by Lee Boot

The Comparative International Education Society (CIES) Language Issues (LI) Special Interest Group (SIG) is pleased to announce its 2014 Dissertation Award!  The award is open to dissertations that focus on educational language issues, broadly defined, in comparative and international education.  Dissertations will be reviewed based on the following criteria:

1. The dissertation’s relevance to current thinking in the field

2. The degree of sophistication or innovation of the methodology used

3. The soundness of data collection and analysis

4. The dissertation’s social utility and/or its implication for policy

5. The degree to which the dissertation incorporates a comparative perspective

Eligible dissertations must have been filed within an 18-month period prior to the LI SIG award’s extended submission deadline of February 15, 2014 (e.g., from August 15, 2012 to February 15, 2014).   Students in Ed.D. or Ph.D. programs are eligible and the applicant and/or the Dissertation Chair must be a current member of CIES.  The winning dissertation will receive $100.

Applicants should submit the following four documents to be considered for the award:

1. A detailed abstract of no more than five pages along with a self-assessment indicating how the dissertation meets the above five criteria; both should be doubled-spaced with no author identification (for blind review)

2. A title page (not counted within the page limit) with author’s name, address, institutional affiliation, telephone, e-mail address, and names of dissertation committee chair(s) and members

3. A reference page (not counted within the page limit) with only the references cited in the abstract, and

4. One letter from the Dissertation Chair recommending the dissertation for this award (this letter may be sent directly to the Committee at the e-mail address below).

After the initial round of consideration, the two highest rated candidates will be asked to send the Committee a file with their entire dissertation. Awardees will be recognized formally at the LI SIG business meeting at the CIES Conference in Toronto, Canada, March 10-14, 2014.

Submission Information

Please, submit the above documents electronically (as attachments in Word compatible files) with the key word “Dissertation Award Submission” in the subject line to:  cieslangsig@gmail.com by February 15, 2014.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Awards Committee at the above e-mail address.

W3C has published the January 2014 edition of Standards for Web Applications on Mobile, an overview of the various technologies developed in W3C that increase the capabilities of Web applications, and how they apply more specifically to the mobile context.

A deliverable of the HTML5Apps project, this edition of the document includes changes and additions since September 2013, including 6 documents reaching Recommendation status (a record), which shows increased maturity of the platform; 4 FPWD and 4 new editors drafts illustrate it is still growing up nicely; and a lot of the changes are linked to performance, off-line support and packaging.

Learn more about the Web and Mobile Interest Group.