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Teaching and Assessing at scale: the use of objective rubrics and structured feedback
No full textIt is widely recognised that feedback is an important part of learning: effective feedback should result in a meaningful change in student behaviour (Morris et al, 2021). However, individual feedback takes time to produce, and for large cohorts – typified by the North of 300 challenge in computing (CPHC, 2019) - it can be difficult to do so in a timely manner. On occasion it seems that many academics lose sight of the purpose of feedback, and instead view it to justify a mark, rather than an opportunity to provide meaningful tuition. One strategy to provide feedback at scale is to share the workload across multiple staff, but this introduces an additional problem in ensuring that the feedback and marking are equitable and consistent. In this paper we present a case study from teaching programming that attempts to address two distinct, but related issues.The first issue is to make feedback more meaningful. We attempt to achieve this by providing detailed feedback on a draft submission of programming coursework allowing students time to make changes to their work prior to the final submission date. We present an analysis of the data generated from this approach, and its potential impact on student behaviour.The second issue is that of scalability. This feedforward approach creates a significant pressure on marking and on the necessity to provide feedback on a draft submission to large numbers of students in good time so that students are able to act upon it. To achieve this we consider an approach based on creating an objective, reusable marking rubric so that the work can be reasonably spread across multiple members of staff. We present an analysis of the data generated from this approach to determine whether we consider the rubric to be objective enough to remove individual interpretations and biases, and where discrepancies exist attempt to determine where those discrepancies arise.This work was carried out through an analysis of impact on student assessment, as well as from the academic staff involved in using the rubrics. Preliminary results from this work show that the more objective rubric used by several did enable a scalable solution for rapid feedback on submissions, and this did indicate some improvement in student outcomes. However, the work also illustrated the problems of subjective interpretations and some variation in outcomes by marke
Volunteering for Wellbeing: Improving Access and Social Inclusion by Increasing the Diversity of Museum Volunteer Training for Public-facing Roles
Get PDFThis article reports outcomes from a 15-month (2018-19) study led by UCL on behalf of the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance in partnership with three London museums of differing sizes with natural or local history collections. The study aimed to address mental health inequalities by diversifying volunteer populations through reforming recruitment procedures to overcome perceived barriers, and enriching training programmes to improve wellbeing. A mixed methods approach was used to assess wellbeing and mechanisms by which key benefits were derived, such as social interaction and forming connections. The article considers how increasing the diversity of volunteer training in museums can improve wellbeing, widen access and promote social inclusion. Policy and practice implications are discussed in relation to embedding wellbeing training strategies into heritage organizations
How does Medusa turn men to stone?
Get PDFMedusa is a notorious character from Greek Mythology. Her story involves turning onlookers to stone and this paper explores the possible methods Medusa may have used. Most of the content considers the phrase as a metaphor and does not consider supernatural techniques to accomplish her task. Freezing, sculpting and heterotopic ossification is considered in this paper with sculpting being the most plausible. [Content warning: mentions of sexual assault
Coming ‘Face to Face with the People who Shaped Scotland’: Portrait Galleries, Creative Writing and the Pedagogical Dynamism of the Portrait Image
No full textMuseum education literature has paid surprisingly little attention to the distinctiveness of portrait galleries or portraits as a genre, despite the fact that they provide ‘powerful spaces for pedagogy’ (Hooper-Greenhill 2020: 24). Taking an ethnographic approach, this article offers a detailed analysis of such pedagogies at work in one creative writing class based at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It describes two pedagogical regimes – the institution’s and the guide’s – and explores how they compete to frame the portraits in different ways. Focusing on two specific portraits, and the creative writing produced in response to them, it argues that while the portrait gallery’s implied pedagogy insists on the subject in the portrait, the class tutor focuses on the portrait as object. Employing Hans Belting’s theory of images (2011), the article concludes that there is a distinctive pedagogical dynamism inherent in the portrait genre, which can be mined for different educational purposes
Life in Plastic ... Is it Fantastic?
No full text“I’m a barbie girl, in a barbie world – life in plastic. It’s fantastic.” Was a bold statement made in the 1997 song titled ‘Barbie Girl’ by Aqua. This song is about the famous dolls Barbie and Ken where they sing about their fun, playful existence where they party. But is it fantastic? Yes, fun and partying are enjoyable activities for some; but does life in plastic bear the same fruits? In this paper 15% of the body is explored as composed of plastic
P4 8 The Writing’s On The Wall
Get PDFIn this paper we discuss the effects of the exploding pen from the James Bond film "GoldenEye". During a demonstration, the pen is seen to be able to remove the torso of a human. A typical Parker jotter pen, the apparent pen used in the film, can hold 8.2 ml of high explosives, in this case that is 14 g of TNT. This releases 32,000 J of energy into the chest. By treating the explosion like crater formation we can calculate a hole created by the pen to be 89 mm. This would kill a human but would not cause the total destruction of a torso as seen in the film. For this to be the case a 6.9 kg stick of TNT would be needed, not quite as stylish as a slim Parker pen
P2 7 What do stars do best? Shine!
Get PDFIn the film ’Stardust’, the magical realm of Stormhold encounters a fallen star in the form a human woman. In the final encounter against the evil witch, she does what stars do and shines as bright as she can to destroy said witch.By modeling the ‘starlight’ as surface power density (surface irradiance) equivalent to the sun at 6.41×10^7Wm−2, we determined a radiation pressure acting on the witch to be 1.48×10^−3Pa at a distance of 3 m. For a radiation pressure strong enough to destroy human skin, we calculated a surface irradiance of 1.17×10^18Wm−2
A1 4 What if Mars was made of Mars Bars?
Get PDFWe investigate the outcomes of a scenario that the planet Mars has suddenly changed its composition and become a giant spherical mars bar of the same volume as planet Mars. We find that both the mass and the gravitational field strength would decrease by 75%, and the escape velocity would reduce by 50%. It would also last as a food source for around 100 billion years
P5 4 The Human Plant
Get PDFThis paper delves into whether or not, humans would be able to survive with photosynthesis being our only source of food and calculated that we would not be able to survive on this alone, as it would be required to breathe 34 times faster to inhale the necessary amount of CO2
P4 5 Heads Up!
Get PDFIn this paper, we calculated how many glass panes of dimensions 1 m ×1 m ×2 mm, on an inclined plane, could a golf ball break through if hit at an angle of 30◦ at a speed of 75.1 m/s. We determined that 7 glass panes would be broken under the given circumstances. Tempered glass, however, requires a force of 196 kN to shatter, which is definitely not possible in this scenario, hence if you are golfing near a building, tempered glass would be ideal to use