scholarly journals COVID-19 Ad-hoc Remote Learning – Quality Assessment, “Seven Stars” Analysis and Lessons Learned

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-65
Author(s):  
Wael Badawy
2020 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 15-25
Author(s):  
Ben Kiregyera

Adoption of development agendas at different levels – national, regional, continental, and global level – has led to an unprecedented increase in demand for official statistics. This increase has not only brought to the fore a litany of challenges facing National Statistical Systems (NSSs) in Africa but also it has created opportunities for strengthening statistical production and development. This paper underscores the need for countries to take full advantage of these opportunities and increase investments in statistics, undertake data innovation, and expand and diversify data ecosystems, leveraging on the foundations of the data revolution for sustainable development and in line with current international statistical frameworks. The paper posits that these improvements will not happen coincidentally nor through ad hoc, piecemeal and uncoordinated approaches. Rather they will happen through more systematic, coordinated and multi-sectoral approaches to statistical development. The National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) is presented as a comprehensive and robust framework for building statistical capacity and turning around NSSs in African countries. The paper unpacks the NSDS; elaborates the NSDS processes including; mainstreaming sectors into the NSDS, the stages of the NSDS lifecycle and the role of leadership in the NSDS proces; highlights NSDS extension; presents the design and implementation challenges, and the key lessons learned from the NSDS processes in Africa in the last 15 years or so.


2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark K. Gardner ◽  
Wu-chun Feng ◽  
Jeremy Archuleta ◽  
Heshan Lin ◽  
Xiaosong Ma

Author(s):  
John T. Behrens ◽  
Tara A. Collison ◽  
Sarah DeMark

During the last 6 years, the Cisco Networking Academy™Program has delivered online curricula and over 36 million online assessments to support instructors and schools teaching computer networking skills to students. This chapter describes the context of this work and lessons learned from this endeavor. Through discussions with stakeholders concerning the central aspects of the Cisco Networking Academy Program assessment activities, seven themes have evolved, each starting with the letter C: claims, collaboration, complexity, contextualization, computation, communication, and coordination. These themes address many aspects of assessment, including design, development, delivery, and the management of assessment resources, which are all necessary to ensure a quality assessment program.


2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 1805-1813
Author(s):  
Carla Abdelnour ◽  
Ester Esteban de Antonio ◽  
Alba Pérez-Cordón ◽  
Asunción Lafuente ◽  
Mar Buendía ◽  
...  

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought great disruption to health systems worldwide. This affected ongoing clinical research, particularly among those most vulnerable to the pandemic, like dementia patients. Fundació ACE is a research center and memory clinic based in Barcelona, Spain, one of the hardest-hit countries. Objective: To describe the ad-hoc strategic plan developed to cope with this crisis and to share its outcomes. Methods: We describe participants’ clinical and demographic features. Additionally, we explain our strategic plan aimed at minimizing the impact on clinical trial research activities, which included SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR and IgG serological tests to all participants and personnel. The outcomes of the plan are described in terms of observed safety events and drop-outs during the study period. Results: A total of 130 patients were participating in 16 active clinical trials in Fundació ACE when the lockdown was established. During the confinement, we performed 1018 calls to the participants, which led to identify adverse events in 26 and COVID-19 symptoms in 6. A total of 83 patients (64%) could restart on-site visits as early as May 11, 2020. All SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR diagnostic tests performed before on-site visits were negative and only three IgG serological tests were positive. Throughout the study period, we only observed one drop-out, due to an adverse event unrelated to COVID-19. Discussion: The plan implemented by Fundació ACE was able to preserve safety and integrity of ongoing clinical trials. We must use the lessons learned from the pandemic and design crisis-proof protocols for clinical trials.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva M. Van Baarle ◽  
Marieke C. Potma ◽  
Maria E. C. van Hoek ◽  
Laura A. Hartman ◽  
Bert A. C. Molewijk ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Various forms of Clinical Ethics Support (CES) have been developed in health care organizations. Over the past years, increasing attention has been paid to the question of how to foster the quality of ethics support. In the Netherlands, a CES quality assessment project based on a responsive evaluation design has been implemented. CES practitioners themselves reflected upon the quality of ethics support within each other’s health care organizations. This study presents a qualitative evaluation of this Responsive Quality Assessment (RQA) project. Methods CES practitioners’ experiences with and perspectives on the RQA project were collected by means of ten semi-structured interviews. Both the data collection and the qualitative data analysis followed a stepwise approach, including continuous peer review and careful documentation of the decisions. Results The main findings illustrate the relevance of the RQA with regard to fostering the quality of CES by connecting to context specific issues, such as gaining support from upper management and to solidify CES services within health care organizations. Based on their participation in the RQA, CES practitioners perceived a number of changes regarding CES in Dutch health care organizations after the RQA: acknowledgement of the relevance of CES for the quality of care; CES practices being more formalized; inspiration for developing new CES-related activities and more self-reflection on existing CES practices. Conclusions The evaluation of the RQA shows that this method facilitates an open learning process by actively involving CES practitioners and their concrete practices. Lessons learned include that “servant leadership” and more intensive guidance of RQA participants may help to further enhance both the critical dimension and the learning process within RQA.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel O. Martínez-Rach ◽  
Pablo Piñol ◽  
Otoniel M. López ◽  
Manuel Perez Malumbres ◽  
José Oliver ◽  
...  

When comparing the performance of video coding approaches, evaluating different commercial video encoders, or measuring the perceived video quality in a wireless environment, Rate/distortion analysis is commonly used, where distortion is usually measured in terms of PSNR values. However, PSNR does not always capture the distortion perceived by a human being. As a consequence, significant efforts have focused on defining an objective video quality metric that is able to assess quality in the same way as a human does. We perform a study of some available objective quality assessment metrics in order to evaluate their behavior in two different scenarios. First, we deal with video sequences compressed by different encoders at different bitrates in order to properly measure the video quality degradation associated with the encoding system. In addition, we evaluate the behavior of the quality metrics when measuring video distortions produced by packet losses in mobile ad hoc network scenarios with variable degrees of network congestion and node mobility. Our purpose is to determine if the analyzed metrics can replace the PSNR while comparing, designing, and evaluating video codec proposals, and, in particular, under video delivery scenarios characterized by bursty and frequent packet losses, such as wireless multihop environments.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERIK GAWEL ◽  
PAUL LEHMANN ◽  
SEBASTIAN STRUNZ ◽  
CLEMENS HEUSON

AbstractIn this paper, we take a Public Choice perspective to identify and categorise barriers to efficient public climate adaptation. Specifically, we distinguish three dimensions of public adaptation: extent, structure (form and timing) and organisation (coordination across territorial authorities and policy fields). Within each of these dimensions, we investigate how the self-interest of voters, pressure groups, bureaucrats and politicians may bias adaptation decisions. Thus, we indicate specific barriers to efficient public adaptation. Based on this framework, we illustrate how Germany's response to major flood disasters reflects the incentive structure of concerned stakeholders and their political interaction. The ad hoc character of some public adaptation measures implies a clear bias from the efficient benchmark. In conclusion, we argue that the propositions of Public Choice theory shed some light on how empirical public adaptation processes unfold.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Albachiara Boffelli ◽  
Matteo Kalchschmidt ◽  
Avraham Shtub

The University of Bergamo switched from regular classes to online classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic during March 2020, without leaving to the students the chance to meet their teachers in the traditional setting even once. As such, this context represents a unique opportunity to compare the traditional courses, held in the years before, with remote learning. In this paper, we focus on the lessons learned from switching a project management course that combines traditional lectures with Simulation-Based Training (SBT) to an online course with the same structure, same curriculum and the same teaching team. Lessons learned are based on the opportunity to compare the two methods of teaching and their learning outcomes. Based on the analysis, conclusions about the future of this course and similar courses are presented.


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