Browsing by Subjects
Now showing items 1-20 of 36
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An investigation into the reasons why students do not collect marked assignments and the accompanying feedbackThe major role played by assessment and feedback in any programme cannot be underestimated. It is through the process of assessment design that course/module learning outcomes are met and as a consequence student learning may be measured. Alongside the importance of assessment runs the value and effectiveness of feedback. In this study feedback is defined as commentaries made in respect of written assignment work. Rowntree’s (1987) seminal text about assessment provides a dramatic, yet highly pertinent claim that feedback “ is the life blood of learning”. The importance of assessment and feedback as a research focus continues to dominate the thinking behind designing appropriate and effective solutions to measure and support learning (Higgins, 2001; Mutch, 2003; Black and Wiliam, 2003; Rust et al 2003). So, why is it that some students do not collect assignment work and therefore cannot benefit from this supposed ‘transfusion’ for learning? Anecdotal evidence from within the School of Education would suggest that there is a small, but persistent, percentage of uncollected assignment work every year. The authors believed that such stories and figures would probably be mirrored within the School of Education and would be echoed across the University. This potential problem prompted the study to find out the extent of the actual problem. The issue of uncollected work and feedback may have consequences for student learning because students are unable to capitalise on any feedback or commentary provided by the tutor. In addition, the issue has particular implications for tutorial time, in terms of time spent writing feedback. This can be frustrating for tutors, who may have taken a great deal of time and thought in providing feedback, which is likely to be tailored to the individual needs of that particular student. The literature discussed with the findings tends to focus on the somewhat narrower dimensions of assessment and feedback, circumventing the larger picture of assessment processes within the wider arena of Higher Education. The report accepts as a given that within the University of Wolverhampton the outcomes based curriculum model is the prevalent design approach, and that alternative curriculum models may be used in other H. E. Institutions. The authors are cognisant that the lack of discussion around the possible influences of current curriculum models influencing H.E. programmes and modules, and consequently their impact on and for assessment and feedback, may pose a significant deficit in the scope of the background reading and discussion. However, as with any curriculum model, the process stands or falls on all the component parts working in synchronisation. If students are not involved or engaged in curriculum design and operation, including assessment processes, a few may feel disenfranchised. This may be a key reason why students neglect to collect assignment work.
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An overview of research on student support: helping students to achieve or achieving institutional targets? Nurture or De-Nature?In the quasi-marketised environment of the new, mass higher education (HE), centralised policy continues to dictate conditions, and traditionally stable sources of income are being made increasingly unreliable. An increasing emphasis on student support within HE institutions (HEIs) has been made necessary by targets for student numbers and the funding that rests on these numbers. These tensions have been added to for 'post-1992' universities, by the Widening Participation initiative that brings with it particular issues around recruitment and retention. Rather than focusing on the models and systems of support that are being developed in different HE settings and their effectiveness, the aim of this paper is to theorise the imperatives behind these, to look again at the context that informs their inception and how the various support structures position and identify students. Through this, the tensions that exist between financial incentives, 'bums on seats', Widening Participation and academic achievement rates will be explored.
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An overview of research on student support: Helping students to achieve or achieving institutional targets? Nurture or De-Nature?In the quasi-marketised environment of the new, mass HE, centralised policy continues to dictate conditions and traditionally stable sources of income are being made increasingly unreliable. An increasing emphasis on student support within HE institutions (HEIs) has been made necessary by targets for student numbers and the funding that rests on these. These tensions have been added to for ‘post-1992’ universities, by the Widening Participation initiative that brings with it particular issues around recruitment and retention. In this context, it is not surprising that the issue of student support has triggered a raft of research and scholarship geared towards providing technical solutions. This paper argues that before such solutions are fixed on, HEIs need to investigate the conceptual underpinning of such mechanisms. Rather than focusing on the models and systems of support that are being developed in different HE settings and their effectiveness, the aim of this paper is to theorise the imperatives behind these, to look again at the context that informs their inception and how the various support structures position and identify students. Through this, the tensions that exist between financial incentives, ‘bums on seats’, Widening Participation and academic achievement rates will be explored.
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Associations between static and dynamic field balance tests in assessing postural stability of female undergraduate dancersBalance testing on dancers has used a wide variety of assessment tools. However, as most field balance tests have been developed for either sport or elderly populations, the evidence of associations between tests and their functional relevance to dance is inconclusive. We assessed possible associations between five such field balance tests . A total of 83 female undergraduate dance students (20 ± 1.5 years; 163 ± 6.6 cm; 61 ± 10.8 kg) volunteered for the tests. They executed the Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT), the modified Romberg test, the Airplane test, the BioSway Balance System (Biodex, Shirley, New York, USA), and a dance-specific pirouette test. Spearman's correlation coefficients examined relationships between the measures of the balance tests. Results showed strongest relationships between some SEBT reach directions (p < 0.01) and very weak to moderate relationships between some balance tests, including some SEBT directions, Romberg, Airplane, Biosway, and pirouette (p < 0.01 and p < 0.05). Our findings suggest that current tests used to assess dancers' postural stability need further investigation to ensure functionality and relevance.
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Body mass index, nutritional knowledge, and eating behaviors in elite student and professional ballet dancers.Objective: It is recognized that there is a high esthetic demand in ballet, and this has implications on dancers' body mass index (BMI) and eating behaviors. The objective of this study was to examine the association between BMI, eating attitudes, and nutritional knowledge of elite student and professional ballet dancers. Design: Observational design. Setting: Institutional. Participants: One hundred eighty-nine participants from an elite full-time dance school (M = 53, F = 86) and from an elite ballet company (M = 16, F = 25) volunteered for the study. There were no exclusion criteria. Interventions: Anthropometric data (height and mass), General Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire (GNKQ), and the Eating Attitude Test—26 (EAT-26) were collected from each participant. Main Outcome Measures: Univariate analysis of variance was used to examine differences in gender and group for BMI, GNKQ, and EAT-26. Regression analyses were applied to examine interactions between BMI, GNKQ, and EAT-26. Results: Professional dancers had significantly greater BMI than student dancers (P < 0.001), and males had significantly higher BMI scores than females (P < 0.05). Food knowledge increased with age (P < 0.001) with no gender difference. Student dancers had a significant interaction between year group and gender because of significantly higher EAT-26 scores for females in years 10 and 12. Regression analysis of the subcategories (gender and group) reported a number of significant relationships between BMI, GNKQ, and EAT-26. Conclusions: The findings suggest that dancers with disordered eating also display lower levels of nutritional knowledge, and this may have an impact on BMI. Female students' eating attitudes and BMI should especially be monitored during periods of adolescent development.
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Coursework Marks High, Examination Marks Low: discussIt is commonly believed that the standard of student performance in coursework tends to be higher than that achieved in formal examinations. This view was tested by analysing undergraduate performances in six subjects at four UK universities. Two measures of relative coursework performance were employed. The first is the difference between the mean coursework and examination marks for each module. The second considers the proportion of students in each module who achieve a higher mark in the coursework than in the examination. The measures showed that in English and History coursework performances are slightly higher, equivalent to one-third of one honours class (or division) while, in Biology, Business Studies, Computer Studies and Law, coursework performances are higher by as much as two-thirds of one honours class (or division). The differences observed in the latter subjects are very significant and have serious implications for parity of treatment in degree programmes where students may choose modules with contrasting modes of assessment.
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Developing alternative teaching skills through a programme of video analysis and mentoringIn 2000, the University of Wolverhampton's Learning and Teaching Strategy funded an innovation project to change a traditionally taught module to a module based on social constructivist principles. The project team found that whilst the changes to the module improved student learning, they had overlooked the demands these alternative methods would make on the teaching skills and expertise of colleagues. The changes not only required lecturers to think differently about how they teach, they also required them to act differently in the classroom e.g. from ‘telling’ to ‘questioning’ behaviour. Getting students to actively engage with each other and negotiate meaning, rather than imparting knowledge, seemed particularly problematic. At times it was all too tempting to revert back to telling students what they ‘should’ know rather than facilitating the generation of students’ own ideas and encouraging a spirit of enquiry. Of course there could be many factors that affect classroom practice, including the teacher’s beliefs about the students and the subject she is teaching. I therefore conjectured that in order to develop appropriate instructional behaviour we would first need to understand and work on the factors affecting classroom behaviour.
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Dyslexic learners and learning centre provision - could do better?Learning Centre staff at the University of Wolverhampton generally have good awareness of disability issues and try to ensure services and facilities are accessible to a wide range of users. However, little work had been done directly with users to explore their views of our services and the problems they might face when using them. The research targeted dyslexic learners as the University has a relatively large population of students with this disability. In addition many of our services rely on an ability to cope with printed and electronic information and these might pose particular problems for users with dyslexia. The services might include apparently simple elements such as guides to particular Learning Centres through to more complex examples including the subject web pages and information skills workshops.
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Emotional intelligence and friendship patterns among Sport Studies studentsThe purpose of this study is to analyze sport students friendships over the course of an academic year: University sport related friendships, University non sport related friendships and its relationship with emotional intelligence and academic performance.
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Evaluating the Use of Computer-Aided Assessment in Higher EducationThe use of computer-aided assessment (CAA) can provide lecturing staff with easy cost-effective solutions to heavy marking workloads. This case study explores the implementation of CAA into a limited number (n=2) of level 1 modules. The aim was to explore students’ responses and lecturers’ perceptions of CAA. Students who had experienced the new assessment regime completed an evaluation questionnaire (n=68), and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teaching staff (n=4) of the modules. Results indicate that students did not perceive CAA negatively within the assessment regime and staff clearly identified that this form of assessment had certain time saving benefits.
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Exploring mentors' interpretation of terminology and levels of competence when assessing nursing students: An integrative review.The purpose of this integrative review is to evaluate the empirical and theoretical literature on the challenges mentors face in interpreting and assessing levels of competence of student nurses in clinical practice. An integrative review of the literature. An extensive and systematic literature search was conducted covering the period 1986-September 2016 across twelve databases covering health and education related publications. Grey literature was searched from wide relevant sources. Sources were eligible for review when they referred to mentor's interpretation or assessment of student nurses' level of competence in practice settings. Methodological rigor of the included studies was evaluated with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool.
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Exploring the relationship between self-efficacy and coping amongst undergraduate studentsThis study investigates the relationship between self-efficacy and coping amongst first year sports studies students. The aims of the study are threefold; firstly, to explore the relationship between self-efficacy and coping among first year undergraduate sport students. Second, to investigate the influence of an intervention strategy to enhance coping skills, and thus raise self-efficacy. Thirdly, to investigate the extent to which academic self-efficacy and coping skills are associated with reduced dropout. The overarching objective is to encourage students to use effective coping strategies that bring about increased self-confidence to deliver the skills required to pass this year.
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Feed-forward: improving students' use of tutor's comments.Anecdotal evidence, considerable practitioner experience, and research within this University (Winter and Dye, 2004) indicate that many students do not collect their work once it has been assessed. Many others show little interest in the written or oral advice offered to them by the markers (Wojtas, 1998). This means that tutors become used to repeating important advice to some students, with no evidence that they have read, understood, or learned from the points raised by them. There are many reasons for students not using tutor feedback. For some students, only the numerical grade is of interest to them – simple, unambiguous and meaningful in terms of achievement and progression (Ecclestone, 1998). Some students will only read the qualitative comments if the quantitative mark is outside their expectations – perhaps to complain if it is surprisingly low, or to bask in the praise of an unexpected A grade. Some students may not read/heed the advice due to a combination of not fully understanding the comments (Chanock, 2000), and not realising their potential value; it is those students that this intervention hoped to target. This study developed from the frustration of tutors who were reduced to pleading that students should engage with their assignment feedback in order to avoid having the same negative remarks appearing on their work in future. One of the student responses to these pleas was that the summative assignments for modules were conclusive and self-contained, and it was difficult to see how comments about raising the grade for a completed module on, say Dyslexia, could help improve grades on the next essay on, say Autism. Indeed, this example uses cognate topic areas, whereas the modular system allows for much more disparate choices of topic, especially in a joint subject degree. Clearly, some students found it difficult to unpick the subject-specific, or topic-content advice from the generic advice to improve future achievement. Developing a solution to this problem required some means of using individual students’ academic histories and applying them to current assessment tasks.
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Feed-forward: Improving students' use of tutors' comments.A small-scale action research project was carried out on students' feedback histories on one undergraduate module. Old grades and comment sheets were collected and analysed by staff for recurring advice to individual students on the target module. This advice was then synthesized to create simple individual learning plans for the students' forthcoming assignments, in other words old feedback was applied to a new task. A number of additional teaching and learning interventions were provided for participants and the statistical outcomes showed a small gain in the grades achieved against those who did not participate. Interviews were held with participants that indicated a number of reasons why feedback was not optimized to assist further learning.
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Improving the attention students pay to, and the extent to which they act upon feedback.That learning is a cyclical process and that assessment drives learning are established facts. It is essential that an assessment regime considers not only what a student should know but also their approach to their learning. If students are required to evaluate, for instance, the ethical implications of IT, then it is not appropriate to use an assessment instrument that simply asks for regurgitation of information. In order to improve future performances, feedback on work presented by a knowledgeable other person, whether tutor, placement supervisor or peer, is essential.2 Staff perceive that feedback prompts student discussion of their work, enables understanding and improves learning. The aims of this project were to improve the efficacy of the feedback process and the quality of assessment feedback in the School of Computing and Information Technology (SCIT). This was through the implementation of a range of steps, based on those proposed by Gibbs during the University of Wolverhampton Campaign on Assessment 2002/03).