Creating SPACE to evolve academic assessment

Universities and research institutions have to assess individuals when making decisions about hiring, promotion and tenure, but there are concerns that such assessments are overly reliant on metrics and proxy measures of research quality that overlook important factors such as academic rigor, data sharing and mentoring. These concerns have led to calls for universities and institutions to reform the methods they use to assess research and researchers. Here we present a new tool called SPACE that has been designed to help universities and institutions implement such reforms. The tool focuses on five core capabilities and can be used by universities and institutions at all stages of reform process.

The Implementation of Multisensory Technique for Children with Dyslexia

Children with learning disabilities are a children's physiological or biological condition in which the competence or achievement is not according to predetermined standard criteria—learning disabilities in the form of errors in reading called dyslexia. Children with specific learning difficulties dyslexia experience difficulties in academic aspects; therefore, it is necessary to carry out an academic assessment and material for tutors to improve dyslexia reading skills. The multisensory technique is alternatives that used as reference material for tutors to improve dyslexia reading skills. Multisensory Techniques that can be used include 1) Reading and Spelling Training; 2) Visual Technique; 3) Auditory Technique, and 4) Tactile Technique. The reading and spelling focus on maintaining relationships between sounds and symbols starts with a single letter and continues with consonant combinations, vowel continuation, and complex letter groupings. The Visual Technique can start by using a picture card with the word written on the bottom (flashcard). Auditory technique for children who have difficulty with sound problems, teach a pair of short words and ask the child to say which word is correct. In addition, children with dyslexia will have the best learning by touch, so it is essential to incorporate this learning style into the instruction as a tactile technique.

Extractive Text Summarization of Student Essay Assignment Using Sentence Weight Features and Fuzzy C-Means

One of the main tasks of a lecturer is to give students an academic assessment in the learning process. The assessment process begins with reading or checking the answers of student assignments that contain a combination of very long sentences such as essay or report assignments. This certainly takes a lot of time to get the primary information contained therein. It is necessary to summarize the answers so that the lecturer does not need to read the whole document but is still able to take the essence of the response to the task. This study proposes the application of summarizing text documents of student essay assignments automatically using the Fuzzy C-Means method with the sentence weighting feature. The sentence weighting feature is used by selecting the sentence with the highest weight in one cluster, helping the system to get the primary information from a document quickly. The results of this study indicate that the system succeeds in summarizing text with an average evaluation of the values of precision, recall, accuracy, and F-measure of 0.52, 0.54, 0.70, and 0.52, respectively.One of the main tasks of a lecturer is to give students an academic assessment in the learning process. The assessment process begins with reading or checking the answers of student assignments that contain a combination of very long sentences such as essay or report assignments. This certainly takes a lot of time to get the primary information contained therein. It is necessary to summarize the answers so that the lecturer does not need to read the whole document but is still able to take the essence of the response to the task. This study proposes the application of summarizing text documents of student essay assignments automatically using the Fuzzy C-Means method with the sentence weighting feature. The sentence weighting feature is used by selecting the sentence with the highest weight in one cluster, helping the system to get the primary information from a document quickly. The results of this study indicate that the system succeeds in summarizing text with an average evaluation of the values of precision, recall, accuracy, and F-measure of 0.52, 0.54, 0.70, and 0.52, respectively.

The Adaptation of Academic Skills Assessment Tool for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Development delays in autism spectrum disorders include communication and social interaction deficit, stereotype behavior, cognitive and emotional development challenges. It makes necessary to adapt the academic assessment tools, taking into account the needs of students with ASD. The article is devoted to the description of the procedure of International Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (iPIPS) modification for academic assessment in ASD students enrolled in special education programs of types 8.1 and 8.2 (divided based on intelletual performance level). Presented iPIPS description, detailed analysis of developmental profile in ASD, which can influence the assessment results given. The article discusses adaptation procedure and recommendations for professionals which can be applied depending on the individual characteristics of the student.

UNDERSTANDING SYSTEM FAILURE IN HEALTH CARE: A MENTAL MODEL FOR DEMAND MANAGEMENT

The load on health systems caused by systemic overburden leads to heightened costs, longer waiting times, a reduced quality of care, andassociated problems. This may be caused by ’failure demand’; however, its definition is inadequate for a complex hierarchical system. Although accounting for a significant proportion of load in other industries, the academic assessment of failure demand in health care remains limited. We present a novel way of identifying repeat consumption, which we loosely equate with failure demand. We present a framework that can be used to identify ‘system failure’, the trigger for later repeat consumption. This provides new insight into understanding whether common events represent system failure. A diagnostic framework was developed from observations, the literature, and brainstorming. Commonly observed exit scenarios in health care were tested against the framework to create a system-failure list. The framework and the categorisation table were shared with eight international Lean health-care experts. Following feedback, the framework and categorisations were fine-tuned and consensus was achieved via member-checking. Identifying and managing failure demand for these settings can lead to a reduced system load, thus reducing costs and increasing system efficiency and quality.

Test Anxiety in Adolescent Students: Different Responses According to the Components of Anxiety as a Function of Sociodemographic and Academic Variables

ObjectiveTest anxiety (TA) is a construct that has scarcely been studied based on Lang’s three-dimensional model of anxiety. The objective of this article is to investigate the repercussion of sociodemographic and academic variables on different responses for each component of anxiety and for the type of test in adolescent students.MethodA total of 1181 students from 12 to 18 years old (M = 14.7 and SD = 1.8) participated, of whom 569 were boys (48.2%) and 612 girls (51.8%). A sociodemographic questionnaire and the Cuestionario de Ansiedad ante los examenes-Adaptado (CAEX-A) [Test Anxiety Questionnaire-Adapted] an adaptation for Spanish secondary school levels (ESO) and Bachillerato were administered.ResultsGirls scored higher on the cognitive and physiological components of TA than boys, the intensity of the physiological response increasing with age. Bachillerato level students reported more physiological anxiety than those of ESO level. Students with better marks in the previous year presented more anxiety in the cognitive component, while those who obtained the lower mark presented higher anxiety values in the behavioral component. Participants reported that the types of tests that cause them more anxiety were oral tests in front of the class, oral presentation in front of a panel, and mathematics tests.ConclusionAdolescents show a differential response of TA based on the physiological, cognitive and motor components, mediated by the variables of gender, age, grade, academic performance and type of exam. These results serve to design specific intervention programs to manage anxiety in situations of academic assessment.