Drawing diagrams in an online examination

This paper describes part of a larger study into the computer understanding of diagrams. The diagrams used in the study were produced during an on-line examination using a simple drawing tool. The students’ examination answers included a diagram and were submitted over the Internet to an automatic marking tool for grading and feedback. This paper focuses on the production of diagrams under examination conditions by describing the diagram drawing tool and discussing the students’ reactions to its use. Whilst only a small number of students have been involved in the trials to-date, drawing simple diagrams using a software tool during an examination did not pose major problems for most of them. We conclude that the use of such a tool is feasible and should be investigated further

The European road accident observatory

The European road accident observator

Car size in UK crashes: the effects of user characteristics, impact configuration and the patterns of injury

Previous work examining the effect of vehicle mass has demonstrated the link with occupant injury severity. The principal factor has been related to Newtonian mechanics. This paper analyses data from the UK Co-operative Crash Injury Study and identifies other factors associated with car size. The mass of the car is found to have a predominant effect on injury outcome in frontal collisions only where the effect is seen most in injuries to the head, face and chest. Most fatal casualties in small cars die when in collision with another car in front or side collisions while the key group for large cars is frontal collisions with road-side objects. There are several characteristics of small car occupants that differ from those in large cars including gender, age and vehicle occupancy. New information in the analysis concerns the priorities in casualty reduction between small and large car occupants and the paper argues that vehicle design should take account of this variation to produce vehicles optimised for the complete range of crashes and car occupants

Reducing the distance in distance education

Tutor Marked Assignments (TMAs) are the major mechanism by which Open University (OU) students receive feedback on their academic progress. This paper shows how the OU has used ICT to improve both the quality of feedback and speed of response to student work, reduce feelings of isolation and make the university seem less remote. The paper examines the system for online submission and return of TMAs, their on-screen marking, and the automated processing of scores and feedback. It shows how the system provides effective feedback to students and their tutors, using ICT to underpin the overall assessment process, and enables new teaching strategies to be used at an institutional level. The system produces faster turnaround of marked TMAs, faster feedback to tutors on their performance and more up to date management information. Better quality feedback to students has also resulted from an interactive loop of dialogue between student and tutor, and improved management information for monitoring. The automated recording of TMA scores has lead to improved accuracy of assessment records that feed into the conflation of continuous assessment records with examination results to produce the overall course results. These developments have enabled course teams to develop new methods of assessment, such as electronic format assignments (e.g. websites and hyperlinked documents), executable files, dynamic templates and other interactive activities

Student experiences of remote computerbased examinations

Student experiences of remote computerbased examination

Experiments with electronic examinations over the Internet

The UK’s Open University (OU) has been using the Internet on a regular basis for transporting student assignments (homework) between student, tutor and the university. Tutor marked assignments are a major part of the OU’s assessment system, but all courses also have an examinable component that often takes the form of a three-hour closed-book examination taken under supervised conditions. Our aim has been to investigate the extent to which we could use the Internet to automate the examination process. In this paper we discuss the results of two experiments that we have carried out so far, and discuss how examinations might be carried out electronically in a distance education setting. The first experiment was performed in 1997 when students sat a formal supervised examination in which the examination paper and the students’ answers were transmitted between the OU and the remote examination sites using electronic means. The second experiment, conducted early in 1999, enabled students to take a ‘mock exam’ accessed via a web page as part of their revision. The experiment was designed to test out the technical feasibility of offering an unsupervised home examination. Students accessed the paper via a web site and submitted their answers in a similar way. Whilst cheating: is an important issue, there are good pedagogic reasons for providing an unsupervised home exam that will be discussed in this paper. The experiments have shown the feasibility of conducting conventional examinations electronically and, in principle, such examinations can be low-cost and be taken securely in the home. In addition: Most students found answering the exam at home a positive experience. There are real advantages, in a distance education setting, of sitting an exam at home. The provision of a mock exam adds value to a course. Designing an infrastructure for an electronic exam is straightforward, although more effort is required to allow students to submit graphical answers. The rigorous time limit placed on an exam (whether conventional or electronic) is an issue for students. The electronic exam increases anxiety over time since the student is also responsible for ensuring that their answers are submitted on time. We expected a similar heightening of anxiety over downloading the question paper, but this was not mentioned by the students We recently completed a third experiment which included fully automated grading of all exam questions (none of which were multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank) and we report our initial findings here

Fatal and serious collisions involving pedal cyclists and trucks in London between 2007 and 2011

<p><b>Objective</b>: Increased numbers of people riding pedal cycles have led to a greater focus on pedal cycle safety. The aim of this article is to explore factors that are associated with fatal and a small number of serious-injury pedal cyclist crashes involving trucks that occurred in London between 2007 and 2011.</p> <p><b>Methods</b>: Data were collected from police collision files for 53 crashes, 27 of which involved a truck (≥3.5 tonnes) and a pedal cycle. A systematic case review approach was used to identify the infrastructure, vehicle road user, and management factors that contributed to these crashes and injuries and how these factors interacted.</p> <p><b>Results</b>: Trucks turning left conflicting with pedal cyclists traveling straight ahead was a common crash scenario. Key contributory factors identified included the pedal cyclists not being visible to the truck drivers, road narrowing, and inappropriate positioning of pedal cyclists.</p> <p><b>Conclusions</b>: Crashes involving trucks and pedal cyclists are complex events that are caused by multiple interacting factors; therefore, multiple measures are required to prevent them from occurring.</p

Designing the European road safety observatory

In 2001 there were over 40,00 people who were killed on the roads of the 15 member states of the European Union (EU), additionally around 3.3 million people were injured1. The costs to society exceeded €180 billion which is around twice the annual budget of the European Commission and 2% of EU GDP. In May 2004 a further 10 countries will join the EU increasing the total population to over 450 million people and the estimated numbers of road crash fatalities by 25% to over 50,000 each year. In 2001 the European Commission adopted a target of reducing fatalities by 50%2 within a decade and identified several areas where it could make a direct contribution within the constraints of subsidiarity. The target was reaffirmed in 20033 in the Road Safety Action Programme which provided further detail about actions it planned to introduce

STAIRS - Standardisation of Accident and Injury Registration: final report

A single European-wide crash injury database, or a compilation of individual, comparable databases, would be of exceptional benefit to the legislation process at an EU level. A direct, data driven approach would allow identification of any safety problems at an early stage, and facilitate a quick and accurate evaluation of any new or remedial measures, including legislation, that may have been implemented. The aim of STAIRS is to make the first moves towards such a goal. It involves the standardisation of in-depth road accident data collection and methodologies that would provide the core data and basic framework for crash injury studies. It is intended that existing groups will be able to adopt the protocol within their existing studies but it is anticipated that the groups will normally add to it to reflect special research concerns. The protocol is intended to facilitate rather than restrict any investigations, so it does not prescribe a particular approach that must be adopted in every case. Rather it provides a set of requirements, for the final datasets in particular, in terms of the core variables and the case selection criteria that will lead to comparability of datasets. This will bring about a European-wide agreement on how to collect this type of information, and if followed, will lead to comparable databases being held in each country that adopts and follows the protocol developed

Network-wide safety impacts of dedicated lanes for connected and autonomous vehicles

Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) enabled by Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) has potential to change future transport systems. The findings from previous studies suggest that these technologies will improve traffic flow, reduce travel time and delays. Furthermore, these CAVs will be safer compared to existing vehicles. As these vehicles may have the ability to travel at a higher speed and with shorter headways, it has been argued that infrastructure-based measures are required to optimise traffic flow and road user comfort. One of these measures is the use of a dedicated lane for CAVs on urban highways and arterials and constitutes the focus of this research. As the potential impact on safety is unclear, the present study aims to evaluate the safety impacts of dedicated lanes for CAVs. A calibrated and validated microsimulation model developed in AIMSUN was used to simulate and produce safety results. These results were analysed with the help of the Surrogate Safety Assessment Model (SSAM). The model includes human-driven vehicles (HDVs), 1st generation and 2nd generation autonomous vehicles (AVs) with different sets of parameters leading to different movement behaviour. The model uses a variety of cases in which a dedicated lane is provided at different type of lanes (inner and outer) of highways to understand the safety effects. The model also tries to understand the minimum required market penetration rate (MPR) of CAVs for a better movement of traffic on dedicated lanes. It was observed in the models that although at low penetration rates of CAVs (around 20%) dedicated lanes might not be advantageous, a reduction of 53% to 58% in traffic conflicts is achieved with the introduction of dedicated lanes in high CAV MPRs. In addition, traffic crashes estimated from traffic conflicts are reduced up to 48% with the CAVs. The simulation results revealed that with dedicated lane, the combination of 40-40-20 (i.e., 40% human-driven – 40% 1st generation AVs– 20% 2nd generation AVs) could be the optimum MPR for CAVs to achieve the best safety benefits. The findings in this study provide useful insight into the safety impacts of dedicated lanes for CAVs and could be used to develop a policy support tool for local authorities and practitioners.</p