Providing formative assessment to students solving multipath engineering problems with complex arrangements of interacting parts: an intelligent tutor approach

Problems faced by engineering students involve multiple pathways to solution. Students rarely receive effective formative feedback on handwritten homework. This paper examines the potential for computer-based formative assessment of student solutions to multipath engineering problems. In particular, an intelligent tutor approach is adopted and tested out on problems of truss analysis, studied in engineering statics. With a cognitive model for solving the class of problems, the tutor allows the student wide latitude in solution steps, while maintaining sufficient constraints for judging the solution and offering feedback. Proper selection of judging points prevents interference with productive student work, while avoiding accumulated errors. To monitor student learning, efforts to apply distinct skills were extracted on the fly from student work. Using statistical methods developed for intelligent tutoring systems, metrics of the effectiveness of the feedback and areas for further improvements were gleaned from error rates in successive opportunities to apply distinct skills.     

Is choosing to go on placement a gamble? Perspectives from bioscience undergraduates

In the biosciences, a professional placement experience in academia or industry is intended to contribute to a student’s personal and professional training. While there is a general acknowledgement that a placement experience is beneficial for students, recent years have seen a decline in the number of students choosing to go on placements. Using a mixed‐method research design, this paper explores the attitudes that influence the bioscience students’ decisions on whether or not to undertake a year in a professional placement. Other questions considered in this study were whether placements influence student attitudes towards learning and if students achieve a better degree classification and better employment because of placement. Perspectives from academic staff and employers were compared with student perspectives on the added value of undertaking an extended placement during a period of study at university. While our findings reaffirm some of the perceived advantages of a professional placement in terms of learning and employability, it identifies important factors that influence student decisions not to undertake placements, revealing interesting questions on the placement perspectives between the student, academic tutor and employer.     

Simple Marketing Techniques and Space Planning to Increase Circulation

In the academic Information Commons, the frontline staff are key library assets. This article demonstrates one example of frontline staff observing, analyzing, and modifying user behavior using simple marketing techniques and space planning. James Madison University East Campus Library personnel increased circulation of books by increasing the visibility of the book collection. Minor furniture changes in the lobby, adding rotating themed book displays and providing digital and print signage, produced a dramatic effect. Circulation numbers essentially doubled for the lobby browsing book collection and markedly increased for books highlighted in the displays.     

Hearing you loud and clear: student perspectives of audio feedback in higher education

The use of audio feedback for students in a full-time community nursing degree course is appraised. The aim of this mixed methods study was to examine student views on audio feedback for written assignments. Questionnaires and a focus group were used to capture student opinion of this pilot project. The majority of students valued audio feedback as more detailed, personalised and supportive than written feedback. Lecturers were also consulted about their experience of audio feedback and its place within current assessment strategies. Further development of this innovative assessment feedback strategy and its integration into a post-registration nursing course is considered.     

Envisioning the Role of Facilitation in Public Deliberation

Research has neglected a critical factor in promoting successful citizen deliberation: the public forum facilitator. The facilitators create the discursive framework needed to make deliberation happen while setting the tone and the tenor for how and what participants discuss. This essay brings facilitators more clearly into the discussions about deliberative practice by offering an expanded and nuanced notion of facilitation in action. I modify D. Ryfe's continuum of involvement concept to outline three distinct types of facilitators: passive, moderate, and involved. Using this continuum, I investigate how the various moves, types of talk, and discursive strategies used by each of these facilitators differ during six National Issues Forums style deliberations. Results demonstrate that facilitators are not neutral, inactive participants in deliberative forums. The analysis indicates that the pedagogical choices made by facilitators about their involvement in forums affect deliberative talk and trajectories. Scholars evaluating deliberation should take into account facilitation and its different dimensions.     

Multilingual Mix in Hong Kong Advertising,Pre- and Post-1997

The paper examines the historical change in linguistic practice of Hong Kong advertising through the decolonization period and attempts to make sense of it from a local-and-global point of view beyond the conventional national-functionalist perspective. It is found that the prominent patterns of language mixing in the advertising of Hong Kong are not only ‘Standard Written Chinese mixed with English’, but also ‘Standard Written Chinese mixed with both English and Cantonese’. The embedded elements of both English and Cantonese in the Chinese advertisements can take the form of a word, a phrase and/or a full clause and can serve both informational and involving functions. Finally, it is argued that multilingual mix in Hong Kong advertising is a phenomenon constantly emerging in the multicultural process of globalization and that being able to mix different languages or varieties of languages for effective communication should be an aspect of linguistic competence highly valued in the age of globalization and localization.     

Design of Online Professional Development in Science Content and Pedagogy: A Pilot Study in Florida

The Exploring Florida Science project goals were: (1) increasing content knowledge of secondary science teachers, specifically in topics that are important to the future of the state, and (2) providing secondary science students with digital media for use in project-based learning. A team of instructional designers, educators, scientists, web designers and teacher educators designed an online professional development environment. Needs analysis included identification of the high incidence topics on the state science achievement test and topics of socio-scientific importance in the state. Development followed tenets of design-based research, and was guided by E-Learning for Educators standards and evaluated for content, pedagogy and usability using rubrics based on established guidelines. This paper details design, development, and evaluation frameworks, and summarizes pilot testing outcomes.