Closing the loop on student feedback: the case of Australian and Scottish universities

Universities have a long history of collecting student feedback using surveys and other mechanisms. The last decade has witnessed a significant shift in how student feedback is systematically collected, analysed, reported, and used by governments and institutions. This shift is due to a number of factors, including changes in government policy related to quality assurance, and the increased use of the results by various stakeholders such as governments, institutions, and potential students and employers. The collection, analysis, and reporting of results are systematically carried out in many institutions worldwide. However, how to use student feedback to effectively improve student learning experience remains an issue to be addressed. This paper will contribute to this debate by comparing how Australian and Scottish universities use student feedback results to inform improvements. Based on thematic analysis of external quality audit reports of all Australian and Scottish universities, this paper suggests that universities have systematic processes to collect student feedback using a range of mechanisms, but limited work is done to use the data to inform improvements. This paper argues the need for universities to genuinely listen to student voice by facilitating partnership between students and institutions to act on their feedback as part of quality assurance.     

Asia in the edges: a narrative account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore

Abstract

The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School is a Biennial event that invites Masters and PhD students from around Asia to participate in conversations around developing and building an Inter-Asia Cultural Studies thought process. Hosted by the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society along with the Consortium of universities and research centres that constitute it, the Summer School is committed to bringing together a wide discourse that spans geography, disciplines, political affiliations and cultural practices for and from researchers who are interested in developing Inter-Asia as a mode of developing local, contextual and relevant knowledge practices. This is the narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” which was hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012.     

Exploring the immediate and short-term effects of peer advice and cognitive authority on Web search behavior

An individual's Web search behavior can be influenced by a number of factors, including features and functions of a search engine as well as search education. In contrast to the long-lasting attention to the algorithm and interface dimensions of search, there is a lack of research concerned with the potential effects of user education on search behavior. To address this gap, we ran a three-session field-lab-combined study to examine the effects of user education from two distinct sources – peer advice and cognitive authority (operationalized as video-based student's advice and expert's advice respectively) – on Web search behavior in two different search task scenarios (i.e., factual specific and factual amorphous tasks). We also tested if these behavioral effects persist for a short period of time when the explicit search tips are removed. Using 185 task session data generated by 31 participants in two field and one lab sessions, this study demonstrates that: (1) both peer advice and cognitive authority are effective in stimulating immediate behavioral changes in Web search; (2) the immediate behavioral impact of search advice is broader in factual amorphous task than in factual specific task; (3) framing search tips as the advice from cognitive authority is more likely to generate continuing, short-term effects on Web search behaviors. This research has implications for the design of task-aware user education as well as the study of users’ interactions with IR systems in general.     

Becoming a teacher: Transitions from training to the classroom in the NWFP,Pakistan

This paper addresses issues related to the effectiveness of teacher education in Pakistan in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), through a small scale collaborative research study in two state secondary schools, one girls’ and one boys’. The aim was to explore how newly qualified teachers manage their transition from student teachers to classroom teachers. In teasing out the relationship between teacher training experiences and classroom practice, we highlight the importance of greater consideration of the social and professional contexts of the school within training programmes as a means to make sustained improvements in the quality of classroom teaching and learning.     

巴基斯坦高等学校设置制度:缘起、程序及标准

在巴基斯坦现行高等教育行政管理机构及组织体系下,巴基斯坦高等学校设置制度的构建缘起、设置程序及标准具有一定的特色.研究发现,巴基斯坦高等学校设置程序围绕申请、审核、考察、赋权等四个环节进行,具备系统的设置标准,涵盖师资队伍建设、设备场地规范、经费使用、管理若干方面.巴基斯坦高等学校设置制度较为完备,符合本国国情,利益主体均衡,标准刚柔相济,但也存在重硬件、轻科研,未能为高等教育国际化纵深发展预留对接平台,以及“一刀切”色彩过重等问题.     

Role-based results redistribution for collaborative information retrieval

We describe a new approach for algorithmic mediation of a collaborative search process. Unlike most approaches to collaborative IR, we are designing systems that mediate explicitly-defined synchronous collaboration among small groups of searchers with a shared information need. Such functionality is provided by first obtaining different rank-lists based on searchers’ queries, fusing these rank-lists, and then splitting the combined list to distribute documents among collaborators according to their roles. For the work reported here, we consider the case of two people collaborating on a search. We assign them roles of Gatherer and Surveyor: the Gatherer is tasked with exploring highly promising information on a given topic, and the Surveyor is tasked with digging further to explore more diverse information. We demonstrate how our technique provides the Gatherer with high-precision results, and the Surveyor with information that is high in entropy.     

Significance of Vitamin D Binding Protein in Assessing Vitamin D Status Among Under-Five Children

Despite ample sunshine, 50–90% Indian children have Vitamin D deficiency (VDD). This enigma of widespread VDD needs exploration especially among under-fives as physiological variations in Vitamin D Binding Protein (VDBP) levels could be potential confounders in the interpretation of total 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D]. However, there is scarce information about relevance of VDBP levels in under-five age group. We therefore, explored association of VDBP levels among 1–5 year old children with VDD. Serum levels of 25(OH)D, VDBP, calcium, parathyroid hormone (PTH) and alkaline phosphatase were estimated in 210 apparently healthy children in the age group of 1–5 years. VDD was defined as serum 25(OH)D levels < 20 ng/ml as per the IOM classification. VDBP levels were classified as low if levels were < 168 μg/ml as per the kit. The prevalence of VDD was 79.5% (n = 167) and VDBP levels were low in 48.6% (n = 102) of children. 25(OH)D levels correlated positively with VDBP (r = 0.298, p = 0.0001). A significant number of children (52.7%) with VDD had low VDBP (p = 0.015). and despite adequate sun exposure, 43% of children showed VDD and 56.6% had low VDPB levels. The low VDBP levels largely explain low 25OHD levels without necessarily implying VDD. It may add a new dimension for better understanding of widespread VDD among under-five children. It thus, points towards the need for redefining cut offs and complete evaluation of vitamin D status among under-fives including VDBP.     

Concept drift detection and adaptation with hierarchical hypothesis testing

A fundamental issue for statistical classification models in a streaming environment is that the joint distribution between predictor and response variables changes over time (a phenomenon also known as concept drifts), such that their classification performance deteriorates dramatically. In this paper, we first present a hierarchical hypothesis testing (HHT) framework that can detect and also adapt to various concept drift types (e.g., recurrent or irregular, gradual or abrupt), even in the presence of imbalanced data labels. A novel concept drift detector, namely Hierarchical Linear Four Rates (HLFR), is implemented under the HHT framework thereafter. By substituting a widely-acknowledged retraining scheme with an adaptive training strategy, we further demonstrate that the concept drift adaptation capability of HLFR can be significantly boosted. The theoretical analysis on the Type-I and Type-II errors of HLFR is also performed. Experiments on both simulated and real-world datasets illustrate that our methods outperform state-of-the-art methods in terms of detection precision, detection delay as well as the adaptability across different concept drift types.     

建设和谐校园文化之探究

和谐的校园文化能够有效促进师生的身心和谐以及人际关系的和谐,能够培养他们自尊自信、勤奋进取、理性平和的豁达、宽容心态,能够推进学校的学风和校风建设。和谐校园文化的建设必须营造和谐的师生关系,加强对大学生的社会主义核心价值观教育,不断强化学生的团队意识,加强教风和学风的建设以及诚信与文明作风的培养,把“八荣八耻”的精神实质贯穿到学校教育、教学的各个环节,全面推动学校和谐校园文化建设。     

An undergraduate student flow model: Australian higher education

The probability of completing and the time to complete an undergraduate course are likely to vary by the age and sex of the student, and the field of study undertaken. In this paper a Markov chain is used to model the movement of undergraduates through the higher education system in Australia. Given the age of the student when they commence a course, this model provides estimates of the probability of them completing the course. It also provides estimates for the mean time a student takes to complete the course, and mean time they spend in the higher education system.