Entry-level students' reading abilities and what these abilities might mean for academic readiness

he National Benchmark Tests Project (NBTP) was commissioned by Higher Education South Africa and became operational in 2009. One of the main aims of the NBTP is to assess the extent to which entry-level students might be said to be ready to cope with the conventional demands of academic study in three key areas: academic literacy; quantitative literacy; and mathematics. This paper presents an analysis of the academic literacy readiness of a sample of registered students as reflected in their performance on the NBT in Academic Literacy, a standardised assessment developed in the context of the wider project. The paper presents a theoretical analysis of the construct of academic literacy as operationalised in the test. This is followed by a categorised empirical analysis of test-takers’ performance on the test, in which the levels of academic readiness of these test-takers are presented and discussed. The argument presented highlights the diverse range of academic literacy levels of entry-level students, as well as implying the teaching and learning interventions that might be necessary to improve readiness. Concluding comments argue that some groups of students may be unable to cope with conventional academic literacy demands in the absence of explicit intervention

Ideas for a high-level proof strategy language

ABSTRACT Finding ways to prove theorems mechanically was one of the earliest challenges tackled by the AI community. Notable progress has been made but there is still always a limit to any set of heuristic search techniques. From a proof done by human users, we wish to find out whether AI techniques can also be used to learn from a human user. AI4FM (Artificial Intelligence for Formal Methods) is a four-year project that starts officially in April 2010 (see www.AI4FM.org). It focuses on helping users of "formal methods" many of which give rise to proof obligations that have to be (mechanically) verified (by a theorem prover). In industrial-sized developments, there are often a large number of proof obligations and, whilst many of them succumb to similar proof strategies, those that remain can hold up engineers trying to use formal methods. The goal of AI4FM is to learn enough from one manual proof, to discharge proof obligations automatically that yield to similar proof strategies. To achieve this, a high-level (proof) strategy language is required, and in this paper we outline some ideas of such language, and towards extracting them. * During this work Gudmund Grov has been employed jointly by University of Edinburgh and Newcastle University. and constrained use of Z [FW08] -is the so-called "posit and prove" approach: a designer posits development steps and then justifies that they satisfy earlier specifications by discharging (often automatically generated) proof obligations (POs). A large proportion of these POs can be discharged by automatic theorem provers but "some" proofs require user interaction. Quantifying "some" is hard since it depends on many factors such as the domain, technology and methodology used -it could be as little as 3% or as much as 40%. For example, the Paris Metro line 14, developed in the Bmethod, generated 27, 800 POs (of which around 2, 250 required user-interaction) [Abr07] -the need for interactive proofs is clearly still a bottleneck in industrial application of FM, notwithstanding high degree of automation. THE FORMAL METHODS PROBLE

Teacher-learners' conceptions of learning: evidence of a "communalist" conception amongst postgraduate learners

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1003021132510.Recently, research on mature students' approaches to learning, conducted within a students'-experiences-of-learning framework, has suggested that these students tend towards being deep-level learners. The studies reported in this paper were focused on the self-reported conceptions of learning of a group of mature students enrolled in a postgraduate degree course. A primary aim of these studies was to assess the extent to which these students reported "sophisticated" conceptions of learning, as might be expected from mature, postgraduate learners. A secondary focus was to assess the extent to which academic context might be said to have influenced learning conceptions over time. The studies suggest that, for this sample of students, quantitative conceptions appear to predominate. In addition, a conception of learning that does not appear to "fit" within the conceptual model used to assess these conceptions is presented and discussed. Empirical data suggesting the stability of these learning conceptions over time is discussed in the light of its implications for teaching on postgraduate degree programmes where students appear to hold quantitative conceptions of learning. But the paper also argues for the need for further research into a conception which holds that learning is a moral obligation or service to a community

The balance between excellence and equity on admission test: contributions of experiences en South Africa and Costa Rica

Se describen dos experiencias en torno al reto de maximizar excelencia y equidad en la admisión para la educación superior. En la Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) se desarrolla y valida una prueba de razonamiento con figuras, para medir inteligencia fluida, tomando como marco de referencia los conceptos desarrollados por Raymond Cattell. Por su parte, la Universidad de Ciudad del Cabo en Sudáfrica aplica métodos de evaluación dinámica, en donde los exámenes van “enseñando” a lo largo de su ejecución y están basados en enfoques Vygotskianos. Estos instrumentos sudafricanos ya han brindado evidencia de validez predictiva en estudios de análisis de sobrevivencia y son parte de un programa de admisión alternativo para estudiantes que provienen de ambientes con desventajas educativas, muchos de ellos forman parte de grupos que fueron educativamente segregados durante el “apartheid”. Mientras que en la Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), el proyecto es reciente y se encuentra aún en su fase diagnóstica y de investigación, en la Universidad de Ciudad del Cabo se cuenta con una trayectoria de más de 20 años. Ambas propuestas buscan identificar de manera más precisa estudiantes que poseen potencial académico y cognitivo para la educación superior, que provienen de ambientes con desventajas educativas, y cuyas habilidades podrían ser subestimadas si solo se usan pruebas de admisión o evaluaciones “tradicionales”. El artículo no pretende hacer un análisis comparativo para concluir cual de las dos aproximaciones es más válida, sino que busca ilustrar dos formas posibles de abordar la problemática de equidad en la admisión para la educación superior, desde una perspectiva científica y no solamente polític

The design and use of 'alternate'assessments of academic literacy as selection mechanisms in higher education

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies on 8 April 2010, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.2989/SALALS.2009.27.3.5.939.In a context where applicants to higher education study vary widely in terms of their prior educational, linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds, it becomes extremely important to assess the extent to which these applicants might be said to be ready to cope with the typical academic reading and writing demands of higher education study. This assessment becomes even more crucial in a country like South Africa, where issues of equity of access, selection and redress remain a central challenge. Put simply, the challenge is to identify academically talented students from educationally diverse backgrounds, especially in cases where the educational backgrounds of these applicants may have militated against them, fully demonstrating their talent in conventional (e.g. school-leaving) examinations. This article describes the theoretical basis for the development of tests of academic literacy that downplay the role of prior learning in the assessment of academic readiness. The uses of these tests as selection mechanisms complementary to conventional academic assessments are also outlined. Empirical data are presented that demonstrate associations between these tests and academic performance in higher education. Issues and challenges regarding the validity and reliability of these tests are presented, and the implications of major research findings on the tests debated and deliberated upon

How do academics come to know? the structure and contestation of discipline-specific knowledge in a design school

The final publication is available at Springer via: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3AHIGH.0000035540.81337.4f.This paper reports the results of a small-scale (n = 9) interview study of the 'ways of knowing' of academics in a Design School at a South African polytechnic. The focus of the study was on exploring the perceptions of these academics about discipline-specific knowledge in their fields. The paper presents an analysis of the responses, derived from semi-structured interviews, to questions concerning the origin, development, structure, and contestation of knowledge. Responses were classified and tabulated in terms of their relation to theories of epistemology and the findings analysed in relation to how they might be said to be descriptive of qualitatively different views of the construction and contestation of discipline-specific knowledge. The analysis suggests that there are some areas of commonality, such as the agreement that their knowledge has an eclectic base and that its structure is influenced by personal, historical, professional and technological imperatives in the discipline. On the other hand, there are some tensions in beliefs about the structure and contestation of knowledge. The analysis draws out tensions between the established canon and popular culture; between individual intuition and professional benchmarks; and between Eurocentric and Afrocentric knowledge bases. Concluding comments suggest that these tensions have important implications for both the content and methodology of teaching