Assessment of learning and teaching in higher education : a case analysis of a university in the south of Europe

The focus of assessment in higher education has been moving from assessment ‘of’ to assessment ‘for’ learning and teaching. This shift suggests that formative assessment with feedback can be more beneficial to learning and teaching than traditional summative assessment. In view of the tension that arises between the move towards formative assessment and the role of summative assessment, this study examines how the University under study seeks to balance these two aspects of assessment. The study made use of interviews, questionnaires and documents to collect data. The participants are lecturers and students at the Faculty of Education. Five lecturers and 5 students were interviewed individually, while 15 lecturers and 29 students completed online questionnaires. The documents were obtained from the University’s website. The findings reveal that the university in question recognises the importance of formative assessment, and has established policies and guidelines on the implementation of assessment of learning and teaching. Findings indicate that there is an imbalance between formative and summative assessment of learning and teaching, favouring the latter against the former. Although policy-makers, lecturers and students are aware of the importance of formative assessment, the traditional summative assessment is still the dominant assessment mode. Such a situation has caused challenges to the assessment policies, created struggles for lecturers and resulted in students’ dissatisfaction with the learning process.peer-reviewe

Voltammetry of immobilized cytochrome c on novel binary self-assembled monolayers of thioctic acid and thioctic amide modified gold electrodes

ArticleJOURNAL OF ELECTROANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY. 590(2): 173-180 (2006)journal articl

Electrochemical characterization of poly(acrylamide) membrane coated on a gold disk electrode in acetonitrile

ArticleJOURNAL OF ELECTROANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY. 579(1): 25-31 (2005)journal articl

Unsupervised discriminant projection analysis for feature extraction

Author name used in this publication: David ZhangBiometrics Centre, Department of ComputingRefereed conference paper2006-2007 > Academic research: refereed > Refereed conference paperVersion of RecordPublishe

A sensor for superoxide in aqueous and organic/aqueous media based on immobilized cytochrome c on binary self-assembled monolayers

ArticleBiosensors and Bioelectronics. 23(2):241-247journal articl

KPCA Plus LDA : a complete kernel Fisher discriminant framework for feature extraction and recognition

2004-2005 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Sustained Content Language Teaching: Insights from an ESL and EFL course

Instructional settings (English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL)) may provide different opportunities for learners’ meaningful language use. This qualitative study was designed to shed light on this issue. The data included multiple sources collected from a sustained content gastronomy language course taught in an American ESL and a Taiwanese EFL context. Findings revealed that various factors (e.g., themes, environment, and learners) contributed to learners from both contexts meeting course goals. The findings further indicate that it is not the ESL/EFL context but instead using a sustained content language teaching approach that incorporates theme-based instruction and dynamic units that ensures learners are provided opportunities for meaningful and purposeful language use

The Role of Arabidopsis ABCG9 and ABCG31 ATP Binding Cassette Transporters in Pollen Fitness and the Deposition of Steryl Glycosides on the Pollen Coat

The pollen coat protects pollen grains from harmful environmental stresses such as drought and cold. Many compounds in the pollen coat are synthesized in the tapetum. However, the pathway by which they are transferred to the pollen surface remains obscure. We found that two Arabidopsis thaliana ATP binding cassette transporters, ABCG9 and ABCG31, were highly expressed in the tapetum and are involved in pollen coat deposition. Upon exposure to dry air, many abcg9 abcg31 pollen grains shriveled up and collapsed, and this phenotype was restored by complementation with ABCG9(pro):GFP:ABCG9. GFP-tagged ABCG9 or ABCG31 localized to the plasma membrane. Electron microscopy revealed that the mutant pollen coat resembled the immature coat of the wild type, which contained many electron-lucent structures. Steryl glycosides were reduced to about half of wild-type levels in the abcg9 abcg31 pollen, but no differences in free sterols or steryl esters were observed. A mutant deficient in steryl glycoside biosynthesis, ugt80A2 ugt80B1, exhibited a similar phenotype. Together, these results indicate that steryl glycosides are critical for pollen fitness, by supporting pollen coat maturation, and that ABCG9 and ABCG31 contribute to the accumulation of this sterol on the surface of pollen.X1133Ysciescopu

Identification of genes differentially expressed in Jining Grey and Liaoning Cashmere goats ovaries

To search for genes controlling high prolificacy of Chinese indigenous goats, differential display reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (DDRT-PCR) was used to screen differentially expressed cDNA bands in the sexually matured ovaries of 3-year-old prolific Jining Grey goats and monotocous Liaoning Cashmere goats with 24 combinations of three anchored primers and eight arbitrary primers. 22 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were proved to be the positive bands by Northern hybridization. They comprised 10 known ESTs and 12 ESTs without homologous sequences in the GenBank. These results indicate that several genes such as GATA-4, metallothionein-like protein, CAT genes and unknown ESTs (CV983340 and CV983341) were expressed only in Jining Grey goats.Keywords: Differential display reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, goat, ovary, prolificacyAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(27), pp. 4408-441