Alternate Format Production Service in Nova Scotia: A University and Community College Collaborative Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Studies have shown students with print and other disabilities face challenges in obtaining post-secondary credentials, however, there are specific supports that can increase their chances of success. While commendable efforts have been made to increase the availability of support services for post-secondary students with disabilities in Nova Scotia by both the Province of Nova Scotia and individual educational institutions, the provision of alternate format materials for print-challenged students remains problematic. Students aren't receiving consistent service across the province, nor are efficiencies in production and delivery being realized. In 2006, the Atlantic Centre of Research, Access and Support for Students with Disabilities at Saint Mary's University initiated a research project to assess the feasibility of a centralized alternate format production service intended for post-secondary students across the province. The Feasibility Study was informed by interviews with disability services staff, library representatives and related organizations from across Nova Scotia; interviews and reviews of existing services in BC, Manitoba and Ontario; reviews of selected reports addressing access to alternate format materials in Canada; and a roundtable session with Nova Scotian stakeholders. The study resulted in a proposal of a consortial model for province-wide service and written documentation of findings.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".