Making Valid and Consistent Inferences About School Effectiveness From Multiple Measures

This study explores the use of multiple measures to enhance the validity and reliability of inferences about school and district effectiveness. Using data from the state of Ohio, a framework for combining measures is applied to examine the individual and collective impact of multiple measures on both the federal AYP designations and state ratings. Implications for the use of multiple measures to broaden the construct of district and school effectiveness, improve the acceptance and legitimacy of accountability programs, and promote desired outcomes are discussed.     

Assessing the reliability of student evaluations of teaching: choosing the right coefficient

Many of the studies used to support the claim that student evaluations of teaching are reliable measures of teaching effectiveness have frequently calculated inappropriate reliability coefficients. This paper points to three coefficients that would be appropriate depending on if student evaluations were used for formative or summative purposes. Results from the present study indicated that students had very low absolute inter-rater reliability, but somewhat higher consistency inter-rater reliability.     

嵌入式系统数据存取的可靠性研究与设计

阐述了几种实用的数据保障措施,重点分析、研究了表决系统的可靠性模型,并具体描述了在嵌入式系统中的实现方法,给出了相应的程序流程图。在嵌入式系统中,软硬件的可靠性设计有力保证了数据的完整性、有效性,提高了系统的可靠性。     

一种新的自动化本体映射技术

为了更好地组合不同的相似度度量结果以提高本体映射结果的质量,提出一种新的基于调谐值度量和单纯降序提取算法的自动化本体映射技术。该技术首先通过调谐值来度量各种相似度矩阵的可靠性,并为每一个相似度矩阵赋予权重以集成不同的相似度矩阵,然后通过单纯降序提取算法结合阈值的策略提取最终的本体映射结果。实验采用2012年本体映射评价竞赛的测试数据集,同2012年本体映射评价竞赛的参与者的比较表明该文提出的方法是有效的。     

Problems in Measuring the Reliability of National Curriculum Assessment in England and Wales

Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) are used in the assessment of pupil performance relative to the National Curriculum in England and Wales, assigning pupils to one of 10 levels on various Attainment Targets (ATs). This is a criterion‐referenced system, and the conventional reliability measures used in norm‐referenced systems do not apply. This paper discusses the problems involved in aggregating SA T items to give levels, and in measuring the reliability of the outcomes produced. Fitting a simple model to SAT data has allowed reliability measures to be produced which are more relevant to this situation than the single numerical values applied to norm‐referenced tests.     

Academic Social Climate – A Key Aspect in Architectural Studies

The present research investigates academic social climate in architectural studies as perceived by students. It studies the importance that the various measures of academic social climate have in the studio and in architectural classes. It also investigates the relation between the personal background of students and their sense of academic social climate. Academic social climate is evaluated with regard to the eight factors proposed by Moos (1979) dealing with: orientation to study material, innovation, academic social connections, teachers’ support, competitiveness, academic‐social involvement, order and organisation, teachers’ control and an index for general academic social climate by means of a survey. Findings show that academic social climate was higher in the studio than in the regular classes in social connections, students’ involvement, teacher support, and order and organisation; while academic social climate measures were higher in the regular classes in teacher control and in the orientation of learning material. The highest academic social climate measures in both studio and classes were students’ involvement and competence, and the lowest measures were teacher support, and order and organisation. Some items of students’ personal and educational background were found to affect their sense of academic social climate. The implications of these findings for architectural design education are presented.     

Direct reliability-based design optimization of uncertain structures with interval parameters

In order to enhance the reliability of an uncertain structure with interval parameters and reduce its chance of function failure under potentially critical conditions, an interval reliability-based design optimization model is constructed. With the introduction of a unified formula for efficiently computing interval reliability, a new concept of the degree of interval reliability violation (DIRV) and the DIRV-based preferential guidelines are put forward for the direct ranking of various design vectors. A direct interval optimization algorithm integrating a nested genetic algorithm (GA) and the Kriging technique is proposed for solving the interval reliability-based design model, which avoids the complicated model transformation process in indirect ones and yields an interval solution that provides more insights into the optimization problem. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by a numeric example. Finally, the proposed direct reliability-based design optimization method is applied to the optimization of a press upper beam with interval uncertain parameters, the results of which demonstrate its feasibility and effectiveness in engineering.     

新时代教育方针下计算机专业大类人才基础课程培养体系改革研究

在学科大类的培养体系下,如何对各个专业的公共课程、公共专业基础课程、专业课程从顶层进行规划,建立联系和区分,改革计算机专业大类人才的基础教育课程培养体系,加强基础理论教育的同时培养学生的专业发展兴趣和良好的思想品德,将是一个值得研究的教改课题。本文以新时代教育方针下的要求作为指导方向,根据现有计算机相关专业学生的培养目标和培养方案,探讨和改进省属重点高校计算机专业大类人才培养方案基础课程体系改革的研究内容和目标,主要包括新时代教育方针下省属重点高校计算机专业大类人才基础课程培养体系改革的必要性、存在的问题及原因、培养体系改革与实践的具体措施、体系改革的实效性分析等。     

浅谈经济全球化背景下的国外对华贸易壁垒

当前,随着我国经济全球化进程的加快,我国与其他国家的经济联系日益紧密,对外贸易也得到了迅猛的发展.而国外对华贸易政策也相应发生了变化,出现了新的特点,外在反映为进口国对我国出口采取的各种贸易壁垒.我们应该在认识和弄清这些壁垒实质的基础上,以积极的态度进行研究分析,并采取有效措施,以突破这些贸易壁垒.     

计算机成绩处理系统的安全和保密措施

通过分析各种考试成绩处理软件中容易出现的问题及原因,给出了如何提高安全性与保密性的具体措施,并给出安全可靠的系统设计模型。     

论教育学教学与小学教育实践的有机联系

在小学教育学教学中,加强和小学教育实践的有机联系是搞好教育学教学的关键环节,应该采取以下措施:请进来,走出去;做好小学案例库建设;有效利用好现代化的教学手段;提倡小学教育学教师到小学上下水课;引导学生参加丰富多彩的教育实践活动等。     

A hierarchical approach to Students’ Assessments of Instruction

A teacher evaluation system can be threatening to faculty, especially if used for summative decisions. Therefore, it is important to obtain valid and pertinent information. Since students are extensively exposed to course elements, students’ evaluation of instruction should be one of several components in the teacher evaluation system. Since traditional methods, such as Cronbach’s alpha and ordinary least squares regression, do not address the hierarchical data of the classroom, the current study used the statistical techniques of confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical linear modelling in order to properly investigate the reliability and validity of the Students’ Assessment of Instruction (SAI) instrument. Use of hierarchical linear modelling to analyse teacher evaluation instruments could not be found in the literature, although it has been used in educational settings. This study will illustrate its usefulness in determining what measures are related, either as evidence of validity or as a bias, to instructional effectiveness. Student responses were also compared with faculty self-evaluations, one indicator of effective teaching, in order to determine if the SAI does measure instructional effectiveness. Overall, the SAI was found to have good reliability and validity with relatively few biases and could be used to extract five distinguishable traits of instructional effectiveness.     

Coping at University: an examination of achievement,motivation, self‐regulation,confidence, and method of entry

Undergraduate university students (n = 132) completed a questionnaire containing measures of psychological variables, verbal ability, an evaluation of their course of study, and demographic characteristics. We also had access to their academic results. We examined the relationships among these variables, especially the psychological variables, and compared them with those posited by recent theoretical work that makes connections among motivation, self‐regulation, and self‐efficacy. We then looked at which variables predicted academic achievement. The sample contained two sub‐samples: mature‐age students who had entered university via an enabling program; and younger students who entered university on the basis of high school results. With universities under severe financial pressure, university‐run enabling programs must demonstrate their effectiveness in terms of students’ successful progress in undergraduate degrees if they are to continue. We compared these two groups of students on the measures noted above.     

Measures Inherent to Treatments in Program Effectiveness Reviews

Abstract

Program effectiveness reviews in education seek to provide educators with scientifically valid and useful summaries of evidence on achievement effects of various interventions. Different reviewers have different policies on measures of content taught in the experimental group but not the control group, called here treatment-inherent measures. These are contrasted with treatment-independent measures of content emphasized equally in experimental and control groups. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) averages effect sizes from such measures with those from treatment-independent measures, while the Best Evidence Encyclopedia excludes treatment-inherent measures. This article contrasts effect sizes from treatment-inherent and treatment-independent measures in WWC reading and math reviews to explore the degree to which these measures produce different estimates. In all comparisons, treatment-inherent measures produce much larger positive effect sizes than treatment-independent measures. Based on these findings, it is suggested that program effectiveness reviews exclude treatment-inherent measures, or at least report them separately.     

Writing and reading: connections between language by hand and language by eye

Four approaches to the investigation of connections between language by hand and language by eye are described and illustrated with studies from a decade-long research program. In the first approach, multigroup structural equation modeling is applied to reading and writing measures given to typically developing writers to examine unidirectional and bidirectional relationships between specific components of the reading and writing systems. In the second approach, structural equation modeling is applied to a multivariate set of language measures given to children and adults with reading and writing disabilities to examine how the same set of language processes is orchestrated differently to accomplish specific reading or writing goals, and correlations between factors are evaluated to examine the level at which the language-by-hand system and the language-by-eye system communicate most easily. In the third approach, mode of instruction and mode of response are systematically varied in evaluating effectiveness of treating reading disability with and without a writing component. In the fourth approach, functional brain imaging is used to investigate residual spelling problems in students whose problems with word decoding have been remediated. The four approaches support a model in which language by hand and language by eye are separate systems that interact in predictable ways.     

Developing a Measure of Perceived Environmental Risk

Abstract

This study conceptually and empirically develops a scale that measures perceptions of environmental risk (PER). PER is a measure that is different from the measure of environmental knowledge but equally important because people tend to act on their perceptions regardless of whether they are accurate. A reliable and valid assessment of perceived environmental risk is important for environmental education because it will provide a general overview of the present state of perceptions regarding environmental risk, and it will provide measures of specific environmental issues. Therefore, this type of scale either can provide a comprehensive measure for environmental education programs or can measure specific selected items that apply to certain situations or programs, or both. Administrators and teachers could use this scale to indicate the effectiveness of environmental education programs. We define perceptions of environmental risk as a general measurement of risk which assesses the degree to which one perceives danger, peril, or hazards to either self, community, society, or all three, in regard to specific environmental issues. In developing this scale, we used various heterogenous groups across multiple studies to affirm the scale's validity and reliability.     

Design and implementation of a position sensorless control method for brushless DC motors

Because brushless direct current (BLDC) motors have the advantages of a compact size, high power density, high efficiency, and long operating life time, they are widely used in many industrial products and electric traction systems. It is known that the BLDC motors have no brushes for commutation. They are commutated with electronically commutation. So, the rotor position information of the BLDC motors must be known to understand which winding will be energized according to the energizing sequence. In most of the existing BLDC motor drivers, rotor position information is detected by Hall effect sensors. This kind of mechanical position sensors will bring additional connections and costs, reliability decrease and noise increase. In order to improve the control performance and extend the range of speed regulation for BLDC motors, a position sensorless control method is proposed in this paper. In the proposed control method, rotor position information of the BLDC motors is detected from the back electromagnetic forces (back-EMFs) which are estimated by an unknown-input observer with line to line currents and line to line voltages. For the purpose of verifying the effectiveness of the proposed control method, a model is built and simulated on the Matlab/Simulink platform. The simulation results show that the speed regulation performance of BLDC motors is improved compared with using Hall effect sensors. At the same time, the reliability of the BLDC motors is improved and the costs of them are reduced because the position sensor is eliminated.     

CRITERION-REFERENCED TESTING: COMMENTS ON RELIABILITY1

Currently there is concern among some educators regarding the reliability of criterion-referenced (CR) measures. In this comment, a recent attempt to develop a theory of reliability for CR measures is examined, and some considerations for determining the reliability of CR measures are discussed. Conventional reliability statistics (e.g., coefficient alpha, standard error of measurement) are found appropriate for CR measures satisfying the assumptions of the measurement model underlying classical test theory. For measures with underlying multidimensional traits, conventional reliability statistics may be used at the homogeneous subscale level. When the confidence interval about a student's “below criterion score” includes the criterion, additional evidence about the student should be obtained. Two-stage sequential testing is suggested as one method for acquiring additional evidence.     

中、高职衔接的若干问题思考

本对我国职业教育的中高等职业教育衔接的几种形式进行了探讨，指出了存在的问题，提出了实现中高等职业教育衔接的措施。     

唐山学院学生评教中存在的问题及对策

教学质量是高校生存与发展的根本,学生评教是实现我院教学质量自我监控的重要环节之一。学生评教指标体系的设置、评教过程的组织、评教结果的统计及反馈都会影响评教的科学性和实效性。文章在调研基础上反映了我院学生评教的现状。