Using Simple Tests to Identify Students Needing Support in Engineering Mathematics

Within large first year classes it can be difficult to identify, at an early stage, those students who are struggling to adapt to studying at a University. In mathematics, many universities adopt a policy of early diagnostic tests to try to identify those struggling with the background material, however this can often identify those who have been away from formal learning for a long time who will not have problems adapting to study within a university environment. In addition, any support provided to students may not be directly related to their studies and such support is often not taken up by those who need it, but instead taken up by those who do not. This paper presents an approach using simple tests which may be repeated weekly to identify those students who are struggling. To complete the first year mathematics course, a student must pass five such tests covering the basics of algebra, the use of calculators, vectors and matrices, differentiation and integration. In each test ten multiple choice questions are asked and a student is deemed to have passed the test when they correctly answer all questions at a single attempt. In advance of the tests, students are shown an example test and told that each of the 10 questions will be on the same topic as in the example. They are therefore able to revise the basics before the test, know the topics that will be present in the test and know that they cannot try to be strategic in their approach by avoiding what they perceive to be hard topics. Students who fail to achieve 100% at each attempt, are given feedback on their attempt, encouraged to seek further support during tutorials, and required to take the test again the following week. Experience has shown that at each attempt between 60% and 80% of students pass the test. Within two tests it is therefore possible to narrow down the list of students struggling with the basics to about 10% of the class. An added benefit is that the tests provide early events for monitoring attendance and those students failing to engage are quickly identified. Personalised emails are sent to each student after each test detailing their test performance, or inviting them to identify problems they are having. The paper concludes by correlating the test results with overall performance in the first year engineering mathematics course

The Development of a Thorough Test Plan in the Analysis Phase Leading to more Successful Software Development Projects

A critical problem in many software development projects is missing some important requirements until late in the development life cycle. The impact of a missing or misunderstood requirement can add to the project cost and delay product launch due to rework both of the application code, documentation updates, and addition test passes. Building a thorough test plan very early in the product development cycle has the potential for early discovery of missing requirements with attendant reduction in project costs and schedule improvement. In this paper we discuss some of the causative factors of how and why requirements can be missed in software development projects and show how the early formulation of a test plan can directly address these factors. Key to the success of this approach is the understanding that mature tests often go beyond the documented requirements for applications and into exploring the boundaries of the application domain where missing requirements can often be uncovered. In addition the test methodology of looking at features from multiple users\u27 perspectives and less common use cases, shed light on misinterpreted and/or misunderstood requirements

Robust testing in generalized linear models by sign-flipping score contributions

Generalized linear models are often misspecified due to overdispersion, heteroscedasticity and ignored nuisance variables. Existing quasi-likelihood methods for testing in misspecified models often do not provide satisfactory type-I error rate control. We provide a novel semi-parametric test, based on sign-flipping individual score contributions. The tested parameter is allowed to be multi-dimensional and even high-dimensional. Our test is often robust against the mentioned forms of misspecification and provides better type-I error control than its competitors. When nuisance parameters are estimated, our basic test becomes conservative. We show how to take nuisance estimation into account to obtain an asymptotically exact test. Our proposed test is asymptotically equivalent to its parametric counterpart.Comment: To appear in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Methodology). Early view version (2020

Quantitative evaluation of orofacial motor function in mice: The pasta gnawing test, a voluntary and stress-free behavior test

AbstractBackgroundEvaluation of motor deficits in rodents is mostly restricted to limb motor tests that are often high stressors for the animals.New methodTo test rodents for orofacial motor impairments in a stress-free environment, we established the pasta gnawing test by measuring the biting noise of mice that eat a piece of spaghetti. Two parameters were evaluated, the biting speed and the biting peaks per biting episode. To evaluate the power of this test compared to commonly used limb motor and muscle strength tests, three mouse models of Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Niemann-Pick disease were tested in the pasta gnawing test, RotaRod and wire suspension test.ResultsOur results show that the pasta gnawing test reliably displays orofacial motor deficits.Comparison with existing methodsThe test is especially useful as additional motor test in early onset disease models, since it shows first deficits later than the RotaRod or wire suspension test. The test depends on a voluntary eating behavior of the animal with only a short-time food deprivation and should thus be stress-free.ConclusionsThe pasta gnawing test represents a valuable tool to analyze orofacial motor deficits in different early onset disease models

The Development of a Thorough Test Plan in the Analysis Phase leading to more Successful Software Development Projects

A critical problem in many software development projects is missing some important requirements until late in the development life cycle. Building a thorough test plan very early in the product development cycle has the potential for early discovery of missing requirements with attendant reduction in project costs and schedule improvement. Key to the success of this approach is the understanding that mature tests often go beyond the documented requirements for applications and into exploring the boundaries of the application domain where missing requirements are often uncovered. In addition, the test methodology of looking at features from multiple users’ perspectives and less common use cases, shed light on misinterpreted and/or misunderstood requirements

An Overview of the Current State of the Test-First vs. Test-Last Debate

When it comes to software development, perhaps one of the most important and time consuming processes is that of software testing. In fact, early studies on software testing estimated that it could consume fifty percent or more of development costs for a product. Because of this, the ability to optimize testing to reduce testing costs can be very valuable. In this paper we compare two popular methods, test-last testing, often used in waterfall software development processes, and test-first testing, often used in Agile test driven software development methods, by reviewing recent studies on the subject. In this review we discuss the possible benefits of test-first and test-last testing and possible problems with the current data comparing these two testing methods. After that, we explore other methods in test-first testing besides test driven development, such as behavior driven development, in an attempt to and a better test-first testing model. In the end we discuss our results and potential future studies to help clarify current data

Diagnosing serious infections in acutely ill children in ambulatory care (ERNIE 2 study protocol, part A): diagnostic accuracy of a clinical decision tree and added value of a point-of-care C-reactive protein test and oxygen saturation

Background: Acute illness is the most common presentation of children to ambulatory care. In contrast, serious infections are rare and often present at an early stage. To avoid complications or death, early recognition and adequate referral are essential. In a recent large study children were included prospectively to construct a symptom-based decision tree with a sensitivity and negative predictive value of nearly 100%. To reduce the number of false positives, point-of-care tests might be useful, providing an immediate result at bedside. The most probable candidate is C-reactive protein, as well as a pulse oximetry. Methods: This is a diagnostic accuracy study of signs, symptoms and point-of-care tests for serious infections. Acutely ill children presenting to a family physician or paediatrician will be included consecutively in Flanders, Belgium. Children testing positive on the decision tree will get a point-of-care C-reactive protein test. Children testing negative will randomly either receive a point-of-care C-reactive protein test or usual care. The outcome of interest is hospital admission more than 24 hours with a serious infection within 10 days. Aiming to include over 6500 children, we will report the diagnostic accuracy of the decision tree (+/- the point-of-care C-reactive protein test or pulse oximetry) in sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative likelihood ratios, and positive and negative predictive values. New diagnostic algorithms will be constructed through classification and regression tree and multiple logistic regression analysis. Discussion: We aim to improve detection of serious infections, and present a practical tool for diagnostic triage of acutely ill children in primary care. We also aim to reduce the number of investigations and admissions in children with non-serious infections

Development of a biaxial compression device for biological samples: preliminary experimental results for a closed cell foam

Biological tissues are subjected to complex loading states in vivo and in order to define constitutive equations that effectively simulate their mechanical behaviour under these loads, it is necessary to obtain data on the tissue's response to multiaxial loading. Single axis and shear testing of biological tissues is often carried out, but biaxial testing is less common. We sought to design and commission a biaxial compression testing device, capable of obtaining repeatable data for biological samples. The apparatus comprised a sealed stainless steel pressure vessel specifically designed such that a state of hydrostatic compression could be created on the test specimen while simultaneously unloading the sample along one axis with an equilibrating tensile pressure. Thus a state of equibiaxial compression was created perpendicular to the long axis of a rectangular sample. For the purpose of calibration and commissioning of the vessel, rectangular samples of closed cell ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) foam were tested. Each sample was subjected to repeated loading, and nine separate biaxial experiments were carried out to a maximum pressure of 204 kPa (30 psi), with a relaxation time of two hours between them. Calibration testing demonstrated the force applied to the samples had a maximum error of 0.026 N (0.423% of maximum applied force). Under repeated loading, the foam sample demonstrated lower stiffness during the first load cycle. Following this cycle, an increased stiffness, repeatable response was observed with successive loading. While the experimental protocol was developed for EVA foam, preliminary results on this material suggest that this device may be capable of providing test data for biological tissue samples. The load response of the foam was characteristic of closed cell foams, with consolidation during the early loading cycles, then a repeatable load-displacement response upon repeated loading. The repeatability of the test results demonstrated the ability of the test device to provide reproducible test data and the low experimental error in the force demonstrated the reliability of the test data

Test suite prioritization techniques applied to Web-based applications

Web applications have rapidly gained importance in many businesses. The increased usage of web applications has created a challenging need for efficient and effective web application testing strategies. This thesis examines one aspect of web testing, that of test suite prioritization. We examine new test suite prioritization strategies that may improve the rate of fault detection for user-session based test suites. These techniques consider test-lengths and systematic coverage of parameter-values and their interactions. Experimental results show that some of these prioritization strategies often improve the rate of fault detection of test suites when compared to random ordering of the test cases. In general the most effective prioritization strategies consider the systematic coverage of the combinations of parameter-values as early as possible