Communicating Student Evaluation of Teaching Results: Rating Interpretation Guides (RIGs)

In the past decade student evaluation of teaching has expanded within Australian universities, with the results of evaluations increasingly being used to make judgements about teaching quality, career advancement and the funding of teaching. An important component of any student evaluation of teaching system is, therefore, the communication of rating results in a manner that enables fair and meaningful interpretations and comparisons of results by the wide range of evaluation users. This paper describes the development in one Australian university of Rating Interpretation Guides (RIGs) which take into account the influence of different teaching contexts on ratings and encourage evaluation users to explore ratings in terms of a range of scores rather than focusing on a single mean score. RIGs represent an important innovation in the communication of evaluation results for both formative and summative evaluation purposes. They are designed to enable meaningful interpretations of ratings which in turn will encourage appropriate use of results.     

The National Grid for Learning: A curriculum without walls?

The aim of the British Government's National Grid for Learning policy is to harness the power of information and communications technology (ICT) in order to create a 'curriculum without walls', where the riches of the world's intellectual, cultural and scientific heritage are available to all. Central to this vision are the assumptions that: all pupils will in the future have appropriate access to computers at home and at school; that there is a common conception between home and school as to what actually constitutes learning. In this paper the authors draw on preliminary findings from a 2 year study of how young people actually utilise ICT at home and at school to raise important questions about the realisation of the Government's policy objectives.     

Elimination of lipaemic interference by high-speed centrifugation

IntroductionIn order to deliver high quality results, detection and elimination of possible analytical interferences, such as lipaemia, is crucial. The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of high-speed centrifugation in eliminating lipaemic interference and to define own lipaemic index (LI) for the studied biochemical analytes.Materials and methodsEvaluated analytes were: albumin, alkaline phosphatase, alanine-aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate-aminotransferase (AST), calcium, creatinine, gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT), glucose, phosphates, total proteins, urea and total bilirubin. Those analytes and LIs have been analysed in duplicate in the Roche Diagnostics-c8000 analyser in samples centrifuged at 3000 rpm/10 minutes in the SL16 (Thermo Scientific, Waltham, USA) centrifuge and according to an own high-speed centrifugation protocol (12,900 rpm/15 minutes) in the MicroCL17R (Thermo Scientific, Waltham, USA) centrifuge. Lipaemia has been measured in each sample. The efficiency of high-speed centrifugation is verified by the Wilcoxon test (P < 0.05). In cases where significant differences are observed, our own LI is calculated. For ALT and AST, it is verified by McNemar test (P < 0.05). For creatinine, both Wilcoxon and McNemar test were applied.ResultsThere were statistically significant differences in analyte concentration before and after high-speed centrifugation for: albumin, creatinine, GGT, glucose, phosphates, urea and total bilirrubin. Own LI is calculated. McNemar test shows statistically significant diferences in the proportion of delivered results before and after high-speed centrifugation in ALT, AST and creatinine.ConclusionsThis study confirms the efficacy of high-speed centrifugation protocol for all the considered analytes, excepting calcium, alkaline phosphatase and total proteins.     

China's universities and Western academic models

China's Cultural Revolution began in the universities where Mao was able to gain strong support for his vision of radical societal transformation by a focus on two issues: the need to uproot persisting traditional values and patterns, summed up under the four olds, and a call to shatter the shackles of all foreign dogmas which was clearly directed at prominent Soviet influences in Chinese higher education. This essay briefly summarizes the main characteristics of China's traditional scholarly institutions, then considers the western academic models introduced by foreign missionaries, those selected and implemented by Chinese modernizers and finally the Soviet academic model adopted by Chinese Communist leaders in the fifties. The historical lessons drawn from this overview provide a context for some critical reflection on the ways in which western academic models are once again affecting reforms underway in Chinese higher education since 1978.