Papers by Alena Kašpárková
Academic writing and phrasebanks
Slovo a slovesnost
Resources Policy, 2017
The article presents findings derived from the benchmarking comparison of four mining companies e... more The article presents findings derived from the benchmarking comparison of four mining companies extracting hard coal in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin located on the boarder of the Czech Republic and Poland: OKD a.s. operating in the Czech Republic and three Polish entities Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa S. A. (JSW), Katowicki Holding Węglowy S. A., and Kompania Węglowa S. A. Although all companies extract the same mineral resource in analogous mining-geological conditions, their economic results differ significantly. The article benchmarks the mining companies in a 5-year period: from 2009 to 2014. Six financial indicators were used in order to achieve the goal: ROE, ROS, ROA, Debt to Equity Ratio, Assets Turnover, and Cash Flow Liquidity Ratio. In addition, the standard variable method was used together with Fuller's method to determine the weights of the different criteria. The benchmarking results, based on the values of integral ratio, show JSW as the leading company in 2009, while in 2014 Czech OKD gained the prime position. In general, during the 5-year observation period, JSW achieved the best financial results. The study presents JSW as the benchmarking leader due to the best performance achieved among the four mining companies extracting hard coal in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin positioned in Central-Eastern Europe.
A Geocaching Game “Meet Your Editor” as a Teaser for Writing Courses
2020 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (ProComm), 2020
The absence of academic writing instruction and the ever-growing requirements for Czech doctoral ... more The absence of academic writing instruction and the ever-growing requirements for Czech doctoral students to publish in prestigious journals English have created a gap between the doctoral students’ skills and the requirements they need to comply with. In this paper, we briefly summarize the results of a needs analysis survey we had administered to doctoral students at a Czech engineering university prior to developing academic writing and information literacy courses for these students. But for these courses to catch on, we need to disseminate knowledge about writing development and pedagogies to audiences and higher education stakeholders who are largely unaware that writing can be taught because writing development and composition studies are not culturally embedded in the Czech education system. To draw attention to the courses and highlight their importance and appeal, we opted for a geocaching/ educaching game and show writing as a process, where students move through different stages on their journey to publication. The game thus creates situations, sending the players to different places along the way, including the library, journal editor’s office, or a conference.
EATAW2021: Selected papers from the 11th Conference of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava (online), Czech Republic, July, 2021
Journal of Academic Writing, Dec 23, 2022
Journal of Academic Writing, 2020
Supporting Academic Writing and Publication Practice: PhD Students in Engineering and their Super... more Supporting Academic Writing and Publication Practice: PhD Students in Engineering and their Supervisors This poster documents the bottom-up efforts leading to the establishment of an academic writing support program for doctoral students at an engineering university in the Czech Republic (CR). To defend their dissertation, by law Czech doctoral students have to have published their research. Moreover, many faculties require their doctoral students to publish in prestigious English-medium journals, which is a challenge even for the students’ supervisors. Although publication requirements prior to dissertation defence are becoming common in many countries (Kamler and Thompson, 2014; Kelly, 2017), Czech students often face a challenge of writing in the absence of any prior writing support, where insufficient knowledge of English only adds an extra hurdle to the already difficult task of argumentation absent in Czech schooling. CR has a comparatively high number of doctoral students, bu...
CASALC Review
V tomto Příkladu dobré praxe představujeme výsledky společného projektu dvou českých pracovišť v ... more V tomto Příkladu dobré praxe představujeme výsledky společného projektu dvou českých pracovišť v oblasti podpory vědecké komunikace, akademického psaní a publikační praxe v angličtině. V textu stručně popisuje10 kurzů Publikační praxe, včetně principů, na kterých kurzy stojí. Kurzy se staly páteří PhD Akademie na VŠB-TUO a zapojila se do nich i Ústřední knihovna této univerzity. Ke kurzům jsme dále připravili v našem kontextu ojedinělé školení pro budoucí lektory kurzů, manuál pro lektory jako podporu během jejich lektorských začátků a také seminář pro školitele. Argumentujeme ve prospěch systematické strukturované výuky odborného psaní na všech úrovních vysokoškolského studia.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Plastic particles smaller than 5 mm, i.e., microplastics, have been detected in a number of envir... more Plastic particles smaller than 5 mm, i.e., microplastics, have been detected in a number of environments. The number of studies on microplastics in marine environments, fresh water, wastewater, the atmosphere, and the human body are increasing along with a rise in the amounts of plastic materials introduced into the environment every year, all contributing to a range of health and environmental issues. Although the use of primary microplastics has been gradually reduced by recent legislation in many countries, new knowledge and data on these problems are needed to understand the overall lifecycle of secondary microplastics in particular. The aim of this review is to provide unified information on the pathways of microplastics into the environment, their degradation, and related legislation, with a special focus on the methods of their sampling, determination, and instrumental analysis. To deal with the health and environmental issues associated with the abundance of microplastics in...
Educare - vetenskapliga skrifter
Doctoral studies in the Czech Republic are highly individualized with little coursework outside t... more Doctoral studies in the Czech Republic are highly individualized with little coursework outside the supervisor/supervisee dyad, and the PhD students are mandated to publish prior to the dissertation defense. This mandate is troublesome because writing development has been on the fringes of the Czech education culture. In addition, the publications often must be in English, and many doctoral students struggle with English. In this exploratory study, we examined how this mandate translates into practice, how doctoral students learn to meet the requirements and how university administrators/supervisors perceive doctoral writing development. To answer our questions, we interviewed 7 university administrators/dissertation supervisors and 7 doctoral students from various backgrounds and universities, looking for diverse views on the issue. Our analysis confirmed the formal status of supervisors as the key doctoral writing literacy brokers. While the supervisors acknowledged their role, th...
Polish Journal of Chemical Technology, 2010
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Papers by Alena Kašpárková