A preliminary evaluation of using WebPA for online peer assessment of collaborative performance by groups of online distance learners

Collaborative assessment has well-recognised benefits in higher education and, in online distance learning, this type of assessment may be integral to collaborative e-learning and may have a strong influence on the student’s relationship with learning. While there are known benefits associated with collaborative assessment, the main drawback is that students perceive that their individual contribution to the assessment is not recognised. Several methods can be used to overcome this; for example, something as simple as the teacher evaluating an individual’s contribution. However, teacher assessment can be deemed as unreliable by students, since the majority of group work is not usually done in the presence of the teacher (Loddington, Pond, Wilkinson, & Wilmot, 2009). Therefore, students’ assessment of performance/contribution of themselves and their peer group in relation to the assessment task, also known as peer moderation, can be a more suitable alternative. There are a number of tools that can be used to facilitate peer moderation online, such as WebPA, which is a free, open source, online peer assessment tool developed by Loughborough University. This paper is a preliminary evaluation of online peer assessment of collaborative work undertaken by groups of students studying online at a distance at a large UK university, where WebPA was used to facilitate this process. Students’ feedback on the use of WebPA was mixed, although most of the students found the software easy to use, with few technical issues and the majority reported that they would be happy to use this again. The authors reported WebPA as a beneficial peer assessment tool

Finite-key security analysis for multilevel quantum key distribution

We present a detailed security analysis of a d-dimensional quantum key distribution protocol based on two and three mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) both in an asymptotic and finite key length scenario. The finite secret key rates are calculated as a function of the length of the sifted key by (i) generalizing the uncertainly relation-based insight from BB84 to any d-level 2-MUB QKD protocol and (ii) by adopting recent advances in the second-order asymptotics for finite block length quantum coding (for both d-level 2- and 3-MUB QKD protocols). Since the finite and asymptotic secret key rates increase with d and the number of MUBs (together with the tolerable threshold) such QKD schemes could in principle offer an important advantage over BB84. We discuss the possibility of an experimental realization of the 3-MUB QKD protocol with the orbital angular momentum degrees of freedom of photons.Comment: v4: close to the published versio

Writing for Immortality

Before the Civil War, American writers such as Catharine Maria Sedgwick and Harriet Beecher Stowe had established authorship as a respectable profession for women. But though they had written some of the most popular and influential novels of the century, they accepted the taboo against female writers, regarding themselves as educators and businesswomen. During and after the Civil War, some women writers began to challenge this view, seeing themselves as artists writing for themselves and for posterity.Writing for Immortality studies the lives and works of four prominent members of the first generation of American women who strived for recognition as serious literary artists: Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Elizabeth Stoddard, and Constance Fenimore Woolson. Combining literary criticism and cultural history, Anne E. Boyd examines how these authors negotiated the masculine connotation of "artist," imagining a space for themselves in the literary pantheon. Redrawing the boundaries between male and female literary spheres, and between American and British literary traditions, Boyd shows how these writers rejected the didacticism of the previous generation of women writers and instead drew their inspiration from the most prominent "literary" writers of their day: Emerson, James, Barrett Browning, and Eliot.Placing the works and experiences of Alcott, Phelps, Stoddard, and Woolson within contemporary discussions about "genius" and the "American artist," Boyd reaches a sobering conclusion. Although these women were encouraged by the democratic ideals implicit in such concepts, they were equally discouraged by lingering prejudices about their applicability to women