TY - JOUR A1 - Mah, Dana-Kristin A1 - Ifenthaler, Dirk T1 - What do first-year students need? BT - digital badges for academic support to enhance student retention JF - Journal of applied research in higher education N2 - The purpose of this paper is to analyse data on first-year students’ needs regarding academic support services and reasons for their intention to leave the institution prior to degree completion. On the basis of the findings, a digital badge outline is proposed which could contribute to improved communication of academic requirements in order to help students to better adapt to higher education demands. Digital badges might also serve as an indicator for students’ needing additional academic support services. KW - Higher education KW - Retention KW - Learning analytics KW - First-year students Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-12-2018-0258 SN - 2050-7003 SN - 1758-1184 VL - 12 IS - 1 SP - 86 EP - 96 PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited CY - Bingley ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hesse, Cornelia A1 - Krysanova, Valentina A1 - Vetter, Tobias A1 - Reinhardt, Julia T1 - Comparison of several approaches representing terrestrial and in-stream nutrient retention and decomposition in watershed modelling JF - Ecological modelling : international journal on ecological modelling and engineering and systems ecolog N2 - Retention and transformation of nutrients within a river catchment are important mechanisms influencing water quality measured at the watershed outlet. Nutrient storage and reduction can occur in soils as well as in the river and should be considered in water quality modelling. Consideration is possible using various methods at several points during modelling cascade. The study compares the effects of five different equation sets implemented into the Soil and Water Integrated Model (SWIM), one describing terrestrial and four in-stream retention with a rising complexity (including algal growth and death at the highest complexity level). The influences of the different methods alone and in combinations on water quality model outputs (NO3-N, NH4-N, PO4-P) were analyzed for the outlet of the large-scale Saale basin in Germany. Experiments revealed that nutrient forms coming primarily from diffuse sources are mostly influenced by retention processes in the soils of the catchment, and river processes are less important. Nutrients introduced to the river mainly by point sources are more subject to retention by in-stream processes, but both nutrient retention and transformation processes in soils and rivers have to be included. Although the best overall results could be achieved at the highest complexity level, the calibration efforts for this case are extremely high, and only minor improvements of overall model performance with the highest complexity were detected. Therefore, it could be reasoned that for some research questions also less complex model approaches would be sufficient, which could help to reduce unnecessary complexity and diminish high uncertainty in water quality modelling at the catchment scale. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Water quality modelling KW - Nutrients KW - Retention KW - River basin KW - Model complexity KW - SWIM Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2013.08.017 SN - 0304-3800 SN - 1872-7026 VL - 269 IS - 34 SP - 70 EP - 85 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -