An extended approach to adjust inconsistent minority peer- and self-assessment scores of teamwork using assessor’s reliability

Teamwork is generally assessed either solely by academic staff or by both academic staff andstudents themselves confidentially as well as collaboratively. Peer- and self-assessments have beenused primarily to assess teamwork process and teacher assessment to assess teamwork product.Peer- and self-assessments are useful to elicit team members’ contribution towards teamwork and toconvert team mark into individual marks, provided the scores are reliable (the extent to which thescores are consistent). However, not all peer- and self-assessment scores are reliable. Anecdotal andliterature evidence suggest that there are several cases of inconsistencies in these scores. Individualcontribution scores given by teammates to an assessee (including himself/herself) can sometimesvary significantly due to both intentional and unintentional reasons. Simply using total individual ratingscores without considering an assessor’s reliability to estimate individual contribution factors cansometime results unfair grades and becomes hindrance to learning through teamwork.PURPOSEThis study proposes an extended approach to adjust inconsistent and/or distorted minority peer andself-assessment scores of teamwork using standard normal probability concept.APPROACHIn order to adjust inconsistent and/or distorted minority peer-and self-assessment scores of teamwork,an extended approach has been proposed. The approach uses the reliability of assessor’s scores ofan assessee using standard normal probability curve. The evaluation of the extended approach isconducted by comparing with the existing approaches using two case examples of peer- and selfassessmentof teamwork where minority team members’ scores are inconsistent.RESULTSThe evaluation of the extended approach shows that the proposed method is superior to the availableapproaches in order to adjust inconsistent peer- and self-assessment scores for special cases wherescores of minority team members are inconsistent. The extended approach helps both to automaticallydetect such scoring anomalies and to adjust the scores so that the fairer contributions to the teamworkwould be obtained and utilised.CONCLUSIONSThe extended approach is useful in that it helps both to automatically detect scoring anomalies and todevise the methods to adjust them. However, the approach does not address the issue of scoringinconsistencies by majority of team members as it uses average score as a basis for identifyinginconsistencies. Moreover, the approach needs to be implemented in the real teamwork environmentin order to identify the impacts of these scoring adjustments in teamwork process and teamworkproduct.

PRISM (Polarized Radiation Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission): an extended white paper

PRISM (Polarized Radiation Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) was proposed to ESA in May 2013 as a large-class mission for investigating within the framework of the ESA Cosmic Vision program a set of important scientific questions that require high res- olution, high sensitivity, full-sky observations of the sky emission at wavelengths ranging from millimeter-wave to the far-infrared. PRISM’s main objective is to explore the distant universe, probing cosmic history from very early times until now as well as the structures, distribution of matter, and velocity flows throughout our Hubble volume. PRISM will survey the full sky in a large number of frequency bands in both intensity and polarization and will measure the absolute spectrum of sky emission more than three orders of magnitude bet- ter than COBE FIRAS. The data obtained will allow us to precisely measure the absolute sky brightness and polarization of all the components of the sky emission in the observed frequency range, separating the primordial and extragalactic components cleanly from the galactic and zodiacal light emissions. The aim of this Extended White Paper is to provide a more detailed overview of the highlights of the new science that will be made possible by PRISM, which include: (1) the ultimate galaxy cluster survey using the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) e↵ect, detecting approximately 106 clusters extending to large redshift, including a char- acterization of the gas temperature of the brightest ones (through the relativistic corrections to the classic SZ template) as well as a peculiar velocity survey using the kinetic SZ e↵ect that comprises our entire Hubble volume; (2) a detailed characterization of the properties and evolution of dusty galaxies, where the most of the star formation in the universe took place, the faintest population of which constitute the di↵use CIB (Cosmic Infrared Background); (3) a characterization of the B modes from primordial gravity waves generated during inflation and from gravitational lensing, as well as the ultimate search for primordial non-Gaussianity using CMB polarization, which is less contaminated by foregrounds on small scales than thetemperature anisotropies; (4) a search for distortions from a perfect blackbody spectrum, which include some nearly certain signals and others that are more speculative but more informative; and (5) a study of the role of the magnetic field in star formation and its inter- action with other components of the interstellar medium of our Galaxy. These are but a few of the highlights presented here along with a description of the proposed instrument.