Time to participate: Lessons from the literature for learning and teaching project evaluation in higher education

Evaluation plays an increasingly important role in the quality-driven context of higher education. Projects that focus on learning and teaching often have evaluation expected of them, however, there is little evidence on the effectiveness of approaches nor the extent to which the praxis of evaluation is achieved. To illustrate this phenomenon, project funding and evaluation expectations are reviewed and the resulting analysis of the literature identifies eight emergent themes. Two overarching factors that unite these themes are time (or lack of it) and participation, leading to six issues for evaluation practice. Alignment of evaluation theory with practice requires focused attention if the maximum benefits of evaluation for the project processes are to be achieved.     

Femoral indicator injection for transpulmonary thermodilution using the EV1000/VolumeView®: do the same criteria apply as for the PiCCO®?

Objective

Comparison of global end-diastolic volume index (GEDVI) obtained by femoral and jugular transpulmonary thermodilution (TPTD) indicator injections using the EV1000/VolumnView® device (Edwards Lifesciences, Irvine, USA).

Methods

In an 87-year-old woman with hypovolemic shock and equipped with both jugular and femoral vein access and monitored with the EV1000/VolumeView® device, we recorded 10 datasets, each comprising duplicate TPTD via femoral access and duplicate TPTD (20 ml cold saline) via jugular access.

Results

Mean femoral GEDVI ((674.6±52.3) ml/m²) was significantly higher than jugular GEDVI ((552.3±69.7) ml/m²), with P=0.003. Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated a bias of (+122±61) ml/m², limits of agreement of ?16 and +260 ml/m², and a percentage error of 22%. Use of the correction-formula recently suggested for the PiCCO® device significantly reduced bias and percentage error. Similarly, mean values of parameters derived from GEDVI such as pulmonary vascular permeability index (PVPI; 1.244±0.101 vs. 1.522±0.139; P<0.001) and global ejection fraction (GEF; (24.7±1.6)% vs. (28.1±1.8)%; P<0.001) were significantly different in the case of femoral compared to jugular indicator injection. Furthermore, the mean cardiac index derived from femoral indicator injection ((4.50±0.36) L/(min·m²)) was significantly higher (P=0.02) than that derived from jugular indicator injection ((4.12±0.44) L/(min·m²)), resulting in a bias of (+0.38±0.37) L/(min·m²) and a percentage error of 19.4%.

Conclusions

Femoral access for indicator injection results in markedly altered values provided by the EV1000/VolumeView®, particularly for GEDVI, PVPI, and GEF.

     

Co-ordination Within Schools,Commitment of Teachers and Students and Student Achievement

This research study investigates co-ordination strategies within schools, their relationships to both teacher and student commitment to school, and the relationship between student commitment and student achievement in Switzerland. Two different kinds of co-ordination strategies, structural and cultural, can be distinguished. Structural co-ordination strategies have to do with formal, lasting arrangements that allow an organisation to operate. These include roles, rules, procedures, and authority relations. Cultural co-ordination strategies are related to the nature of communications and the consensus on organisational goals in the school. Cultural mechanisms shape what teachers want to do. Drawn from TIMSS, the sample for the present analyses included principals, teachers and students in 178 classes at the lower secondary level in three Swiss cantons: Bale-Country, Berne and Zurich. Multiple regression analyses carried out with different indicators of teacher and student commitment to school showed that school coordination strategies can make a difference, although the effects were rather small. A further analysis that included student commitment indicators as predictors of mathematics achievement suggests that the affective/social and the cognitive domains are relatively independent at class level.     

Learning to assess and evaluate complex realities

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability -     

Aristotelian Appeals and the Role of Candidate‐Generated Videos in Talent Assessment

Videos made by job candidates can be an effective means of promoting their qualifications, thus potentially helping them secure a job. However, little past research has focused on the impact of such videos on reviewers’ appraisals of a prospective candidate. Using Aristotle's means of persuasion as a methodological framework, this study first identified the most sought after candidate attributes identified by hiring firms, then explored the degree to which firm representatives felt two candidate‐generated videos demonstrated these attributes. Findings suggest reviewers deemed the attributes characterised by pathos (emotional connections) as most important and found this quality to be most evident in the videos. As such, videos may provide the means to inject pathos into a job candidate's self‐promotional materials not possible in more traditional application packages. However, while such videos offer advantages over traditional candidate collateral, their potency can elicit strong and sometimes unintended reactions.     

COVID-19 and schooling: evaluation,assessment and accountability in times of crises—reacting quickly to explore key issues for policy,practice and research with the school barometer

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - The crisis caused by the COVID-19 virus has far-reaching effects in the field of education, as schools were closed in March 2020 in many...     

Risks and Risk‐Based Regulation in Higher Education Institutions

Risk‐based regulation is a relatively new mode of governance. Not only does it offer a way of controlling institutions from the outside but it also provides the possibility of making an organisation’s achievements visible/visualisable. This paper comments on a list of possible risks that higher education institutions have to face. In a second step, it is discussed that a higher education institution changes when a framework of risk‐based regulation is adopted. The paper then illustrates how governance changes when the risk‐based regulation approach is transferred from a UK context to an overall European one with differing traditions of higher education.     

Examining care navigation: librarian participation in a team-based approach?

Objective

This study investigated responsibilities, skill sets, degrees, and certifications required of health care navigators in order to identify areas of potential overlap with health sciences librarianship.

Method

The authors conducted a content analysis of health care navigator position announcements and developed and assigned forty-eight category terms to represent the sample''s responsibilities and skill sets.

Results

Coordination of patient care and a bachelor''s degree were the most common responsibility and degree requirements, respectively. Results also suggest that managing and providing health information resources is an area of overlap between health care navigators and health sciences librarians, and that librarians are well suited to serve on navigation teams.

Conclusion

Such overlap may provide an avenue for collaboration between navigators and health sciences librarians.