Stephen Jeffares Article, Community, Publication

Jeffares and Dickinson 2016 on Online Q Sorting

An article out this month in the journal Evaluation demonstrates how Q-methodology can be used for evaluating collaboration between public service organisations. The tool in question is called POETQ (Partnership Online Evaluation Tool using Q). This is a tool that was inspired by earlier tools like FlashQ but designed to work across a range of devices and web browsers. The published article focuses on the rationale for designing such a tool and the challenge of designing a Q-set suitable for partnership evaluation.

 

 

 

Susan Ramlo, PhD Publication

Ramlo et al. on evaluating a bioinformatics course

Ramlo, Susan E., David McConnell, Zhong-Hui Duan, & Francisco B. Moore (2008, June). Evaluating an inquiry-based bioinformatics course using Q methodology. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 17(3), 219-225.

Abstract: Faculty at a Midwestern metropolitan public university recently developed a course on bioinformatics that emphasized collaboration and inquiry. Bioinformatics, essentially the application of computational tools to biological data, is inherently interdisciplinary. Thus part of the challenge of creating this course was serving the needs and backgrounds of a diverse set of students, predominantly computer science and biology undergraduate and graduate students. Although the researchers desired to investigate student views of the course, they were interested in the potentially different perspectives. Q methodology, a measure of subjectivity, allowed the researchers to determine the various student perspectives in the bioinformatics course.

Susan E. Ramlo (@sramlo)  is in the Department of Engineering and Science Technology, University of Akron, Akron, OH. David McConnell (Department of Geology), Zhong-Hui Duan (Department of Computer Science), and Francisco B. Moore (Department of Biology) are also at the University of Akron.