Assessing Journalistic Potential with Performance Reviews
Grading a student’s performance is probably one of the least favorite tasks of most journalism educators. One reason, apparently, is that grading in courses that involve so many writing assignments is tedious and time-consuming. Instructors also sometimes may harbor doubts as to how reliable grades are as a measure of journalistic potential and ability. Those feelings seem reflected in a review of the eleven articles on grading over the past two decades in Journalism Educator. The titles alone tell much about attitudes, including “Five proven ways to ease the chores of grading stories,”l‘‘Reflections on the difficult task of grading writing assignments,”z and “Grading system reduces anxieties, improves e f f~ r t . ”~ Several ideas have been advanced in the articles to make grades more closely reflect actual competence and ease student anxieties. Often the methods center on rewrites or on some type of ungraded approach. For example, Bowers (1973) described a method in which many individual stories were evaluated as acceptable or unacceptable for publication, rather than assessed letter grades. Stories could be resubmitted as many times as necessary until they were found acceptable. Some stories were graded and, of course, students still received grades at the end of the course.‘ Bowers and others have suggested that no grades be used in courses such as beginning news writing, perhaps substituting simply a pass-fail system. How well ungraded approaches would work or be accepted by students, however, can be questioned. During a panel discussion at a recent regional educators‘ colloquium, a participant asked, “What would you think of a system where we didn’t give students any grades until the end of the term, when one grade would be given?” “They’d riot! ” replied another educator, to general emphatic nods, laughs and “amens” from the rest of the audience. There was also discussion at the same meeting over the question of how fair it is to include at least some nonobjective components in journalism students’ grades. Some participants said they frowned on the idea, although Brigham Young University’s Ralph D. Barney found merit in the approach: “We have to prepare them when they get out for a world that is not necessarily easy or objective.” He said he often includes a “Barney Bias” factor of 10 percent in his course grades that covers what he acknowledges are subjective measures of such things as dedication and
Prospective Reporters Face Writing/Editing Tests at Many Dailies
This national study confirms a documented trend that daily newspapers are using writing and editing tests to evaluate prospective reporters. It finds that nearly 45% of responding newspapers administer such tests and that the likelihood of testing decreases as circulation size increases. Those managing editors who do test, consider test results a key factor in reaching a hiring decision on both experienced and inexperienced candidates for reporting jobs.
Heat Transfer Characteristic for a New Plate Metal Hydride Reactor
The property of major metal hydride reactors in the world was analyzed and a new plate metal hydride reactor was designed.An experimental facility to test the metal hydride reactor was also designed correspondingly.The effective thermal conductivity of the plate metal hydride reactor was measured by varying the initial metal hydride packing fraction,the kind of filled gas and the pressure of the filled gas,cycle numbers.The test results show that the effective thermal conductivity of the reactor,has exceeded(7.5) W/(m·K) before activation,which is increased greatly.After alloy activation,the effective thermal conductivity of the reactor has a linear change trend with the hydrogen pressure during the interval 0.1~3.5 MPa.The effective thermal conductivity of the reactor just only decreases quickly at the beginning,but becomes stable after several cycles.