scholarly journals Examination of the Inter-Rater Agreement among Faculty Marking a Research Proposal on an Undergraduate Health Course

Author(s):  
Shari Rone-Adams ◽  
Sandra Naylor

Purpose: This research looked at inter-rater agreement among faculty marking a research proposal on an undergraduate health course. The purpose of this study was to investigate if there were significant differences between marks as well as the comments given on research proposals that were double marked by two faculty members, where faculty were blind to the other marker’s marks and comments. Subjects: The subjects for this study consisted of 80 final year health students who submitted a research proposal and 13 full-time and 10 part-time faculty members who double marked the proposals. Methods: Faculty pairs marked the proposals independently and were required to meet with each other and discuss the marks given, reasons for the mark and the comments. Markers were asked to come to an agreement about the mark and the comments. Analyses: Agreement in marks was assessed using a Bland-Altman plot. Weighted Cohen's Kappa was used to estimate the agreement between the classifications given by markers. Comments were analyzed for differences using thematic analysis. Results: There was a wide discrepancy in the classification of students between markers. The weighted proportions found to agree on classification was 46%. Analysis of the comments indicated a wide discrepancy between markers. Conclusion: The outcomes of this study are similar to previous studies that have looked at inter-rater agreement when double marking was used to mark various types of written assignments. Further exploration of the inter-rater agreement in the marking process and other marking processes that results in a transparent system is needed.

Author(s):  
Ruth E Kelly

Role theory was utilized in this descriptive study to investigate clinical faculty in baccalaureate nursing programs. The Clinical Faculty Role Questionnaire was developed and employed to study 134 full-time and part-time clinical faculty members. Theory derivation was used and the concept of role engagement was empirically supported. Pearson's correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationships among the variables. T-test results identified differences between full-time and part-time faculty members on role variables of status, role conception, and role engagement. The relationships between study concepts and areas of educational content related to the teaching role were explored and identified as supportive of the clinical educator role. Ancillary qualitative investigation resulted in the identification of several themes: the need for clinical competence; for part-time faculty, a desire to be included in program planning.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 156
Author(s):  
Yahya Mohammad Alshehri

This paper attempts to shed more light on the teaching practices of part-time faculty members and their impacts on community college students. It has been found that part-time faculty members employ traditional teaching practices compared to full-time faculty members. These teaching practices have, to varying degrees, negative effects on community college students. It has also been found that some of the compelling factors that hinder part-time faculty from utilizing effective teaching practices are institutional and departmental policies and practices. This paper identifies some gaps in the literature and calls future studies. It delineates a couple of recommendations aiming at improving the teaching practices of part-time faculty as well as their working condition. 


2021 ◽  
pp. 153819272110665
Author(s):  
Beatrice Avolio ◽  
Jorge Benzaquen ◽  
Carlos Bazán

This study analyzed the critical factors to approach the emergency online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic in a business school in Latin America. The data were collected through a semi-structured online questionnaire administered to 94 full-time and part-time faculty members. The study identified 10 critical factors for the successful implementation of emergency online teaching. The originality of the study lies in analyzing the experience in migrating to online teaching in a Hispanic higher education academic institution.


Author(s):  
Shu-Han Chen ◽  
Tzeng-Ji Chen ◽  
Shinn-Jang Hwang

Little is known about family medicine academic staff in Taiwan, and basic data about this workforce may aid healthcare decision makers. We analysed data on Taiwan’s 13 medical schools collected by the Taiwan Association of Family Medicine from June to September 2019. Items included medical school names and total staff, and the gender, age, degree, working title (part-time/full-time), academic level, and sub-specialty of each current family medicine faculty member. A total of 116 family medicine faculty members were reported; most were male (n= 85, 73.3%). Ages ranged between 30 and 69 years, with a mean (SD) age of 43.3 (8.09). Faculty members with a master’s degree were the largest group (n= 49, 42.2%), and most were academic lecturers (n=49, 42.2%). Additionally, only about one-fourth (n=26, 22.4%) of family medicine faculty in medical schools were full-time, while the other three-fourths (n=90, 77.6%) were part-time faculty; most were located in northern Taiwan (n=79, 68.1%) and specialized in gerontology and geriatrics (n=55, 47.4%) and hospice palliative care (n=53, 45.7%). Our research provides the most complete census of family medicine academic physicians in medical schools in Taiwan. The results inform efforts to improve the establishment and development of family medicine departments in Taiwan.


Author(s):  
William G. Rothstein

Large-scale federal funding of research in the 1950s and 1960s enabled medical schools to hire many full-time clinical faculty members who differed from their part-time colleagues in their orientation toward research and patient care. When research funding leveled off in the late 1960s, medical schools turned to patient-care revenues from Medicare and Medicaid to pay faculty salaries. Faculty earnings from research and clinical activities have led to inbalances in the attention given to patient care, teaching, and research. Until well past mid-century, most clinical faculty members were part-time teachers with extensive private practices. In 1951, part-time faculty members comprised 32 percent of the non-M.D. faculty and 80 percent of the M.D. faculty, and they provided 40 percent of the total faculty time spent on all activities. The use of part-time faculty members in the clinical fields was considered advantageous because they retained their clinical skills and were paid lower salaries. When the federal government began large-scale funding of research in medical schools, full-time clinical faculty positions became more feasible because the government compensated faculty members for their research time. Some faculty members carried out federally funded research during the summer months to supplement their academic-year salaries. Many others carried out funded research during the academic year, with the medical schools receiving compensation on a prorated basis for the time lost from teaching and other academic obligations. Medical schools were also reimbursed by all grants for research overhead expenses. By 1970, 49 percent of all medical school faculty members received partial or full support for their research activities. Because research detracted from the private practices of clinical faculty members, few of them would have made the necessary financial sacrifices to undertake research and live on normal academic salaries. Medical schools and the NIH therefore used several devices to create nominal faculty salaries for purposes of grant funding that were much higher than the actual faculty salaries paid by medical schools. One method was for the medical school to pay only a part, such as one-third, of a faculty member’s salary, while the total salary was used in grant applications.


1979 ◽  
Vol 12 (03) ◽  
pp. 318-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Gruberg ◽  
Virginia Sapiro

In the late sixties, women in the United States became sensitized to their second-class status and organized to raise their consciousness and change their conditions. At the same time women in academia began to organize within their disciplines to address the problems they faced there. Political science was no exception; in 1969, when women constituted 5 percent of the membership of the APSA and 8 percent of all political science faculty teaching in colleges and universities, the APSA Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession and the Women's Caucus for Political Science formed. Numerous reports have revealed a moderate increase in the presence of women in the profession in recent years. As Table 1 shows, the percentage of degrees in political science awarded to women has increased since 1970. By the academic year 1976–77 women constituted 11 percent of full-time faculty and 18 percent of part-time faculty. Twenty-three percent of the students entering Ph.D. programs in 1977 were women, a downturn of 3 percent from the previous year, although an overall rise from the previous decade.


Author(s):  
Paul Lauter

While increasing attention began to be focused a decade ago on the scandalous misuse of part-time or “adjunct” faculty in colleges, their use has persistently spread. In fact, new varieties of “temporary” positions continue to be invented by college managers. “Part-time” faculty now include some who teach what amounts to a full load, but who are paid on a credit hour or per course basis, others who scramble for one or two courses each term and are paid flat rates, as well as a few whose salaries and benefits are prorated fractions of those of a full-timer. But there are now many “off-tenure” full-time appointments as well: “lecturers,” whose contracts are renewed every year or two but who may remain in their positions, without tenure, indefinitely; “nontenure-track” instructors and assistant professors, who may stay at an institution for four, six or more years but who, at the point of a tenure decision, must move on; “replacement” appointments, who fill lines for a year or two and then migrate to similar positions elsewhere. I shall use the term “adjunct faculty” or “adjuncts” to describe this quite varied group of individuals, for while the word is not precisely appropriate in all cases, its dictionary definition calls attention to the fact that such faculty, while “joined or added” to the institution, are in critical ways “not essentially a part of it.” Handwringing over the plight of adjuncts has brought no relief, and even most union contracts have so far been marginally helpful. That should be no surprise, for the exploitation of adjuncts serves a number of crucial interests of college managers and of those to whom they report. It is important to identify these interests more clearly if the abuse of this large number of our colleagues is ever to be brought under control, much less halted. For the exploitation of adjuncts is not a function of managerial nastiness, nor is it—any more than was the War on Vietnam—an unfortunate product of historical “accidents.” Rather, it is rooted in a particular conception of college management designed to serve historically distinctive social and political interests.


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