Project Title: Support and Assessment of Laboratory work in Chemistry
Project Leader(s): Paul Yates
This project will develop support materials for selected experiments in the first year physical chemistry laboratory. These will allow students to gain an appreciation of experimental design, to analyse appropriate data, and to produce a coherent report within an integrated non-laboratory environment. Each package will consist of a video clip of experimental apparatus, appropriate pre-laboratory exercises, a means of generating randomised data, a guided analysis tool and links to external analysis tools, post-laboratory exercises, and a pro-forma for electronic submission of the final report.
During the data generation stage, students will be required as far as possible to carry out the same readings as they would in the actual laboratory. Thus the data will be presented in the form of photographs (where colour changes need to be noted, for example) and representations of instruments (such as a thermometer when a temperature needs to be measured). This will retain some of the uncertainty associated with genuine experimental work.
The materials will be used in the cases where a student misses a laboratory practical for whatever reason, and as a reassessment vehicle where a student has not satisfied the requirements for successful completion of the laboratory course.
Support and Assessment of Laboratory work in Chemistry by Paul Yates, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Project Title: Quality Enhancement of the Keele Undergraduate Psychology Provision
Project Leader(s): John Sloboda and Mark Trueman
This project will support the Psychology Department in a review of its undergraduate provision during the academic year 2000-1.
The project will deliver two outcomes:
1. A redesign of the undergraduate provision which addresses a range of internal and external factors impacting on undergraduate education in the discipline and the sector (including professional accreditation, benchmarking, new developments in course delivery and assessment, staffing changes, and the changing undergraduate market).
2. A documentation of the process by which the first outcome is achieved. This will focus on the refinement of methodology which is suitable for deployment in constraint-relevant course redesign within a resource-lean environment, and which is capable of generalisation to a range of disciplines and levels. The methodology will include (a) the design and analysis of a student experience questionnaire capable of being applied in a range of disciplines and at different points in time, separated by as much as 5 years, (b) the use of student-related data collected for quality assurance purposes, (c) a review of good practice in other institutions; (d) refinement of assessment methods and criteria in relation to the skills to be assessed and the level of study at which the assessment takes place.
Quality Enhancement of the Keele Undergraduate Psychology Provision by John Sloboda and Mark Trueman, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
