Improving further education provision for learners from minority ethnic groups: a review of the evidence

This paper summarises the findings from a review carried out by the National Research and Development Centre for adult literacy and numeracy (NRDC) for the Quality Improvement Agency (QIA) between April and September 2007. The study sought to summarise what is known about the participation of those from minority ethnic groups in Further Education (FE) and to identify effective practice in helping them to achieve

Pushing architectural quality further

In this paper, the intentions thriving the implementation of computational modeling of building physics as it is approached in the Architectural engineering courses at Ghent University are discussed. During the bachelor degree, courses focus mainly on integration of basic building physics feasibility in the architectural conceptualization. During the final bachelor year, students program their own simplified 2D models for internal condensation and thermal bridges in a spreadsheet, based on realistic detailing from buildings they studied in other courses. These models are intentionally kept both simplified and strongly mathematically based to nurture thorough comprehension of the physical background of problematic design options. Additionally, evaluation of energy performance with official EPB-software is incorporated in the courses because of its high relevance as a legal benchmark. All these models, including EPB, are (semi)static and thus offer only limited but nevertheless useful information on physical, legal, hygienic… viability of different options at reasonable complexity. Furthermore, they induce basic modeling skills as a basis for further development. During the master’s degree, the focus shifts from taxation of the feasibility of design decisions towards energetic performance as one of the starting points and validation criteria of the design process. For students who wish to specialize in the matter, elective courses and master’s thesis projects on optimization, innovative techniques, passive building standards etc. are offered in which advanced dynamic modeling is used. These models offer an important input for this specific design process as they enable precise, nuanced validation of the robustness and sensitivity for certain parameters of different strategies in a given, very complex, situation. By developing both innovative, more precise models for the master classes besides more powerful integration of modeling with design software (BIM) and robust predesign templates for the bachelor courses with master’s student cooperation, the research team supports these courses in achieving output of the highest possible quality

A multiprocess quality model: identification of of key processes in the integration approach

In this paper we investigate the use of multiprocess quality model in the adoption of process improvement frameworks. We analyze an improvement effort based on multiple process quality models adoption. At present, there is a possibility of a software development organization to adopt multi-quality and improvement models in order to remain competitive in the IT market place. Various quality models emerge to satisfy different improvement objective such as to improve capability of models, quality management and serve as IT government purpose. The heterogeneity characteristics of the models require further research on dealing with multiple process models at a time. We discuss on the concept of software process and overview on software maintenance and evolution which are important elements in the quality models. The concepts related to process quality model and improvement models are discussed. The research outlined in this paper shows that software processes, maintenance, evolution, quality and improvement have become really important in software engineering. The synergy among the multi-focused process quality model is examined with respect to process improvement. The research outcome is to determine key processes vital to the implementation of multi-process quality model

Extending weighting models with a term quality measure

Weighting models use lexical statistics, such as term frequencies, to derive term weights, which are used to estimate the relevance of a document to a query. Apart from the removal of stopwords, there is no other consideration of the quality of words that are being ‘weighted’. It is often assumed that term frequency is a good indicator for a decision to be made as to how relevant a document is to a query. Our intuition is that raw term frequency could be enhanced to better discriminate between terms. To do so, we propose using non-lexical features to predict the ‘quality’ of words, before they are weighted for retrieval. Specifically, we show how parts of speech (e.g. nouns, verbs) can help estimate how informative a word generally is, regardless of its relevance to a query/document. Experimental results with two standard TREC collections show that integrating the proposed term quality to two established weighting models enhances retrieval performance, over a baseline that uses the original weighting models, at all times

Environmental Games and Queue Models

This paper considers a pollution and control game which uses a queuing framework. This framework allows an accounting of pollution events, environmental pollution quality and the application of controls to maintain a desirable quality of the environment. A number of examples are used to highlight the approach and demonstrates both its theoretical and practical usefulness.Environment; Control; Quality; Queuing

Food Quality in Producer-Grazer Models: A Generalized Analysis

Stoichiometric constraints play a role in the dynamics of natural populations, but are not explicitly considered in most mathematical models. Recent theoretical works suggest that these constraints can have a significant impact and should not be neglected. However, it is not yet resolved how stoichiometry should be integrated in population dynamical models, as different modeling approaches are found to yield qualitatively different results. Here we investigate a unifying framework that reveals the differences and commonalities between previously proposed models for producer-grazer systems. Our analysis reveals that stoichiometric constraints affect the dynamics mainly by increasing the intraspecific competition between producers and by introducing a variable biomass conversion efficiency. The intraspecific competition has a strongly stabilizing effect on the system, whereas the variable conversion efficiency resulting from a variable food quality is the main determinant for the nature of the instability once destabilization occurs. Only if the food quality is high an oscillatory instability, as in the classical paradox of enrichment, can occur. While the generalized model reveals that the generic insights remain valid in a large class of models, we show that other details such as the specific sequence of bifurcations encountered in enrichment scenarios can depend sensitively on assumptions made in modeling stoichiometric constraints.Comment: Online appendixes include