Academic Rigor: A Critical Analysis

There is a segment in the movie Bedazzled which appears pertinent to the present discussion. The scene is inside a classroom. A table is covered with a stack of red apples, indicating the popularity of the teacher and perhaps symbolizing forbidden fruit. Actress Elizabeth Hurley, wearing a short skirt and tight sweater, is teaching in front of a classroom full of young men. She walks to a blackboard where tomorrow\u27s homework assignments are written. OK boys, tonight\u27s homework. Algebra: XN + YN = ZN, but you are never going to use that, are you? She erases the assignment. There are cheers from the class. Hurley looks at the next assignment. Imperialism and the First World War... what is done is done, I say. No point in thinking about it now: more cheers from the class. German, French, Spanish... Ja, Ja, Oui, Oui, Si, Si... Nonsense! Everyone speaks English anyway, and if they don\u27t, they ought to: agreeing laughter from the class. So, no homework tonight. But I want you to watch lots of television. Don\u27t neglect your video games, and I\u27ll see you in the morning. Shall we say 10… 10:30... no point in getting up too early is there

The observed state of the water cycle in the early twenty-first century

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 28 (2015): 8289–8318, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00555.1.This study quantifies mean annual and monthly fluxes of Earth’s water cycle over continents and ocean basins during the first decade of the millennium. To the extent possible, the flux estimates are based on satellite measurements first and data-integrating models second. A careful accounting of uncertainty in the estimates is included. It is applied within a routine that enforces multiple water and energy budget constraints simultaneously in a variational framework in order to produce objectively determined optimized flux estimates. In the majority of cases, the observed annual surface and atmospheric water budgets over the continents and oceans close with much less than 10% residual. Observed residuals and optimized uncertainty estimates are considerably larger for monthly surface and atmospheric water budget closure, often nearing or exceeding 20% in North America, Eurasia, Australia and neighboring islands, and the Arctic and South Atlantic Oceans. The residuals in South America and Africa tend to be smaller, possibly because cold land processes are negligible. Fluxes were poorly observed over the Arctic Ocean, certain seas, Antarctica, and the Australasian and Indonesian islands, leading to reliance on atmospheric analysis estimates. Many of the satellite systems that contributed data have been or will soon be lost or replaced. Models that integrate ground-based and remote observations will be critical for ameliorating gaps and discontinuities in the data records caused by these transitions. Continued development of such models is essential for maximizing the value of the observations. Next-generation observing systems are the best hope for significantly improving global water budget accounting.This research was funded by multiple grants from NASA’s Energy and Water Cycle Study (NEWS) program.2016-05-0

A Comprehensive Critique of Student Evaluation of Teaching: Critical Perspectives on Validity, Reliability, and Impartiality

This thought-provoking volume offers comprehensive analysis of contemporary research and literature on student evaluation of teaching (SET) in Higher Education. In evaluating data from fields including education, psychology, engineering, science, and business, this volume critically engages with the assumption that SET is a reliable and valid measure of effective teaching. Clayson navigates a range of cultural, social, and era-related factors including gender, grades, personality, student honesty, and halo effects to consider how these may impact on the accuracy and impartiality of student evaluations. Ultimately, he posits a “popularity hypothesis”, asserting that above all, SET measures instructor likability. While controversial, the hypothesis powerfully and persuasively draws on extensive and divergent literature to offer new and salient insights regarding the growing and potentially misleading phenomenon of SET. This topical and transdisciplinary book will be of great interest to researchers, faculty, and administrators in the fields of higher education management, administration, teaching and learning. Dennis Clayson is Professor Emeritus in the College of Business Administration at the University of Northern Iowa, US. Chapter 1: Issues and Debates Surrounding Student Evaluations of Teaching Chapter 2: Potential Impacts of Gender Bias on Student Evaluations Chapter 3: The Influence of Personality Traits on Student Evaluations Chapter 4: Halo Effects Impacting on Student Evaluations Chapter 5: Questioning the Truthfulness of Student Evaluations Chapter 6: Rigor, Grades and how they Impact on Student Evaluations Chapter 7: The Association between Student Learning and Student Evaluations Chapter 8: Student Evaluations and the Improvement of Instruction Chapter 9: Challenging the Statistical Reliability of Student Evaluations Chapter 10: Traditional Validity and SET Chapter 11: Identifying Valid Applications of SET Chapter 12: Validity and the Impacts of Subjectivity Chapter 13: Introducing a Likability Hypothesis Chapter 14: Justifications of the Likability Hypothesis Chapter 15: Conclusion and Recommendations – the Future of SEThttps://scholarworks.uni.edu/facbook/1514/thumbnail.jp