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Student dissatisfaction with assessment and feedback is a significant challenge for most UK Higher Education Institutions according to a key national survey. This paper explores the meaning, challenges and potential opportunities for enhancement in assessment and feedback within the authors' own institution as illustrative of approaches that can be taken elsewhere. Using a qualitative design, a review of assessment and feedback, which included an exploration of students' perceptions, was made in one College of the University. The findings highlighted variations in assessment and feedback practice across the College with dissatisfaction typically being due to misunderstanding or miscommunication between staff and students. Drawing on the review, we assert in this paper that students' dissatisfaction with assessment and feedback is not a 'tame' problem for which a straightforward solution exists. Instead, it is a 'wicked' problem that requires a complex approach with multiple interventions.

This paper presents a detailed account of policy-making in a contemporary risk communication arena, where strong power dynamics are at play that have hitherto lacked theoretical analysis and empirical validation. Specifically, it expands on the understanding of how public health policy decisions are made when there is a weak evidential base and where multiple interpretations, power dynamics and values are brought to bear on issues of risk and uncertainty. The aim of the paper is to understand the role that power and expertise play in shaping public health risk communication within policy-related debates. By drawing on insight from a range of literatures, the paper argues that there several interacting factors that shape how a particular narrative gains prominence within a wider set of perspectives and how the arguments and findings associated with that perspective become amplified within the context of policy choices. These findings are conceptualised into a new model – a policy evaluation risk communication (PERC) framework – and are then tested using the Electronic cigarette debate as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crisis Management teaching has not featured within business schools to the extent that we might expect given the crises witnessed in a range of business sectors over recent years. One of the criticisms voiced against the MBA degree is that it has too great a focus on the rational and positivistic approaches to dealing with managerial problems. Organizational crises provide a challenge to that paradigm and suggest that a more critical approach to dealing with the management curriculum is required. This article provides an account of a stand-alone course in crisis management that has been delivered over a 20-year period in a number of institutions worldwide. The authors set out how the course is designed and delivered to bridge the gap between academia and business practice, how it makes use of evidence-based management, and how a critical approach is embedded throughout. The authors also discuss some of the challenges associated with designing and delivering a course that is multidisciplinary and technically demanding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]