GRADUATE ATTRIBUTE MANAGEMENT: MAPPING UNIVERSITY GENERIC ATTRIBUTES TO THOSE OF THE CANADIAN ENGINEERING ACCREDITATION BOARD

After 2009, accredited Canadian engineering schools began to develop processes to map the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board-Graduate Attributes(CEAB-GAs) to their curriculum and integrate ways to measure them. At around the same time, several Canadian universities embarked on a process to identifytheir own University-wide Graduate Attribute (UGAs). UGAs are assumed to be applicable across study disciplines; i.e. the university experience as a whole.To address the need to assess students on the basis of the CEAB GAs and the UGAs in the Faculty of Engineering and develop the basis for an integrated graduate attribute management system, an interdisciplinary team conducted a yearlong qualitative study with the purpose of exploringthe intersection of the UGAs with CEAB-GAs. The key objectives were to develop a mapping process between the two sets and to explore management strategies for assessing both sets of graduate attributes. Two independent teams performed the mapping exercise using a sequential mixed methods study design. A qualitative exploratory mapping study was followed by a quantitative aggregation of the mapping results. Integration of the qualitative and quantitative study results was completed as part of the interpretation of the results. Both forward and backward mapping took place. Results demonstrated that, although generic, UGAs may not necessarily capture specific professional program graduate attributes such as the CEAB-GAs. The study also highlighted the need for more revisions and updates of UGAs by including various stakeholders who can substantially contribute to implementation and assessment of UGAs.

Using a Heliospheric Upwinding eXtrapolation Technique to Magnetically Connect Different Regions of the Heliosphere

Understanding how coronal structure propagates and evolves from the Sun and into the heliosphere has been thoroughly explored using sophisticated MHD models. From these, we have a reasonably good working understanding of the dynamical processes that shape the formation and evolution of stream interaction regions and rarefactions, including their locations, orientations, and structure. However, given the technical expertize required to produce, maintain, and run global MHD models, their use has been relatively restricted. In this study, we refine a simple Heliospheric eXtrapolation Technique (HUX) to include not only forward mapping from the Sun to 1 AU (or elsewhere), but backward mapping toward the Sun. We demonstrate that this technique can provide substantially more accurate mappings than the standard, and often applied “ballistic” approximation. We also use machine learning (ML) methods to explore whether the HUX approximation to the momentum equation can be refined without loss of simplicity, finding that it likely provides the optimum balance. We suggest that HUX can be used, in conjunction with coronal models (PFSS or MHD) to more accurately connect measurements made at 1 AU, Stereo-A, Parker Solar Probe, and Solar Orbiter with their solar sources. In particular, the HUX technique: 1) provides a substantial improvement over the “ballistic” approximation for connecting to the source longitude of streams; 2) is almost as accurate, but considerably easier to implement than MHD models; and 3) can be applied as a general tool to magnetically connect different regions of the inner heliosphere together, as well as providing a simple 3-D reconstruction.

Intersecting Roadmaps: Resolving Tension Between Profession-Specific and University-Wide Graduate Attributes

Can we map university-wide graduate attributes to specific program requirements? Can we develop and manage an integrated assessment process? In this article, we present a seven-month long project where we attempted to map generic university graduate attributes (UGAs) to required engineering program graduate attributes in a large Canadian research institution. The purpose of the project was to explore the intersection of the UGAs with engineering graduate attributes, evaluate the accreditation process, develop a mapping process, and examine management strategies for assessing both sets of graduate attributes, all the while keeping the continual improvement process attractive to students, instructors, and administrators. Using a modified dialectical inquiry, two groups worked on the mapping process: one from engineering, the other from social sciences (Education and Arts), to ensure objectivity of comparison. Both forward and backward mapping took place. Results demonstrated that, although generic, UGAs may not necessarily capture specific professional program graduate attributes. The study also highlighted the need for more revisions and updates of UGAs by including various stakeholders who can substantially contribute to the implementation and assessment of UGAs.

Ambition and ambivalence: Reconsidering positive peace as a trans-scalar peace system

For 50 years positive peace has served as an aspirational goal for many scholars and practitioners of peace. However, much recent scholarly literature evidences a substantial ambivalence toward this ambition, suggesting that prominent theories, policies and practices in the field have failed to support positive peace. This article argues that a key reason for this shortcoming is the field’s failure to respond adequately to the evolving character of conflict (latent and overt) related to technological, legal and economic changes associated with the consolidation of globalization over this period. This consolidation has served to shrink the distances between previously remote actors, to expand exponentially the influence of many institutions, norms, practices and projects as they penetrate new societies, to concentrate power into the hands of ever fewer actors, and to reify instead of deconstruct endemic inequality and marginalization within states, between states, and across the globe. The failure of the field to respond robustly to these changes also prompts concerns about its ability to face sweeping challenges soon to come related to technological innovation, climate change, demographic shifts, labour automation and the search for new governance models. This article, therefore, reaffirms the aspirational goals of peace and conflict studies by building on Lederach’s earlier Peacebuilding Triangle to propose a Trans-Scalar Peace System which would recognize the need for coherent and supplementary policies and actions across scales (global, regional, international, nation and local) and utilize a backward-mapping approach to promote a parity of esteem for actors, institutions and decisions at each scale which would, at the same time, privilege the voice of those with the most pertinent knowledge, experience and capacity for action in support of any given policy or practice. Such an approach would honour the lessons of the ‘local turn’ while developing a global trans-scalar peace system.

Big-Picture Planning and Backward Mapping

In the second section, Planning the Course, readers who need to develop online courses will find sequential guidance and sample planning documents to aid in large-scale thinking, curriculum selection, and general course development. This section includes chapters that guide readers on writing course objectives and learning outcomes, backward mapping, determining how to narrow down what will be taught, writing or choosing curriculum, navigating textbooks and open educational resources (OERs), and considering online methods and strategies. Each chapter in this section targets course development and design to support online music appreciation instructors as they create, transfer, or refresh online music appreciation courses.

Data assimilation using adaptive, non-conservative, moving mesh models

Numerical models solved on adaptive moving meshes have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Motivating problems include the study of fluids in a Lagrangian frame and the presence of highly localized structures such as shock waves or interfaces. In the former case, Lagrangian solvers move the nodes of the mesh with the dynamical flow; in the latter, mesh resolution is increased in the proximity of the localized structure. Mesh adaptation can include remeshing, a procedure that adds or removes mesh nodes according to specific rules reflecting constraints in the numerical solver. In this case, the number of mesh nodes will change during the integration and, as a result, the dimension of the model's state vector will not be conserved. This work presents a novel approach to the formulation of ensemble data assimilation (DA) for models with this underlying computational structure. The challenge lies in the fact that remeshing entails a different state space dimension across members of the ensemble, thus impeding the usual computation of consistent ensemble-based statistics. Our methodology adds one forward and one backward mapping step before and after the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) analysis, respectively. This mapping takes all the ensemble members onto a fixed, uniform reference mesh where the EnKF analysis can be performed. We consider a high-resolution (HR) and a low-resolution (LR) fixed uniform reference mesh, whose resolutions are determined by the remeshing tolerances. This way the reference meshes embed the model numerical constraints and are also upper and lower uniform meshes bounding the resolutions of the individual ensemble meshes. Numerical experiments are carried out using 1-D prototypical models: Burgers and Kuramoto–Sivashinsky equations and both Eulerian and Lagrangian synthetic observations. While the HR strategy generally outperforms that of LR, their skill difference can be reduced substantially by an optimal tuning of the data assimilation parameters. The LR case is appealing in high dimensions because of its lower computational burden. Lagrangian observations are shown to be very effective in that fewer of them are able to keep the analysis error at a level comparable to the more numerous observers for the Eulerian case. This study is motivated by the development of suitable EnKF strategies for 2-D models of the sea ice that are numerically solved on a Lagrangian mesh with remeshing.

Data assimilation using adaptive, non-conservative, moving mesh models

Numerical models solved on adaptive moving meshes have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Motivating problems include the study of fluids in a Lagrangian frame and the presence of highly localized structures such as shock waves or interfaces. In the former case, Lagrangian solvers move the nodes of the mesh with the dynamical flow; in the latter, mesh resolution is increased in the proximity of the localized structure. Mesh adaptation can include remeshing, a procedure that adds or removes mesh nodes according to specific rules reflecting constraints in the numerical solver. In this case, the number of mesh nodes will change during the integration and, as a result, the dimension of the model’s state vector will not be conserved. This work presents a novel approach to the formulation of ensemble data assimilation for models with this underlying computational structure. The challenge lies in the fact that remeshing entails a different state space dimension across members of the ensemble, thus impeding the usual computation of consistent ensemble-based statistics. Our methodology adds one forward and one backward mapping step before and after the EnKF analysis respectively. This mapping takes all the ensemble members onto a fixed, uniform, reference mesh where the EnKF analysis can be performed. We consider a high- (HR) and a low-resolution (LR) fixed uniform reference mesh, whose resolutions are determined by the remeshing tolerances. This way the reference meshes embed the model numerical constraints and also are upper and lower uniform meshes bounding the resolutions of the individual ensemble meshes. Numerical experiments are carried out using 1D prototypical models: Burgers and Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equations, and both Eulerian and Lagrangian synthetic observations. While the HR strategy generally outperforms that of LR, their skill difference can be reduced substantially by an optimal tuning of the data assimilation parameters. The LR case is appealing in high-dimensions because of its lower computational burden. Lagrangian observations are shown to be very effective in that fewer of them are able to keep the analysis error at a level comparable to the more numerous observers for the Eulerian case. This study is motivated by the development of suitable EnKF strategies for 2D models of the sea-ice that are numerically solved on a Lagrangian mesh with remeshing.

The re-design of a fourth year Bachelor of Education programme using the Constructive Alignment Approach

The focus of this article is on the re-design of a fourth year Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) programme at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Due to the changes in teacher qualifications, as outlined in the 2015 Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualification (MRTEQ) policy document, Higher Education Institutions were required to adapt their Initial Teaching Education (ITE) programmes to meet the requirements of the new policy document. This article describes the use of a backward mapping approach, in conjunction with the application of a constructive alignment framework, used by the education faculty at UWC to adjust the teaching and learning in the B.Ed programme to address the outcomes and standards required by the MRTEQ policy document. Given the type of student enrolled at UWC, the article provides a discussion on the challenges involved in developing a programme for students who might not have been adequately prepared for their tertiary studies due to the disadvantaged school contexts they come from. The article thus provides a reflective discussion on the challenges involved in the re-design process that used the pre-service teacher competencies expected at the end of the B.Ed programme at UWC, to develop the teaching and learning programme and assessment tasks for the fourth year B.Ed course.Received: 02 August 2018Accepted: 31 October 2018Published online: 29 November 2018