Aiming for autonomy: formative peer assessment in a final-year undergraduate course

This article takes a dual focus on the theme of student formative peer assessment. On the one hand it offers a thorough literature review in this field, while on the other it unpacks a case study of curriculum design where peer assessment has been adopted. The practical example draws on recent changes made to a third- and final-year undergraduate research dissertation course in a UK architectural school. Although peer assessment worked quite well in this small setting, similar findings might be uncovered when scaled up to larger cohorts, as well as other disciplines and year groups. The research findings are certainly relevant for other contexts. Qualitative research from a focus group with six students on the course informs the empirical body of the paper. Through engaging with students’ reflections, as well as the relevant literature, and reflexively looking at the curriculum changes, this paper discusses some of the benefits and drawbacks that can arise from peer assessment in this context. Peer assessment is not without its challenges and hiccups, but, despite these, the benefit to autonomous critical thinking cannot be understated. And arguably peer assessment is especially germane for final-year undergraduates as they embark on employment or more advanced studies.     

What is the Australian National Maritime Museum Ilma collection?

ABSTRACT

The Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) in their Darling Harbour warehouse store just over one thousand Ilma. The Ilma are performance symbols of Bardi law and custom, which tell stories of the lands and seas of the Dampier Peninsula, King Sound and surrounding islands of Western Australia. Ilma performances are public and meant for all to see. The ANMM in 2007 resourced detailed documentation of the collection. In 2018 the collection still does not appear on the online catalogue and remains unavailable for public view. While recent efforts have been put into the collection there are important questions to be raised about the responsibility of museums to collections that have contested meanings and serve multiple purposes.     

Writer identification approach based on bag of words with OBI features

Handwriter identification aims to simplify the task of forensic experts by providing them with semi-automated tools in order to enable them to narrow down the search to determine the final identification of an unknown handwritten sample. An identification algorithm aims to produce a list of predicted writers of the unknown handwritten sample ranked in terms of confidence measure metrics for use by the forensic expert will make the final decision.Most existing handwriter identification systems use either statistical or model-based approaches. To further improve the performances this paper proposes to deploy a combination of both approaches using Oriented Basic Image features and the concept of graphemes codebook. To reduce the resulting high dimensionality of the feature vector a Kernel Principal Component Analysis has been used. To gauge the effectiveness of the proposed method a performance analysis, using IAM dataset for English handwriting and ICFHR 2012 dataset for Arabic handwriting, has been carried out. The results obtained achieved an accuracy of 96% thus demonstrating its superiority when compared against similar techniques.     

基于STAR-CCM+的汽车挡风玻璃除霜性能提升的仿真分析与研究

采用计算流体动力学的方法,利用STAR-CCM+软件对某一车型挡风玻璃除霜性能进行数值模拟分析。通过对出风口格栅进行调整,改变了暖风气流与挡风玻璃之间碰撞角的大小与碰撞点的位置,优化了挡风玻璃表面暖风气流的分布,提升了除霜性能,为汽车除霜风道的设计和改善车辆除霜性能提供了参考。     

高职大学英语真实性课程评价方案的设计

真实性课程评价是近十几年来国际流行的课程评价方式,其能力本位的评价特点,决定其可以在高职大学英语能力培养方面起到重要作用。为实施高职大学英语真实性评价,需要根据高职各专业的英语能力需求,在英语课程评价各个环节进行真实性的设计,其中文化演练部分的评价设计是真实性评价设计的核心。     

Between business and morality: cultural politics in independent bookshops in China

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how cultural businesses may facilitate contentious political activity in authoritarian contexts. Existing research in Western liberal democracies has shown the widespread political activism of actors in the cultural and creative industries. Whether such activism exists in authoritarian society, how it may differ in character and form, and what implications this will have for our understanding of relations between business, politics, and culture in authoritarian countries remain to be addressed. Drawing on data collected from 55 ‘independent bookshops’ in China, I illustrate how these organisations perform ‘cultural politics,’ a type of political participation in which actors employ mainly symbolic means to express social and political concerns. The organisations’ economic relations and conditions facilitate their efforts to create spaces in which contentious questions can be raised, sensitive topics explored, and alternative ideas expressed, despite the Chinese state’s political regulation of the cultural sphere. The finding of the economic embeddedness of cultural politics sheds new light on our understanding of the political economy of cultural businesses in contemporary China.     

No harmless child labor: The effect of child labor on academic achievement in francophone Western and Central Africa

This study empirically examines the effect of child labor on academic achievement in 10 francophone Western and Central African countries. The data were taken from the Programme d’Analyse des Systèmes Educatifs de la CONFEMEN and comprised characteristics of 25,288 grade six students across 1803 schools. Two-stage least squares analysis highlights that child labor undermines academic achievement regardless of subject, gender, and age. It lowers reading and mathematics scores for both genders and for children under 12 and over 13 years. Child labor therefore hinders human capital accumulation in African countries, and it takes place at the cost of future prosperity.     

Outstanding performances during elite-standard short and middle-distance finals and the hyperandrogenism regulation—A detailed analysis of Caster Semenya’s results

ABSTRACT

Recently, there has been much controversy over the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) regulations regarding eligibility to compete and natural testosterone levels in female athletes. Much interest lies in the analysis of Caster Semenya's extraordinary performance. The objective of this work were, a) Complete an analysis of Caster Semenya's results during the 800m finals and b) search for existing similar performances by other female athletes. We analysed the results of the finals of all IAAF World Championships and Olympic Games from 1984–2016, including the 800m results of the Diamond Leagues 2016–2018. Exponential curves were fit to the data to characterise and predict performance for each event. Caster Semenya's finishing times before her ineligibility to compete and after the suspension of the IAAF hyperandrogenism regulation were found to be 1.24% and 1.49%, respectively, faster than the characteristic performance of the elite-standard in the women’s 800m final. Other female athletes, with finishing times faster than the ones predicted by the characteristic curves were also discovered. The percentage difference in performance between Caster Semenya and the other participants did not reach 3% in the 800m event. No conclusions can be drawn regarding extraordinary results ever performed during the 100m, 200m or 400m finals.     

大学生独立生活能力与法律素质培养探讨

分析独立生活能力和大学生法律素养的涵义及其意义,就目前我国大学生法律素质的现状,初步提出有利于提高大学生法律素质的方法和途径,为更好地实现大学生独立生活能力提出了一些浅见。     

田径表演赛可行性探析

随着科技水平的发展，电视、多媒体网络等各种传播媒介的迅速发展，体育产业的迅速崛起，人们生活质量的提高、财富的积累，使得人们对体育的诉求也在不断的发生着变化。各种体育赛事逐步融入了表演赛，来扩大本项运动的国际影响力。由于体育明星效应，使得一些体育运动在国内一度掀起过高潮。那么，我们可以借鉴这种市场化的操作方式，从宏观的角度论述田径表演赛，通过明星效应，结合市场管理的方法，提升对田径运动兴趣，加大对田径运动知识的了解、认识，从而起到缓解瓶颈期学校体育中田径常年不受学生青睐的尴尬局面，迎来田径发展新“春天”。