Thesis (M.D.) -- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 2007. / Vita. Bibliography: pp. 40-41.

This thesis concerns a longitudinal study of the practice of Live Peer Assessment on two University courses in Computer Science. By Live Peer Assessment I mean a practice of whole-class collective marking using electronic devices of student artefacts demonstrated in a class or lecture theatre with instantaneous aggregated results displayed on screen immediately after each grading decision. This is radically different from historical peer-assessment in universities which has primarily been asynchronous process of marking of students' work by small subsets of the cohort (e.g. 1 student artefact is marked by < 3 fellow students). Live Peer Assessment takes place in public, is marked by (as far as practically possible) the whole cohort, and results are instantaneous. This study observes this practice, first on a level 4 course in E-Media Design where students' main assignment is a multimedia CV (or resume) and secondly on a level 7 course in Multimedia Specification Design and Production where students produce a multimedia information artefact in both prototype and final versions. In both cases, students learned about these assignments from reviewing works done by previous students in Live Peer Evaluation events where they were asked to collectively publicly mark those works according to the same rubrics that the tutors would be using. In this level 4 course, this was used to help students get a better understanding of the marks criteria. In the level 7 course, this goal was also pursued, but was also used for the peer marking of students' own work. Among the major findings of this study are: • In the level 4 course student attainment in the final assessment improved on average by 13% over 4 iterations of the course, with very marked increase among students in the lower percentiles • The effectiveness of Live Peer Assessment in improving student work comes from o Raising the profile of the marking rubric o Establishing a repertoire of example work o Modelling the 'noticing' of salient features (of quality or defect) enabling students to self-monitor more effectively • In the major accepted measure of peer-assessment reliability (correlation between student awarded marks and tutor awarded marks) Live Peer Assessment is superior to traditional peer assessment. That is to say, students mark more like tutors when using Live Peer Assessment • In the second major measure (effect-size) which calculates if students are more strict or generous than tutors, (where the ideal would be no difference), Live Peer Assessment is broadly comparable with traditional peer assessment but this is susceptible to the conditions under which it takes place • The reason for the better greater alignment of student and tutor marks comes from the training sessions but also from the public nature of the marking where individuals can compare their marking practice with that of the rest of the class on a criterion by criterion basis • New measures proposed in this thesis to measure the health of peer assessment events comprise: Krippendorf's Alpha, Magin's Reciprocity Matrix, the median pairwise tutor student marks correlation, the Skewness and Kurtosis of the distribution of pairwise tutor student marking correlations • Recommendations for practice comprise that: o summative peer assessment should not take place under conditions of anonymity but that very light conditions of marking competence should be enforced on student markers (e.g. > 0.2 correlation between individual student marking and that of tutors) o That rubrics can be more suggestive and colloquial in the conditions of Live Peer Assessment because the marking criteria can be instantiated in specific examples of student attainment and therefore the criteria may be less legalistically drafted because a more holistic understanding of quality can be communicated.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-07, Section: B, page: 4122. Adviser: Osama I. Mikhail. Includes bibliographical references.

The primary purpose of this study was to identify and secure perceptions of what personal and institutional factors influenced and attracted adult students to enroll in four year institutions in Oklahoma. The secondary purpose was to compare student responses by institution. The more notable findings include: (1) dominant personal factors as to why adult students in this study returned to college were reportedly to improve/advance themselves, especially as it relates to their career; (2) flexible class scheduling was reported to be the most important institutional function for recruiting adult students, with academic quality and institutional costs of education next in importance; (3) almost 90% of respondents reported being under 45 years of age; (4) almost 85% reported commuting fewer than 50 miles to class; (5) approximately 90% reported enrolling each fall and spring (6) approximately twice as many respondents who returned to college reported they did so because it was more important to them to complete an unfinished degree than to begin a degree. Conclusions drawn from this study are as follows: (1) adult students appear to be unlikely to enroll in classes meeting more than three times a week; (2) adult students in Oklahoma may no longer be described as part time and/or night students; (3) these students appear to be returning to college as full-time students, absorbing it into their daily lives and continuing their careers; (4) adult students in Oklahoma are homogeneous in that they tend to be relatively young, white, well educated and employed; (5) institutional officials should exercise caution about using the information given by these students as tools for recruiting adult students to their institutions.

Canadian science policy has increasingly linked the value of academic knowledge to its contribution to economic competitiveness. A market vision of scientific quality is embedded in new funding criteria which encourage academic scientists to collaborate with industry, generate intellectual property, and found companies. While the “Mode 2” thesis advanced by Gibbons and Nowotny asserts that quality criteria in science are changing to incorporate economic relevance, there is little empirical evidence to either refute or substantiate this claim. Using Bourdieu’s theory of practice, this study explores the responses of basic health scientists to market-oriented funding criteria. The goal of the study was to understand how scientists, occupying different positions of power in the scientific field, defined “good science” and pursued scientific prestige. Twenty semi-structured interviews were carried out with 11 scientists trained before and 9 trained after the rise of market-oriented science policy. Data derived from Curriculum Vitae and Background Information Forms were used to estimate the type and volume of capital each participant held. Scientific capital, as reflected in peer-reviewed publications and grants, was perceived as the dominant form of recognition of scientific quality. However, “entrepreneurial capital”, as reflected in patents, licenses, industry funding and company spin-offs, functioned as a new form of power in accessing resources. Study participants adopted different positions in a symbolic struggle over competing visions of “good science” and used different strategies to acquire scientific prestige. Some pursued a traditional strategy of accumulation of scientific capital, while others sought to accumulate and convert entrepreneurial capital into scientific capital. Findings suggest that there is no longer a single symbolic order in the scientific field, but that the field is stratified according to a scientific and market logic. Hence, support is provided for both continuity with “Mode 1” and change towards “Mode 2” evaluation of academic quality.

Canadian science policy has increasingly linked the value of academic knowledge to its contribution to economic competitiveness. A market vision of scientific quality is embedded in new funding criteria which encourage academic scientists to collaborate with industry, generate intellectual property, and found companies. While the “Mode 2” thesis advanced by Gibbons and Nowotny asserts that quality criteria in science are changing to incorporate economic relevance, there is little empirical evidence to either refute or substantiate this claim. Using Bourdieu’s theory of practice, this study explores the responses of basic health scientists to market-oriented funding criteria. The goal of the study was to understand how scientists, occupying different positions of power in the scientific field, defined “good science” and pursued scientific prestige. Twenty semi-structured interviews were carried out with 11 scientists trained before and 9 trained after the rise of market-oriented science policy. Data derived from Curriculum Vitae and Background Information Forms were used to estimate the type and volume of capital each participant held. Scientific capital, as reflected in peer-reviewed publications and grants, was perceived as the dominant form of recognition of scientific quality. However, “entrepreneurial capital”, as reflected in patents, licenses, industry funding and company spin-offs, functioned as a new form of power in accessing resources. Study participants adopted different positions in a symbolic struggle over competing visions of “good science” and used different strategies to acquire scientific prestige. Some pursued a traditional strategy of accumulation of scientific capital, while others sought to accumulate and convert entrepreneurial capital into scientific capital. Findings suggest that there is no longer a single symbolic order in the scientific field, but that the field is stratified according to a scientific and market logic. Hence, support is provided for both continuity with “Mode 1” and change towards “Mode 2” evaluation of academic quality.

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