Implications of bias in automated writing quality scores for fair and equitable assessment decisions.

Recent advances in automated writing evaluation have enabled educators to use automated writing quality scores to improve assessment feasibility. However, there has been limited investigation of bias for automated writing quality scores with students from diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds. The use of biased scores could contribute to implementing unfair practices with negative consequences on student learning. The goal of this study was to investigate score bias of writeAlizer, a free and open-source automated writing evaluation program. For 421 students in Grades 4 and 7 who completed a state writing exam that included composition and multiple choice revising and editing questions, writeAlizer was used to generate automated writing quality scores for the composition section. Then, we used multiple regression models to investigate whether writeAlizer scores demonstrated differential predictions of the composition and overall scores on the state-mandated writing exam for students from different racial or ethnic groups. No evidence of bias for automated scores was observed. However, after controlling for automated scores in Grade 4, we found statistically significant group differences in regression models predicting overall state test scores 3 years later but not the essay composition scores. We hypothesize that the multiple choice revising and editing sections, rather than the scoring approach used for the essay portion, introduced construct-irrelevant variance and might lead to differential performance among groups. Implications for assessment development and score use are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Lessons learnt from a scientific peer-review training programme designed to support research capacity and professional development in a global community.

High-quality peer-reviewer training open to researchers across the globe has the potential to improve the published literature, however, this type of training is not widely available. In this paper, we describe an online peer-reviewer training programme, highlight its effectiveness in building peer review and writing skills, and discuss challenges and lessons learnt. This training programme, open to researchers across the globe, acquaints participants with challenges to and inequities in publishing and educates them about writing effective peer reviews. A focal point is how to provide specific and respectful feedback to help authors get accepted for peer review at an academic journal. Forty-nine participants from or residing in six continents completed the training. All programme evaluation respondents agreed that the orientation helped them gain a better understanding of their role as a peer reviewer at Pre-Publication Support Service. Most agreed that the training was helpful in improving their peer-review skills, and that the training was helpful in improving their writing skills. Participants wanted more networking and collaboration opportunities with other peer reviewers, inclusion of a qualitatively researched example paper and improved communication about the required time commitment. Our online programme with multiple time options was geographically inclusive but internet connectivity was challenging for some participants. Peer-reviewer training programmes can help researchers build their peer review and writing skills and enhance participants' understanding of disparities in publishing. Integrating a geographically diverse group of researchers has the potential to enrich the discussions and learning in such a programme.

Inattention in health professions education scholarship.

In this editorial, the Editor-in-Chief considers inattention to details and the implications thereof in education scholarship and academic writing.

Graph-based extractive text summarization method for Hausa text.

Automatic text summarization is one of the most promising solutions to the ever-growing challenges of textual data as it produces a shorter version of the original document with fewer bytes, but the same information as the original document. Despite the advancements in automatic text summarization research, research involving the development of automatic text summarization methods for documents written in Hausa, a Chadic language widely spoken in West Africa by approximately 150,000,000 people as either their first or second language, is still in early stages of development. This study proposes a novel graph-based extractive single-document summarization method for Hausa text by modifying the existing PageRank algorithm using the normalized common bigrams count between adjacent sentences as the initial vertex score. The proposed method is evaluated using a primarily collected Hausa summarization evaluation dataset comprising of 113 Hausa news articles on ROUGE evaluation toolkits. The proposed approach outperformed the standard methods using the same datasets. It outperformed the TextRank method by 2.1%, LexRank by 12.3%, centroid-based method by 19.5%, and BM25 method by 17.4%.

Up-Hill: An Allegory.

The Christina Rossetti poem "Up-Hill" (1862) is an exemplary poem of the Victorian era by one of the rare female poets of the time, including Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Browning, Katherine Tynan, and Alice Meynell. Rossetti, typical of the era and the Victorian genre, wrote allegories about faith and love. She came from a distinguished literary family. "Up-Hill" was one of her better-known works.

Primary intracranial alveolar soft part sarcoma in a 22 years old female: a rare case report with literature review.

Alveolar soft part sarcoma is a very rare malignant neoplasm of peripheral muscular, adipose or neural tissue. Its occurrence, as a primary intracranial tumour, is even rarer. To the best of our knowledge, only nine cases of primary intracranial alveolar soft part sarcoma exist in English scientific literature. We attempt to write a comprehensive review on this poorly understood intracranial malignancy, with no evident systemic lesions, such as in the case of our 22 years old patient. In addition to absent definitive proof of benefit of radiologic or chemotherapeutic management, we highlight the role of surgery as the primary treatment. Younger patients with this tumour may have a worse prognosis than elderly patients.

Not so terrifying after all? A set of failed replications of the mortality salience effects of Terror Management Theory.

Terror Management Theory (TMT) postulates that humans, in response to awareness of their death, developed complex defenses to remove the salience and discomfort stemming from those thoughts. In a standard paradigm to test this theory, an individual is presented with a death-related prime (Mortality Salience; MS), such as writing the details of their own death, or something neutral, such as watching television. After a distractor task (for delay), participants complete the dependent variable, such as rating how much they like or agree with a pro- or anti-national essay and its author. Individuals in the MS condition typically exhibit greater worldview defense than control conditions by rating the pro-national essay more positively and the anti-national essay more negatively. We completed five separate studies across five unique samples with the goal of replicating and extending this well-established pattern to provide further understanding of the phenomena that underlie the effects of MS. However, despite using standard procedures, we were unable to replicate basic patterns of the dependent variable in the MS conditions. We also pooled all responses into two meta-analyses, one examining all dependent variables and one focusing on the anti-national essay; yet the effect sizes in these analyses did not significantly differ from zero. We discuss the methodological and theoretical implications of these (unintended) failures to replicate. It is not clear if these null findings were due to methodological limitations, restraints of online/crowd-sourced recruitment, or ever-evolving sociocultural factors.

Reproducibility in 2023 - An End-to-End Template for Analysis and Manuscript Writing.

Reproducibility imposes some special requirements at different stages of each project, including reproducible workflows for the analysis including to follow best practices regarding code style and to make the creation of the manuscript reproducible as well. Available tools therefore include version control systems such as Git and document creation tools such as Quarto or R Markdown. However, a re-usable project template mapping the entire process from performing the data analysis to finally writing the manuscript in a reproducible manner is yet lacking. This work aims to fill this gap by presenting an open source template for conducting reproducible research projects utilizing a containerized framework for both developing and conducting the analysis and summarizing the results in a manuscript. This template can be used instantly without any customization.

Improving Narrative Feedback for Resident-Led Academic Rounds: The Effects of Assessment Form Design Changes.

Background: Learners benefit more from narrative feedback than numerical scores on formative assessments, yet they often report that feedback is lacking in quality and quantity. Changes to the formatting of assessment forms is a practical intervention with limited literature regarding its impact on feedback. Objective: This study explores the effect of a formatting change (ie, relocating the comment section from the bottom of a form to the top) on residents' oral presentation assessment forms and if this affects the quality of narrative feedback. Methods: We used a feedback scoring system based on the theory of deliberate practice to evaluate the quality of written feedback provided to psychiatry residents on assessment forms from January to December 2017 before and after a form design change. Word count and presence of narrative comments were also assessed. Results: Ninety-three assessment forms with the comment section at bottom and 133 forms with the comment section at the top were evaluated. When the comment section was placed at the top of the evaluation form, there were significantly more comment sections with any number of words than left blank (X 2(1)=6.54, P=.011) as well as a significant increase in the specificity related to the task component, or what was done well (X 2(3)=20.12, P≤.0001). Conclusions: More prominent placement of the feedback section on assessment forms increased the number of sections filled as well as the specificity related to the task component.

LTCOS Data Management: CHPE and PDC.

The purpose of this short essay is to describe the data management processes utilized in the Long Term Career Outcome Study at the Center for Health Professions Education and the Postgraduate Dental College of the Uniformed Services University. It includes descriptions of our workflow, how we obtain the data, challenges, and recommendations based on our experience for data managers and institutions to follow. This descriptive writing may help guide practice for other institutions looking to streamline their data management plan.

Al colgar el pijama: más allá de la Enfermería / When hanging up your pajamas: beyond Nursing

Isidro Manrique es enfermero, pero también es profesor, ponente y escritor. Quizás lo conoces más como “El enfermero del pendiente”, una web donde cada día publica con el objetivo de divulgar, de manera gratuita, diferentes técnicas y manuales de UCI; sin embargo, si hay algo que de verdad le gusta es la poesía. Miles de personas le siguen en sus redes donde comparte sus textos llenos de vivencias, alegrías, tristezas e historias de hospitales. ¿Con qué nuevo texto nos sorprenderá?.(AU)

Integrating Writing Throughout the Curriculum in Doctor of Nursing Practice Programs: A Collaborative Model for Success.

BACKGROUND: Historically, faculty in Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) programs have noted poor student writing proficiency, which is associated with substandard oral and written communication skills, analytical reflection, and professional role attainment. Few studies have investigated incorporating integrative collaborative model Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) strategies in DNP programs. This study evaluated the efficacy of this model on the writing proficiency of students in their final year of the DNP program. METHOD: This mixed-methods study examined how a collaborative model using WAC strategies affects DNP project value and rigor, writing proficiency, and student satisfaction. RESULTS: Student writing proficiency improved significantly, resulting in statistical improvement in DNP project value and rigor. Students viewed the collaborative model favorably when using the incorporated WAC strategies. CONCLUSION: A collaborative WAC model used by nursing faculty, writing resource centers, and a research librarian effectively improved the writing skills of DNP students. [J Nurs Educ. 2023;62(4):241-248.].