Relationships between student characteristics and self‐, peer and tutor evaluations of oral presentations

There are many influences on how assessors grade themselves and others. Oral presentations are useful for exploring such factors in peer, self‐ and tutor marked assessments, being rapidly completed and assessed, commonly used in HE and very difficult to anonymize. This opportunistic study examined the effects of gender and level of attainment on the triangulation of marks awarded to student presenters. Grades generated by peer assessment were associated more strongly with tutor‐awarded marks than those from self‐assessment. For self‐assessment there was a strong effect of gender (female students undervalued their performance compared with tutor grades). Peer assessment produced higher marks than from tutors, perhaps because of the close‐knit community developed during residential courses. For tutor marks, the greatest variability was at the lower end of the scale, whereas peer assessors were most variable when marking students who self‐evaluated or peer assessed highly. Students awarded a narrower range of marks to peers compared with tutors, but when self‐assessing used a larger range. Presentations by students who admitted to little sleep the night before received lower grades from both peers and tutors, but this was not reflected by self‐assessments, suggesting they were unaware of their poorer performances. Sessions with fewer talks (four rather than seven) reduced the ‘dip’ in marks previously observed in the middle of sessions. Findings are discussed in the context of bias in this mode of assessment.     

Simulation framework for teaching in modeling and simulation areas

Simulation is the process of executing a model that describes a system with enough detail; this model has its entities, an internal state, some input and output variables and a list of processes bound to these variables. Teaching a simulation language such as general purpose simulation system (GPSS) is always a challenge, because of the way it executes the models and the abstraction level it can achieve, very different compared with most well-known programming languages. This article presents an open source simulation framework that implements a subset of entities of GPSS, which could help students to improve the understanding of this language. This tool also stores all entities of simulations in every single simulation time, which is very useful for debugging simulations, but also for getting a detailed history of all entities in the simulations, knowing exactly how they have behaved in every simulation time.     

Double your major,double your return?

We use the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates to provide the first estimates of the effect on earnings of having a double major. Overall, double majoring increases earnings by 2.3% relative to having a single major among college graduates without graduate degrees. Most of the gains from having a double major come from choosing fields across two different major categories. Graduates who combine an arts, humanities or social science major with a major in business, engineering, science or math have returns 7–50% higher than graduates with a single major in arts, humanities or social science. But such double major combinations have returns no higher than single majors in business, engineering, science or math. Majors combining business and science or math have returns more than 50% greater than the returns to having a single major in these fields.     

The Effects of Discipline on Deep Approaches to Student Learning and College Outcomes

“Deep learning” represents student engagement in approaches to learning that emphasize integration, synthesis, and reflection. Because learning is a shared responsibility between students and faculty, it is important to determine whether faculty members emphasize deep approaches to learning and to assess how much students employ these approaches. This study examines the effect of discipline on student use of and faculty members’ emphasis on deep approaches to learning as well as on the relationships between deep approaches to learning and selected educational outcomes. Using data from over 80,000 seniors and 10,000 faculty members we found that deep approaches to learning were more prevalent in Biglan’s soft, pure, and life fields compared to their counterparts. The differences were largest between soft and hard fields. We also found that seniors who engage more frequently in deep learning behaviors report greater educational gains, higher grades, and greater satisfaction with college, and that the strength of these relationships is relatively consistent across disciplinary categories.     

A Hong Kong case of lesson study—Benefits and concerns

In recent years, there has been a feeling that effective teachers can be fostered by grounding professional development in actual classroom practice. This paper reports how a group of teachers adopted a lesson study approach and worked collaboratively so as to improve their class instruction on wh-question formation. Teachers’ reflections indicate that the collaborative environment throughout the study enabled them to gain insights into how to improve their teaching strategies. Also identified are some of the problems faced by teachers, which may undermine the gains of lesson study.     

Benchlearning – an action research program for transforming leadership and school practices

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we investigate how a Benchlearning program for principals in Norway and Sweden supports changes in Norwegian principals’ leadership practices. The program design builds on principles for practical action research. The aim of the program was to inspire changes in the principals’ leadership practices that encourage innovative school practices. The program includes learning modes such as theoretical inputs, sharing experiences, school visits, training, and trialling of new leadership practices. Drawing on data from participants’ reflections on their learning and changes in their leadership practices, we identify transformations that have been realized and the ways in which the Benchlearning program has supported the transformations. The findings indicate that the program can be seen as a systematic and disciplined process, a ‘meta-practice’, that supports changes in the principals’ leadership practices, their understandings, and the conditions of their practice. More specifically, the findings show that the theoretical inputs and practical learning modes stimulated transformations of the principals’ thinking about leadership practices, what they do in practice and how they relate to others. In particular, the study suggests that the principals’ active participation in trialling new leadership practices in their own schools stimulated transformations.     

Modelling impact of dredging and dumping in ebb-flood channel systems

For a channel-shoal system in a funnel-shaped basin the impact of dredging and dumping is investigated using a complex process-based model. First, the residual flow and sediment transport circulations are analysed for the channel-shoal pattern, which has emerged after a long-term model simulation. Results are compared to the Western Scheldt estuary, which forms the inspiration for this study. Subsequently, different dredge and dump scenarios are modelled, according to a conceptual model, in which ebb-and flood-channels and enclosed shoals form morphodynamic units (cells) with their own sediment circulation. Model results show that dumping sediment in a channel further reduces the channel depth and induces erosion in the opposite channel, which enhances tilting of the cross-section of the cell and eventually can lead to the degeneration of a multiple channel system into a single channel. The impact of different dredging and dumping cases agrees with results from a stability analysis. This means that this type of model applied to a realistic geometry can potentially be used for better prediction of the impact of human interventions.     

The chimera of the competency-based approach to teaching mathematics: a study of carpentry purchases for home projects

Educational Studies in Mathematics - The competency-based approach conceives mathematics as a necessary tool for dealing with daily-life tasks. Many studies have focused on examining the low math...     

A cultural lens on Yucatec Maya families’ COVID-19 experiences

Health guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic led families around the world to spend more time isolated together, disrupting leisure activities, schooling, social interactions, and family work (UNICEF, 2021). Using the lens of Yucatec Maya families’ cultural values and practices, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 Yucatec Maya rural women in Mexico (M_age = 32; and for comparison, 13 middle-class European-American women (M_age = 41)), with children 6–7 years old, to analyze families’ experiences during the pandemic. Faced with the same isolation as in the United States, our exploratory analysis revealed Maya families experienced external stresses but at the same time were generally comfortable with their children's everyday activities and their social-emotional well-being, illuminating consequences of the communities’ cultural theories about development.