Comparison of Physics Teacher’s Forecast Grade and Actual Grade Obtained by Candidates in Cambridge AS and A-Level International Examinations: A Case Study of an Advanced Level School in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria

Aim: This paper examined a comparative assessment of teacher’s forecast and actual grades obtained by students who sat for Cambridge AS and A-Level International Examinations in an Advanced Level School, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria for five (5) consecutive years. Study Design: The teacher’s mark book which documented the forecasted grades for Physics in Cambridge AS and A-Level International Examinations from the year 2014 to 2018 was consulted and compared with the actual grades obtained by students over the same period. Methodology: Two hundred and thirty-five (235) students’ results constitute the sampled population. Ahead of the time of final Cambridge International Examinations (CIE), some students who had withdrawn from the school system due to the fact that they are dead, terribly sick or gained admission into other higher institutions of learning and did not have their names on the CIE result broadsheets were disqualified from being part of the sampled population. This enabled the researchers to accurately compared the forecast grades of students who sat for CIE with the grades that they actually obtained. Shapiro-Wilk test of normality was carried out and the P-value was above 0.05 level of significance, as this shows that the data was parametric. SPSS version 23 was thereafter used to analyze the data and the hypothesis was tested using paired sample T-tests. Results: There is no significant difference between Physics teacher’s forecast grades and the actual grades obtained by students in Cambridge Advanced AS and A-Level International Examinations for 5 years (2014 – 2018) as the teacher’s forecast grades for the last 7 examination series were accurate at P < 0.05 level of significance. The P –values; (0.083, 0.235, 0.260, 0.802, 0.328, 0.110 and 0.990) were above 0.05 significant level. Conclusion: Findings from our study showed that there is no significant difference between Physics teacher’s forecast and the actual grades obtained by the students in the Cambridge Assessment International Education for October/November 2015, May/June 2016, October/November 2016, May/June 2017, October/November 2017, May/June 2018 as well as October/November 2018 examination series.

Investigation of reading error types, reading levels and reading speeds of students with special learning difficulties

The main aim of this study is to investigate reading error types, reading levels and reading speeds of students with special learning difficulties (SLD). A case study model was used in the research. The research was carried out with 34 students enrolled in Grades 3–8, who were diagnosed with SLD in Konya in the 2019–2020 academic year. In the data analysis, while ‘error analysis’ was used for reading error types, the formula Number of Words Correctly Read ÷ Total Word Number of Text × 100 was utilised to determine reading levels. As for the identification of reading rates, the number of words read correctly in one minute was determined. According to the results of the research, the error types displayed by the students with SLD in the texts that are suitable for the classes that they attend and in the texts that belong to lower grade levels than their actual grade levels were found to be misreading, hesitating while reading, repeating, omitting a sound/syllable/word or skipping a line, substituting a sound/syllable or a word, pausing while reading, correction and reversing sounds. Keywords: Special learning difficulties, reading difficulty, reading error types, reading levels, case study.

Reflection on exam grades to improve calibration of secondary school students: a longitudinal study

Grades provide students with information about their level of performance. However, grades may also make students more aware of how well they have estimated their performance, their so-called calibration accuracy. This longitudinal quasi-experimental study, set in secondary education, examined how to increase students’ awareness of the accuracy of their grade estimates in order to improve their calibration accuracy. During an entire school year, students from year 1, 2, and 3 provided grade estimates after each of their French exams. Subsequently, when students received their grades, the level of reflection support on their earlier estimates was manipulated. The first group of students just received their grade, the second group had to calculate the difference between their estimate and the actual grade, and the third group also had to reflect on reasons for a possible mismatch. We expected that more reflection support would lead to more improvement in calibration accuracy. Results showed that providing grade estimates already improved calibration accuracy over the school year, regardless of level of reflection support. This finding shows that asking for grade estimates is an easy-to-implement way to improve calibration accuracy of students in secondary education.

ASSESSMENT OF QUALITY AND STRENGTH OF CONCRETE IN CONDITIONS OF REAL CONSTRUCTION

The determination of the actual class of concrete in monolithic reinforced concrete structures is the most important factor determining the quality and strength of structures. In practice, the actual grade of concrete may differ from the design value. If this difference occurs in the direction of decreasing the actual concrete class, then the normative and design characteristics of concrete, the bearing capacity and rigidity of the structures, respectively, decrease and there is a need to strengthen the structures. Current regulatory documents allow you to determine the actual class of concrete in both continuous and spot inspection of structures. The article discusses specific examples to determine the actual class of concrete and draws conclusions about the rational use of a continuous or selective examination of structures of various types with specific examples.

Wineinformatics: Regression on the Grade and Price of Wines through Their Sensory Attributes

Wineinformatics is a field that uses machine-learning and data-mining techniques to glean useful information from wine. In this work, attributes extracted from a large dataset of over 100,000 wine reviews are used to make predictions on two variables: quality based on a “100-point scale”, and price per 750 mL bottle. These predictions were built using support vector regression. Several evaluation metrics were used for model evaluation. In addition, these regression models were compared to classification accuracies achieved in a prior work. When regression was used for classification, the results were somewhat poor; however, this was expected since the main purpose of the regression was not to classify the wines. Therefore, this paper also compares the advantages and disadvantages of both classification and regression. Regression models can successfully predict within a few points of the correct grade of a wine. On average, the model was only 1.6 points away from the actual grade and off by about $13 per bottle of wine. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to use a large-scale dataset of wine reviews to perform regression predictions on grade and price.

No Significant Difference - Unless you are a Jumper

Much of the e-education literature suggests that there is no significant difference in aggregate student learning outcomes between online and face-to-face instruction. In this study, we develop a model that forecasts the grade that individual students would have most likely earned in the alternate class setting. Students for whom the difference between the actual grade received in one class format (for example, online) and the forecasted grade in the other class setting (for example, face-to-face) is one full letter grade or higher are called “jumpers.” Our findings indicate that jumpers are numerous, suggesting that whereas no significant difference may exist between instruction settings at the aggregate level, at the individual level, the choice between settings matters. These results have important implications for the no significant difference literature and strongly support the need for refined course setting advisement for students.

Does More Accurate Knowledge of Course Grade Impact Teaching Evaluation?

Students’ different standards may yield different kinds of bias, such as self-directed (higher than their past performance) bias and peer-directed (higher than their classmates) bias. Utilizing data obtained from a natural experiment where some students were able to see their grades prior to teacher evaluations, and to investigate possible sources of bias, we empirically analyzed the role of information (such as the actual grade students received in their current course and their previous grade point average), and the average grade of the course, on the student evaluation of teaching. Because bias is sensitive to the accuracy of grade information, the randomized data examined in this paper are a valuable source for estimating both self-directed and peer-directed bias. We identify the existence of the two kinds of biases and demonstrate that the influence of peer-directed bias tends to increase after the accurate information on the course grade is revealed.

Instruction in Cause and Effect Paraphrasing Using Social Studies Text With a Secondary Bilingual Student: A Case Study

Purpose: This case study describes the use of the paraphrasing strategy with cause-and-effect (C/E) relations as a technique to improve a 14-year-old high school student's reading comprehension of social studies text in both his native (Spanish) and second language (English). Method: The student used expository texts from state textbook adoption materials. Instruction was based on scaffolded dialogue that cued the student to attend to and paraphrase various aspects of the C/E concept. Results: Despite the fact that the student began with texts at reading levels 5 and 6 years below his actual grade level, the comprehension of C/E relations in history text was a challenge. Several factors contributed to the complexity of the task for the student. By the final phase of intervention, he was successfully paraphrasing with texts that were 3 and 4 years above the baseline reading grade levels. Implications: The salient points from this study that may be useful for educators or speech language pathologists are: a description of the difficulties that interfered with the student's comprehension and the thought processes he used, types of cues used to teach C/E relations, and evidence of the student's development of paraphrases and comprehension.

Grading Scientific Translation: What’s a New Teacher to Do?

The author of this article outlines the development of a scoring rubric to grade scientific translations. The article begins by enumerating the assumptions that shaped his teaching initially, before demonstrating how classroom observations eventually led the author to understand that his assumptions were faulty. The experience leads to a deeper understanding of student competencies, which are used to create an instrument that helps to describe student achievement and assign it an actual grade. The author argues that the rubric plays a part in overall student learning, and he describes the development of the rubric within the context of demographic changes taking place in North American universities.