Assessment: New Ways of Pupil Evaluation Using Real Data

Typically, external assessment of school statistics concentrates on lower–level skills. This article discusses how use of the real data of CensusAtSchool makes it possible to devise questions and activities that assess deeper levels of understanding, as described in Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Learning.     

Student perceptions of their learning and engagement in response to the use of a continuous e-assessment in an undergraduate module

Student engagement is an important issue in higher education, and is related to the quality of the student experience. Increasing student engagement is one way of enhancing quality at a higher education institution. An institution is able to influence student engagement in a number of ways, one being through curriculum design. The use of a low-stakes continuous weekly summative e-assessment had a positive influence on student engagement in an optional level 5 (second year) undergraduate geography module. Students considered their increased engagement was a direct consequence of this assessment method. It was also found that students thought they improved their learning, particularly their understanding, as a result of the continuous assessment. This study suggests that carefully designed assessments can be used to increase student engagement and learning, and, as a result, contribute to improving the quality of the overall student experience.     

Open access and predatory publishing: a survey of the publishing practices of academic pharmacists and nurses in the United States

Objective:Academics are under great pressure to publish their research, the rewards for which are well known (tenure, promotion, grant funding, professional prestige). As open access publishing gains acceptance as a publishing option, researchers may choose a “predatory publisher.” The purpose of this study is to investigate the motivations and rationale of pharmacy and nursing academics in the United States to publish in open access journals that may be considered “predatory.”Methods:A 26-item questionnaire was programmed in Qualtrics and distributed electronically to approximately 4,500 academic pharmacists and nurses, 347 of whom completed questionnaires (~8%). Pairwise correlations were performed followed by a logistic regression to evaluate statistical associations between participant characteristics and whether participants had ever paid an article processing fee (APF).Results:Participants who had published more articles, were more familiar with predatory publishing, and who were more concerned about research metrics and tenure were more likely to have published in open access journals. Moderate to high institutional research intensity has an impact on the likelihood of publishing open access. The majority of participants who acknowledged they had published in a predatory journal took no action after realizing the journal was predatory and reported no negative impact on their career for having done so.ConclusionThe results of this study provide data and insight into publication decisions made by pharmacy and nursing academics. Gaining a better understanding of who publishes in predatory journals and why can help address the problems associated with predatory publishing at the root.