Preparing Students for Success on Examinations: Readiness Assurance Tests in a Graduate-Level Statistics Course

Formative feedback is one way to foster students' readiness for statistics examinations. The use of Readiness Assurance Tests was examined as an educational intervention in which feedback was provided for both correct and incorrect responses in a graduate-level statistics course. Examination scores in the intervention group ( n = 56) were compared with those in a control group ( n = 42). Intervention group examination scores significantly improved from 75.92 ± 14.52 on the Readiness Assurance Test to 90.06 ± 7.06, p < .001, on the midterm, and final examination scores improved from 78.23 ± 17.29 to 85.6 ± 6.98, p = .002. Intervention group midterm scores were significantly higher than those of the control group (90.06 ± 7.06 versus 79.7 ± 11.6, p < .001); however, no differences were found between the groups on the final examination (85.35 ± 9.46 versus 85.6 ± 6.98, p = .91). Use of Readiness Assurance Tests was an effective modality to increase student self-efficacy, learning experience, and, relative to a control group, midterm examination performance in statistic

Greater return on women's enterprise (GROWE) : final report and recommendations of the women's enterprise task force. SEEDA, women’s enterprise task force.

This Women’s Enterprise Task Force (WETF) report, Greater Return On Women’s Enterprise (GROWE), sets out the economic case for women’s enterprise and advises partners and stakeholders how to achieve a greater economic return from investment in women’s enterprise. The Task Force has framed its recommendations to maximise existing investment and resources. We are mindful of the Government’s Business Support Simplification Programme and the effect the recession will continue to have on public spending, and so suggest that relevant Government departments and private sector organisations work together to streamline support and make best use of existing investment. In providing thought leadership to increase the quantity, scalability and success of women’s enterprise in the UK, the WETF has informed the national agenda on women’s enterprise for the last three years, concentrating its efforts on five specific Pillars: 1. gender-disaggregated business data 2. female-friendly business support 3. access to finance and technology 4. supplier diversity and procurement 5. strategic influencing and awareness raising. WETF highlights of the past three years include paving the way for a Business Link national data disaggregation methodology whilst influencing and shaping the establishment, direction and implementation of Aspire, a £12.5m women’s co-investment fund to support high-growth women-owned businesses. Alongside this, the WETF has played an important role in raising awareness of the economic case for women’s enterprise and the potential of female entrepreneurs in aiding the UK’s economic recovery. Perhaps most importantly, the WETF met with the Prime Minister and saw important policy developments taken forward in the Government’s Enterprise Strategy of March 2008. In 2009 the WETF contributed to the enterprise knowledge bank by producing two research reports into women’s enterprise: Impact of the Recession on Women’s Enterprise and Myths and Realities of Women’s Access to Finance. The Task Force welcomes progress made by the Ethnic Minority Business Task Force (EMBTF) in the advocacy of complementary areas which include the need for access to finance, disaggregated data and supplier diversity. Much of the groundwork for the WETF’s work was laid out in the Government’s 2003 publication, A Strategic Framework for Women’s Enterprise. In 2003, it was estimated that women constituted around 27% of self-employed people in the UK, and that only 12-14% of businesses were majority-owned by women (compared to 28% in the USA). From the Strategic Framework for Women’s Enterprise, to the establishment of the WETF and the Enterprise Strategy, Government has shown the importance that it attaches to women in enterprise and its recognition of the increased economic benefits women can contribute to UK plc. This must be even more important in emerging from recession. Recently, Government has a produced a policy statement, Building Britain’s Future: New Industry, New Jobs (NINJ), which sets out Government’s vision for economic recovery and growth by targeted intervention aimed at hightech, high-growth firms. The WETF has several recommendations for how enterprising women can take advantage of these interventions. Enterprise has a significant role to help women remain economically active and increase the productivity and international competitiveness of the UK. Recent figures from 2009 show that women, who make up 46% of the workforce, now constitute nearly 29% of the self-employed in the UK (up 2 percentage points). 15% of the 4.8 million enterprises in the UK are now majority-led by women. The longer-term quantitative targets outlined in the Framework included women accounting for 40% of customers using Government sponsored business support services; and women-owned businesses accounting for 18-20% of the UK total. Government has gone some way towards achieving these targets. Today, women-owned businesses account for around one third of Business Link customers, a major increase on the 22.3% or nearly 150,000 women customers in Q1 of 2005/6. However, overall progress has been very slow and neither of the Framework targets set for completion by 2006 has yet been met. More work needs to be done to address this and the other issues facing women’s enterprise today. This report examines how to further increase the current £70 billion Gross Value Added (GVA) and £130 billion turnover annual contribution made by women’s enterprise to the UK economy. Recent figures suggest that 900,000 more businesses would be created if the UK achieved the same levels of female entrepreneurship as in the US, resulting in an additional £23 billion GVA to the UK economy, thus largely closing the productivity gap with the US.1 In Britain alone, 150,000 extra businesses would be created per annum if women started businesses at the same rate as men.2 This is especially pertinent in this time of recession. With effective, targeted support, increasing the number of women entrepreneurs will be an important factor in driving economic recovery

Conflicting logics of public relations in the English NHS: a qualitative study of communications and engagement

Since the formation of the NHS, all UK citizens have been entitled to access a universal health service, but radical changes to the NHS are now occurring. Although recent NHS policy claims that ‘the NHS belongs to us all’ and ‘the NHS is a social movement’, these collectivist rhetorical claims appear when such communitarian discourse is under threat, as NHS England’s (2014) Five Year Forward View tries to square the circle of efficiency, quality and equity. Historically, patients and user-groups have formed support networks and social movements, and collectively campaigned for their voices to be heard by policy makers, clinicians and managers. In contrast to the discourse of user movements, the field of marketing and public relations generally relies on the idea of the public as consumers rather than citizens. As complex governance arrangements blur the lines between public and private, concerns have been raised about how ‘spin’ associated with public relations might contravene accountability, communicative rationality and deliberative or participatory democracy. Using qualitative methods, we conducted empirical research in two localities to explore the role of communications and engagement staff as they worked to ‘transform’ the NHS in line with the vision of the Five Year Forward View. We gathered documentary data and interview data from people whose roles required them to ‘do engagement’. These staff came from a range of backgrounds, including professional marketing backgrounds, and many were unaware of emancipatory goals or user-led involvement and activism. Our analysis examines the competing logics of marketing and patient empowerment within a key stakeholder matrix document and that surfaced in participants’ accounts of their engagement practices.NIH

A Collaborative Self-Study of Supervisors in a University-Based Literacy Clinic: Exploring Tensions in Support, Feedback, and Conflict Resolution

This article reports on a collaborative self-study conducted by five supervisors in a university-based literacy clinic. Over two semesters of mentoring elementary teacher candidates, we met weekly and reflected biweekly. The purpose of this research was to identify the tensions that supervisors were contemplating as they mentored and supervised candidates. Our findings indicate that we were grappling with ways to 1) provide candidates with equitable support; 2) guide candidates, rather than tell them what to do; and 3) confront conflict. By detailing the ways we reflected on and explored these tensions, we include suggestions for teacher education supervision and teacher education more broadly, both from our own experiences and previous research

A Collaborative Self-Study of Supervisors in a University-Based Literacy Clinic: Exploring Tensions in Support, Feedback, and Conflict Resolution

This article reports on a collaborative self-study conducted by five supervisors in a universitybased literacy clinic. Over two semesters of mentoring elementary teacher candidates, we met weekly and reflected biweekly. The purpose of this research was to identify the tensions that supervisors were contemplating as they mentored and supervised candidates. Our findings indicate that we were grappling with ways to 1) provide candidates with equitable support; 2) guide candidates, rather than tell them what to do; and 3) confront conflict. By detailing the ways we reflected on and explored these tensions, we include suggestions for teacher education supervision and teacher education more broadly, both from our own experiences and previous research

Scottish show

Jurried exhibtion of five selected artists. Healey was one of five invited artists. Artworks selected by Gallery panel. Printed catalogue of artworks

Challenges Facing Healthwatch, a New Consumer Champion in England

This article engages with debates about the conceptualisation and practical challenges of patient and public involvement (PPI) in health and social care services. Policy in this area in England has shifted numerous times but increasingly a consumerist discourse seems to override more democratic ideas concerning the relationship between citizens and public services. Recent policy change in England has seen the creation of new consumer champion bodies in the form of local Healthwatch. The article describes these new organisational structures for PPI and shows how those who seek to influence planning and delivery of services or comment or complain about aspects of their care face considerable complexity. This is due, in part, to the ambiguous remit set out for newly instigated Healthwatch organisations by government. Drawing on governance theory, we show that it can also be understood as a function of an increasingly polycentric governance arena. Challenges that flow from this include problems of specifying jurisdictional responsibility, accountability, and legitimacy. We review Healthwatch progress to date, then we set out four challenges facing local Healthwatch organisations before discussing the implications of these for patients and the public. The first challenge relates to non-coterminous boundaries and jurisdictional integrity. Secondly, establishing the unique features of Healthwatch is problematic in the crowded PPI arena. The third challenge arises from limited resources as well as the fact that resources flow to Healthwatch from the local authorities that Healthwatch are expected to hold to account. The fourth challenge we identify is how local Healthwatch organisations negotiate the complexity of being a partner to statutory and other organisations, while at the same time being expected to champion local people’s view

Preventing adolescent dating violence: An outcomes protocol for evaluating a gender-transformative healthy relationships promotion program

Adolescent dating violence (ADV) is a pressing public health problem in North America. Strategies to prevent perpetration are needed, and a substantial body of research demonstrates the importance of applying a gender lens to target root causes of adolescent dating violence as part of effective prevention. To date, however, there has been limited research on how to specifically engage boys in adolescent dating violence prevention. In this short communication, we describe the protocol for a longitudinal, quasi-experimental outcome evaluation of a program called WiseGuyz. WiseGuyz is a community-facilitated, gender-transformative healthy relationships program for mid-adolescent male-identified youth that aims to reduce male-perpetrated dating violence and improve mental and sexual health, by allowing participants to critically examine and deconstruct male gender role expectations. The primary goal of this evaluation is to explore the impact of WiseGuyz on adolescent dating violence outcomes at one-year follow-up among participants, as compared to a risk- and demographically-matched comparison group. Knowledge generated and shared from this project will provide evidence on if and for whom WiseGuyz works, with important implications for adolescent health and well-being

The Influence of Different European Cements on the Transport and Early-age Properties of Concrete in the Cover-zone

The use of in situ tests for performance based specification would require demonstration of their suitability to distinguish the quality of concrete. With the introduction of new European Standards for cements, this would mean concretes produced with these new cements should be classified for their quality using the performance tests. It is generally believed that transport properties of concrete are related to their durability and hence the measurement of these properties can form the basis of performance based specifications. This paper reports data indicating that transport properties measured at 28-days for concretes manufactured with different European cements and water-binder ratios can form the basis of classifying concrete for their durability. The results also demonstrated how the different cements specified in European Standards influence the transport properties and other early-age properties

Student Ensemble: Symphonic Winds

Center for the Performing ArtsMarch 23, 2016Wednesday Evening8:00 p.m