Making assessment of group work fairer and more insightful for students and time-efficient for staff with the new IPAC software

Universities and professional bodies increasingly recognize the educational benefits of students working in group projects. However, both staff and students have concerns about the fairness of the assessment when all the team members get the same mark. In particular, this leads to poor student experience and numerous complaints of ‘free ridders’. One increasingly popular way of addressing these concerns is via the use of the IPAC methodology, i.e. Individual Peer Assessment of Contribution to group work. The IPAC methodology allows academics to give an individual mark to students that participated in a group work activity, and this is based on their contributions as seen by their peers. This is welcome by the students Who claim are the best people to judge the contribution, tackle associated problems, and encourages student engagement and professional behavior during group work. A working group of academics was formed at University College London to look into the IPAC methodology and identify a solution that could be implemented across the institution. After extensive conversations, it was clear that there was a general agreement among practitioners that the IPAC methodology should be used, however there were multiple views on how this should be done in practice. For instance, there are different formulas that can be used to combine the “group mark” and the “IPAC value” into the “individual marks”; different questions and scales that are used to ascertain the level of contribution; different opinions of the feedback that should be given back to the students from the available information; or even if self-assessment should be included; different moments on time when the peer assessment could take place, etc. On the other hand, the implementation of the IPAC methodology is very staff-time consuming without a tool (3-4 full working days for an 80-students class). This includes collection of students’ views and assessment of their peers, selecting and organizing data corresponding to each student, calculating IPAC values and giving each student their individual feedback, etc. In practice, this means that without a tool to make this process efficient, IPAC is not always used even if beneficial. Therefore, an automatic IPAC tool or software is needed, but this needs to be adaptable to the user. This paper presents some priority requirements for the IPAC tool that I identified from extensive literature reading, own experience and numerous conversations with other staff members. The paper also presents a new IPAC tool designed and developed in view of these priorities, which include extensive customization, quick and personalized feedback to students and staff-time efficiency. This paper and software is useful to any academic/teacher setting and assessing group work

Bridging Soft Skills Gap Between University Graduates and Entry-level Professional Careers in Kigali, Rwanda

On a global level, three out of four employers claim to have difficulty finding university graduates with the soft skills companies need, and educators agree. The soft skills gap is also a massive challenge in Rwanda, as researches show that recent graduates struggle to enter the job market and find decent employment upon graduation due to a lack of practical exposure and experience with soft skills. This paper explores a career readiness program that aims at bridging the communication soft skills gap between university graduates and entry-level professional careers to increase the number of employed graduates from local institutions. The program was developed based on the author’s years of experience in education, information from literature review, and research from university graduates, educators, and private programs

Is It Safe To Use Peer Assessment Of Individual Contribution Level When Assessing Group Work?

The use of group work activities is increasing in Higher Education because of well-known educations benefits, e.g. student have to apply technical knowledge to the project at hand engaging them in deeper learning, as well as they develop team work and other professional skills. However, the assessment of the group work is challenging. Giving the same mark to all group members causes concerns among students and staff, both in terms of ‘free riders’ and mark fairness. One way of addressing both these issues is to use Peer Assessment of Individual Contribution to group work, namely IPAC. However, many academics are reluctant to use this methodology. Two main reasons are (i) that some feel nervous about giving “power” to the students to mark peers and how this would affect the final marks, (ii) that implementing this method can be administratively quite time consuming. This paper presents insights in both these concerns. This is of interest to anyone organizing and running assessed student group work activities, and that is using or might want to use in the future the IPAC methodology

Sexual and Reproductive Health Literacy in Rwanda Kazo Sector Murusenyi Village

Unplanned pregnancies and other reproductive health issues are global health problems. Nowadays, young people are highly exposed compared to last time. Internet and other sources of misleading sexual information are available to them. Parents who are supposed to be the health information providers are not responsible because they do not want, but because they have limited knowledge, and they also face different challenges which prevent them from fulfilling their responsibilities towards their children such as education level, income level, gender, and religion. All these issues to young people have increased the number of young people who get pregnancies before and unwillingly. Young people face different challenges, including STDs, suicide, poverty, and depression. Parents who should take the lead to educate them face different challenges which prevent them from providing or guiding their children such as lack of education, gender role, and income level. All over the world, young people suffer a lot; and Rwanda has not been left behind. The focus will be on young people aged 15-26 from Murusenyi Village, Kazo Sector, Ngoma District, Eastern Province of Rwanda

Health and Technology: Online platform to facilitate access to care and prevention for chronic non-communicable conditions in Rwanda

Rwanda is confronted with a growing problem of non-communicable diseases (NCD). It is important that people in Rwanda have access to effective prevention and treatment. This paper explores a program that would use a digital platform to facilitate access to information, services, and products that would help NCD at risk populations in Rwanda to access appropriate prevention and care. The program was developed based on the author’s experience in Rwanda’s healthcare industry, the information from review of literature as well as key informant interviews (NCD patients, advocates, and caregivers) and a survey with health professionals. The research conducted highlighted that there is a need for improvement in health education and access to services and products used for NCDs. The program will serve as a one-stop center for NCD prevention and care services

An investigation of the suitability of Artificial Neural Networks for the prediction of core and local skin temperatures when trained with a large and gender-balanced database

Neural networks have been proven to successfully predict the results of complex non-linear problems in a variety of research fields, including medical research. Yet there is paucity of models utilising intelligent systems in the field of thermoregulation. They are under-utilized for predicting seemingly random physiological responses and in particular never used to predict local skin temperatures; or core temperature with a large dataset. In fact, most predictive models in this field (non-artificial intelligence based) focused on predicting body temperature and average skin temperature using relatively small gender-unbalanced databases or data from thermal dummies due to a lack of larger datasets. This paper aimed to address these limitations by applying Artificial Intelligence to create predictive models of core body temperature and local skin temperature (specifically at forehead, chest, upper arms, abdomen, knees and calves) while using a large and gender-balanced experimental database collected in office-type situations. A range of Neural Networks were developed for each local temperature, with topologies of 1–2 hidden layers and up to 20 neurons per layer, using Bayesian and the Levemberg-Marquardt back-propagation algorithms, and using various sets of input parameters (2520 NNs for each of the local skin temperatures and 1760 for the core temperature, i.e. a total of 19400 NNs). All topologies and configurations were assessed and the most suited recommended. The recommended Neural Networks trained well, with no sign of over-fitting, and with good performance when predicting unseen data. The recommended Neural Network for each case was compared with previously reported multi-linear models. Core temperature was avoided as a parameter for local skin temperatures as it is impractical for non-contact monitoring systems and does not significantly improve the precision despite it is the most stable parameter. The recommended NNs substantially improve the predictions in comparison to previous approaches. NN for core temperature has an R-value of 0.87 (81% increase), and a precision of ±0.46 °C for an 80% CI which is acceptable for non-clinical applications. NNs for local skin temperatures had R-values of 0.85-0.93 for forehead, chest, abdomen, calves, knees and hands, last two being the strongest (increase of 72% for abdomen, 63% for chest, and 32% for calves and forehead). The precision was best for forehead, chest and calves, with about ±1.2 °C, which is similar to the precision of existent average skin temperature models even though the average value is more stable

Tracing the Cold War in Colombian architecture: a disregarded legacy

Drawing on a social and cultural analysis of the architecture designed and built by the state during the Colombian military dictatorship of the 1950s, and based on original sources, including historical archives, declassified official reports, oral history, and raw blueprints, this PhD research project traces relationships between architecture, and the national and international politics of that time. In doing so, this research analyses the relation between the built environment and power, questioning traditional concepts of representation and identity. It will be argued that behind the nationalist discourse, the nationwide consolidation of modern architecture should also be seen as a camouflaged instrument of the Cold War. As part of the contemporary debate about the worldwide impact of the Cold War, this research focuses on the architecture of the 'National Policy of Public Works' developed during Rojas Pinilla's dictatorship (1953-1957). It takes as a case study one of the regime’s most emblematic projects: the Naval College 'Almirante Padilla' - ENAP, using it as a methodological instrument through which larger issues can be traced: the architecture is taken to be a materialization of the political project of a ‘new state’ in Latin America, according to the policies implemented across the hemisphere during the Cold War. State architecture was explicitly used as a political device of the aspiring 'welfare state' amidst a social and governmental controversial context. This state architecture co-opted the Modern Movement, simultaneously developing modern facilities, and following other agendas. What will be articulated here is a critical view of this seemingly neutral infrastructure by questioning how this shaped what I will refer to as a ‘conflictual identity’