Academic literature on the topic 'Kansas State University – Examinations – Physics'

This research evaluates the use of online examinations in college courses from both instructor and student perspectives. Instructional software was developed at Kansas State University to administer online homework assignments and examinations. Survey data were collected from two classes to measure and evaluate the level of student preferences for online examinations. The statistical determinants of student preferences for online testing were identified and quantified using logistic regression analysis. Strategies for the effective use of online examinations are summarized for potential adopters of online examinations.

Richard Schelp completed his PhD in lattice theory in 1970 at Kansas State University. However, he did not take a traditional route to a PhD in mathematics and an outstanding career as a professor and a mathematical researcher. He grew up in rural northeast Missouri. He received his BS in mathematics and physics from the University of Central Missouri. After the completion of his master's degree in mathematics from Kansas State University, he assumed a position as an associate mathematician in the Applied Science Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University for five years. To start his PhD programme at Kansas State University, he had to quit a well-paying position. Also, he was already married to his wife Billie (Swopes) Schelp and he had a family – a daughter Lisa and a son Rick. This was a courageous step to take, but it says something about who Dick Schelp was.

Owen Phillips grew up in Sydney, Australia, and following a distinguished record at a State high school and in the final NSW school examinations, he enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney in 1948. In the third year, he transferred to the Faculty of Science to do more advanced courses in Mathematics and Physics (with the idea of going back to Engineering after one year and qualifying for a Science degree on the way). Owen did so well, however, that he went on to do a fourth year in Mathematics and graduated with First Class Honours.

One of the problems that is of interest to researchers is the adaptation of fi rst-year students. One of the indicators of their successful adaptation, many researchers believe performance. With the help of correlation and structural analysis, the interrelation between the results of fi nal examinations in the general education school and the results of training in the fi rst half of the year during the adaptation of fi rst-year students of the Institute of Physics of the Kazan (Volga) Federal University (KFU) was investigated. At the fi rst stage of the pedagogical analysis, we came to the conclusion that between the results of the fi nal examinations in the general education school and the results of training in the fi rst half of the year, during the adaptation of the fi rst-year students of the Institute of Physics, a slight diff erence was revealed, which demonstrates their interdependence. The article also presents an algorithm for working with a correlation matrix. The materials of the article can be used by high school teachers, curators of student groups, as well as by researchers in organizing and conducting an experiment on their problem in the higher school educational organization.

The article is dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of two Internet physics olympiads organized by the Physics Department of Novosibirsk State University, in which senior pupils from Russia and the USA participated. For the time when before the advent of popular social networks there were a few more years when the currently popular messengers were not yet widespread, the organization of such competitions was technically and organizationally far from a trivial task. It was also necessary to overcome the problem of different programs and different levels of school physics teaching in Russia and the USA, as well as the problem of the language barrier. All these tasks were successfully solved by the joint efforts of the Russian and American organizing committees, and in 1999 the competitions Novosibirsk – San Diego and in 2000 Novosibirsk – St. Petersburg – San Diego – Seattle were held. A successful invention that allowed equalizing the chances of teams and replacing interethnic rivalry with cooperation was the idea to hold competitions between international teams, consisting of an equal number of Russian and American schoolchildren communicating with each other via direct video communication. Sets of tasks were prepared for the olympiads, both ordinary, written, and video clips with tasks-demonstrations. The latter have been particularly successful in resolving the problem of the language barrier. The great help in conducting these two Olympiads was the many years of experience gained by NSU during the All-Siberian Olympiads and the idea of the demonstration tasks used in entrance examinations at the Physics Department of NSU. We present in this article both the content of the tasks of the Olympiads and the responses of the domestic and American press to the events described.

07–430Anson, Chris M. (N Carolina State U, Raleigh, USA; chris_anson@ncsu.edu), Assessing writing in cross-curricular programs: Determining the locus of activity. Assessing Writing (Elsevier) 11.2 (2006), 100–112.07–431Chanock, Kate (La Trobe U, Bundoora, Australia; c.chanock@latrobe.edu.au), Help for a dyslexic learner from an unlikely source: The study of Ancient Greek. Literacy (Oxford University Press) 40.3 (2006), 164–170.07–432Cole, Simon (Daito Bunka U, Japan), Consciousness-raising and task-based learning in writing. The Language Teacher (Japan Association for Language Teaching) 31.1 (2007), 3–8.07–433Daniels, Peter T. (New Jersey, USA). On beyond alphabets. Written Language and Literacy (Benjamins) 9.1 (2006), 7–24.07–434Dovey, Teresa (U Technology, Sydney, Australia), What purposes, specifically? Re-thinking purposes and specificity in the context of the ‘new vocationalism’. English for Specific Purposes (Elsevier) 25.4 (2006), 387–402.07–435Dowdall, Clare (U Plymouth, UK; c.dowdall@plymouth.ac.uk), Dissonance between the digitally created words of school and home. Literacy (Oxford University Press) 40.3 (2006), 153–163.07–436Elbow, Peter (U Massachusetts, Amherst, USA; elbow@english.umass.edu), Do we need a single standard of value for institutional assessment? An essay response to Asao Inoue's ‘community-based assessment pedagogy’. Assessing Writing (Elsevier) 11.2 (2006), 81–99.07–437Green, Anthony (U Cambridge, ESOL Examinations, Cambridge, UK; Green.A@cambridgeesol.org), Washback to the learner: Learner and teacher perspectives on IELTS preparation course expectations and outcomes. Assessing Writing (Elsevier) 11.2 (2006), 113–134.07–438Holme, Randal & Bussabamintra Chalauisaeng (Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, China), The learner as needs analyst: The use of participatory appraisal in the EAP reading classroom. English for Specific Purposes (Elsevier) 25.4 (2006), 403–419.07–439Jia, Yueming Zohreh R. Eslami, & Lynn M. Burlbaw (Texas A & M U, USA), ESL teachers' perceptions and factors influencing their use of classroom-based reading assessment. Bilingual Research Journal (National Association for Bilingual Education) 30.2 (2006), 407–430.07–440Kirkgöz, Yasemin (Çukurova U, Turkey; ykirkgoz@cu.edu.tr), Designing a corpus based English reading course for academic purposes. The Reading Matrix (Readingmatrix.com) 6.3 (2006), 281–298.07–441Lambirth, Andrew (Canterbury Christ Church U, UK; al4@cant.ac.uk) & Kathy Goouch, Golden times of writing: The creative compliance of writing journals. Literacy (Blackwell) 40.3 (2006), 146–152.07–442Li, Yongyan (City Hong Kong, China), A doctoral student of physics writing for publication: A sociopolitically-oriented case study. English for Specific Purposes (Elsevier) 25.4 (2006), 456–478.07–443Moreira, Sylvia (City U New York, USA) & Maryellen Hamilton. Goats don't wear coats: An examination of semantic interference in rhyming assessments of reading readiness for English language learners. Bilingual Research Journal (National Association for Bilingual Education) 30.2 (2006), 547–557.07–444Penney, Catherine (U Newfoundland, Canada) James Drover, Carrie Dyck & Amanda Squires, Phoneme awareness is not a prerequisite for learning to read. Written Language and Literacy (Benjamins) 9.1 (2006), 115–133.07–445Serniclaes, Willy (U René Descartes, Paris, France), Allophonic perception in developmental dyslexia: Origin, reliability and implications of the categorical perception deficit. Written Language and Literacy (Benjamins) 9.1 (2006), 135–152.07–446Suzuki, Akio (Josai U, Japan), Differences in reading strategies employed by students constructing graphic organizers and students producing summaries in EFL reading. JALT Journal (Japan Association for Language Teaching) 28.2 (2006), 177–196.07–447Stapleton, Paul (Hokkaido U, Sapporo, Japan) & Rena Helms-Park, Evaluating Web sources in an EAP course: Introducing a multi-trait instrument for feedback and assessment. English for Specific Purposes (Elsevier) 25.4 (2006), 438–455.07–448Zhu, Yunxia (U Queensland, New Zealand; zyunxia@unitec.ac.nz), Understanding sociocognitive space of written discourse: Implications for teaching business writing to Chinese students. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (Walter de Gruyter) 44.3 (2006), 265–285.

We report on an ongoing research study on student understanding of thermodynamic concepts and principles in the context of an introductory engineering thermodynamics course at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). Through analysis of student responses to mostly qualitative questions, we have identified prevalent and persistent difficulties. In this paper, we describe the research methods, present some preliminary results, and discuss the implications of our work for instruction and the development of curricular materials. We also illustrate the use of interactive lecture questions as an instructional tool. In recent decades, research on student understanding in science and engineering has revealed that traditional quantitative problems often are not a suitable tool for the assessment of conceptual understanding. On the basis of results from prior investigations in the context of thermal physics we have therefore begun to administer “conceptual” questions to students of engineering thermodynamics. These questions are delivered through ungraded quizzes, course examinations, and as interactive lecture questions (ILQs or “clicker questions”) via a classroom communication system. While only the two written formats require students to explain the reasoning supporting their answers, we have found that there is good agreement between the results obtained through different methods. Our work so far has concentrated on probing student understanding of (1) work and the application of the first law to closed systems and flow processes, (2) the distinction between state and process quantities, in particular student understanding of entropy as a state function, and (3) the application of the second law, especially to refrigeration cycles. Conceptual difficulties that we have observed include, for example, the students’ tendency to associate an increase in entropy of the system with any irreversible process even if the state function property of the entropy leads to a different result. Similar difficulties have been documented in the context of introductory and upper-level physics courses. While ILQs serve as a research instrument, we also recognize their potential as an effective instructional tool. Data from post-tests suggest that the use of such questions can enhance student learning in traditional lectures. In addition, we discuss how results from this study contributed to the writing of a textbook on engineering thermodynamics.