Enhancing Professional Development and Supporting Students on Work-Placement by Peer-Peer Learning Using an Online Reflective Blog Assessment

Work placement aims to enhance professional development and allow students to apply knowledge and skills from their programme of study. Students can struggle with both conceptualising work in terms of academic knowledge and the reverse process of transforming tacit knowledge from the workplace into a form they can verbalise. Additionally, they are isolated from their peer support group. To address these issues, we have implemented a blog assessment in Dublin Institute of Technology to actively encourage reflection and also foster peer-to-peer learning through providing an opportunity to share experiences of the diverse range of activities during work placement. A pilot was implemented for Pharmacy Technician students using the institute’s virtual learning environment. As a result of this pilot and subsequent modifications made in the following years, we identified key requirements and resources to prepare, support and engage students in all aspects of the work placement assessment. Examples that we discuss include an assessment rubric, instructional videos and reflective writing resources, a pre-placement reflective writing workshop, feedback mechanisms, and assessment strategies that actively promoted student interaction with their peers. Evaluation results including the main benefits, recommendations, limitations and suggested improvements are also included. It has also been demonstrated that this assessment is transferable to a different programme of study as it was extended to the placement module for BSc (Nutraceuticals). Further work will include additional measures to guide students to focus on critical points during reflection, and will include an increased emphasis on graduate attributes

Non perturbative study of QCD on a 2+2 anisotropic lattice

We present preliminary results for a non perturbative determination of the parameters in the action required to restore Lorentz invariance in long distance correlators, using the static interquark potential. Comparison with analytical results is made and further applications are discussed.Comment: 3 pages, Lattice2003 (improvement

Bottomonium spectrum at finite temperature

We investigate the modification of S and P wave states in the bottomonium spectrum above and below the deconfinement crossover temperature through their spectral functions obtained from the maximum entropy method. Anisotropic ensembles with $N_f=2+1$ Wilson clover fermions with tadpole-improvement are used while the bottom quark is treated with an improved non-relativistic action. We observe significant modifications of the P wave $\chi_{b1}$ ground state directly above the crossover temperature, $T_c$, while the S wave $\Upsilon$ ground state remains relatively unchanged up to temperatures of almost $2T_c$. This evidence supports earlier conclusions from our FASTSUM collaboration of the immediate dissociation of the P wave states above $T_c$ and the survival of the S wave ground states up to $2T_c$.Comment: presented at the 31st International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice 2013), 29 July - 3 August 2013, Mainz, German

The bottomonium spectrum at finite temperature from Nf=2+1N_f=2+1 lattice QCD

We present results on the bottomonium spectrum at temperatures above and below the deconfinement crossover temperature, $T_c$, from dynamical lattice QCD simulations. The heavy quark is treated with a non-relativistic effective field theory on the lattice and serves as a probe of the hot medium. Ensembles with a finer spatial lattice spacing and a greater range of temperatures below $T_c$ than those previously employed by this collaboration are used. In addition, there are $N_f=2+1$ flavours of Wilson clover quark in the sea with $M_\pi\approx400$ MeV and we perform a more careful tuning of the bottom quark mass in this work. We calculate the spectral functions of S and P wave bottomonium states using the maximum entropy method and confirm earlier findings on the survival of the ground state S wave states up to at least $2T_c$ and the immediate dissociation of the P wave states above $T_c$.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figure

A perturbative determination of the parameters of an anisotropic quark action

The parameters of a 3+1 anisotropic quark action with Symanzik-improved glue are determined at 1-loop in perturbation theory.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures. Talk presented at Lattice2004(improved), Fermilab, June 21-26, 200

Excited and exotic bottomonium spectroscopy from lattice QCD

Abstract: We explore the spectrum of excited and exotic bottomonia using lattice QCD. Highly excited states are identified with masses up to 11,000 MeV, many of which can be grouped into supermultiplets matching those of the quark model while exotic spin-parity-charge-conjugation quantum numbers JPC = 0+−, 1−+, 2+− that cannot be formed from q¯q alone are also identified. Single-meson operator constructions are used that have good JPC in the continuum, these are found to overlap well onto heavy quark states up to J ≤ 4. A continuum JPC is assigned to each level, based on the distribution amongst lattice irreps and dominant operator overlaps. States with a dominant gluonic component are identified and form a hybrid supermultiplet with JPC = (0, 1, 2)−+, 1−−, approximately 1500 MeV above the ground-state ηb, similar to previous computations with light, strange and charm quark systems

Excited and exotic bottomonium spectroscopy from lattice QCD

Abstract: We explore the spectrum of excited and exotic bottomonia using lattice QCD. Highly excited states are identified with masses up to 11,000 MeV, many of which can be grouped into supermultiplets matching those of the quark model while exotic spin-parity-charge-conjugation quantum numbers JPC = 0+−, 1−+, 2+− that cannot be formed from q¯q alone are also identified. Single-meson operator constructions are used that have good JPC in the continuum, these are found to overlap well onto heavy quark states up to J ≤ 4. A continuum JPC is assigned to each level, based on the distribution amongst lattice irreps and dominant operator overlaps. States with a dominant gluonic component are identified and form a hybrid supermultiplet with JPC = (0, 1, 2)−+, 1−−, approximately 1500 MeV above the ground-state ηb, similar to previous computations with light, strange and charm quark systems

Static-light matrix elements on a dynamical anisotropic lattice

The static-light matrix element needed to determine $f_B$ is studied on an anisotropic lattice with $N_f=2$. The improvement in precision due to stout links and all-to-all propagators is investigated.Comment: Lattice2004(heavy), Fermilab, June 21-26, 2004. 3 page