An item analysis of Nason phonics test in grades one and two

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

One size does not fit all in the assessment of pharmacology learning in a diverse multidisciplinary undergraduate student class

Background: Assessment not only drives student learning but is also an indicator of the success of teaching methodologies employed. There is considerable pressure on pharmacology instructors to effectively teach the discipline to diverse multidisciplinary (biochemistry, chemistry, physiology, and medicine) undergraduate students. To date, there are no studies documenting and assessing pharmacology learning in the aforementioned group. This is an 8 years retrospective study aimed at compiling, analyzing, and evaluating different types of assessment to gauge multidisciplinary student learning in pharmacology.Methods: Quantitative and qualitative (rather than single) methods of data collection were used to provide a richer and mutually corroborative array of evidence. Assessment of student learning included computer-based assessment (CBA) of laboratory practicals, end of the module (EOM) multiple choice questions (MCQ) examination and an EOM essay paper.Results: Our findings indicate significant variation in students’ scores depending on the type of assessment employed. Strikingly over the 8-year period annual mean scores in the physiology student cohort were consistently and significantly lower compared to other groups. This contrasts with the medical student cohort who demonstrated a consistent and significant increase in mean scores compared to overall class means. Interestingly, no deviations were observed in the overall CBA, MCQ scores among all student groups. However, on closer analysis laboratory practical type influenced student performances with lower scores in the computer-assisted learning (CAL) CBA versus the wet laboratory practical CBA.Conclusion: Our research-based evidence suggests that certain modes of assessment may preferentially suit some but not all students from multidisciplinary backgrounds within the one pharmacology class

Predicting declension class from form and meaning

The noun lexica of many natural languages are divided into several declension classes with characteristic morphological properties. Class membership is far from deterministic, but the phonological form of a noun and/or its meaning can often provide imperfect clues. Here, we investigate the strength of those clues. More specifically, we operationalize this by measuring how much information, in bits, we can glean about declension class from knowing the form and/or meaning of nouns. We know that form and meaning are often also indicative of grammatical gender---which, as we quantitatively verify, can itself share information with declension class---so we also control for gender. We find for two Indo-European languages (Czech and German) that form and meaning respectively share significant amounts of information with class (and contribute additional information above and beyond gender). The three-way interaction between class, form, and meaning (given gender) is also significant. Our study is important for two reasons: First, we introduce a new method that provides additional quantitative support for a classic linguistic finding that form and meaning are relevant for the classification of nouns into declensions. Secondly, we show not only that individual declensions classes vary in the strength of their clues within a language, but also that these variations themselves vary across languages.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, the is the camera-ready version accepted at the 2020 Annual Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2020

Keeping it real: Exploring an interdisciplinary breaking bad news role-play as an integrative learning opportunity.

Palliative care is a complex area of healthcare that is best delivered by an interdisciplinary team approach. Breaking bad news is an inherent part of caring for people with life-limiting conditions. The purpose of this study was to explore an interdisciplinary breaking bad news role-play in a palliative care module. The participants were undergraduate medical and nursing students. Qualitative data from focus groups, student and facilitator feedback and a role-play recording were thematically analysed. The findings revealed that the role-play led to increased understanding of and changes in attitudes towards key palliative care principles, interdisciplinary teamwork, and communication of bad news. There was evidence of increased self-awareness. The findings suggest that the interdisciplinary breaking bad news role-play was a rich integrative learning experience that was valued by students

Periodic review sessions contribute to student learning across the disciplines in pharmacology.

Abstract Background: The teaching of the discipline of pharmacology is in constant flux. In order to meet the challenges of teaching pharmacology effectively we investigated a new teaching and learning strategy. Aim: Our aim was to investigate whether structured periodic review sessions could improve teaching and learning for students in a multidisciplinary undergraduate pharmacology module. Methods: Following each lecture students were asked to identify topics of difficulty in pharmacology using the one minute paper classroom assessment technique (CAT).  Three review sessions were then introduced based on the problematic issues identified by students. They completed a pre- and post-review session MCQ examination to gauge improvements in their learning. Feedback was obtained from students at the end of the module regarding the acceptability, advantages and limitations of the CATs and the review sessions. Results: There was active participation by students in all thirteen CATs (71.15% ± 1.2%), three review sessions (78.3% ± 1.6%) and the end of module questionnaire (81%).  A significant increase in student learning across all disciplines was observed in all three review sessions (**, p<0.01; ***,p<0.001 and **, p<0.01 for review sessions 1-3 respectively). The majority of students (99%) expressed the opinion that the review sessions enhanced their learning of pharmacology. A limitation expressed by some students was the necessity to complete multiple CATs to support each of the three review sessions. Conclusion: Strategically structured student directed review sessions which are carefully designed and executed are an interesting and effective educational tool for improving and complementing student learning across the disciplines in pharmacology

Compliance-innovation: a quality-based route to sustainability

The areas of Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and innovation are under-explored in research generally, and specifically in sustainability-oriented research. In this paper we propose a practice-based concept of Compliance-Innovation and set out its significance for sustainability. Development of the concept is based on a literature review and exploratory qualitative research with eighteen practitioners. The concept acknowledges the central role of knowledge integration across business domains as the basis of modern competitive advantage. The absence of such integration in the GRC and innovation domains, revealed in practice, opens opportunities. The governing force for such integration is presented here as sustainability, when applied as a strategic orientation for business. We outline how the integration of GRC and innovation domains drive commercial exploitation for environmental sustainability and business sustainability. Building on the concept of Absorptive Capacity we identify both external and internal sources of knowledge as determinants of organization's selected sustainability goals, which are relevant across the phases of organizations' innovation activities throughout its Innovation Value Chain. We argue that a quality-based orientation is necessary to derive value from the networks employed in applying the concept in practice

Drivers of exceptionally cold North Atlantic Ocean temperatures and their link to the 2015 European heat wave

The North Atlantic and Europe experienced two extreme climate events in 2015: exceptionally cold ocean surface temperatures and a summer heat wave ranked in the top ten over the past 65 years. Here, we show that the cold ocean temperatures were the most extreme in the modern record over much of the mid-high latitude North-East Atlantic. Further, by considering surface heat loss, ocean heat content and wind driven upwelling we explain for the first time the genesis of this cold ocean anomaly. We find that it is primarily due to extreme ocean heat loss driven by atmospheric circulation changes in the preceding two winters combined with the re-emergence of cold ocean water masses. Furthermore, we reveal that a similar cold Atlantic anomaly was also present prior to the most extreme European heat waves since the 1980s indicating that it is a common factor in the development of these events. For the specific case of 2015, we show that the ocean anomaly is linked to a stationary position of the Jet Stream that favours the development of high surface temperatures over Central Europe during the heat wave. Our study calls for an urgent assessment of the impact of ocean drivers on major European summer temperature extremes in order to provide better advance warning measures of these high societal impact events