Incorporating technical risk in compound real option models to value a pharmaceutical R&D licensing opportunity

The valuation of multi-staged pharmaceutical R&D can be interpreted as a chain of real options. In valuing these compound option models, a crucial problem is how to deal with the different types of risk. Previous models, such as Cassimon et al. (2004), offer a closed-form solution for the valuation of a new drug development using a generalized n-fold compound option model, but implicitly bundle both commercial and technical risk in one risk measure. We extend this model by explicitly incorporating technical risk, while still preserving the closed-form solution of the model. As such, this extended model is better suited to handle real-life valuation cases in the pharmaceutical industry. We document the theoretical model with a real-life project of a major pharmaceutical multinational.     

Gauging e-government: A report on implementing services among American cities

Municipalities face a dilemma as they pursue technologically enabled modes of providing traditional services. The planning stages of e-government amount to triage: which specific municipal functions and services can a municipality afford to implement (or which services can they afford not to implement) given the costs of technology and technological capability? Little in the way of defining the leading edge of innovation among cities exists. To date, the literature on e-government “best practices” tends to stress creating standards for evaluating web-enabled services rather than for benchmarking the actual status of e-government implementation. In other words, a well-developed literature is emerging around standards by which municipal websites can be evaluated such as navigability and content standards. These standards do not give us insight, however, into the specific functions and services as they emerge on municipality websites. As a means toward addressing this lacuna, the authors created a rubric for benchmarking implementation among cities nationwide using a broad range of functional dimensions and assigning municipalities “e-scores.” In this paper, the authors describe these efforts, their approach and their findings.     

The effect of class composition by gender and ability on secondary school students’ school well-being and academic self-concept: A literature review

In the field of educational effectiveness research, the influence of a class’ student body on students’ individual achievement scores has been a popular research interest for many years. Yet, few studies have focussed on the effects of class composition on students’ non-achievement outcomes, and up to now, hardly any attempts have been made to summarize the findings of previous studies on this topic by conducting a literature review. The current study tries to fill in this gap and focuses on the effects of class composition in secondary education in terms of ability and gender on students’ school well-being and academic self-concept. The results of this literature review indicate that ability grouping is beneficial for strong students’ school well-being, but rather detrimental for the school well-being of weak students. The reverse holds for students’ academic self-concept. Furthermore, our results show that single-sex classes are advantageous for girls’ school well-being and academic self-concept. As for boys, the results are inconclusive.     

Feedback,a powerful lever in teams: A review

This paper reviews the literature on the effects of feedback provided to teams in higher education or organizational settings. This review (59 empirical articles) showed that most of the feedback applications concerned “knowledge of results” (performance feedback). In contrast, there is a relatively small body of research using feedback conveying information regarding the way individuals or the team performed a task (process feedback). Moreover, no research compared the effectiveness of process versus performance feedback. Concerning feedback effectiveness, half of the studies implementing performance feedback research reported uniformly positive effects while the other half resulted in positive effects on some dependent variables and no effect on others. All the studies using solely process feedback showed mixed positive results: some dependent variables improved while some others did not change. None of the studies reported any negative effects. This review also highlighted 28 key factors supporting feedback interventions effectiveness.     

What ISPI and performance improvement mean to me

This year, the International Society for Performance Improvement celebrates its 50th anniversary. Over the past half century, our field has moved from programmed learning to programmed instruction to performance improvement. This new column reflects on 50 years of member memories and what it has meant to each of this column's contributors. If you would like to add to the discussion, please contact the PI journal editor: publications@ispi.org     

Performance improvement/HPT model: Guiding the process

This commentary is part of an ongoing dialogue that began in the October 2011 special issue of Performance Improvement—Exploring a Universal Performance Model for HPT: Notes From the Field. The authors feel that the performance improvement/HPT model in its past, present, and potential future iterations is not the only model for our field; however, it makes a systematic and flexible contribution to the field.     

Teachers' attitudes and students' opposition. School misconduct as a reaction to teachers' diminished effort and affect

Recent decades have seen many studies dealing with the effects of teacher expectations. While most have focused on students' cognitive outcomes, we relate teacher expectations to student deviancy. We expect low expectations to be associated with students' feelings of futility and less teacher support, which, according to respectively strain theory and social control theory, give rise to misconduct. Multilevel analyses of data (2004–2005) from 11,844 students and 2104 teachers in 84 Flemish secondary schools suggest that, in schools where teacher expectations are low, students report less perceived teacher support, which is associated with higher rates of self-reported school misconduct.     

Hybrid sliding mode observer for switched linear systems with unknown inputs

This paper addresses the state observation and unknown input estimation of a class of switched linear systems with unknown inputs. This class of systems may have modes in which the state is not fully observable. A state transformation allows implementing two suitable reduced-order observers. The first one, based on second order sliding mode techniques, is proposed to reconstruct the discrete state in the presence of unknown inputs. The second one, based on gathering partial information from individual modes of the switched system and on higher order sliding mode techniques, is introduced to estimate the continuous state. Then, the observer injection signal of the first second order sliding mode observer is used to estimate the unknown inputs. Simulation results highlight the efficiency of the proposed method.     

Student and novice teachers’ stories about collaborative learning implementation

Despite the research evidence on the effectiveness of collaborative learning (CL), the implementation of this teaching strategy has not yet found a profound place in teaching practice. As a consequence, several studies have investigated teachers’ motives regarding and experiences with the use of CL. Most of these studies concern however senior teachers, whereas new generations of teachers are important actors in the process of educational innovation. Hence, it is crucial to explore novice teachers’ stories about CL implementation: what motivates them to implement this teaching strategy, what hinders them and how do they handle the challenges they are confronted with? The answers to these questions may provide useful information for improving the teacher education curriculum regarding CL. In this respect, the present study intends to study pre-service and beginning teachers’ experiences with CL in classroom practice, after a formal training pertaining to CL as part of their teacher education programme. The aim is to identify the main challenges student and novice teachers encounter when they want to implement CL in their teaching practice, and how they position themselves in these challenges. A qualitative case study design with in-depth interviews in the Flemish context (Belgium) was used to gain access to the particular experiences of each teacher, and to the processes of interpretation and meaning-making that go with those experiences. Participants were interviewed individually one week before graduation (n?=?15). After at least half a year of experience in the teaching profession, 10 participants were interviewed for a second time. In the present study, we present the results from a cross-case analysis, using the method of constant comparative analysis to identify similarities or differences, and to capture recurring patterns within the data. The findings reveal several dilemmas that illustrate the conflicting options teachers are facing in relation to their colleagues, their pupils, the curriculum and in the classroom context when they intend to implement CL. In particular, the following dilemmas were identified: two dilemmas related to professional autonomy (student teachers: teacher autonomy vs. pre-service performance assessment; novice teachers: teacher autonomy vs. institutional conformity), further dilemmas related to teachers’ beliefs about pupils’ readiness for CL vs. evidence about pupils’ readiness for CL, investing in innovation vs. curriculum and job pressure, and pedagogical intentions vs. contextual constraints. In most conflicting situations, student and novice teachers position themselves in the challenge by opting for non-implementation.