Justin Walls

This article presents a method to evaluate undergraduate and postgraduate course teaching efficiency systematically, alongside measuring effectiveness of curriculum content and delivery. We argue that efficiency is aligned to cost and revenue while effectiveness is a quality-related construct. These potentially antagonistic elements – cost, revenue and quality – must be kept in balance if courses are to be attractive to students (high quality) and financially viable. Curriculum data collection and analysis spanned micro (unit), meso (course) and macro (faculty) level. Revenue data consisted of annual teaching student enrolment numbers by unit of study, aggregated to course level. Cost data included academic and administrative staff costs, and student professional experience placement expenditure. A teaching revenue to cost of delivery ratio metric and course quality score metric were developed to enable comparisons of units and course performance. Over time, these metrics, when utilised together, could be used to determine the impact of quality improvement interventions on teaching cost and revenue and vice versa. We argue that this approach supports strategic planning and actions to improve both efficiency and effectiveness of units and courses, without negatively affecting quality.

Institutional quality assurance frameworks enable systematic reporting of traditional higher education courses against agreed standards. However, their ability to adequately evaluate quality of a MOOC has not been explored in depth. This chapter, Quality Assurance for Massive Open access Online Courses – building on the old to create something new, explores the added learning and teaching dimensions that MOOCs offer and the limitations of existing frameworks. Many components of a MOOC are similar to traditional courses and, thus, aspects of quality assurance frameworks directly apply, however they fail to connect with the global, unrestricted reach of an open learning and teaching platform. The chapter uses the University of Tasmania's first MOOC, Understanding Dementia, as a case. MOOC-specific quality assurance dimensions are presented in an expanded framework, to which the Understanding Dementia MOOC is mapped, to demonstrate its usefulness to a sector grappling with this new learning and teaching modality. This chapter continues the commentary on – Policy issues in MOOCs Design, through the topic of ‘quality issues critical comparison – contrasting old with new.'

'Fit for Purpose': a cohort-centric approach to MOOC design

Cardiovascular disease is the most frequent cause of death in people with chronic respiratory disease. The cause of this association has been attributed to airway obstruction leading to cardiovascular dysfunction (increased central blood pressure (BP) and aortic stiffness). However, this has never been experimentally tested. Methacholine is routinely used to stimulate airway function changes that mimic airway pathology. This study aimed to determine the cardiovascular effects of methacholine-induced airway obstruction. Fifteen healthy young adults (aged 22.9 +/- 2.5 years; 4 male; mean +/- S.D.) underwent a bronchial challenge test (randomized, blinded, cross-over design) in which they received nebulized methacholine inhalation in serially increasing concentrations (from 0.39 to 25 mg/ml) or saline (0.9%; control) on two separate days. Bronchoconstriction was assessed by forced expiratory volume at one second (FEV1) and cardiovascular effects by augmentation index, brachial BP, central BP, heart rate and aortic stiffness. Methacholine significantly decreased FEV1 from baseline to peak inhaled concentration compared with saline (-0.48 +/- 0.34 vs. -0.07 +/- 0.16 L; p<0.001), but there was no between-group change in augmentation index (1.6 +/- 7.0 vs. 3.7 +/- 10.2%; p=0.49), brachial systolic BP (-3.3 +/- 7.6 vs. -4.7 +/- 5.7 mmHg; p=0.59), central systolic BP (-1.1 +/- 5.2 vs. -0.3 +/- 5.5 mmHg; p=0.73), heart rate (0.4 +/- 7.1 vs. -0.8 +/- 6.6 bpm; p=0.45) or aortic stiffness (0.2 +/- 1.3 vs. 0.8 +/- 1.8 m/s; p=0.20; n=12). Thus, methacholine induced airway obstruction does not acutely change brachial BP or central haemodynamics. This finding refutes the notion that airway obstruction per se leads to cardiovascular dysfunction, at least in healthy individuals in the acute setting.

We acquired ³¹P-MRS data from skeletal muscle of subjects of mixed gender and ethnicity, combined with a panel of physiological characteristics, and tested several long-standing hypotheses regarding relationships between muscle cell biochemistry and whole-body physiology with unusually high statistical power. We hypothesized that i) whole-body VO₂max would correlate with muscle respiratory capacity, ii) resting muscle phosphocreatine concentration ([PCr]) would negatively correlate with delta efficiency and iii) muscle mitochondrial function would positively correlate with both resting VO₂ and total daily energy expenditure (TDEE). Muscle respiratory capacity explained a quarter of the variation in VO₂max (r² = 26, p < .001, n = 87). There was an inverse correlation between muscle [PCr] and delta efficiency (r = −23, p = 046, n = 87). There was also a correlation between [PCr] recovery halftime and TDEE (r = −23, p = 035, n = 87). Our data not only provide insights into muscle cell chemistry and whole-body physiology but our mixed cohort means that our findings are broadly generalizable.

Objective To determine if non-elite athletes undertaking short duration running exercise adjacent to a busy roadway experience increased blood levels of common pollutant volatile organic compounds (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX)). Design and setting The study was observational in design. Participants (nine males/one female non-elite athletes) ran for 20 min, near a busy roadway along a 100 m defined course at their own pace. Blood levels of BTEX were determined both pre- and post-exercise by SPME-GC-MS. Environmental BTEX levels were determined by passive adsorption samplers. Results Subjects completed a mean (range) distance of 4.4 (3.4 to 5.2) km over 20 min (4.5 (3.8 to 5.9) min/km pace), with a mean (SD) exercise intensity of 93 (2.3)% HR_max, and mean (SD) ventilation significantly elevated compared with resting levels (86.2 (2.3) vs 8.7 (0.9) l/min; p3 for toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes, respectively, while benzene was below the detectable limit due to the short exposure period. Significant increases in blood BTEX levels were observed in runners between pre- and postexercise for toluene (mean increase of 1.4 ng/ml; p=0.002), ethylbenzene (0.7 ng/ml; p=0.0003), m/p-xylene (2.0 ng/ml; p=0.004) and o-xylene (1.1 ng/ml; p=0.002), but no change was observed for benzene. Conclusions Blood BTEX levels are increased during high-intensity exercise such as running undertaken in areas with BTEX pollution, even with a short duration of exercise. This may have health implications for runners who regularly exercise near roadways.

Knowledge discovery techniques find new knowledge about a domain by analysing existing domain knowledge and examples of domain data. These techniques typically involve using a human expert and automated software analysis (data mining). Often the human expertise is used initially to choose which data is processed, and then finally to determine which results are relevant. However studies have noted that some domains contain data stores too extensive and detailed, and existing knowledge too complex, for effective data selection or efficient data mining. A different approach is suggested which involves the human expert more pervasively, taking advantage of their expertise at each step, while using data mining techniques to assist in discovering data trends and in verifying the expert's findings. Preliminary results suggest that the approach can be successfully applied to discover new knowledge in a complex domain, and reveal many potential areas for research and development.