Developing a national item bank

The COLA project has been developing a large bank of assessment items for units across the Scottish further education curriculum since May 2003. These will be made available to learners mainly via colleges’ virtual learning environments. Many people have been involved in the development of the COLA item bank. Processes have included deciding on appropriate item types and subject areas, training authors, peer-reviewing and quality assuring the items and assessments, and ensuring they are interoperable and tagged with appropriate metadata

Putting interoperability to the test: building a large reusable assessment item bank

The COLA project has been developing a large bank of assessment items for units across the Scottish further education curriculum since May 2003. These will be made available to learners mainly via colleges virtual learning environments (VLEs). Many people have been involved in the development of the COLA assessment item bank to ensure a high level of technical and pedagogical quality. Processes have included deciding on appropriate item types and subject areas, training authors, peer-reviewing and quality assuring the items and assessments, and ensuring they are tagged with appropriate metadata. One of the biggest challenges has been to ensure that the assessments are deliverable across the four main virtual learning environments in use in Scottish colleges-and also through a stand-alone assessment system. COLA is significant because no other large project appears to have successfully developed standards-compliant assessment content for delivery across multiple VLEs. This paper discusses how COLA has dealt with the organizational, pedagogical and technical issues which arise when commissioning items from many authors for delivery across an educational sector

Alien Registration- Macdonald, Mary (Portland, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/22167/thumbnail.jp

Alien Registration- Macdonald, Mary (Bangor, Penobscot County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/11805/thumbnail.jp

Examining the perceived benefit of education for Aboriginal secondary students in Western Australia

Indigenous and remote Australians have lower education and employment levels than non- Indigenous and urban Australians and face continued socio-economic disadvantage. Many contemporary voices have called for quantitative evidence for Indigenous education policy. The current thesis responds to this gap in the literature by developing a factor model of Indigenous education engagement, and supports this with regression equations and qualitative interviews exploring the impact of various experiences on Indigenous engagement with secondary school. The current study found that, despite gap in attendance rates, Year 12 completion rates, and tertiary education enrolment and completion, Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants alike ascribed a high value to the benefit of completing secondary education. For both groups, students were more likely to attribute benefit to schooling when they encountered a Positive School Culture, Promotion of Indigenous Culture, Pathway Development, and opportunities to develop Self-Efficacy. Yet, Indigenous secondary students in this study who ascribed benefit to secondary education appeared to make that decision at an earlier age, and did not often ascribe equal benefit to higher education. Compared with non-Indigenous participants of the current research, Indigenous students make education decisions with the belief that it will be harder for them to attain success in post-secondary education due to lower academic achievement, social discourse and discrimination surrounding Indigenous identity, geographic remoteness, and economic concerns. Furthermore, qualitative analysis revealed that non-Indigenous secondary teachers are likely to look to more superficial aspects of culture, rather than the epistemological and ontological aspects desired by Indigenous students, when developing a culturally inclusive environment. Finally, the Revised Factor Model developed in this thesis explained 46% of the total variance amongst variables measuring student experiences of and attitudes toward the utility of education

'Occupational Therapy and Mental Health'

E. M. Macdonald, reprinted from British Medical Bulletin, vol. 6, no. 3, pp 191-196

Recognise, raise the alarm, react. The process and factors that delay adolescent presentation with testicular pain

Background Adolescent males have high rates of testicular loss after testicular torsion (TT) due to a delay in presentation to hospital after the onset of symptoms. I aim to investigate the issue two-fold: 1. to confirm the scientific basis and ongoing relevance of the need to investigate the phenomena; 2. to investigate the knowledge, views and experiences of young men regarding testicular health to understand the phenomena using qualitative methodology. Methods Meta-analysis following PRISMA guidelines was undertaken with a primary outcome of long-term (>12 months) testicular loss following adolescent TT, in combination with a systematic review investigating predictors of testicular loss. Two regional retrospective audits were undertaken with primary outcomes of immediate testicular loss and time to presentation to hospital after onset of scrotal pain. One-to-one semi-structured interviews were undertaken with young men 11-19 years old with a chaperone, recruited from naturalist environments such as youth clubs. Thematic analysis was undertaken, and data was managed using framework methodology. Recruitment continued until data saturation. Validity was ensured by meticulous study design, high levels of reflexivity and regular supervision. Findings Meta-analysis confirmed a 39% early and 50% long term testicular loss or atrophy rate, with systematic review confirming delay to presentation to predict poor outcomes. Regional audit confirmed ongoing relevancy of the project with early testicular loss of 30% and 50% in Glasgow and Sheffield respectively. Median time from onset of pain to presentation at hospital in Sheffield was 6.25 hours(range 40 minutes to 170 hours) and 24 hours in Glasgow. Qualitative investigation revealed adolescent males are dependent on their parents for all aspects of health, including advice, access and attitudes. The process whereby an adolescent male affects their acute healthcare needs has been revealed. The adolescent recognises there is a problem and raises the alarm by telling their parents. Their parents then synthesise the symptom information and seek help, often after a ‘watch and wait policy’, making an appointment with their general practitioner as the first point of health contact. This process acts as a barrier to young people gaining timely hospital assessment of painful testes. Other factors delaying this process are: poor knowledge of adolescent testicular problems; lack of education and age appropriate information resources; concern from the young people about getting it wrong and raising a false alarm; poor confidence; young peoples’ fear of disrupting the family routine and disincentivisation of hospital attendance confounding concerns about burdening the NHS. Recommendations Recommendations from this study would be to introduce nationalised teaching on testicular health problems in schools, and for parents to receive education of the health conditions whereby a ‘watch and wait’ process is inappropriate and where children and adolescents should be taken directly to hospital