An Investigation Into Objective Testing in Science in a Scottish Secondary School

This thesis surveys the literature on objective testing with particular reference to work done in the area of multiple choice testing. The history of the Objective Testing movement is traced from the intelligence tests constructed by Binet in France to the present day and includes a survey of the use of multiple choice tests in Science examinations in British schools today. The experimental work in the thesis was carried out on first and second year pupils in a comprehensive school who were following the Integrated Science Syllabus. Several aspects of the use of multiple choice tests were investigated beginning with an examination of the effect of changing initial responses on multiple choice tests. It was found that pupils gained marks by making these changes more often than they lost marks. This was found to be true for both boys and girls. To investigate the effect of rearranging the responses within a multiple choice test three rearrangements of items were made and the results of the rearranged test compared with the original test. The following rearrangements were investigated (a) Reversing the order of the distractors while keeping the key in the same position; (b) Placing the key in one of the last two positions in a five choice item, when previously it had been in one of the first three positions; (c) Altering the position of the most plausible distractor to a position immediately before the key. No significant results were obtained except when the most plausible distractor was placed immediately before the key. To investigate the effect of item arrangement within multiple choice tests, two forms of the same test were constructed, one having the items arranged in the easy to difficult order and the other having the items arranged in the difficult to easy order. The marks were slightly higher for the difficult to easy form of the test. A preliminary investigation, into a scoring method which allowed for partial knowledge, was carried out and the results suggested that it may he possible to adopt it for use in schools

The School Improvement Partnership Programme: Sustaining Collaboration and Enquiry to Tackle Educational Inequity

No abstract available

ZERO-TOUCH BOOTSTRAP OF A NETWORK CONNECTED DEVICE

Techniques are presented herein that allow devices to automatically discover the correct enterprise wireless network to connect to, and securely onboard against that network, without manual provisioning of network information or credentials on the devices. This enables secure deployment of devices at scale on enterprise wireless networks. Minor enhancements to Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 are described to enable this flow. Unlike Wi-Fi Alliance® Device Provisioning Protocol (DPP), the techniques presented herein are lightweight and do not include additional messaging overhead between the client device (STA) and Access Point (AP)

Mobile information access in the real world: A story of three wireless devices

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2008 ElsevierThe importance of the user perspective to the wireless information access experience cannot be understated: simply put, users will not indulge in devices that are perceived to be difficult to use and in technologies that do not offer quality infotainment – combined information and entertainment – content. In this paper, we investigate the impact that mobile devices have on the user wireless infotainment access experience in practice. To this end, we have undertaken an empirical study placed in a ‘real-world’ setting, in which participants undertook typical infotainment access tasks on three different wireless-enabled mobile devices: a laptop, a personal digital assistant and a head mounted display device. Results show that, with the exception of participants’ level of self-consciousness when using such devices in public environments, the user wireless information access experience is generally unaffected by device type. Location was shown, though, to be a significant factor when users engage in tasks such as listening to online music or navigation. Whilst the interaction between device and environment was found to influence entertainment-related tasks in our experiments, the informational ones were not affected. However, the interaction effects between device and user type was found to affect both types of tasks. Lastly, a user’s particular computing experience was shown to influence the perceived ease of wireless information access only in the case of online searching, irrespective of whether this is done for primarily informational purposes or entertainment ones

Differential Regulation of ER Ca2+ Uptake and Release Rates Accounts for Multiple Modes of Ca2+-induced Ca2+ Release

The ER is a central element in Ca2+ signaling, both as a modulator of cytoplasmic Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) and as a locus of Ca2+-regulated events. During surface membrane depolarization in excitable cells, the ER may either accumulate or release net Ca2+, but the conditions of stimulation that determine which form of net Ca2+ transport occurs are not well understood. The direction of net ER Ca2+ transport depends on the relative rates of Ca2+ uptake and release via distinct pathways that are differentially regulated by Ca2+, so we investigated these rates and their sensitivity to Ca2+ using sympathetic neurons as model cells. The rate of Ca2+ uptake by SERCAs (JSERCA), measured as the t-BuBHQ-sensitive component of the total cytoplasmic Ca2+ flux, increased monotonically with [Ca2+]i. Measurement of the rate of Ca2+ release (JRelease) during t-BuBHQ-induced [Ca2+]i transients made it possible to characterize the Ca2+ permeability of the ER (\documentclass[10pt]{article} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pmc} \usepackage[Euler]{upgreek} \pagestyle{empty} \oddsidemargin -1.0in \begin{document} \begin{equation*}\overline{{\mathrm{P}}}_{{\mathrm{ER}}}\end{equation*}\end{document}), describing the activity of all Ca2+-permeable channels that contribute to passive ER Ca2+ release, including ryanodine-sensitive Ca2+ release channels (RyRs) that are responsible for CICR. Simulations based on experimentally determined descriptions of JSERCA, \documentclass[10pt]{article} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pmc} \usepackage[Euler]{upgreek} \pagestyle{empty} \oddsidemargin -1.0in \begin{document} \begin{equation*}\overline{{\mathrm{P}}}_{{\mathrm{ER}}}\end{equation*}\end{document}, and of Ca2+ extrusion across the plasma membrane (Jpm) accounted for our previous finding that during weak depolarization, the ER accumulates Ca2+, but at a rate that is attenuated by activation of a CICR pathway operating in parallel with SERCAs to regulate net ER Ca2+ transport. Caffeine greatly increased the [Ca2+] sensitivity of \documentclass[10pt]{article} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pmc} \usepackage[Euler]{upgreek} \pagestyle{empty} \oddsidemargin -1.0in \begin{document} \begin{equation*}\overline{{\mathrm{P}}}_{{\mathrm{ER}}}\end{equation*}\end{document}, accounting for the effects of caffeine on depolarization-evoked [Ca2+]i elevations and caffeine-induced [Ca2+]i oscillations. Extending the rate descriptions of JSERCA, \documentclass[10pt]{article} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pmc} \usepackage[Euler]{upgreek} \pagestyle{empty} \oddsidemargin -1.0in \begin{document} \begin{equation*}\overline{{\mathrm{P}}}_{{\mathrm{ER}}}\end{equation*}\end{document}, and Jpm to higher [Ca2+]i levels shows how the interplay between Ca2+ transport systems with different Ca2+ sensitivities accounts for the different modes of CICR over different ranges of [Ca2+]i during stimulation