Personal understanding of assessment and the link to assessment practice: the perspectives of higher education staff

The study investigates how higher education staff understand assessment, and the relationship between these understandings and their assessment practices. Nine individuals attended a workshop that guided them through the creation of a concept map about assessment, which was subsequently discussed in one-to-one semi-structured interviews. We found considerable variation in understanding of assessment, both between and within participants, and this appeared to be a consequence of the varied contexts within which assessment operates. Some assessment practices were highly complex, and at times closely entwined with teaching. In addition, individuals’ practices helped to illuminate variation in how underlying concepts (e.g. assessment for learning) were understood. The approach supported the construction of the participants’ understanding of assessment, and enabled the exploration of the interplay between thinking and reported practice, which were closely aligned. It also drew attention to the need to further develop methodologies which capture both the complexity of thinking about assessment and real-world assessment practices.     

Confidence and Expectations About Caring for Older People With Dementia: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Student Nurses

Older people who are living with dementia often need healthcare, including hospital admissions, due to additional health conditions. Caring for older people who are living with dementia is, therefore, a core nursing role. This study investigated student nurses’ expectations of, and confidence about, caring for older people with dementia and the effect of students’ age, precourse experience, and their academic year. The design was a cross-sectional survey using questionnaires to collect data. The participants (n = 328), based at one university in England, had all had at least one practice learning placement. Most student nurses (n = 202; 62%) had precourse contact with older people with dementia and had cared for them during the course (n = 291; 89%). The student's academic year significantly affected confidence about caring for older people with dementia (p = .006), but still only 52% (n = 26) of third-year students felt “generally confident.” Precourse contact with older people with dementia had a significant impact on expectations (p = .001) and confidence in caring for people with dementia (p = .002). Students who were >25 years were significantly more likely to have had precourse contact with older people with dementia (p = < .001). Nurse educators should ensure that students entering nurse education appreciate that caring for older people who are living with dementia will be a core part of their role. They must proactively prepare nursing students to care for people with dementia, recognizing that some students have no previous contact, which may affect their confidence and experiences.     

FROM COVERT PROCESSES TO OVERT OUTCOMES OF REFUTATION TEXT READING: THE INTERPLAY OF SCIENCE TEXT STRUCTURE AND WORKING MEMORY CAPACITY THROUGH EYE FIXATIONS

This study extends current research on the refutation text effect by investigating it in learners with different levels of working memory capacity. The purpose is to outline the link between online processes (revealed by eye fixation indices) and off-line outcomes in these learners. In science education, unlike a standard text, a refutation text acknowledges readers’ alternative conceptions about a topic, refutes them, and presents scientific conceptions as viable alternatives. Lower and higher memory span university students with alternative conceptions about the topic read either a refutation or a non-refutation text about tides. Off-line measures of learning revealed that both groups of refutation text readers attained higher knowledge gains. During the reading process, refutation text readers fixated for longer on the refutation segments while reading the parts presenting the scientific information (look-froms). Non-refutation text readers looked back to the informational parts for longer. Look-froms (positively) and reading time (negatively) predicted learning from refutation text, indicating that the quality, not quantity, of reading was related to it. In contrast, learning from non-refutation text was predicted only by working memory capacity. The refutation effect is discussed and educational implications are drawn.     

Statistical Models for Monolingual and Bilingual Information Retrieval

This work reviews information retrieval systems developed at ITC-irst which were evaluated through several tracks of CLEF, during the last three years. The presentation tries to follow the progress made over time in developing new statistical models first for monolingual information retrieval, then for cross-language information retrieval. Besides describing the underlying theory, performance of monolingual and bilingual information retrieval models are reported, respectively, on Italian monolingual tracks and Italian-English bilingual tracks of CLEF. Monolingual systems by ITC-irst performed consistently well in all the official evaluations, while the bilingual system ranked in CLEF 2002 just behind competitors using commercial machine translation engines. However, by experimentally comparing our statistical topic translation model against a state-of-the-art commercial system, no statistically significant difference in retrieval performance could be measured on a larger set of queries.     

A case study of the development of WebPA: An online peer-moderated marking tool

Peer moderation of group work in higher education is rapidly advancing through the use of technological developments and is increasingly being informed by pedagogical research. The highly successful WebPA online assessment system has gone through a number of development phases over its 15-year history and has now evolved into a relatively mature and flexible tool for facilitating group work. This paper presents a case study of the approaches that have been used in the system's development from the technical perspective, and describes how the scope of the project has massively expanded and that the development has been continually backed by a sound and wide-ranging pedagogy. The benefits of using the online system are shown to be underpinned throughout by examples of good practice in the supervision of academic group work. A critical evaluation of the tool and surrounding pedagogical practices highlight future areas for technical expansion.     

Typography for children may be inappropriately designed

We present four studies indicating that the size and design of the typeface in textual material for children aged 7–9 may impair speed of reading and comprehension, and measurement of reading attainment. The first study compared the speed with which sample sentences were comprehended. The sentences were printed in Arial font with an x‐height of 4.2 or 5.0 mm. The sentences were verified 9% more quickly when presented in the larger typeface. The second study compared reading age on the Salford Sentence Reading Test when the typeface remained at the initial size (x‐height 3.3 mm) throughout the test, and when it decreased in size as usual. The average reading age measured with the larger font was 4 months older. The final studies compared the font Sassoon Primary with the font Verdana and showed that Verdana was read and searched more quickly.