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A literature review of online exams in HE in Physics and Maths
Get PDFDuring the COVID pandemic, universities around the globe had to move not only their content delivery online, but also their assessments. Due to COVID causing significant upheaval in Higher Education (HE), this enforced experiment also afforded an opportunity to reflect on traditional, invigilated, closed book exams (ICBE) resulting in research and advice in this area. A systematic review of this academic and grey literature was performed concentrating on maths heavy physics examinations to investigate what guidance is given to examination writers, educators who prepare students for exams and HE examinees themselves. The literature review results were divided into: Advice for examiners who need to provide an uinvigilated open book exam (UOBE), discussions on cheating, advice for students and case studies. It was found that ICBEs were good at examining lower order cognitive skills, e.g. recall and understanding, but higher order skills, such as analysing and synthesising, are better examined with access to a larger range of resources. Guidance on making academic misconduct more difficult also suggested using higher order thinking skills in exam questions as responses to these type of tasks are more individual and getting outside help may be more difficult in a time constrained UOBE. Furthermore, literature encouraged reflection on the motivation for cheating and suggested that overly demanding assessment may encourage students to seek inappropriate help. The advice for students highlighted the need to prepare as thoroughly for a UOBE as they would for a traditional exam. Probably the thrust should change from pure memorization to students preparing their notes so that they can efficiently access their material to locate relevant parts for synthesis during a UOBE. Some of the case studies used statistical methods to investigate comparability of grades between UOBEs and ICBEs and some of the studies found them comparable, so a large shift of results may be due to other factors rather than the exam type. Other studies describe their approach and include stakeholder reflections. The main recommendation to exclude lower cognitive skills can pose a problem for maths heavy exams as they mainly assess how well an examinee has mastered these skills before building on them. However, it seems advisable to climb higher up Bloom’s taxonomy if possible. Also, it may be conceivable to break up exams into shorter sections that require individual uploading before access to the next part is granted to reduce the possibility of outside help. Furthermore, individualised maths type problems could be achievable by using different data sets for a question. Student advice should highlight the differences between UOBEs and ICBEs so that they can prepare appropriately
Exclusion through Inclusion?: Museum Architecture and the Institutionalization of Critique
No full textArchitecture is not only a social product; the social is also constituted through architecture. This holds particularly true for the museum. Museum architecture is a spatialized expression of social order and an infrastructure through which collective imaginations are generated. I will show how the German Bundeswehr uses its principal museum to apply a post-heroic mode of identity formation. The Bundeswehr has to distance itself from the past while it also has to articulate a minimum of historic continuity to legitimize itself. The Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr (Dresden) achieves this through a twofold spatial tactic. First, through a dramatic architectural intervention, and secondly, through the interpretation of this spatial arrangement. Articulated in and through architecture, the ‘critical engagement with the past’ becomes institutionalized. Providing a sociological explanation of why the critical negation of the past became a prominent narrative within German memorial culture, I argue, that it allows for a coherent self-narration below the horizon of historical fractures and multiple conflicts in the refigured modernity. Although a similar discourse is at work at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, its affirmative architecture, however, contradicts any claims of a ‘critical engagement with the past’
What Can Museum Anthropology Do in the Twenty-first Century?
No full textThis article sets out to tackle the question: ‘what can museum anthropology do in the twenty-first century?’ It does so by focusing on the doing in a double-sense: on what museum anthropology can do, as in affecting, impacting and achieving, as well as on museum anthropology’s own doing, as a particular set of knowledge practices brimming with methodological, epistemological and ontological potentials to be harnessed for its own renewal and for cross-disciplinary fertilization across the academy and beyond the museum itself. The character of the article is programmatic, laying out the program of museum anthropology being developed at LMU Munich, Germany. The article begins by pondering this question explicitly. Then it proceeds by mapping out what has been done, what is being done, and what will be done to address this question at LMU Munich in collaboration with other universities and museums. At the end, the article draws out some of the implications of answering that question for an anthropology not only of and in but through museums, which intervenes in the fields that it studies
Book Review: Louise Tythacott and Kostas Arvanitis (eds), Museums and Restitution: New Practices, New Approaches
No full textProject Zero Dawn could be the key to preventing Human Extinction and restoring Earth’s biosphere. Part 2: AI Machines
No full textIn the video game series Horizon, the story follows a young Seeker named Aloy, as she investigates the hidden secrets of her forgotten world. In doing so she is faced with many challenges, primarily fighting giant machines and their rogue AI masters. This paper takes inspiration from the artificial intelligence and automated machine aspect of Horizons main plot. Looking at the development of the programs/machines and how they could assist in solving problems within our current era. This paper will contain many plot points from within the Horizon series. So, it is best advised to finish Horizon Forbidden West before continuing in order to avoid spoilers from the main story, allowing you to gain the best experience from the Horizon series.
Martian Mud Huts: The future of Exo-habitation
No full textMars, our closest planetary neighbour, and the target of mankind’s endeavours for exo-habitation poses many challenges to those that wish to inhabit its surface and thus various approaches must be taken to ensure the best chances for colonists. Biodomes might provide the initial habitats however as the colonies grow the use of in-situ materials (regolith) becomes vital. Binder Jet Technology printing with the use of genetically altered bacterial binders might be the key to expansion on Mars
What Happens When Academics Self-Organise?
No full textThis reflective piece is based on my attendance at the University of the West Indies and the University of Leicester International Summer School held from the 5th to 10th of June 2023 at the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS), under the theme ‘Crime, (In)Justice, and Human Rights’. My research interest includes women, violence, well-being and the criminal justice system, so I was eager to participate in what was happening. I experienced apprehension and uncertainty because my background is more rooted in practice than academia, so the questions of belonging and ability flooded my mind. However, the week provided the tools I needed to bring confirmation, reassurance, and motivation to continue my journey. 
Children’s Wayfaring Experiences at an Olfaction-Enhanced Three Little Pigs Story Exhibition
Get PDFThis study draws on data from a public exhibition that was purposefully designed to engage children’s sense of smell in relation to an adapted version of The Three Little Pigs story at a children’s museum. Twenty-eight children attended the exhibition before official opening and their experiences were documented through researcher-led interviews, children’s drawings and researcher fieldnotes. Narrative hermeneutical analysis revealed that children’s olfactory engagement with the story was associated with the portrayal of good and evil and was fostered through the exhibition’s multisensory display. Children asserted themselves in the identity of wayfarers and engaged with the olfactory elements by criss-crossing personal, shared, literary and olfactory boundaries. The power of olfaction to stimulate idiosyncratic emotional responses came to the fore in children’s appropriation of the story narrative and the shared exhibition space
Negotiating Indigenous participation and heritage at a multicultural festival
No full textThis article investigates how Indigenous participation and heritage are negotiated at a multicultural festival in Norway. While such festivals respond to the call for meeting places that foster inclusion and belonging in society, researchers have warned against promoting superficial understandings and essentialism. Based on fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with festival management and Greenlandic participants, we found that Indigenous participation and heritage were negotiated along three lines. First, participants shared enthusiasm for the festival and its inclusive vision. Second, they showed in different ways the imperative of understanding the complexity of Indigeneity as a diverse and multifaceted experience. Third, in response to the festival management’s call for participation, one acted as a curator while others became silent consultants. We argue that the experience of both festival management and Greenlanders could have been significantly deepened by a more profound and shared knowledge of the nature of Indigeneity