Assessment options in higher education

This article evaluates an initiative to introduce assessment choice within a taught unit on an undergraduate healthcare programme as a means of addressing poor performance, especially for those students diagnosed with dyslexia. Students’ perceptions of the assessment experience were sought via the use of two focus group interviews (n = 16). The article describes the effect the assessment experience had on students’ stress levels, individual learning styles and achievement. Students’ performance improved and statistical analyses indicated parity between the assessment methods offered with similar performance profiles between students with and without dyslexia. The conclusion reached is that while the introduction of assessment options may be time consuming for staff to develop, the benefits of an enhanced student‐centred approach to assessment may be well worth this investment in time. Although a limited study owing to the small sample size, the results should be of interest to those academics who are concerned with assessment and its impact on students’ achievement.     

Continuing attachments in academic work in neoliberal times: on the academic mode of existence

Is there (still) something specific about academic practice in contemporary neoliberal times? This article reports on a sociomaterial, ethnographic study informed by Deleuze’s untimely empiricism conducted at two research centres of a research university. We unfold the specificity of ‘the academic’ by elaborating upon two central notions: relational aspirations (the attachments of these academics, and the operations that such attachments generate) and mode of existence (the way academic practice comes into being by and through these attachments). The article discerns four types of relations that are typical for academic practice and argues that the way in which academic practice exists nowadays is characterized by a continuous distancing in action, that is, by drawing things together and by slowing things down.     

Popular Culture

WAITING FOR PRIME TIME: THE WOMEN OF TELEVISION NEWS by Marlene Sanders and Marcia Rock (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988—$19.95, ISBN 0-252-01435-9)

FAIR PLAY: CBS, GENERAL WESTMORELAND, AND HOW A TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY WENT WRONG by Burton Benjamin (New York: Harper &; Row, 1988—$17.95, ISBN 0-06-015928-6)

BEHIND THE FRONT PAGE: A CANDID LOOK AT HOW THE NEWS IS MADE by David S. Broder (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987—$8.95, paper, ISBN 0-671-65721-6)

BAD TIDINGS: COMMUNICATION AND CATASTROPHE edited by Lynne Masel Walters, Lee Wilkins, and Tim Walters ((Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1989—price not given, ISBN 0-89859-951-2)

MEDIA, MYTHS AND NARRATIVES: TELEVISION AND THE PRESS edited by James W. Carey (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988—$35.00/16.95, ISBN 0-8039-3049-6, paper)

PREDICTIONS OF PUBLIC OPINION FROM THE MASS MEDIA: COMPUTER CONTENT ANALYSIS AND MATHEMATICAL MODELING by David P. Fan (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988—$42.95, ISBN 0-313-26296-9)

JOURNALISTS AT WAR: THE DYNAMICS OF NEWS REPORTING DURING THE FALKLAND'S CONFLICT by David E. Morrison and Howard Tumber (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988—$49.95/18.95, ISBN 0-8039-8057-4, hard 0-8039-8058-2, soft)

NEWS COVERAGE OF THE SANDINISTA REVOLUTION by Joshua Muravchik (American Enterprise Institute, 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 20706—$19.95/9.95, ISBN 0-8447-3661-9 hard, and 0-8447-3662-7, soft)

IMAGE WARS: PROTECTING YOUR COMPANY WHEN THERE'S NO PLACE TO HIDE by Stan Sauerhaft and Chris Atkins (New York: John Wiley, 1989—$22.95, ISBN O471-60936-6)

THE IQ CONTROVERSY: THE MEDIA AND THE PUBLIC by Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman (Rutgers, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988—$24.95, ISBN 0-88738-151-0)

NEWS AS HEGEMONIC REALITY: AMERICAN POLITICAL CULTURE AND THE FRAMING OF NEWS ACCOUNTS by Allan Rachlin (New York: Praeger, 1988—$37.95, ISBN 0-275-92534-X)

BEYOND MALICE: THE MEDIA'S YEARS OF RECKONING by Richard M. Clurman (Transaction Books, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903—$24.95, ISBN 0-88738-234-7)

MASS MEDIA, CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS AND STREET GOSSIP: HOW COMMUNICATION AFFECTS THE QUALITY OF LIFE IN AN URBAN NEIGHBORHOOD by W. Phillips Davison (New York: Gannett Center for Media Studies, Columbia University, 1988—price not given, paper, ISBN not provided)

NEWS AND NUMBERS: A GUIDE TO REPORTING STATISTICAL CLAIMS AND CONTROVERSIES IN HEALTH AND OTHER FIELDS by Victor Cohn (Iowa State University Press, 2121 South State Ave., Ames, Iowa 50010—$17.95, ISBN 0-8138-1442-1)     

Combined effects of sleep deprivation and strenuous exercise on cognitive performances during The North Face® Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc® (UTMB®)

This study investigated the effects of combined sleep deprivation and strenuous exercise on cognitive and neurobehavioral performance among long-distance runners completing one of the most difficult ultramarathons in the world. Seventeen runners participated. Each had a wrist-worn actigraph throughout the race to record their sleep time. In addition, each individual’s performance in 10-min response-time tests before and after the race was recorded and a questionnaire enabled participants to report any difficulties they experienced during the competition. During race completion times of 27 to 44 h, combined acute lack of sleep (12 ± 17 min of rest during the race) and strenuous exercise (168.0 km) had marked adverse effects on cognitive performances ranging from mere lengthening of response time to serious symptoms such as visual hallucinations. This study suggests that regardless of rest duration and time in race, cognitive performances of ultramarathoners are adversely affected.     

The means of managing momentum: Bridging technological paths and organisational fields

This paper examines how technological and organisational changes are mediated through different means of mutually monitoring and collectively coordinating technological developments in the field of semiconductor manufacturing. As collective practices, both monitoring and coordinating aim at generating momentum in order to stabilise or redirect technological paths in organisational fields. The empirical analysis of innovation practices in the field of semiconductor manufacturing technology shows that the means of managing momentum, above all roadmaps, conferences, and R&D consortia, influence and transform the development of new technologies as well as the social relations within the organisational field. The transformative capacity of these means is elaborated conceptually using Giddens’ theory of structuration.     

The Pathway Program: How a Collaborative,Distributed Learning Program Showed Us the Future of Social Work Education

This paper describes a three-campus collaborative, distributed learning program that delivers social work education to remote rural and desert communities in California via distance learning modalities. This “Pathway Program” provides accredited social work education for a career ladder beginning with advising and developing an academic plan and leading to BSW and MSW degrees. The paper offers assessment data on the Pathway Program and also suggests the potential for major changes in social work education. Questions about the nature of the university, the role of the faculty member, and the future of social work students in the twenty-first century are discussed.     

The subject‐person of adult education in the crisis of modernity

The philosophical and theoretical background of this article is the recent debate in conventional education, highlighting problems with the subject‐person of education (e.g., Oelkers, 1987). This debate has its origins in the questioning by philosophers of the project of modernity, of its future (e.g., Habermas, 1985; Wellmer,1985), and of its subject‐person (e.g., Frank et ah, 1990). The philosophy of education is affected by this debate primarily for two reasons: first, the subject‐person is at the core of the project of modernity and therefore of the inseparably linked idea of conventional education. Second, modernity is in itself an educational project (e.g., Oelkers, 1983), for, if education fails to bring forth the enlightened and emancipated subject‐person, modernity also fails. Therefore, if there is today, as is generally admitted, a crisis of modernity, conventional education and its conception of the subject‐person, as well as the corresponding learning model are inevitably affected. This also applies to adult education, in so far as adult education refers to models of the subject‐person that are still deeply rooted in conventional education.     

MEDIA TONE AND PUBLIC OPINION: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF MEDIA COVERAGE AND PUBLIC OPINION ON CHANCELLOR KOHL

This study investigates the relationship between media coverageof Helmut Kohl in seven leading German print media and the opinionsof the German general public about the politician between 1975and 1984. For the content analysis evaluative assessments aboutHelmut Kohl on six different dimensions of characteristics werecoded. The analysis of public opinion is based on 72 representativesurveys in which respondents expressed their evaluations ofthe politician. The two time series were compared by means ofcross-lagged correlations. The whole period was first examinedwith aggregations of three-months-intervals; then closer attentionwas paid to the time period since Helmut Kohl took office aschancellor on the basis of monthly intervals. In both cases,the results show that evaluation shifts in the media precedesimilar evaluation shifts in public opinion with a time lagof about three to six months for the whole period of investigation,and a somewhat shorter time lag for the time of his chancellorship.Evaluation shifts in the political magazines Der Spiegel andStern were more closely related to public opinion than evaluationshifts in the national dailies.