Calibration of assessment instruments – classification in mathematics at the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano

Item Response Theory, IRT, is a valuable methodology for analyzing the quality of the instruments utilized in assessment of academic achievement. This article presents an implementation of the mentioned theory, particularly of the Rasch model, in order to calibrate items and the instrument used in the classification test for the Basic Mathematics subject at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano. 509 responses chains of students, obtained in the june 2011 application, were analyzed with a set of 45 items, through eight case studies that are showing progressive steps of calibration. Criteria of validity of items and of whole instrument were defined and utilized, to select groups of responses chains and items that were finally used in the determination of parameters which then allowed the classification of assessed students by the test.

Liberating the Issue of Present Days. About the Foucaltian Critics of Inflationary Speeches on the Present as “Mass Society” and “Estatalized Space”

With this article we pretend to contribute, in a really modest way, to the liberation of a tenacious image of our society: which operates as an ideological basis of a group of current socio-political pseudocritics, with great success and diffusion. For this we will undertake the exposition and the analysis of the development group of Naissance de la biopolitique in which Foucault accomplishes the critic of all that number of inflationary speeches that represent our society like a “mass society” and a “estatalized space”. Facing these vague and disproportionate forms of consideration, the foucaltian critic, in its exquisite attention to what happens nowadays, it should reveal how our societies function as systems that optimize the difference –radically nominalists-, in which it is produced, beyond any phantasmatic of the oppressor and invasive estate, a regretion of the legal-estate structures that articulate the socio-politic groups, in benefit of the reconstitution and the social tissue as a communitarian network, suitable for the dynamics of market competence that characterise our enterprise societies. That will open to a new idea of the critic, and to a displacement of its object and objectives.

Performatividad y arte computacional. Hacia una “DIY society”

El artículo analiza la figura del prosumidor desde los estudios visuales a partir de la combinación de la teoría de los actos de habla y los nuevos medios. El objetivo es evaluar si la distinción entre productores y consumidores, estrategias y tácticas de Michel de Certeau continúa siendo operativa en las interfaces gráficas de la cultura global de la información de Scott Lash. Para ello distingue dos tipos de performatividad de los actos de habla: la performatividad top-down del software, y la bottom-up de los juegos del lenguaje y las formas de vida. Estos tipos se aplican al análisis del discurso de los eslóganes que aparecen en los sitios web de las iniciativas “open” y de economía colaborativa, ya que las primeras están dedicadas a la producción de bienes inmateriales y las segundas a la producción de bienes materiales. El desarrollo muestra cómo los dos tipos de performatividad transforman el análisis textual de los estudios literarios y cinematográficos en una metodología capaz de investigar acciones materiales, humanas y no humanas. Las conclusiones describen el surgimiento de nuevas convenciones narrativas de poder y control ajenas a la ficción que apuntan a una “DIY society”.