How Much Do Our Incoming First Year Students Know?: Diagnostic Testing in Mathematics at Third Level

A continuing cause for concern in higher education institutions is the poor core mathematical skills of incoming students. Many institutions now offer mathematics support services such as drop-in centres, online resources and short ‘refresher courses’ in an attempt to alleviate the problem. The majority of third level institutions in Ireland and internationally now make use of diagnostic testing of incoming first year students that both predict subsequent success and select groups for remediation. This project was developed to explore the issues around diagnostic testing and follow-up support for incoming students in the College of Sciences and Health. A large cohort of first year science students was tested and those who failed to achieve 50% on the test were offered support. This support came in the form of peer-assisted student led tutorials during which students had the opportunity to revise basic areas of mathematics. On comparison of the scores on the diagnostic test with the end of module results we have noticed a correlation between students who scored poorly on the diagnostic test and students who failed the Semester 1 mathematics module. The key recommendations arising from this study are; diagnostic testing provides useful information about the cohort as a whole and provides lecturers with information about gaps in the prior knowledge of the group allowing them to take particular care when introducing new topics, diagnostic testing helps to identify those students who are significantly weaker than the rest of the cohort and thus enables them to be targeted with support and attention. Furthermore, by carrying out diagnostic testing over an extended period of time, trends can be observed. This information can then be used by Schools or Departments in an attempt to cope with diversity and ensuring that follow-up support is adequately provided

PDP4Life: personal development planning for lifelong learning. Final Report.

Many HEIs have developed electronic Personal Development Planning (e-PDP) systems that support the learner through the processes of personal development planning, however, little attention appeared to have been paid to developing frameworks within these systems to enable learners to merge formal and informal records of learning into a single database, to transfer records from one institutional learning environment to another, and to access and manipulate their learner records when not registered within a place of study. PDP4Life attempted to address these issues. This final project report outlines the outcomes of this JISC project

Design Transactions

Design Transactions presents the outcome of new research to emerge from ‘Innochain’, a consortium of six leading European architectural and engineering-focused institutions and their industry partners. The book presents new advances in digital design tooling that challenge established building cultures and systems. It offers new sustainable and materially smart design solutions with a strong focus on changing the way the industry thinks, designs, and builds our physical environment. Divided into sections exploring communication, simulation and materialisation, Design Transactions explores digital and physical prototyping and testing that challenges the traditional linear construction methods of incremental refinement. This novel research investigates ‘the digital chain’ between phases as an opportunity for extended interdisciplinary design collaboration. The highly illustrated book features work from 15 early-stage researchers alongside chapters from world-leading industry collaborators and academics

Design Transactions: Rethinking Information for a New Material Age

Design Transactions presents the outcome of new research to emerge from ‘Innochain’, a consortium of six leading European architectural and engineering-focused institutions and their industry partners. The book presents new advances in digital design tooling that challenge established building cultures and systems. It offers new sustainable and materially smart design solutions with a strong focus on changing the way the industry thinks, designs, and builds our physical environment. Divided into sections exploring communication, simulation and materialisation, Design Transactions explores digital and physical prototyping and testing that challenges the traditional linear construction methods of incremental refinement. This novel research investigates ‘the digital chain’ between phases as an opportunity for extended interdisciplinary design collaboration. The highly illustrated book features work from 15 early-stage researchers alongside chapters from world-leading industry collaborators and academics

Crashworthiness assessment considering the dynamic damage and failure of a dual phase automotive steel

Analyzing crash worthiness of the automotive parts has been posing a great challenge in the sheet metal and automotive industry since several decades. The present contribution will focus on one of the most urging challenges of the crash worthiness simulations, namely, an enhanced constitutive formulation to predict the failure and cracking of structural parts made from high strength steel sheets under impact. A hybrid extended Modified Bai Wierzbicki damage plasticity model is devised to this end. The material model calibrated using the experimental data covering high strain rate deformation, damage and failure successfully predicted the instability and subsequent response of the crash box under impact. Simulation results provide the deformation shape and deformation energy in order to predict and evaluate the vehicle crashworthiness. The simulations further helped in discovering the irrefutable impact of strain rate and stress state on the impact response of the auto-body structure. The strain rate is found to adequately affect the energy absorption capacity of the crash box structure both in terms of impact load and fold formation whereas the complex stress state has a direct association to the development of instability within the structure and early damage appearance within the folds