The Impact of Relative Grade Expectations on Student Evaluation of Teaching

It is commonly accepted that student evaluation of teaching (SET) ratings are influenced by expected grades, and that faculty are able to 'buy' higher SET ratings by giving higher grades. Researchers have questioned whether there are limits to the ability to buy grades due to the possibility that students reward teachers for their relative grade as opposed to their absolute grade. In this paper we use SET data to investigate the relationship between SET ratings and relative grades. Similar to the prior literature, we find an indirect relationship between SET scores and historical grade performance averages (GPAs) but, we find the opposite result to be true when we examine the relationship between SET scores and expected grades earned by peers. Contrary to recent literature that suggests limits exist to an instructor's ability to purchase high SET scores when relative grades are considered, we find that the incentives to lower grading standards and buy higher SET ratings may actually be greater than has been thought in the past.

Book review: the rise and fall of the UK Film Council by Gillian Doyle, Philip Schlesinger, Raymond Boyle and Lisa W. Kelly

In The Rise and Fall of the UK Film Council, Gillian Doyle, Philip Schlesinger, Raymond Boyle and Lisa W. Kelly explore the shifting importance given to film policy in Britain by focusing on the establishment of the UK Film Council under the Labour government that came to power in 1997. This organisational study gives a cogent and lucid account of the Film Council’s aims and achievements, as well as the challenges it faced, before its eventual abolition in 2011. However, the political and economic focus leaves both audience reception and the Council’s influence on cinema as an art form largely unexplored, writes Geoffrey Nowell-Smith

Verse scored free: Scansion, recording, notation

Cet essai retrace les tentatives faites par les prosodistes pour noter (score) le rythme de la poésie, notamment à l’aide de systèmes de notations empruntés à l’harmonie diatonique. La notation articule deux impulsions contradictoires : l’enregistrement d’une voix posée comme préexistante, et la génération de mise en voix ultérieures. En outre, elle introduit un ensemble de disjonctions entre le corps des voix qui sont notées ou qui interprètent la notation, et le corps de la marque en tant que signe visuel, tout en pointant vers leur réconciliation. L’appel à la musique devient un moyen de réguler ces tensions en même temps qu’il tente d’évacuer les excès rythmiques auxquels la scansion traditionnelle n’a jamais été capable de rendre justice