Drama and languages education : authentic assessment through process drama

In this chapter I explore the ways process drama can enrich and enliven the assessment regime of a middle school beginner language program. The chapter draws on five months’ language teaching which I did to collect data during my doctoral research. I taught a secondary co-educational class of 12-13 year olds (first year secondary school) for their German lessons while the teacher who had invited me in observed the lessons. Throughout the project there was an emphasis on student participation through questionnaire, discussion and interview...

Non-Governmental Organisations(NGOs) in Bangladesh : an assessment of their legal status

Despite multiple efforts, the amount of poverty in Bangladesh has remained alarmingly high by any standard. Two salient characteristics of poverty alleviation in Bangladesh are: their poor accessibility for the ‘target’ population (the rural poor), and lack of co-ordination between government and the Non-Government Organisations. The moment the state alone is unable to combat poverty then the NGOs come into the picture to fill the void. First Britain as a colonial power, then the East Pakistan Government and the Government of Bangladesh have promulgated Ordinances and Regulations for the practical regulation of NGOs. The loopholes and flaws within the legal framework have given the NGOs opportunities to violate the Ordinances and Regulations. A better situation could be achieved by modifying and strictly implementing such state rules, ensuring accountability, effective state control, and meaningful NGO-State collaboration and co-operation.

Raising the stakes: the challenges for teacher assessment

These are changing times in Australia for teachers and their students, with the introduction of a national curriculum and standards driven reform. While countries in Europe such as England, and in Asia such as Singapore, are changing policy to use assessment in the support of and improvement of learning it appears that we in Australia are moving towards creating policy that will raise the assessment stakes for the putative purposes of transparency, accountability and fairness. What can be learnt from countries that have had years of high stakes testing? How can Australia avoid the mistakes of past curriculum and assessment reform efforts? And how can Australian teachers build their capacity to maximise their use of the learning power of assessment? These are the questions that are addressed in this article, with reference to innovative research from global networks that have maintained the assessment focus on learning rather than accountability practices.

Assessment of the health impacts of the 2011 summer floods in Brisbane

Background: During December 2010 and January 2011, torrential rainfall in Queensland resulted in the worst flooding in over 50 years. We carried out a community-based survey to assess the health impacts of this flooding in the city of Brisbane. Methods: A community-based survey was conducted in 12 flood-affected electorates using postal questionnaires. A random sample of residents in these areas was drawn from electoral rolls. Questions examined sociodemographic information, the direct impact of flooding on the household, and perceived flood-related health impacts. Outcome variables included perceived flood-related effects on overall and respiratory health, along with mental health outcomes measured by psychosocial distress, reduced sleep quality and probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the association between flooding and health outcome variables, adjusted for current health status and socioeconomic factors. Results: 3000 residents were invited to participate in this survey, with 960 responses (32%). People whose households were directly impacted by flooding had a decrease in perceived overall health (OR 5.3, 95% CI: 2.8–10.2), along with increases in psychological distress (OR 1.9, 1.1–3.5), decreased sleep quality (OR 2.3, 1.2–4.4), and probable PTSD (OR 2.3, 1.2–4.5). Residents were also more likely to increase usage of both tobacco (OR 6.3, 2.4–16.8) and alcohol (OR 7.0, 2.2–22.3) after flooding. Conclusions: There were significant impacts of flood events on residents’ health, in particular psychosocial health. Improved support strategies may need to be integrated into existing disaster management programs to reduce flood‐related health impacts.

Problems in the assessment of magnesium depletion in the rat by in vivo 31P NMR

Prior in vitro studies, utilizing 31Pn uclear magnetic resonance (31PN MR) to measure the chemical shift (CT) of 0-ATP and lengthening of the phosphocreatine spin-spin (7"') relaxation time, suggested an assessment of their efficacy in measuring magnesium depletion in vivo. Dietary magnesium depletion (Me$) produced markedly lower magnesium in plasma (0.44 vs 1. I3 mmol/liter) and bone (1 30 vs 190 pmol/g) but much smaller changes in muscle (41 vs 45 pmol/g, P < 0.01), heart (42.5 vs 44.6 prnol/g), and brain (30 vs 32 pmollg). NMR experiments in anesthetized rats in a Bruker 7-T vertical bore magnet showed that in M e $ rats there was a significant change in brain j3-ATP shift (16.15 vs 16.03 ppm, P < 0.05). These chemical shifts gave a calculated free [Mg"] of 0.71 mM (control) and 0.48 mM (MgZ+$). In muscle the change in j3-ATP shift was not significant (Me$ 15.99 ppm, controls 15.96 ppm), corresponding to a calculated free M P of 0.83 and 0.95 mM, respectively. Phosphccreatine Tz (Carr-Purcell, spin-echo pulse sequence) was no different with M e $ in muscle in vivo (surface coil) (M$+$ 136, control 142 ms) or in isolated perfused hearts (Helmholtz coil) (control 83, M e $ 92 ms). 3'P NMR is severely limited in its ability to detect dietary magnesium depletion in vivo. Measurement of j3-ATP shift in brain may allow studies of the effects of interaction in group studies but does not allow prediction of an individual magnesium status.

Using reflective practice assessment in the first year of law to encourage a positive professional identity and promote law student well-being

In this paper we argue that intentional curriculum design in the first year of law should encourage law students to develop an emergent sense of a positive professional identity. When first year law students engage with a nascent notion of a positive professional identity, their well-being is supported because their studies are informed and contextualised by a sense of purpose for their future professional life. In a first year law subject run for the first time at the QUT Law School in 2011, reflective practice was successfully used to achieve these goals. The paper discusses the subject, the opportunity of using reflective practice to teach a positive sense of professional identity, and some student perspectives on the subject’s design.

A unified description language for human to automated services

Through the rise of cloud computing, on-demand applications, and business networks, services are increasingly being exposed and delivered on the Internet and through mobile communications. So far, services have mainly been described through technical interface descriptions. The description of business details, such as pricing, service-level, or licensing, has been neglected and is therefore hard to automatically process by service consumers. Also, third-party intermediaries, such as brokers, cloud providers, or channel partners, are interested in the business details in order to extend services and their delivery and, thus, further monetize services. In this paper, the constructivist design of the UnifiedServiceDescriptionLanguage (USDL), aimed at describing services across the human-to-automation continuum, is presented. The proposal of USDL follows well-defined requirements which are expressed against a common service discourse and synthesized from currently available servicedescription efforts. USDL's concepts and modules are evaluated for their support of the different requirements and use cases.

Assessment of the health impacts of the 2011 summer floods in Brisbane

Background: During December 2010 and January 2011, torrential rainfall in Queensland resulted in the worst flooding in over 50 years. We carried out a community-based survey to assess the health impacts of this flooding in the city of Brisbane. Methods: A community-based survey was conducted in 12 flood-affected electorates using postal questionnaires. A random sample of residents in these areas was drawn from electoral rolls. Questions examined sociodemographic information, the direct impact of flooding on the household, and perceived flood-related health impacts. Outcome variables included perceived flood-related effects on overall and respiratory health, along with mental health outcomes measured by psychosocial distress, reduced sleep quality and probable post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine the association between flooding and health outcome variables, adjusted for current health status and socioeconomic factors. Results: 3000 residents were invited to participate in this survey, with 960 responses (32%). People whose households were directly impacted by flooding had a decrease in perceived overall health (OR 5.3, 95% CI: 2.8–10.2), along with increases in psychological distress (OR 1.9, 1.1–3.5), decreased sleep quality (OR 2.3, 1.2–4.4), and probable PTSD (OR 2.3, 1.2–4.5). Residents were also more likely to increase usage of both tobacco (OR 6.3, 2.4–16.8) and alcohol (OR 7.0, 2.2–22.3) after flooding. Conclusions: There were significant impacts of flood events on residents’ health, in particular psychosocial health. Improved support strategies may need to be integrated into existing disaster management programs to reduce flood-related health impacts.

Principles on assessment of costs on standard basis – necessary or proper

The judgement in Hennessey Glass and Aluminium Pty Ltd v Watpac Australia Pty Ltd [2007] QDC 57 McGill DCJ provides valuable guidance for practitioners as to whether a range of particular costs items should be permitted on an assessment on the standard basis, and the amounts which should be allowed for such items. The items in issue included counsel’s fees and fees paid to expert witnesses. The decision also examined GST implications for the recovery of legal costs.

Court Based Psychiatric Assessment: A Case for an Integrated and Diversionary Public Health Role

This article describes a follow-up study of 232 individuals who underwent psychiatric assessment by a Criminal Justice Mental Health Team (CJMHT) in 2001/2002, and also draws upon in-depth interviews conducted with 26 of the cohort. At assessment many people are identified with substance misuse problems, as homeless and with a history of psychiatric contact but in the main their problems are of insufficient severity to merit diversion to psychiatric hospital. The study mapped service contact, housing and offending in the 12 months following assessment and compared this to the 12 months prior to assessment, and found increased levels of service contact but also increased levels of offending and no decrease in homelessness. Thus assessment by the CJMHT brought few discernible advantages for the majority of clients. This was also the perception of the 26 clients who were interviewed. Their own perceptions of their lifestyle and the support that they deemed most valuable are described to identify means of enhancing the efficacy of court assessment.

Automated support for versioning compliance checking between workflow management and product lifecycle management (in Chinese)

With the development of enterprise informatisation, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems have been widely deployed and applied in enterprises. This paper analyzes the requirement that conducting version operations on business objects as specified in process models should be compliant with the versioning policies imposed by product lifecycles. This leads to the introduction of the concept of versioning compliance, and the approach of compliance checking that we proposed in our earlier work, which comprises both syntactical compatibility and behavioural compatibility checking. The paper then focuses on the tool implementation for providing automated support to the versioning compliance checking. An empirical evaluation of the tool was also performed with industrial partners using the well-known questionnaire-based method. The evaluation and feedback from practitioners further evidence the practical significance of this research question in the PLM field and demonstrate that the proposed solution with its automated tool support possesses a high application potential.