, Medicine, Nursing, Arts, and Sciences, and Advanced International Studies.
The Carey School of Business employs 93 full-time faculty members.
To enhance the learning experience, from time to time, the Carey Business School invites seasoned executives to spend concentrated time on campus and share real-world experiences with the students.
Student Body
Over 2,000 graduate and undergraduate students are enrolled in the Carey Business School. The students represent more than 60 different countries.
MBA Degree Offerings
The Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business offers a full-time Global MBA, as well as a flexible MBA, and several MBA dual-degree programs.


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Full review tomorrow (April 3) on http://sororiteasisters.com/ but here are snippets:
Upon first sip you will get a sweet raisin note, a light grape essence, not nearly as muscatel as some Darjeeling, and you may even think that it is a rather light, bright, tea with a clean finish. But wait… sneaking upon your unsuspecting taste buds is a rich, full mouthfeel, almost creamy, velvety, with a nutty, woodsy, backdrop of flavor.
I could see this tea being quite excellent iced, but it requires no additives and I feel adding any thing, even sweetener, would ruin this perfect cup.


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New perspective, new eyes, and opportunity to listen to another's story! I'm thankful for how these posts are filling my heart with insight and the same for you. So, today meet my dear Ronnie. She is wifey to Shane, devoted mother to Ezra and Israel, and works currently as the Head of the Mathematics Department at St George's British International School in Rome, Italy. Originally from Berkshire in the South of England and me from Southeast Texas, we met in Grand Cayman during a season of life that fused us together with a close bond that still holds fast with even an ocean between us. Read her heart shared, open and honest, and ponder with your heart these words.
Biblical womanhood in a world of confusion
I am writing this blog on the Sunday before the 2016 US Election where one candidate has confessed on tape to having some pretty ugly views on the purpose of woman, and the other proudly promoted the need for late term abortions, meanwhile on the other side of the pond the current Prime Minister attempts to fight to make something that is unconstitutional constitutional. So that being said it's not a great time to look to worldly leaders for great ideas about womanhood. Even in the evangelical church there are myriad of messages concerning this topic, even amongst persons of like minded agreement there is, well, disagreement. We are flooded with contradictory or conflicting or just pure fantasy-based images in the world and often in the church.
Be a big shot at work and come home to cook a magnificent three course meal for four friends, have a baby and start a successful home business, dress impeccably and successfully entertain five six year olds in an afterschool playdate.
I probably don't speak for all women; I imagine there are women out there that can achieve these things. Yet, I am not one of them! I am so completely not one of them! So for me I need something else than these fantasies, something more than contradiction, something tangible that is worth something, that means something, that has real value beyond this current moment and even this life; a hope for my identity, as a woman.
I hope that my value comes as a gift and a given. "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." [Genesis 1:27] I am His creation, and He is the almighty God who stitched together the entire universe. He has gifted me with His image, and since God has gifted it, it is certainly a given that it is of high value. My mere existence, my presence, my being alive is of immense value as the bearer of His image.
I hope that there is value in my singleness. "An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit." [1 Corinthians 7:34] The Lord loves my attention and devotion, I was created to worship, and so fully can I do this outside of dating and marriage and children. The Lord values my committed in the time I give and the heart I have for him.
I hope that there is value in my marriedness. " 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church." [Ephesians 5: 31-32] My marriage is the symbol of Christ's headship over the church, and my submission to my husband is the wonder of all God's children following Christ.
I hope for value in my motherhood. "Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. " [Titus 2:4] How I love my children has a direct impact on those around me, the love I have for my children prevents people making harmful and untrue statements about the Word of God.
I hope for value in my work. "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward." [Colossians 3:23-24] Wherever I work, whatever my work, my work is for the Lord, He values it so highly that for my work for Him I get an actual inheritance from Him as my reward. There is no greater work than the work we do for Him, and when I teach or account or clean or wash up or lawyer for Him I can know I am earning my reward.
I hope for value in my beauty. "Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight." [1 Peter 3:3-4] Praise the Lord for this! In plain text, God, the almighty ruler of heaven and earth, values greatly the beauty of my person not my body. The beauty of my heart, which never fades, not my clothes or hair. Praise the Lord!
I hope for forgiveness in my sins and for life eternal with my God, my Saviour, my redeemer, my friend. "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus." [Ephesians 2:6-7]
I hope with the certainty of a person that has been promised promises by one who never breaks them.
I hope for my God to come.
I hope for my life to please Him.
I hope for my identity to be His.
I hope.


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CENTER CITY (WPVI) -- The American Red Cross is mobilizing to respond to Hurricane Matthew. On Thursday, Denise and Robert Van Ness drove from their home in the Poconos to Center City to pick up an Emergency Response Vehicle.
The couple is headed to Columbia, South Carolina - a safe place to wait for the hurricane to blow through.
"What we'll be doing is feeding people. Feeding people that need it," said Robert Van Ness of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
The monster storm has already done considerable damage in Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas. It's heading for Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas now. The Van Ness' will go where they're needed most - to help distribute food to those in need.
"What we're assigned to right now is mostly just feeding. We'll be running food back and forth to the shelters for feeding in the shelters. So we won't be out in the field, yet. It depends on how bad the storm hits, and how many people go back home," said Denise Van Ness of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
The Van Ness' are likely just the first Red Cross volunteers from our area to leave for the hurricane zone, with more to follow.
"Our promise is to help, to always be prepared to help. So when people sign up to be a Red Cross volunteer, and I hope that many people will sign up because it enables us to go help other people in need," said Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes, American Red Cross.
This is not the first disaster response for the Van Ness'. Denise responded to Hurricane Katrina. They both just returned from assisting the victims of the San Bernardino wildfires. They expect to be away, helping the hurricane victims, for the next two-three weeks.
Red Cross heads south to assist with aftermath of Hurricane Matthew
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We ran an online survey with 2,000 people, 59% women and 41% men aged between 16 and 54 years across the UK.
Our questions focused on how much they use AI, which AI they regularly use and what tasks or activities they would be happy for AI to help them with.
Here are the results:
OnePulse is a research startup based in bustling London Bridge. They pride themselves in giving brands and businesses the opportunity to gather consumer opinion in real-time and on demand. The OnePulse app incentivises smartphone owners to answer micro-surveys, giving their honest answers in minutes.
New Business
Media Enquiries
Jo Doyle,
Senior Communications Lead


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Back Row L to R
Tony Kennedy (kit man), Glen Martin (physio) Steve Locker, Matty Hysen, Craig Melrose, Andy Grainger, Terry Burke, Chris Leighton, Andy Blower, Ross Lumsden, Derek Atwell, Nicky Evans, Lawrence Fox (fitness coach), Tony Harrison (assistant manager).
Front Row L to R
Michael Farrey, Glen Robson, Wayne Edgecumbe, Steve Hutchinson, Mick Tait (manager), David Burt, Steve Stewart, Graham Hogg, Richie Pitt.
Player 1999/2000 appearances (starts + sub appearances) & goals:
Steve Locker –13, Matt Hysen–13 + 1 sub , Craig Melrose –17 & 1 goal,
Andy Grainger – 0, Terry Burke – 56 , Chris Leighton – 2 + 6 sub,
Andy Blower – 21 + 1 sub & 1 goal, Ross Lumsden – 40 + 6 sub,
Derek Atwell – 9 + 4 sub, Nicky Evans – 26 + 3 sub & 3 goals.
Michael Farrey – 37+ 1 sub, Glen Robson–15 + 3 sub & 11 goals (incl. 3 penalties & 1 hat trick), Wayne Edgecumbe – 29 + 3 subs & 13 goals, Steve Hutchinson – 25 + 3 sub & 6 goals, David Burt – 15+7 sub & 1 goal, Steve Stewart – 26 + 2 sub & 2 goals,
Graham Hogg 15 + 15 sub & 1 goal, Richie Pitt – 47 & 8 goals.
September 1999, John Gamble quits as manager after a 0-3 defeat at Lancaster City, into the hot seat came a familiar face for his first spell as manager, Mick Tait.
This was his 1st team photo taken on 9th October 1999 before the 3-0 home FA Trophy 1st Round victory against Stourbridge.
It was actually Mick Tait's 3rd game in charge having taking over from John Gamble after the popular former Blyth defender had resigned following a year in charge. John stated he thought he had taken the club as far as he could and felt it best to stand down now so the new manager had a good chance to reverse the poor start to the season, John even suggested managers as he replacement (one being the former Hartlepool United manager Mick Tait).
Upon taking the job Mick Tait commented:
"I was contacted by the club after John had resigned, they asked if I was interested in the job. I had heard John had resigned and had thought of contacting the club to see if I could help in the short-term. I had been waiting to get back into League football but when Blyth approached me I decided I was happy to get involved with football at this level".
"The club is very well run I have watched games at Blyth on a number of occasions and it has always seemed a very good Non League club."
"The club didn't set any specific targets but they are a very ambitious club and have told me that they want to be playing Conference football within a few seasons".
1999 had been the club's Centenary year so 1999/2000 was deemed the club Centenary Season with several events held to mark it (however the events on the pitch were to prove not as successful).
The club had a new Centenary badge designed (created by Newcastle based Kimmerton Design) and it adorned the new kit for the season.
It was a slight 'tweak' of the previous ICIS kit, having a more prominent sponsors logo and the new Centenary club crest.
There was also new away kit, a rather luminous all bright orange affair that surprisingly went down a storm with supporters.
As for on the field events the season hadn't started well for manager John Gamble and quickly got worse, having guided the club to a respectable 14th place in 1998/1999 after taking over from Alan Shoulder in the October hopes were high for a push for the club's highest finish yet.
However only 2 victories in the first 9 league games had plunged the club into an early relegation battle, 4 red cards in the first 6 games didn't help matters however the board backed their manager but after a 1-4 League Cup defeat at local rivals Gateshead things came to a head.
The result of the game wasn't helped when goalkeeper Terry Burke had to leave at half time to attend the birth of his 1st child! and with no keeper on the bench an outfield player had to go in nets for the second half but it was the after game events that brought things to a head.
Reports of a player bust up came out and by the Friday news broke that 5 players had been released but it was hearing that fans favourite Wayne Edgecumbe had asked for a transfer straight after the Gateshead game that made fans aware there was problems within the team.
The following Saturday Blyth crashed out of the FA Cup losing 3-5 at Leigh RMI (with yet another red card thrown in for good measure it was to prove to be Andy Toman's final game for the club anyway).
2 more defeats in the space of 7 days proved the end of the road for Gambo and he and his assistant Laurie Pearson tendered their resignations after a defeat at Lancaster on 25th September. Injured right back Michael Farrey & physio Glen Martin stood in as caretaker managers for the 7-0 League Cup victory over Whitley Bay on 28th September and 2 days later the club appointed Mick Tait as manager.
The new manager 'feel good' factor happened as Blyth travelled to Winsford United on the Saturday and easily won 5-0 !.
Mick Tait and his new assistant Tony Harrison steadied the ship and calmed down the dressing room unrest with Wayne Edgecumbe staying, although as expected he brought in his own players with former Hartlepool Utd midfielder Nicky Evans being his 1st signing.
In came the likes of Andy Martin, Maurice Hilton, Ian Dixon, Paul Symons and there was a return brief return for Gustavo Di Lella as the manager tried to address what thought was an imbalance & lack of shape to the side.
Results improved gradually although consistency was still missing and it wasn't helped when Glen Robson broke his leg in a 0-3 defeat at Runcorn in October however days later Blyth recovered from the major blow of losing their star striker when they travelled to Frickley Athletic and won 4-1.
But the following Saturday Croft Park there was to witness the now rather infamous 'ill tempered' 3-4 home defeat by Hyde United. Emotions was running high after Hyde's on loan Crewe striker (a young & up and coming) Rob Husle appeared to punch the ball into the net to seal a 3-4 victory for the visitors having recovered from being 0-3 down at one stage, tempers spilled over and both players & supporters were involved in a fracas with the Hyde players & dugout after some rather unnecessary behavior from all parties which saw both clubs warned by the league & FA about their future conduct!.
There was other horror shows, not surprisingly one being in the Northumberland Senior Cup, after gaining a hard-fought 0-0 AET draw at Croft Park Northern Alliance side Ponteland United then won the replay 0-1, also a shock 0-1 League Cup Semi Final defeat at home to Trafford in March.
It was well into the New Year before the form settled and consecutive away victories at Gainsborough Trinity 0-1 & Leek 1-4 Town give belief of climbing the table it also coincided with the arrival of experienced players such as Brian Rowe, Jeff Wrightson, Ian Chandler, Paddy Atkinson & a return for Willie Moat.
Mich Tait finally guided the club to a respectable 15th place in the final table, although once again a Mick Tait reign in the hot seat was to feature a war of words with the board.
Tait stepped down as manager in the July citing promises he was made by the board when taking the job about funding being available for the coming season were not meet, he claimed he was promised the resources to make a challenge for the title!.
In an interview with Jeff Bowron in the Sunday Sun, Tait fired a broadside at the accusing them of a "job not fitting the description in the brochure".
Tait claimed "I knew there would be problems when I took over, But I was told funds would be available for a crack at the title if we pulled away from the relegation zone".
"We did that comfortably despite the players having to go without wages for several weeks but the reality is the finances just aren't there. I wasn't prepared to work in those circumstances".
"They have no immediate future which is a shame as I only went to Blyth because it was a big club with plenty of tradition"
The club's Commercial Manager Ken Waterhouse reacted in the same Sunday Sun article saying: "We'll turn the situation around".
"The debt is certainly not manageable but we're not prepared to gamble financially and the club will survive without a front man".
Rumours of the debts being around the 20K mark and the fact that the players had gone unpaid during the season, along with the promises the club had made to Mick Tait but clearly were not able to follow through on just emphasised that there was clearly was simmering trouble within the club. Mick Tait's resignation was followed shortly after by the clubs Chief Executive stepped down.
While a new manager was appointed in the July of 2000 in the shape of John Charlton the simmering problems were to finally catch up with the club a year later.
And as well all know the John Charlton era in charge & the events of summer 2001 is a story in itself.


text: Choosing the Right Authentication Method for Azure AD Wednesday, June 12, 2019 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT (US East Coast)7:00 AM - 8:00 AM PDT (UTC -7) In this webinar we will talk about the various authentication methods available in Azure AD – Cloud / Password Hash Sync / Pass-through Authentication / AD FS. We will outline why choosing the right authentication method for your business is critical as you begin your journey to the cloud. We will explain how these authentication methods work and we will compare & contrast them with regards to deployment costs, end user experience, advanced capabilities, and business continuity. Speakers


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CORE: Creative outreach for resource efficiency
Being more efficient with resources, i.e. water, energy, packaging, transport, raw materials and waste, benefits the environment through more effective use of finite assets and reductions in emissions; it can also collectively deliver savings for business and, at a national level, make UK industry more profitable. Recent UK government policy and strategy has created a step-change in support for resource efficiency (RE) initiatives, underlining the UK's commitment to development in this area. As a result, RE has become a headline term within UK government and business, stimulated by the EU flagship initiative on RE under the Europe 2020 strategy, which provides a long-term framework (roadmap) for action.
CORE (Creative outreach for resource efficiency) aims to support the delivery of a vibrant and creative outreach programme to maximise public and user engagement in RE. It is an enabler project, helping other EPSRC-supported projects (funded through the EPSRC's Resource Efficiency sandpit) to deliver high-impact, world-class science. Essentially, through-life, the CORE project will gain momentum and broaden its outreach by continually cycling through a three-stage process of capacity building (based on existing networks and contacts); disseminating key results to targeted audiences and getting feedback; and then, reaching out to new participants (academics and others), with a view to long-term survival and winning subsequent funded projects. The project will ideate, coordinate and support the use of vibrant and creative outreach mechanisms for exciting public and user engagement activities; organise specific events and activities; establish a new, one-stop online shop for information, dissemination and knowledge-sharing; support the targeted dissemination of high-quality outcomes; sustain and develop a healthy, collegiate community of practice; and, identify and communicate news of outreach, collaboration, enterprise and research opportunities. CORE will strive to be vibrant, visual and creative, ensuring that academics 'get out of the lab', provoke public debate and deliver world-class engagement on their projects.
This project will directly support outward-facing activities of value with appropriate public and user groups through an Innovative Outreach Fund, cross-cutting themes and policymakers' events. Partner institutions will use exciting mechanisms (such as pop-up labs, crowdsourcing, podcasts, social design and innovation, physical hands-on and fun demonstrations and schools events) to encourage dialogue, co-create outcomes and deliver impact with a range of stakeholders.
This project has strong links to the EPSRC's research themes of: 'Living with Environmental Change', 'Engineering' and 'Manufacturing the Future'. CORE responds to the national and European policy agendas on resource efficiency and so will place the UK in a leadership position on engagement, co-creation and, hopefully, partnership building in this emerging area.
UEA Team
For full list of partner institutions, visit http://www.core-community.net/partner-organisations/
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)


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Platform Administration
Set policies, create, view, remove and administer all wireless service user accounts.
|Service provider & customer level
|Service provider view which can view, create, remove and suspend customer accounts.
|White label
|Use custom domain and SSL certificate captive portal and platform (integration charges apply).
|Customize portal login screen
|Customize content to enforce warnings or terms & conditions that meet business requirements.
|Control access
|Admin access to portal with create, edit, suspend, delete, password reset and .csv bulk upload.
|Role-based administration
|Create custom access privileges as required to separate access rights to menus, edit/read-only and network devices e.g. customer access, end user support, engineers and operations.
|Password security policies
|Configurable admin login password security options including: Minimum characters, force special characters, force numeric, force capital, forced expiry, no repeat passwords and create banned password list.
|Manage login attempts
|Support inactivity and unsuccessful login attempts for admin account lock-out, disablement and closure.
|Platform logs
|Maintain logs of all logins and changes made in the platform.


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Thursday, April 23
Keynote Roundtable: Romance Fiction and American Culture
Tania Modleski, USC
Used Lauren Berlant's The Female Complaint as a point from which to analyze the romance genre. Chick lit, in particular, is the latest form of female complaint. Writing for or acting within the "intimate public" means assuming you're writing for women (in this case) who are just like yourself. The core of complaint rhetoric is a fundamental ambivalence toward love, because it is both the source of most female complaints and also the cure. If it's truly the cure, though, true social change will never happen. [One has to wonder why. I have a problem with statements like these, because they assume love will continue as it is currently constructed, which is not necessarily true.] Berlant focuses on middle-class, white women's female complaint, ignoring women of color and privileging the problems and issues of those middle-class white women above those of any other female demographic. What happens, for example, when women of color write romances? Are they then more politically acceptable in their complaining? Male sentimental culture is strong: Clint Eastwood's movies and male "weepies," for which the men get awards and rewards, rather than the scorn women get for female-coded sentiment. This privileges male suffering when written, performed, produced by men.
Stephanie Coontz, Evergreen State University
Coontz feels like an outlier at the conference, because she's never read romances. She can talk, though, about the evolution of marriage, courtship, romance in history. As an historian, she finds literature fascinating because it shows the tensions in people's lives as they are soothed, resolved, highlighted. She is most interested in the variations between time periods, though, rather in the minute details. Before the eighteenth century, only adulterous relationships could count as love, because marriage was all about the practicalities. During the eighteenth century, though, western society began to imagine the concept of love in marriage and that young people should have the right to choose one's own partners. The invention of the love match was a very scary thing to defenders of "traditional marriage." It was seen as both a threat to male power, a threat to female safety, a threat to parental control. It was a far-reaching cultural redefinition in which marriage was no longer overtly a power relationship and men's and women's roles and spheres began to separate. Previously, women were seen as hyper-sexual; in 19thC, they were constructed as asexual instead, with their asexuality constructed as natural, rather than a necessity. Women began to turn to other women to talk about feelings, vulnerabilities, and increasingly foreign other gender. In the 20thC, mutual sexual attraction was reintegrated into marriage with the advent of dating, in which sexuality and attractiveness of men became associated with danger ("bad boy"). There was increasing anxiety over men's intentions and society grappled with very real contradictions, because the dangerous but attractive Other is not a good bet for a stable marriage. Today, there are problems with maintaining sexual tension in a long relationship. Coontz finished her talk by asking how we make confidence in man's intentions sexy? How to do eroticize equality?
Mary Bly/Eloisa James, Fordham University, speaking today as Eloisa James
Bly/James would like to see a conversation about shame in romance studies. We don't like to think of shame as attached to reading, writing, or talking about romance, but we need to think about issues of where shame interacts with money in the romance genre. When she was growing up, her reading romance caused a family crisis. For every romance she read, she had to read a classic novel from "acceptable" literature. Her grandmother with no education was undervalued by the family, and that's mostly where Bly/James got her romance from as a child and teen. Romance were a waste of her time, ruining her brain, like TV. Success hasn't changed that equation for her. Money doesn't help; in fact, it exacerbates the problem for her. When she was at Yale, she got "caught" by her friends with romances at the library. Her friends said, "I certainly see why you didn't want anyone to see that," and Bly/James felt intense shame. She believes very strongly that it shouldn't have to be that way. The only way she could give herself permission to write romance was to say it was for money, and even then it became a completely underground career. Her ingrained sense of shame was so huge that she couldn't reveal herself in the English departments she worked for. Even when she did come out, the shame didn't go away. Any other popular genre would have been "cool," but romance was humiliating. Romance scholars simplistically say that the romance genre is an affirmation of female desires, but for women to be reading/writing about sex is a very vexed topic. We have to recognize that and interrogate how shame and feminism and complexity can and do coexist. As scholars, we can't ignore this. She wants another version of her, in ten years, to be able to use her romance writing as well as her scholarship of whatever kind FOR tenure, rather than having to hide it. She wants to be a part of diminishing the shame.
Jennifer Crusie, Romance Author
Crusie gets up and says, "Hi, I'm Jennifer Crusie, and I have no shame!" Her experience with romance has been very different. She rejects the assumption that people have that writers must agree that they're writing trash because "everyone knows" that's what romances are. She argues that romance writers and readers give away too much power because we want to belong. Romance is not merely a US tradition; it's from all times and all places. It represents the feminizing of a form of fiction—a woman is on the center stage of a romance novel and she struggles and wins, proving that the world is an emotionally just place and that love and women can make a difference. Love is the biggest risk that humans take, but the stories about it are not cool. People turn back to literature of hope. They are not trashy, not stupid, not low class. Crusie ends, "the arc of the universe is long and bends towards justice," claiming that romance is getting its due.
Someone asked about the proliferation of the marriage plot in Reality TV. Bly said that she'd read that the most successful Reality shows are those that are aspirational (American Idol, for example, where you can see yourself achieving same dream). Coontz talked about the proliferation of niche marketing, but argued that there's far less "Bachelor" on Reality TV nowadays than in the marriage markets in 18thC London.
Someone asked how the subversiveness of feminism works for or against the acceptance of romance (not sure I got that right). Crusie answered that the goal of a writer has to be to tell a good story, rather than insert a message into a book. The book succeeds with a reader because it resonates with a theme inside her, but you can't predict that theme. Her literary criticism changed radically when she started writing. She's trying to tell the truth of the people on the page. The true subversive message is that if you struggle, you will win.
Someone asked panelists to talk about Coontz's final question of how we eroticize equality. Crusie said that the struggle is the story, the power dynamics are what drive it, and the equality comes at the end. Bly said that desire is very stubborn and may not be PC or cool, no matter how much we might like it to be. Coontz said that romances shouldn't avoid the very real problems that exist in the world and in relationships. In sexuality, fear struggles with confidence. Modleski finished by saying that she thinks it would be most interesting to look at lesbian romances, where the power dynamics are necessarily different.
Overall, I'd heard or read most of the information from this panel before, except what Modleski discussed. Which is not to say that it wasn't a perfect way to start the conference, because I absolutely think it was. We got a general historical overview (Coontz), theoretical overview (Modleski), and a clashing of some of the major themes in the study of the genre (shame, confidence, happiness, power dynamics, freedom, equality).
One thing that struck me more than anything else, and I didn't get an opportunity to ask my question, but I was fascinated with the panel's elision of the masculine, of the hero. Modleski talked about female complaint, Coontz about the construction of love and of the feminine, Bly and Crusie about the motivations of female writers and readers. But no one mentioned the hero of the romance and considering the thematic focus on masculinity in so many romances and romance series, this seemed an interesting omission. I asked Crusie about it after the panel finished and she said very definitely, "The hero's the MacGuffin" (referring to the film term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock meaning the quest object that has no inherent value in and of itself except in that it catalyzes quest, which is where the real story lies). I wholeheartedly disagree. The hero might be the McGuffin for female-focused romances and romance series (like those of Crusie and James), but it certainly isn't for me with my absolute hero-focus, and for readers like me who make Suzanne Brockmann, J.R. Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, and Stephanie Laurens best-selling authors and m/m romance the fastest growing field in erotic romance.


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Case Detail
Colleen Kay Burgess
Case Details
Case Type: Missing
Height: 5' 7"
Case Status: OPEN
Weight: 135 lbs
Identifying Marks:
Incident Date: 08/31/1974
Agency: Englewood Police Department
City: Englewood
Date of Birth: 03/28/1949
County: Arapahoe
Date of Death: Unknown
Agency Case #: 74-17906
Age: 31
Judicial District: 18th Judicial District
Gender: Female
Year Solved:
Race: Caucasian
NamUs Case #: 8297
Eyes: Hazel
NCMEC Case #: Unknown
Hair: Red/Auburn
About this Case:
On August 31, 1974, 31 year old Colleen Burgess left work at Frito Lay in Denver and never returned home. Approximately one week later one of Colleen's close friends received a letter, believed to be from Colleen, indicating she had a terminal illness and left home because she didn't want her husband and four children to see her suffering. There has been no known contact with Colleen since. May have left in a 1967 green Chevrolet Nova. Anyone with information regarding this case is asked to please contact the Englewood Police Department
If you have any information about this case, please contact:
Englewood Police Department
ColoradoBack to Top


text:
Αυτό το άρθρο με τίτλο "Το ανθρώπινο σώμα είναι θαυμάσιο – αλλά δεν έχει μια εγγύηση διάρκειας ζωής" was written by Alice Roberts, for The Observer on Sunday 31st May 2015 06.00 UTC
Your body is far from perfect. You're the product of millions of years of evolution, but this process doesn't strive towards "perfection". Πράγματι, it doesn't strive towards anything. It just happens: because there are differences between individuals in a species, and some have better chances of surviving and reproducing than others. There's never a goal in mind. All that matters is those chances of survival and reproduction: a game played out in the moment, between organisms and their environment.
Looking in detail at human anatomy, I'm always left with two practically irreconcilable thoughts: our bodies are wonderful, intricate masterpieces; and then – they are cobbled-together, rag-bag, sometimes clunking machines. There are so many bits of anatomy that could be much better designed. If I was an intelligent designer of humans, I'd switch the retina around to eliminate the blind spot where the nerves leave the back of the eye; I'd put a little pump in the leg veins to help the blood back to the heart and lower the risk of deep venous thrombosis; I'd stick in a really good link between the two coronary arteries, so that if one became blocked, the other could easily take over; and I'd sort out the spine to reduce the chances of back problems. Some of these are niggling problems, some can be life-threatening. But they don't seem to have greatly affected our ancestors' chances of survival and reproduction, so natural selection hasn't "noticed" them – and we're stuck with them.
The spine is a great example of something that straddles this perceptual divide: it looks like a consummate piece of engineering genius, but it seems almost designed to fail. Τουλάχιστον, it seems to be designed to fail with age; it comes with built-in obsolescence.
The vertebral column is made up of 33 vertebrae. The lower ones are fused: five to form the sacrum, and the last four as the coccyx. Ο 24 vertebrae above the sacrum are separate units. Each vertebra is joined to its neighbours, above and below, by small synovial joints towards the back. These permit a certain degree of movement between each pair of vertebrae. But the main weight-bearing joints of the spine are the pillows of cartilage – the intervertebral discs – between the bodies of the vertebrae. These discs consist of a fibrous outer ring, which itself consists of annular layers, like an onion. The centre of the disc is different: gel-like, something like the consistency of toothpaste – held in place by that fibrous outer ring. The gel helps to spread the load across the surfaces of the opposing vertebrae. Τουλάχιστον, that's how a young disc works.
As you get older, your discs get older with you. Και, fairly inevitably, they start to degenerate. The nucleus dries out and instead of spreading the load so evenly, allows peaks of pressure to develop in the disc. Minute fractures can appear in the surface of the vertebrae, and eventually lead to small pits, with the nucleus pushing up into the vertebra itself. These pits are called Schmorl's nodes. Cracks in the outer fibrous ring allow the inner nucleus to herniate through, creating what's commonly known as a "slipped disc". Such protrusions can press on spinal nerves, and so it's not surprising that this can be painful.
When I'm looking at archaeological human remains, I can pick up some signs of this type of degenerative disease. I'll never know if someone suffered from a slipped disc – that's all soft tissue. But I can see where the joints are starting to lose it, and extra bone builds up around the edges of the vertebra – "marginal osteophyte" – as if in an attempt to stabilise a failing joint. And I can certainly pick up Schmorl's nodes, punching into the end-plates of vertebrae. These are relatively common lesions in older skeletons.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to look at my own spine in a way I'd never done before. Early one Saturday morning, I headed to Cheltenham, to the Cobalt Imaging Centre, for a hot date with their 1.5 Tesla MRI scanner. I was going to have what amounted to almost a full body scan – from my neck to my pelvis, missing out my head, arms and legs. This was all for a talk about anatomy – my anatomy – for the Cheltenham science festival, επί 5 Ιούνιος.
I was really intrigued to get this opportunity to look inside my body – and to see bits of myself for the first time. Και ακόμη, as I drove up to Cheltenham that Saturday, I approached my appointment with the massively powerful magnetic machine with trepidation. The people at Cobalt were going to see right through me – what would they find? Σε ένα recent study του 666 apparently healthy people, 659 of them had some kind of incidental finding – some very minor, others very serious.
I lay in the open-sided scanner, listening to the clanking of the machine around me, and wondering what it was seeing. The scans of my lower body seemed to take a long time. Τελικά, after about two hours, I met up with radiologist Iain Lyburn to look at my scans. There was something wrong. We were looking at a sagittal slice through my body, right through the middle of my spine. I could see the plump intervertebral discs, each with a juicy, pale grey centre – right down to the last but one. This disc, L4/5, lying between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, was black. It had also punched up into the body of L4, the fourth lumbar vertebra, above it. And it was herniated – I could clearly see a bubble of black pushing out beyond the vertebrae at the back, uncomfortably close to the lumbar nerve roots.
Iain was very kind. I was quite sanguine. I've had back pain on and off for years. Having children and then carrying them around certainly hasn't helped. I knew I had a bad back. Now I was seeing it.
The scan has made me more careful of my back. I tended to dismiss it as just muscular before, and to carry on doing things that were a little bit painful. So I won't push my back in stretches now. I won't do high impact aerobics – there's plenty of other exercise I can do without hurting my back or making it worse – and, with some reluctance, instead of carrying my toddler to his bed and lying him gently down, I ask him to climb in himself.
It's interesting, this completely degenerate L4/5 disc, ink-black on the MRI. It will never not be degenerate. I just have to live with it. It's part of my body's built-in obsolescence. When I was in my 20s, and even though I was studying medicine, I didn't ever really think that my body would fail. Now I'm in my 40s, I have to face a different reality – I, like everyone else, am slowly falling apart. There are plenty of things I can do to reduce the rate of decline, but I can't stop it. As far as evolution is concerned, I'm not perfect at all. I'm just about good enough. And I'm mortal.
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Student Finds Cocaine in Terrorism Book
A local student taking a class at Mid America Nazarene University in Kansas got a little more than she paid for when she found a strange substance in a textbook on terrorism she purchased online.
Sophia Stockton, a junior at the University, bought the book Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives and Issues for $30 on Amazon. She discovered the peculiar substance upon receiving the package in the mail.
"It was Sunday night and I just received it in the mail," Stockton told FOX 4. "I opened it and I was just kind of flipping through the pages and so my 18-year-old brother was sitting at the table too."
Stockton suddenly noticed an extra little package with a white powdery substance.
"Just a little tiny package falls out with white powder in it," Stockton said. "And I'm like white powder just fell out of my terrorism book. And so my brother was like 'Oh, that's scary.'"
Stockton brought the package to the Gardner Police Department the next day, still unsure of what it could be, according to FOX 4.
Gardner Police tested the substance immediately and discovered it was in fact cocaine.
"They went back and they tested it and he came back like 10 minutes later and said, you didn't happen to purchase cocaine with your text book did you?" Stockton told FOX 4. "I was like no."
An attorney friend of Stockton's told her the tiny bag was approximately two to three grams of cocaine, worth $300 to $400, FOX 4 reported.
"In class we talked about people sending bombs in the mail and I thought of you know they send anthrax in the mail, too," Stockton said.
Gardner Police told FOX 4 they destroyed the drugs. Authorities are currently investigating the possible sources of the substance.