Abstract Semantics for K Module Composition

AbstractA structured K definition is easier to write, understand and debug than one single module containing the whole definition. Furthermore, modularization makes it easy to reuse work between definitions that share some principles or features. Therefore, it is useful to have a semantics for module composition operations that allows the properties of the resulting modules to be well understood at every step of the composition process. This paper presents an abstract semantics for a module system proposal for the K framework. It describes K modules and module transformations in terms of institution-based model theory introduced by Goguen and Burstall

Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education: A Guide for Teachers

Teachers spend much of their time on assessment, yet many higher education teachers have received minimal guidance on assessment design and marking. This means assessment can often be a source of stress and frustration. Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education aims to solve these problems. Offering a concise overview of assessment theory and practice, this guide provides teachers with the help they need. In education, theory and practice are often poorly linked. In this guide, Teresa McConlogue presents theoretical ideas and research findings and links them to practice. She considers recent theoretical work on feedback and suggests ways of developing evaluative judgement. Throughout the book, teachers are encouraged to examine their practice critically, and there are ideas for small-scale educational investigations, involving teachers, their colleagues and students, such as using the Assessment Review Questionnaire to adapt assessments. A key principle of Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education is that an understanding of academic standards is fundamental to good assessment design and more reliable marking. The guide explores the concept of academic standards and proposes methods of co-constructing shared standards within a teaching team and with students through calibration activities

Music Technology, Gender, and Sexuality: Case Studies of Women and Queer Electroacoustic Music Composers

This document aims to contribute to the established scholarship that highlights the role gender and sexuality has with one’s fundamental relationship to composition and music technology. The profession of electronic music composition and music production are strongly associated with notions of power and control, as much of this technology was built during the World Wars and Cold War. These aggressive views have created gendered language and metaphors in the field. Metaphors are the primary way in which we accommodate and assimilate information and experience to our conceptual organization of the world. It is at the source of our capacity to learn and at the center of our creative thought. I hope to continue the discussion of language, metaphors, and various approaches to composing and working with music technology through a historical overview of women’s achievements and difficulties in the electroacoustic community. Elainie Lillios, Jess Rowland, and Carolyn Borcherding were selected to be interviewed for this document. Each interview allows them the opportunity to discuss their music, their approach to composition and their use of technology as part of their artistic process, and to discuss their roles of educators and their approach to pedagogy to further contribute to the scholarship and history of electroacoustic composers

Bridges and barriers to developing visual literacy in UK undergraduates

Today’s communication is multimedia and visually-rich. However, there is a possibility that many students leave university without the visual literacy they need to understand the multifaceted role that visuals can play in such messages or to create such messages themselves. This study had three main aims: first, to find out if that possibility was real; second, to try to understand why; and third, to identify what could be done about it.Within the UK education system generic and interdisciplinary skills are primarily developed within disciplinary frameworks. To obtain a general picture of where skills relating to working with visual materials may be developed within specific subject areas, an institutional case study was undertaken where the module specifications for all undergraduate academic programmes were analysed to audit the opportunities for students to develop aspects of visual literacy. This process also identified a suitable selection of academic staff who were interviewed to help identify potential barriers to widening those opportunities and bridges for overcoming many of these barriers.The audit of module specifications found that students studying the majority of degrees at the institution do not appear to get the opportunities they need to be fully visually literate. For many, only critical skills or creative skills are developed rather than both. For some, the visuals used or created are highly technical and not particularly transferable to other situations which may be an issue when careers paths are increasingly unpredictable and society beyond employment is more visually oriented. Comparing the audit results with the requirements of subject benchmark statements (QAA, 2020b) and the UK Quality Code for Higher Education (QAA, 2014b) indicates that the ability to use visuals when communicating with different audiences, especially non-specialists, may be implied within these statements and therefore not given the prominence it deserves in many degree programmes.Several barriers to developing visual literacy were identified. In line with the pragmatic research approach, these were classified by their level of surmountability. In addition, several bridges were identified, which can be used to overcome at least the more resolvable barriers. Two main recommendations were made: the provision of a range of assessment rubrics to facilitate the adoption of more visually-rich multimodal assignments and more specific wording in some subject benchmark statements to ensure programme designers also see the need to include these in order to develop the skills needed to communicate disciplinary knowledge and more in today’s visual society

On the algebra of structured specifications

AbstractWe develop module algebra for structured specifications with model oriented denotations. Our work extends the existing theory with specification building operators for non-protecting importation modes and with new algebraic rules (most notably for initial semantics) and upgrades the pushout-style semantics of parameterized modules to capture the (possible) sharing between the body of the parameterized modules and the instances of the parameters. We specify a set of sufficient abstract conditions, smoothly satisfied in the actual situations, and prove the isomorphism between the parallel and the serial instantiation of multiple parameters. Our module algebra development is done at the level of abstract institutions, which means that our results are very general and directly applicable to a wide variety of specification and programming formalisms that are rigorously based upon some logical system