Improving student uptake and understanding of feedback through a dialogue model of assessment

Through the use of questionnaires, focus groups and a pilot study, this research examines student perception of assessment feedback and whether a dialogue model of assessment can aid in improving this perception. The findings of the study are that the dialogue model did improve student perception. It also identified the following recommendations for consideration: Recommendation 1: While a QE approach could be taken where a minimum standard of feedback is determined at University level, the researchers feel this might be restrictive and is better left to subject groups to determine. This minimum level can then be used as a QA check by internal moderators and at Quality Review events. It will be important to ensure that if feedback falls below this subject-determined minimum level that action is taken within the group to bring feedback up to the standard required. Recommendation 2: It should be written into the feedback policy that students have a right to a meeting to discuss feedback. This needs to be clearly expressed to ensure students recognize that this is not an opportunity to negotiate grades (as the researchers have personally experienced) and given in the spirit of helping the student develop. The researchers believe that as educators we should see the value in such meetings and make time for them. If good, constructive, clear feedback is given at the time of the assessment then there will be very few students who need to take up this opportunity. Recommendation 3: Within programme documentation when generic transferable skills are discussed there should be a requirement to show where the team are developing student understanding of the assessment process. Recommendation 4: Staff should be encouraged to include their marking scheme with the assessment brief. Recommendation 5: Monitor the result of the new assessment strategy in terms of student attainment and perception about the fairness of assessment. In particular identify how many modules have gone to single units of assessment and where this happens how students are supported with feedforward. Recommendation 6: Identify is there is a University standard expectation for particular types of assessment instrument at each level. This would help us to communicate lecturer expectations to students

Studies of encapsulant materials for terrestrial solar-cell arrays

Study 1 of this contract is entitled ""Evaluation of World Experience and Properties of Materials for Encapsulation of Terrestrial Solar-Cell Arrays.'' The approach of this study is to review and analyze world experience and to compile data on properties of encapsulants for photovoltaic cells and for related applications. The objective of the effort is to recommend candidate materials and processes for encapsulating terrestrial photovoltaic arrays at low cost for a service life greater than 20 years. The objectives of Study 2, ""Definition of Encapsulant Service Environments and Test Conditions,'' are to develop the climatic/environmental data required to define the frequency and duration of detrimental environmental conditions in a 20-year array lifetime and to develop a corresponding test schedule for encapsulant systems

Effect of atomic beam alignment on photon correlation measurements in cavity QED

Quantum trajectory simulations of a cavity QED system comprising an atomic beam traversing a standing-wave cavity are carried out. The delayed photon coincident rate for forwards scattering is computed and compared with the measurements of Rempe et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 1727 (1991)] and Foster et al. [Phys. Rev. A 61, 053821 (2000)]. It is shown that a moderate atomic beam misalignment can account for the degradation of the predicted correlation. Fits to the experimental data are made in the weak-field limit with a single adjustable parameter--the atomic beam tilt from perpendicular to the cavity axis. Departures of the measurement conditions from the weak-field limit are discussed.Comment: 15 pages and 13 figure

Delayed feedback control in quantum transport

Feedback control in quantum transport has been predicted to give rise to several interesting effects, amongst them quantum state stabilisation and the realisation of a mesoscopic Maxwell's daemon. These results were derived under the assumption that control operations on the system be affected instantaneously after the measurement of electronic jumps through it. In this contribution I describe how to include a delay between detection and control operation in the master equation theory of feedback-controlled quantum transport. I investigate the consequences of delay for the state-stabilisation and Maxwell's-daemon schemes. Furthermore, I describe how delay can be used as a tool to probe coherent oscillations of electrons within a transport system and how this formalism can be used to model finite detector bandwidth.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

Entangled and disentangled evolution for a single atom in a driven cavity

For an atom in an externally driven cavity, we show that special initial states lead to near-disentangled atom-field evolution, and superpositions of these can lead to near maximally-entangled states. Somewhat counterintutively, we find that (moderate) spontaneous emission in this system actually leads to a transient increase in entanglement beyond the steady-state value. We also show that a particular field correlation function could be used, in an experimental setting, to track the time evolution of this entanglement

Dramatic impact of pumping mechanism on photon entanglement in microcavity

A theory of entangled photons emission from quantum dot in microcavity under continuous and pulsed incoherent pumping is presented. It is shown that the time-resolved two-photon correlations drastically depend on the pumping mechanism: the continuous pumping quenches the polarization entanglement and strongly suppresses photon correlation times. Analytical theory of the effect is presented.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Nonlinear photon transport in a semiconductor waveguide-cavity system containing a single quantum dot: Anharmonic cavity-QED regime

We present a semiconductor master equation technique to study the input/output characteristics of coherent photon transport in a semiconductor waveguide-cavity system containing a single quantum dot. We use this approach to investigate the effects of photon propagation and anharmonic cavity-QED for various dot-cavity interaction strengths, including weakly-coupled, intermediately-coupled, and strongly-coupled regimes. We demonstrate that for mean photon numbers much less than 0.1, the commonly adopted weak excitation (single quantum) approximation breaks down, even in the weak coupling regime. As a measure of the anharmonic multiphoton-correlations, we compute the Fano factor and the correlation error associated with making a semiclassical approximation. We also explore the role of electron--acoustic-phonon scattering and find that phonon-mediated scattering plays a qualitatively important role on the light propagation characteristics. As an application of the theory, we simulate a conditional phase gate at a phonon bath temperature of $20$K in the strong coupling regime.Comment: To appear in PR

Cooperative quantum jumps for three dipole-interacting atoms

We investigate the effect of the dipole-dipole interaction on the quantum jump statistics of three atoms. This is done for three-level systems in a V configuration and in what may be called a D configuration. The transition rates between the four different intensity periods are calculated in closed form. Cooperative effects are shown to increase by a factor of 2 compared to two of either three-level systems. This results in transition rates that are, for distances of about one wavelength of the strong transition, up to 100% higher than for independent systems. In addition the double and triple jump rates are calculated from the transition rates. In this case cooperative effects of up to 170% for distances of about one wavelength and still up to 15% around 10 wavelengths are found. Nevertheless, for the parameters of an experiment with Hg+ ions the effects are negligible, in agreement with the experimental data. For three Ba+ ions this seems to indicate that the large cooperative effects observed experimentally cannot be explained by the dipole-dipole interaction.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures. Revised version, to be published in PR

Relationships between selected personal and farm characteristics of Tennessee Grade A dairy producers : number and types of extension contacts made, use of recommended practices, and production levels

The purpose of this study was to determine relationships between selected characteristics of Tennessee Grade A dairy producers and their farm operations and the Extension dairy educational program. This was done by characterizing the Grade A dairy producers and relating those characteristics, their production levels, and use of recommended practices to their self-reported participation in the Extension program. The data in this study were obtained through Extension surveys with 885 dairymen in 51 Tennessee counties in 1980 and 844 dairymen in 50 counties in 1984. Measures of central tendency, frequencies, and percentages were used in determining characteristics. Relationships between dependent and independent variables were determined by the one-way analysis of variance (F-test), with significance assigned at the .05 probability level. Major findings included; 1. Producers in the 1980 and 1984 surveys had an average age of 44-45 years and average education of 12.1-12.4 grades of school. Producers in the 1984 survey operated higher acreages, owned fewer cows, and employed slightly more fulltime workers than producers in the 1980 survey. Fewer of the producers in the 1984 survey had added buildings and/or silos to their farms in the previous five years, had upright silos, and had their milking machines checked in the previous six months than producers In the 1980 survey. More of the producers in the 1984 survey planned to remain at the same herd size than producers in the 1980 survey. Producers in the 1984 survey had higher herd averages in pounds of milk and in pounds of butterfat and had higher increases in herd average pounds of milk in the previous five years than producers in the 1980 survey. 2. Producers in the 1984 survey attended more Extension meetings, and more dairy Extension meetings, made more visits to the Extension office, and received more farm visits from Extension thus having more total Extension contacts than producers in the 1980 survey. 3. Producers in the 1984 survey used lower percentages of the pasture-forage practices, lower percentages of the feeding practices, higher percentages of the breeding practices, equal percentages of the milking practices, higher percentages of the herd management practices, and equal percentages of the total recommended practices as compared to producers in the 1980 survey. 4. In the 1984 survey, producers who were younger, had more education, operated higher acreages, owned more cows, had added buildings and/or silos in the previous five years, employed more full-time workers, made more Extension contacts, and used more recommended practices had higher levels of production than producers lower in each of these characteristics. 5. Producers in the 1984 survey who were younger, had more education, operated higher acreages, owned more cows, had added buildings and/or silos in the previous five years, employed more full-time workers, and made more Extension contacts used more recommended practices than producers who were lower in each of these characteristics. 6. Producers in the 1984 survey who had more education, operated higher acreages, owned more cows, planned to remain at the same herd size for the next five years, had added buildings and/or silos in the previous five years, employed more fulltime workers, had upright silos, had their milking machines checked in the previous six months, had trigon or herringbone milking parlors, used more milking units per operator, and had higher production levels made more Extension contacts than producers who varied from these characteristics. 7. Producers who used more practices in each bundle (pasture-forage, feeding, breeding, milking, herd management, and record keeping) and more total recommended practices produced higher averages in pounds of milk, pounds of butterfat, and had higher increases in herd average pounds of milk over the previous five years than producers who used less practices in the 1984 survey. 8. Producers in the 1984 survey who had more Extension contacts of each type and more total Extension contacts used more practices in each bundle (pasture-forage, feeding, breeding, milking, herd management, and record keeping) and more total recommended practices than producers with fewer Extension contacts

A State-by-State Policy Analysis of STEM Education for K-12 Public Schools

For practitioners and policy makers across the nation, STEM education has a vague definition. This study looks at how all 50 states define STEM education in policy, using four models: (a) Disciplinary STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics); (b) Integrated STEM focusing on combining two or more disciplines to produce critical thinking, real world application, and creative problem solving; (c) the Disciplinary and Integrated STEM model that acknowledges both to summarize programs at the state policy level; (d) the model with no definition of STEM education. The final results include 10 percent of states use the first model, 42 percent use an Integrated definition, 30 percent use both Integrated and Disciplinary terminology, while 18 percent have no definition in policy documents. Content analysis was used to determine what each state used while looking at documents such as bills, statutes, regulations, executive orders, strategic plans, state-sponsored websites, and press releases. Secondary content analysis was used to determine states’ goals and aspirations with STEM education at the policy level. The following include the overall results of the goals and aspirations of the states: 78 percent of the states related STEM education to workforce or economic development, 68 percent suggested STEM education is for all students and not just special populations, 56 percent wanted to improved minority participation in STEM fields, 30 percent used Career and Technical Education programming as the primary STEM source of education delivery, 18 percent of the states wanted to use after school programming for STEM Education, and 16 percent wanted to improve STEM education in the state by offering more advanced coursework like Advanced Placement courses in the high schools. The study also provides an overview of the federal Race to the Top grant program and its STEM competitive initiative (2010)