This paper reports on an existing undergraduate academic skills module where the assignment, a printed portfolio, has been replaced with an online portfolio. Qualitative feedback reveals that students most valued the provision of rapid and regular feedback on work, and had a raised awareness of employability goals. Tutors most valued the ability…

Online education continues to become an increasingly prominent part of higher education, but many students struggle in distance courses. For this reason, there has been considerable interest in predicting which students will succeed in online courses and which will receive poor grades or drop out prior to completion. Effective intervention depends…

In an economy driven by technological innovation and a complex social landscape, schools can no longer count on traditional academic preparation to set children up for success later in life. The types of skills that will enable students to succeed in the 21st century--such as the ability to solve complex problems, transfer knowledge to new…

In the high-stakes accountability English educational system, decisions made by government and agencies about curriculum, pedagogy and assessment drive school planning and actions. This paper analyses the drivers for the recent change to French German and Spanish GCSEs and highlights particular areas of the new specification which may damage the…

Online monitoring of high-voltage (HV) equipment is a vital tool for early detection of insulation failure. Most insulation failures are caused by partial discharges (PDs) inside the HV equipment. Because of the very high cost of establishing HV equipment facility and the limitations of electromagnetic interference-screened laboratories, only a…

Recent reforms in England and the USA give evidence that teaching methods and content can change rapidly, given a strong external pressure, for example through economic incentives, inspections, school choice, and public display of schools' and pupils' performances. Educational activities in the Scandinavian countries have increasingly become…

Institutions of higher education commonly employ a conjunctive standard setting strategy, which requires students to resit failed examinations until they pass all tests. An alternative strategy allows students to compensate a failing grade with other test results. This paper uses regression discontinuity design to compare the effect of first-year…

Given the longstanding role of grades in education, and their increased use for high-stakes decisions including student mobility, admission, selection, and accountability, this paper presents a systematic review of grading policies across all 10 Canadian provinces and 3 territories. In total, 23 policies were inductively analyzed for their…

This article proposes a film assignment that uses a series of activities built around the film "Draft Day" to supplement traditional pedagogies for teaching contract law in introductory courses. This film facilitates learning by reinforcing the contract formation principles faculty teach in introductory courses; showing contract…

This paper is a discussion and critical review of grading practices at a large flagship public university. In this paper, I examine the rights a student has when calling into question the authority and decision-making abilities of teachers in a classroom setting. Following my recent experience with a professor (noted at the beginning of this…

When the safety of the public is at stake, it is particularly relevant for licensing and credentialing exam agencies to use defensible standard setting methods to categorize candidates into competence categories (e.g., pass/fail). The aim of this study was to gather evidence to support change to the Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing-USA…

This dissertation consists of two separate essays on major choice in higher education. In the first chapter, I investigate how differences in information affect students' major choices over time. Since college has such a short time horizon, the amount of information students have before coming in may play a big role in how well they are matched to…

In the first years of his career as a high school math teacher, Matt Townsley was bothered by the fact that his grades penalized students for not learning content quickly. A student could master every standard, but low quiz grades and homework assignments they didn't complete because they didn't understand would lower their final grade,…

Within education, determining whether a student is progressing appropriately occurs through assessment. However, opinions regarding how physical education students should be assessed vary greatly. As a consequence, some physical education professionals encourage skills-driven measures of competency, and others believe that attributes such as…

As a chief pillar of higher education and technological innovation, universities have been enhancing national innovative capacity and promoting the social and economic development of the nation. Graduate education is an important channel of nurturing high-level talents, of which the cultivation of graduate students' practical ability is at the…