Scoping a vision for formative e-assessment: a project report for JISC

Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning. If the relationship between teaching and learning were causal, i. e. if students always mastered the intended learning outcomes of a particular sequence of instruction, assessment would be superfluous. Experience and research suggest this is not the case: what is learnt can often be quite different from what is taught. Formative assessment is motivated by a concern with the elicitation of relevant information about student understanding and / or achievement, its interpretation and an exploration of how it can lead to actions that result in better learning. In the context of a policy drive towards technology-enhanced approaches to teaching and learning, the question of the role of digital technologies is key and it is the latter on which this project particularly focuses. The project and its deliverables have been informed by recent and relevant literature, in particular recent work by Black andIn this work, they put forward a framework which suggests that assessment for learning their term for formative assessment can be conceptualised as consisting of a number of aspects and five keystrategies. The key aspects revolve around the where the learner is going, where the learner is right now and how she can get there and examines the role played by the teacher, peers and the learner. Language: English Keywords: assessments, case studies, design patterns, e-assessmen

Robust, Recognizable and Legitimate: Strengthening India's Appliance Efficiency Standards and Labels Through Greater Civil Society Involvement

Residential use accounts for 14 percent of global energy consumption. Appliance standards alone could achieve 17 percent energy reductions in the residential sector. Although appliance efficiency standards and labeling programs (AES&L) aim to influence consumer behavior, consumers and civil society often play a limited role in the design, implementation, and monitoring of these programs. This report considers the contribution that civil society organizations can make at each stage of an appliance efficiency standards and labeling program (AES&L), based on experiences in 10 developed and developing countries

Changing Midwifery: Working Conditions and the Quality of Care

Maternity units have been expected to achieve, within constrained resources, significant improvements in the quality and continuity of care as required by government policy. While significant advances have been made, these have been achieved by drawing upon the professionalism and vocational commitment of midwives, and at the expense of their working conditions and sense of wellbeing. While this approach has, in the short term, served the purpose of increasing midwifery output within existing resource constraints, the quality of care has suffered. The increasing problems of recruitment, retention, and falling morale within the profession suggest that it is not sustainable. In the longer term, if the improvements in care achieved thus far are to be sustained, there is a need to reform midwives' working conditions and working environment. This is not to imply that the answer to the ongoing dilemmas facing the maternity services lies solely in improvements in the pay levels or pay structure for midwives. The solution is also dependent on the extent to which midwives are afforded the enhanced status and autonomy recognised as necessary for the improvement of maternity services. Furthermore, strong representation of midwives, alongside improvements in management structures and systems of communication in NHS trusts, are necessary if midwives are to be enabled to participate in decision-making and thereby effectively contribute to improvements in the quality of care.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF EFFECTIVE LEARNING ECOSYSTEMS IN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING (ODL) UNIVERSITIES: TECHNOLOGIES, INSTITUTIONAL PREPAREDNESS, AND CHANGE

A critical analysis of digital learning ecosystems in ODL universities reveals increasing adoption and innovation of technologies in the process of delivering education across the world. Though proponents of traditional-based education argue that students experiencing learning through ODL systems are disengaged from the learning process and that teachers are equally disconnected from the learning process, with insufficient value placed on face-face teaching, pressures to assign overinflated grades, and incentives to teach content only, and not critical thinking skills, however, technology has the potential to alleviate many of the challenges. Moreover, some of the challenges are peculiar to some of the ODL education systems, especially universities in the developing world. Emerging digital resources and technologies hold promise to enrich and revitalize ODL university systems, give students a deserved learning experience, and better prepare students and teachers to face the 21st century. Every aspect of learning, such as grading, assessment, access to reading materials, learning platforms and environments/classrooms, simulations, etc. is covered by emerging connected workplace technologies. The paper discusses the underlining determinant factors, namely institutional-management preparedness, employee attitudes, institutional research and technological innovations, stakeholder engagement, power supply, bandwidth/broadband issues, funding, digital policy frameworks, and the overall responsiveness to change that global ODL competitiveness imposes. It concludes that institutional preparedness and national priorities drive the effective direction of the change that meets the requirements of ODL learning systems

Rise to the occasion: The trajectory of a novice Japanese teacher's first online teaching through action research

Foreign language teaching in distance education is administratively and pedagogically challenging; research on the perspectives of novice practitioners’ online teaching is also relatively scarce. This study explores how a novice Japanese teacher navigated and negotiated her professional development in a two-way virtual practitionership during her first online teaching. Data were collected from ongoing dialogue journals between the novice and her mentor followed by a semi-structured interview. Qualitative results indicate that pedagogically-sound and personalized digital tools can not only reduce the psychological distance between the teachers and students, but facilitate online teaching and learning via a performance-driven, standard-based curriculum. Informed by Action Research, the study reveals how both practitioners de/reconstructed their teacher identities and achieved professional empowerment through robust supervision and reciprocal teacher evaluation in a virtual environment. It further demonstrates the extent to which this evidence-driven and research-oriented approach can better address the genuine concerns of a foreign language program in distance education. Specifically, this context-responsive study indicates the improvement of online course delivery, teacher training and program sustainability in its own right

A review of supply chain quality management practices in sustainable food networks

© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Supply chain quality management practices are necessary to improve processes, meet consumer quality needs, and enhance supply chain quality management performance in sustainable food networks. Food supply chain quality management and associated practices are considerably studied in global food systems, less so for alternative food networks. There are salient differences between global food systems and alternative food networks, which may reflect on the applicable supply chain quality management practices in the food systems and networks. This paper reviews the literature on supply chain quality management practices, with a focus on alternative food networks. A systematic literature review methodology is adopted, resulting in the analysis of seventy-eight papers, identifying a total of one hundred and three supply chain quality management practices. The identified supply chain quality management practices were analysed in relation to their link to a) place, production, and producer and b) link to (bio)processes. Emerging themes from the analysis are discussed, and some areas of future research were put forward.Peer reviewe

All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement

Each new generation must become active, informed, responsible, and effective citizens. As a teacher we surveyed for this report said, civic education "is essential if we are to continue as a free democratic society. Not to educate the next generation will ensure the destruction of our American way of life as we know it."Data show that many young Americans are reasonably well informed and active. For instance, 45% of citizens between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in the 2012 election. In a national survey conducted for this Commission, 76% of people under the age of 25 who voted could correctly answer at least one (out of two) factual questions about where the presidential candidates stood on a campaign issue and state their own opinion on that issue.On the other hand, more than half of young people did not vote. And on some topics, most young people were misinformed. A majority (51.2%) of under 25-year olds believed that the federal government spends more on foreign aid than on Social Security, when in fact Social Security costs about 20 times more. (Older adults have also been found to be misinformed on similar topics.) Our research, like many other studies, finds that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are far less likely to be informed and to vote.These shortcomings cannot be attributed to the schools alone, since families, friends, political campaigns, election officials, the mass media, social media, and community-based organizations are among the other important influences on young people. In fact, our research shows that while schools matter, civic education must be a shared responsibility.The outcomes are acceptable only when all the relevant institutions invite, support, and educate young people to engage in politics and civic life. Improving the quality and quantity of youth participation will require new collaborations; for example, state election officials and schools should work together to make voting procedures understandable and to educate students about voting rules