33,347 research outputs found

    Personal development planning in the first year

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    The approach to quality and standards in higher education (HE) in Scotland is enhancement led and learner centred. It was developed through a partnership of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), Universities Scotland, the National Union of Students in Scotland (NUS Scotland) and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) Scotland. The Higher Education Academy has also joined that partnership. The Enhancement Themes are a key element of a five-part framework, which has been designed to provide an integrated approach to quality assurance and enhancement. The Enhancement Themes support learners and staff at all levels in further improving higher education in Scotland; they draw on developing innovative practice within the UK and internationally The five elements of the framework are: z a comprehensive programme of subject-level reviews undertaken by higher education institutions (HEIs) themselves; guidance is published by the SFC (www.sfc.ac.uk) z enhancement-led institutional review (ELIR), run by QAA Scotland (www.qaa.ac.uk/reviews/ELIR) z improved forms of public information about quality; guidance is provided by the SFC (www.sfc.ac.uk) z a greater voice for students in institutional quality systems, supported by a national development service - student participation in quality scotland (sparqs) (www.sparqs.org.uk) z a national programme of Enhancement Themes aimed at developing and sharing good practice to enhance the student learning experience, facilitated by QAA Scotland (www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk). The topics for the Enhancement Themes are identified through consultation with the sector and implemented by steering committees whose members are drawn from the sector and the student body. The steering committees have the task of establishing a programme of development activities, which draw on national and international good practice. Publications emerging from each Theme are intended to provide important reference points for HEIs in the ongoing strategic enhancement of their teaching and learning provision. Full details of each Theme, its steering committee, the range of research and development activities as well as the outcomes are published on the Enhancement Themes website (www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk). To further support the implementation and embedding of a quality enhancement culture within the sector - including taking forward the outcomes of the Enhancement Themes - an overarching committee, the Scottish Higher Education Enhancement Committee (SHEEC), chaired by Professor Kenneth Miller, Vice-Principal, University of Strathclyde, has the important dual role of supporting the overall approach of the Enhancement Themes, including the five-year rolling plan, as well as institutional enhancement strategies and management of quality. SHEEC, working with the individual topic-based Enhancement Themes' steering committees, will continue to provide a powerful vehicle for progressing the enhancement-led approach to quality and standards in Scottish higher education

    On Partially Controlled Multi-Agent Systems

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    Motivated by the control theoretic distinction between controllable and uncontrollable events, we distinguish between two types of agents within a multi-agent system: controllable agents, which are directly controlled by the system's designer, and uncontrollable agents, which are not under the designer's direct control. We refer to such systems as partially controlled multi-agent systems, and we investigate how one might influence the behavior of the uncontrolled agents through appropriate design of the controlled agents. In particular, we wish to understand which problems are naturally described in these terms, what methods can be applied to influence the uncontrollable agents, the effectiveness of such methods, and whether similar methods work across different domains. Using a game-theoretic framework, this paper studies the design of partially controlled multi-agent systems in two contexts: in one context, the uncontrollable agents are expected utility maximizers, while in the other they are reinforcement learners. We suggest different techniques for controlling agents' behavior in each domain, assess their success, and examine their relationship.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file

    Describing the Ball: Improve Teaching by Using Rubrics - Explicit Grading Criteria

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    Assessment is crucial to effective teaching and learning. Carnegie\u27s Educating Lawyers and Roy Stuckey\u27s Best Practices for Legal Education emphasize the importance of assessment. This article explains how detailed, written grading criteria describing what students should learn and how they will be evaluated should be a central part of law teachers\u27 assessment plans. The article details how rubrics can improve law student learning, and contains both detailed, step-by-step directions on creating rubrics and examples of rubrics from many different law school courses

    Eroding Confidentiality in Delinquency Proceedings: Should Schools and Public Housing Authorities Be Notified?

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    In this Article, Professor Henning examines how schools and public housing authorities obtain juvenile records and explains how these institutions may use the records to exclude children and their families from the basic benefits of education and housing. Drawing on recent research in the field of developmental psychology, Professor Henning reevaluates early assumptions about adolescents\u27 amenability to treatment and the impact of stigma on children and explores the practical implications of sharing records with schools and public housing authorities, questioning whether new confidentiality exceptions actually will yield the expected benefits of improved public safety. She concludes that legislators should deny public housing authorities access to juvenile records but allow schools limited access to records through a series of school liaisons. These liaisons should attempt to accommodate, on a case-by-case basis, the often competing values of preserving safety in schools while enabling the rehabilitation of children in the juvenile justice system

    Educational Research Abstracts

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    Editors\u27 Note: As noted in previous issues of the Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations, the purpose of this Educational Research Abstract section is to present current published research on issues relevant to math and science teaching at both the K-12 and college levels. Because educational research articles are published in so many different academic journals, it is a rare public school teacher or college professor who reads all the recent published reports on a particular instructional technique or curricular advancement. Indeed, the uniqueness of various pedagogical strategies has been tacitly acknowledged by the creation of individual journals dedicated to teaching in a specific discipline. Yet many of the insights gained in teaching certain physics concepts, biological principles, or computer science algorithms can have generalizability and value for those teaching in other fields or with different types of students. In this review, the focus is on action research. Abstracts are presented according to a question examined in the published articles. Hopefully, such a format will trigger your interest in how you might undertake an action research study in your own teaching situation. The abstracts presented here are not intended to be exhaustive, but rather a representative sampling of recent journal articles. Please feel free to identify other useful research articles on a particular theme or to suggest future teaching or learning themes to be examined. Please send your comments and ideas via e-mail to [email protected] or by regular mail to The College of William and Mary, P. O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23185-8795

    Using Individual and Group Multiple-Choice Quizzes to Deepen Students\u27 Learning

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    For years, I was highly skeptical about using multiple-choice questions to assess law students\u27 learning.\u27 Clients, after all, do not ask lawyers to solve multiple-choice problems. I have realized, however, that multiple-choice quizzes can be a highly effective technique to include in any doctrinal class. Well-designed multiple-choice quizzes can help students in any size class learn foundational doctrine, provide feedback to teachers and students, develop students\u27 interpersonal skills, and prepare students for the bar exam. Having used multiple-choice quizzes in first year and upper-level courses for several years, I now value multiple-choice quizzes as an effective first step in preparing students to engage in solving complex legal problems. When used with other assessments\u27 as part of a comprehensive, coherent, and intentional overall course design, multiple-choice quizzes are effective in preparing law students for the deep learning necessary to practice law effectively. This Article focuses on a particular approach to using multiple choice quizzes. In this approach, a one-semester course is broken into five to seven modules, and students individually complete a scheduled, closed-book, multiple-choice quiz toward the beginning of each new course module, before the material is formally covered in class but after students have completed reading on the topic. Each quiz primarily tests students on foundational doctrine for the new module and incorporates previous course material. After taking the multiple choice quiz individually, students immediately retake the same quiz in small groups, earning grades for both their individual and group quiz scores. Following the group quiz, students can appeal the answers their group got wrong. At the end of the multiple-choice quiz process, the teacher provides a mini-lecture, focusing on those multiple-choice questions and topics that were most challenging. This Article first shows why using this method of multiple-choice quizzes is effective and appropriate in law school doctrinal classes. The remainder of the Article suggests how to design and use these quizzes to maximize their effectiveness
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