A powerful guide to seeking justice from corporations who commit human rights and environmental atrocities.

Multinational enterprises, or MNEs, can contribute to economic prosperity and social development in the countries where they operate. At the same time, their activities may directly or indirectly cause harm to humans and to the environment. Historically, MNEs have rarely been held accountable for their involvement in human rights abuses and environmental damage. In recent years, however, activists have sought to hold parent companies directly liable for the harm caused by their group’s activities. They have also strategically used litigation to trigger corporate accountability reforms at international, regional, and national levels.

Focusing on Europe, this book evaluates the extent to which litigation against MNEs has been effective in achieving access to justice and corporate accountability, particularly in civil-law countries. It also considers whether ongoing regulatory developments, such as the adoption of mandatory human rights due diligence norms and the negotiations for a business and human rights treaty, can contribute to the realization of access to justice and corporate accountability in the future.

Project Outcome for Academic Libraries, acrl.projectoutcome.org, is a free toolkit from the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) designed to help academic libraries understand and share the impact of essential library programs and services. The toolkit provides simple surveys and an easy-to-use process for measuring and analyzing outcomes. The standardized surveys allow libraries to aggregate their outcome data, compare against similar institutions, and analyze trends over time by service topic and program type.
 
In celebration of Project Outcome’s fifth anniversary, Assessment and Advocacy: Using Project Outcome for Academic Libraries collects case studies demonstrating how a variety of libraries have used Project Outcome to make improvements in their practice and highlighting the value the toolkit has brought to institutions and the academic library profession. Chapters capture ways to use Project Outcome to make small changes, like the optimal arrangement of a library’s study room furniture, to using Project Outcome data in conversation with datasets from other sources to provide greater insights into the contributions of academic libraries to student learning and success, as well as evidence that can be used in advocating for institutional, state, and federal funding.
 
Academic librarians know that their work makes a difference. You set students on the road to success and researchers on the road to results, providing valuable skills and access to knowledge that help our colleges and universities thrive. The challenge for libraries can be capturing meaningful data to support that story. Since 2019, the Project Outcome for Academic Libraries toolkit has helped library workers measure learning outcomes to drive change, make data-informed decisions, and demonstrate the impact and value of academic libraries. Learn how to use this data in your library, institution, and the profession with Assessment and Advocacy, all proceeds of which go to keeping Project Outcome free.
 

 
Teachers spend much of their time on assessment, yet many higher education teachers have received minimal guidance on assessment design and marking. This means assessment can often be a source of stress and frustration. Offering a concise overview of assessment theory and practice, this guide provides teachers with the help they need. In education, theory and practice are often poorly linked. In this guide, Teresa McConlogue presents theoretical ideas and research findings and links them to practice. She considers recent theoretical work on feedback and suggests ways of developing evaluative judgment. Throughout the book, teachers are encouraged to examine their practice critically, and there are ideas for small-scale educational investigations, involving teachers, their colleagues, and students, such as using the Assessment Review Questionnaire to adapt assessments. This guide explores the concept of academic standards and proposes methods of co-constructing shared standards within a teaching team and with students through calibration activities.
 

Supplies clinicians with data on the applicability of previous MMPI chronic pain research to the revised version of the test.

Community colleges are a cornerstone of higher education and serve the unique needs of the communities in which they reside. In 2019, community colleges accounted for 41 percent of all undergraduate students in the United States.
 
Community college librarians are engaged in meaningful work designing and delivering library programs and services that meet the needs of their diverse populations and support student learning. The Community College Library series is meant to lift the voices of community college librarians and highlight their creativity, tenacity, and commitment to students.
 
The Community College Library: Assessment explores the research, comprehensive plans, and new approaches to assessment being created by community college librarians around the U.S. Chapters include sample activities and materials and cover topics including assessing student learning while shifting from Standards to Framework; investigating and communicating library instruction’s relationship to student retention; and building librarian assessment confidence through communities of research practice.
 
This book demonstrates the innovative and replicable ways community college librarians are measuring, evaluating, and reflecting on the services they provide, and how to use these assessments to demonstrate the value and impact of library services and advocate for resources.
 

Measured Language: Quantitative Studies of Acquisition, Assessment, and Variation focuses on ways in which various aspects of language can be quantified and how measurement informs and advances our understanding of language. The metaphors and operationalizations of quantification serve as an important lingua franca for seemingly disparate areas of linguistic research, allowing methods and constructs to be translated from one area of linguistic investigation to another.

Measured Language includes forms of measurement and quantitative analysis current in diverse areas of linguistic research from language assessment to language change, from generative linguistics to experimental psycholinguistics, and from longitudinal studies to classroom research. Contributors demonstrate how to operationalize a construct, develop a reliable way to measure it, and finally validate that measurement—and share the relevance of their perspectives and findings to other areas of linguistic inquiry. The range and clarity of the research collected here ensures that even linguists who would not traditionally use quantitative methods will find this volume useful.

A new approach to training and evaluating world languages online instructors

The rapid growth in online world language programs in the United States coupled with the widespread implementation of virtual teaching in response to COVID-19 have pushed the field to reconceive instruction. Virtual learning creates unique challenges for instructors, who need to ensure that their students have adequate interaction with their peers, their professor, and native speakers of the language. Even with a growing demand for online language courses, there are few tools that evaluate the training and assessment of online language instructors.

In Online World Language Instruction Training and Assessment, authors Carmen King Ramírez, Barbara A. Lafford, and James E. Wermers fill that gap, providing a critical pedagogical approach to computer-assisted language learning (CALL) teacher education (CTE). By combining best CTE training and evaluation practices with assessment tools, the authors explain how teachers can integrate technology to build successful online programs. Their ecological, holistic approach addresses all facets of learning online—including pressing challenges of moving courses online, teacher training, developing core competencies and skills, instructions for assessment and self-evaluation, goal setting, and the normalization of critical CTE practices in an increasingly digital environment.

The authors propose new solutions to teacher training challenges, providing extensive rubrics and tools that can equitably assess online language instructor skills, the training they receive, the assessment process they undergo, and the instruments used for instructor assessment. A list of CALL and CTE resources (available on the Press’s website) further supports readers’ successful adaptation to an everchanging learning environment.

Aid flowing into Syria is intended to determine the outcome of the conflict between rebel factions and Damascus. Instead, it could perpetuate the civil war and ignite larger regional hostilities that could reshape the political geography of the Middle East. This report examines the main factors likely to contribute to or impede the spread of violence from civil war and insurgency in Syria, and then examines how they apply to neighboring states.