Website scraping, or content scraping, is essentially a practice of (automatically) extracting or scraping content on a web page. Scraping is typically performed by a program/software sending a series of automated requests to the web page. This program is often called a web scraping bot or content scraping bot due to how it operates.  It’s […] … learn more→

The other day I was looking for a cleaner for cleaning my office, a gardener for setting up my new garden, and I got bombarded with a wide range of random options on Google. All these options created a lot of confusion and made it difficult for me to decide which is the right one. […] … learn more→

The Covid-19 crisis has imposed distance education on everyone, not without pain . At the University, our students have been almost exclusively at a distance for almost a year! These successive confinements have had serious consequences. First there were the technical issues, the poor network connection, insufficient computer equipment, the difficulty in isolating yourself from others. Then, very quickly, we […] … learn more→

Mark Hlavacik, associate professor of communication studies, University of North Texas: In her resignation letter, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos explained that her sudden departure from the administration was motivated by President Donald Trump’s incendiary words to the crowd that went on to ransack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on […] … learn more→

A-level exams in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have been cancelled, along with Highers in Scotland. It’s not yet clear what the replacement for these exams will look like, and many students may be feeling anxious or despondent about their prospects. However, some kind of assessment will take place – so now is not the time to […] … learn more→

GCSE and A-level exams in England have been cancelled, opening the door to a repeat of the confusion that marked the award of grades in 2020. The cancellation of exams in March 2020 in England was followed by the realisation that an algorithm created to moderate the data provided by schools had led to significant reduction […] … learn more→

After 20 years of teaching academic writing to both native speakers and English language learners, I can attest that at some point, just about everyone asks me why, or even whether, grammar matters. There is more than one way to define grammar. Linguists – the people who study language – define “grammar” as a description […] … learn more→

Today, women outnumber men in higher education. However, they remain strongly under-represented in the fields which use mathematics the most. This under-representation contributes to inequalities in the labor market since scientific fields lead on average to better paid jobs . It is also likely to represent a potential loss of talent in areas of high skill demand such as IT and AI. Finally, we know that algorithms […] … learn more→

We all know the word argument. By argument, we usually mean that people have some kind of quarrel. People take opposing positions about something and then each proceeds to try to convince the other(s) that they are right. When arguments are heated, participants aim to demolish all objections and perhaps even the people who make […] … learn more→

Academics are increasingly expected to share their research widely beyond academia. However, our recent study of academics in Australia and Japan suggests Australian universities are still very much focused on supporting the production of scholarly outputs. They offer relatively limited support for researchers’ efforts to engage with the many non-academics who can benefit from our research. One reason engagement is expected […] … learn more→