The effect of basketball sport aerobics on basketball skill development for fifth-grade students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of an experimental teaching method, Sport Aerobics, on the basketball skill acquisition of fifth grade students. This study investigated the differences in the shooting, dribbling, and passing scores of students taught with Sport Aerobics instruction compared to those taught with a traditional method, Practice Style. Sport Aerobics is an instructional method based on a theoretical framework developed by the researcher to enhance skill acquisition. This framework leads to teaching strategies such as using immediate feedback and specific cueing; arranging for students to engage in object free movement; arranging lessons, according to the framework's concept of movement progression, into lessons staged according to skill and sub-skill complexity; and instructing based on whole group organization. Sport Aerobic instructional strategies were designed to facilitate process learning that is recognized as important in today's development learning approach for age related curriculums. In contrast, the traditional Practice Style uses product-oriented strategies. ^ Four classrooms, consisting of seventy-nine fifth grade students from two physical education programs, at different locations, were randomly assigned to two treatments; Sport Aerobics and Practice Style for instruction over a 15 period curriculum. Using the American Alliance Physical Education Recreation & Dance tests, both groups were pretested and posttested for skill achievement of shooting, dribbling, and passing. Pretest and posttest skill score samples were collected and evaluated. ANCOVAs were performed on the posttests adjusted for the pretests to determine whether or not there would be greater achievement of skills with the Sport Aerobics method. Results failed to establish significant scoring differences between the two methods. Based on the literature and study findings a recommendation is made that longer lesson units will assist in the investigation of the effectiveness of both the instructional model and the individual elements that facilitate skill acquisition. ^

An aspect-oriented approach to designing role-based access control services

Access control (AC) limits access to the resources of a system only to authorized entities. Given that information systems today are increasingly interconnected, AC is extremely important. The implementation of an AC service is a complicated task. Yet the requirements to an AC service vary a lot. Accordingly, the design of an AC service should be flexible and extensible in order to save development effort and time. Unfortunately, with conventional object-oriented techniques, when an extension has not been anticipated at the design time, the modification incurred by the extension is often invasive. Invasive changes destroy design modularity, further deteriorate design extensibility, and even worse, they reduce product reliability. ^ A concern is crosscutting if it spans multiple object-oriented classes. It was identified that invasive changes were due to the crosscutting nature of most unplanned extensions. To overcome this problem, an aspect-oriented design approach for AC services was proposed, as aspect-oriented techniques could effectively encapsulate crosscutting concerns. The proposed approach was applied to develop an AC framework that supported role-based access control model. In the framework, the core role-based access control mechanism is given in an object-oriented design, while each extension is captured as an aspect. The resulting framework is well-modularized, flexible, and most importantly, supports noninvasive adaptation. ^ In addition, a process to formalize the aspect-oriented design was described. The purpose is to provide high assurance for AC services. Object-Z was used to specify the static structure and Predicate/Transition net was used to model the dynamic behavior. Object-Z was extended to facilitate specification in an aspect-oriented style. The process of formal modeling helps designers to enhance their understanding of the design, hence to detect problems. Furthermore, the specification can be mathematically verified. This provides confidence that the design is correct. It was illustrated through an example that the model was ready for formal analysis. ^

Analysis of Housing Partnerships using the Balanced Scorecard framework

Housing Partnerships (HPs) are collaborative arrangements that assist communities in the delivery of affordable housing by combining the strengths of the public and private sectors. They emerged in several states, counties, and cities in the eighties as innovative solutions to the challenges in affordable housing resulting from changing dynamics of delivery and production. ^ My study examines HPs with particular emphasis upon the identification of those factors associated with the successful performance of their mission of affordable housing. I will use the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) framework in this study. The identification of performance factors facilitates a better understanding of how HPs can be successful in achieving their mission. The identification of performance factors is significant in the context of the current economic environment because HPs can be viewed as innovative institutional mechanisms in the provision of affordable housing. ^ The present study uses a mixed methods research approach, drawing on data from the IRS Form 990 tax returns, a survey of the chief executives of HPs, and other secondary sources. The data analysis is framed according to the four perspectives of BSC: the financial, customer, internal business, and learning and growth. Financially, revenue diversification affects the financial health of HPs and overall performance. Although HPs depend on private and government funding, they also depend on service fees to carry out their mission. From a customer perspective, the HPs mainly serve low and moderate income households, although some serve specific groups such as seniors, homeless, veterans, and victims of domestic violence. From an internal business perspective, HPs’ programs are oriented toward affordable housing needs, undertaking not only traditional activities such as construction, loan provision, etc., but also advocacy and educational programs. From an employee and learning growth perspective, the HPs are small in staff size, but undertake a range of activities with the help of volunteers. Every part of the HP is developed to maximize resources, knowledge, and skills in order to assist communities in the delivery of affordable housing and related needs. Overall, housing partnerships have played a key role in affordable housing despite the housing market downturn since 2006. Their expenses on affordable housing activities increased despite the decrease in their revenues.^