Improving Writing Through The Peer-To-Peer Evaluation Process

This presentation will demonstrate the process utilized in graduate and undergraduate level classes at Hodges University to improve writing skills through a Peer-to-Peer evaluation.  The research addresses the utilization of a rubric where students evaluate a minimum of two fellow classmates and share their critique in an online discussion board.  Students evaluate classmates on assignment coverage, critical thinking, conceptual fluency, writing fluency, and information literacy.  The rubric provides specific sub-categories that guide students as they evaluate classmates.  Once the student evaluation process is complete, student research is critiqued by the professor prior to submission of the research paper.  This presentation will cover usage of the rubric and statistical results from initial testing.   Innovative professors must continue to enhance the quality of their online delivery in an effort to achieve the same educational outcomes acquired in a traditional classroom.   While this process works very well in a traditional classroom setting, this presentation demonstrates how the same process can be utilized effectively in an online environment

Next Choreography: Transformative potential for young people in choreographic practice

This is the final version of the article. Available from Ausdance via the URL in this record.Funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Next Choreography is a three-year Siobhan Davies Dance (SDD) project for 14-21-year-old young people (YP). The fundamental aim of the project is to develop the cohort’s knowledge, skills, insight, and experience to create their own unique choreographic work. Distinct to SDD, the project encourages YP to look beyond dance to the different choreographic processes used by artists across different art forms. Next Choreography offers three different cohorts of YP (2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17) a one-year program over three terms, each term having a different focus, and progressively building their understanding, developing their experiences, and using their skills. The project was conceptualized by the SDD team to be impactful in three main ways: on individuals and communities, on SDD as an organization, and on policy and practice. The paper presented at the daCi 2015 conference presented details of the project’s Year 1 achievements in relation to particular measures of success. It also made connections where appropriate to the existing body of research into creativity in YP’s dance education, specifically, the theory of Wise Humanising Creativity (WHC) as conceptualized and developed by the University of Exeter (UoE) staff, Dr. Kerry Chappell and Professor Anna Craft. The evaluation conducted by the UoE and SDD team used a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. Questionnaires utilized quantitative methods and observations, WHC Creativity Wheel, and semi-structured interviews employed qualitative methods. The 1 data collection aimed to discover in detail the key participants’ lived experiences during the project. The project had a number of research questions, and this paper will focus on part of the Impact strand: Individual/Community with a specific focus on the YP’s transformation, choreographic development, and creativity. Analysis techniques appropriate to the data type were used to draw out the findings. The research was bound by the ethical protocols of the UoE.We would like to thank and acknowledge the SDD team, the young people, and Arts Facilitator for their time given to this piece of research evaluation. We would also like to thank the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for funding the project and University of Exeter and University of Winchester for supporting additional research time for the University researchers

Assessment of the use of technical software by the students in the context of mechanical engineering

[EN] In the framework of the European Higher Education area, university teaching has focused in recent years on adapting Master's and Bachelor's degrees to the demands of the professional sector. To do this, the training and development of the generic and specific skills recommended for the incorporation of students into the job market have been priority objectives in the approach to study plans. However, there is no consensus on the methodologies for evaluating these skills, especially regarding how to separate the acquisition and / or improvement of the skills from the specific knowledge and skills of the subjects. Due to the lack of time, teaching staff seek methodologies that do not involve additional tests for the evaluation of competences, which would increase the number of tests to a non-realistic number with the corresponding assessment duties for the professors. In order to make a contribution in this regard, this work presents an approach for evaluating the ability to handle specific software applied to problems in the area of mechanical engineering. This work proposes a methodology for acquiring the required skills and an evaluation system to grade the degree of expertise in the manipulation of the software. In our University, this skill is called the Specific Instrumental Skill, which measures the ability of the students for using the tools in engineering, like, in this case, the use of software to run structural numerical simulations as ANSYS®. The methodology proposed is based on an a priori training. This training is based on 2 hours weekly sessions where the students should solve, in groups of 2 or 3 students, a set of labs with the help of the professor. The students do not need to deliver any report to the professor since the objective of the sessions is the training of the students. Therefore, the pressure over the student is low and the professor avoid to mark a high number of student¿s reports, allowing him to focus only on the learning process of the students and not on the evaluation during the training sessions. These labs increase the difficulty along a number of sessions. The last session consists in an exam in which the students must solve a lab similar to those already solved during the training sessions. This time, each student will work individually without the help of the professor and with a control of the time. Finally, the performance of the methodology is checked by a cross-test for the same students who are part of the group of students of another subject (control subject) where the same tool (ANSYS®) is used. The collected data showed that the students following this methodology acquire the sufficient expertise for handling the software and their skills outperform those of the students of the control subject who did not follow the proposed methodology. As a conclusion, the methodology proposed in this work guarantees a good level of expertise for the students, as shown by the results. Since the results in the final lab exam and the results of the cross-test coincides, the use of the final test exam could be interpreted as a good indicator of the degree of expertise in the use of the software. Additionally, the proposed methodology reduces the work load for the professor as it only requires assessing 1 report per student (instead of several reports for each group of 2 or 3 students in each of the session) while ensuring the authorship of the report.Authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Vicerrectorado de Estudios, Calidad y Acreditación and the Vicerrectorado de Recursos Digitales y Documentación of the Universitat Politècnica de València (project PIME B/19-20/165) and the Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación of the Universitat Politècnica de València (EICE INTEGRAL).Nadal, E.; Rupérez Moreno, MJ.; Giner Navarro, J.; Rovira, A.; Ródenas, JJ.; Martínez Casas, J.; Pedrosa, AM. (2020). Assessment of the use of technical software by the students in the context of mechanical engineering. IATED Academy. 3344-3348. https://doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2020.0756S3344334

Children\u27s Justice: How to Improve Legal Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System

From 2009 to 2016 the University of Michigan Law School served as the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep). This seven-year, multimillion dollar project, directed by Clinical Professor Don Duquette, conducted a national needs assessment that identified a substantial consensus on the role and duties of the child’s lawyer. The needs assessment led to the QIC-ChildRep Best Practice Model, an update and expansion of the 1996 ABA Standards for Lawyers Representing Children in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases. Released in 2016 as a300-page softcover book, CHILDREN\u27S JUSTICE is the final report of the QIC-ChildRep project, guiding the reader through 13 chapters and 3 appendices: Chapter 1: Challenge: Improve Child Representation in America Chapter 2: Evolution of Child Representation Chapter 3: National Needs Assessment Chapter 4: Emerging Consensus and the QIC Best Practice Model Chapter 5: Six Core Skills and the QIC Best Practice Training Chapter 6: What the Lawyers Say About Implementing the Six Core Skills Chapter 7: Sample Selection and Research Methods Chapter 8: Profile of Lawyers Representing Children Chapter 9: Lawyer Activities and Their Impact Chapter 10: Findings of the Evaluation of the QIC-ChildRep Best Practices Model Training for Attorneys Chapter 11: Reflections on QIC Empirical Findings Chapter 12: The Flint MDT Study: A Description and Evaluation of a Multidisciplinary Team Representing Children in Child Welfare Cases Chapter 13: How to Improve Legal Representation of Children in America’s Child Welfare System Appendix A: QIC Best Practice Model of Child Representation in the Child Welfare System Appendix B: 1996 American Bar Association Standards of Practice for Lawyers Who Represent Children in Abuse and Neglect Cases Appendix C: 2011 ABA Model Act Governing Representation of Children in Abuse, Neglect and Dependency Proceedings This product was created by the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System at the University of Michigan Law School, Cooperative Agreement No. 90CO1047, funded by the Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.https://repository.law.umich.edu/books/1109/thumbnail.jp

A misleading answer generation system for exam questions

University professors are responsible for teaching and grading their students in each semester. Normally, in order to evaluate the students progress, professors create exams that are composed of questions regarding the subjects taught in the teaching period. Each year, professors need to develop new questions for their exams since students are free to discuss and register the correct answers to the various questions on prior exams. Professors want to be able to grade students based on their knowledge and not on their memorization skills. Each year, as discovered by our research, professors spend over roughtly 2:30 hours each year for a single course only on multiple answer questions sections. This solution will have at its core a misleading answer generator that would reduce the time and effort when creating a Fill Gap Type Questions through the merger of highly biased lexical model towards a specific subject with a generalist model. To help the most amount of professors with this task a web-server was implemented that served as an access to a exam creator interface with the misleading answer generator feature. To implement the misleading answer generator feature, several accessory programs had to be created as well as manually edditing textbooks pertaining to the question base topic. To evaluate the effectiveness of our implementation, several evaluation methods were proposed composed of objective measurements of the misleading answers generator, as well as subjective methods of evaluation by expert input. The development of the misleading answer suggestion function required us to build a lexical model composed from a highly biased corpus in a specific curricular subject. A highly biased model is probable to give good in-context misleading answers but their variance would most likely be limited. To counteract this the model was merged with a generalist model, in hopes of improving its overall performance. With the development of the custom lexical model and the server the professor can receive misleading answers suggestions to a newly formed question reducing the time spent on creating new exams questions each year to assess students’ knowledge

Data (Mis) Visualization and its Impact on Academic Advancement and Public Understanding

Cultures across the globe are increasingly visual—whether this be due to the popularity of video streaming, advances in the graphic arts, or the rise of accessible software, apps, and other technologies. In fact, while globalization endures as a prominent force, it seems that the rather universal languages of images and numbers do as well. Visualizations—in particular data visualizations—are valued for their efficiency in communicating messages and their efficacy in spurring emotion and instigating action. This gives such images great power. Although all media consumers must ultimately be accountable for their own ability to interact responsibly with the visual media, educators have a duty to prepare students in higher education for the unique burdens and challenges that accompany their disciplines. However, instructors rarely focus on visual literacy when it comes to the learning outcomes of many programs even when source evaluation and the use of reliable research is prioritized and expected. According to the Association of College and Research Libraries: Visual literacy is a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media. . . . A visually literate individual is both a critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture. When visual literacy is covered in the curriculum, there is a tendency to emphasize the state-of-the-art technologies, artistic process, and proper methods that accompany the creation of such imagery. Yet, the skill set of abilities listed in this definition is more heavily weighted toward the consumptive aspects rather than the productive. To better equip our students for both their professional and personal lives after academia, it is imperative that we give them the tools and skills to critically read data visualizations This panel will address questions regarding the implications that various forms of data and information visualization have on the pedagogy, research, culture, and public face of their respective academic fields: Dr. Dale Edwards is the Program Coordinator and a Professor of Journalism & Media Studies at the University of Northern Colorado. The practices of journalism and the mass media have perhaps the furthest public reach and highest influence when it comes to the effects of visual information on the public. Appropriately preparing and balancing the responsibilities of the producers and consumers of this content is a longstanding problem with new dilemmas and complications. Dr. Rob Reinsvold is a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the Coordinator for the Biology Secondary Education Program at the University of Northern Colorado. The proliferation of large amounts of data in the sciences has led to concerns of misinformation as seen with the recent climate change skeptics and flat earth theorists. Dr. Reinsvold strives to develop data-literate science educators that will in turn teach others how to effectively access, interpret, and communicate data. Maggie Shawcross is an Assistant Professor and the Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Northern Colorado. Maggie has previously worked as a Consumer Health Librarian and a Public Librarian focusing on health programming and health literacy. She is keenly aware of how imagery affects the work of healthcare professionals and consumers, and she instructs students on how to use reliable and credible resources in the ever-changing environment of health information. Jingying Crystal Zhen is a graduate student studying Digital Media at the University of Northern Colorado and Computer Graphics at Shandong Normal University. Crystal’s work focuses on digital illustration, and she is interested in how data visualization can help data be communicated more clearly. In discussing this topic from the vantage point of their respective disciplines, participants offers specific issues, experiences, and suggestions that help define the current context of visual literacy and illuminate a path forward for responding to this modern state of affairs

Evaluation of a pilot program that integrated generic and specific skills on engineering degree: a case study in Catalonia

The ETSEIAT recently executed pilot programs to introduce generic and specific skills into its study plans. As these pilots are now concluding, an evaluation of their efficiency has been conducted. This paper analyses the answers given by professors who were interviewed (via in-person interviews and online tests) to determine how they developed and evaluated their students’ skills. The results of these interviews offer clear data about the progress obtained by the pilot programs, how the professors understood the recently added dynamics and tools, and how the new skills are integrated into the various subjects and coursesPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Improving and Assessing Information Literacy Skills through Faculty-Librarian Collaboration

This article addresses ways to assess the effectiveness of integrating information literacy into college courses by taking a close look at a partnership developed between Dr. Amy Dailey and the reference librarians at Gettysburg College