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Conventional take-home assignments and online quizzes are compared as formative assessments intended to engage students in learning. Using data from six semesters for each, we consider five characteristics: participation, timeliness and nature of feedback, fit within overall course assessment, and cost of delivery. Both assignments and quizzes generated high participation. Marked feedback took up to five weeks with assignments but was immediate with quizzes. In both cases, passing the formative assessment did not ensure a pass in the exam, but failing it indicated a lack of engagement and almost certain exam failure. The 10% course weighting for quizzes fitted better than the 30% for assignments. The assignments were costly to administer, but online quizzes had a marginal cost close to zero. As formative assessments, we find that overall online quizzes were as effective as take-home assignments and cost considerably less.

Purpose A key question in the provision of public health concerns how that provision is governed. The purpose of this paper is to examine the governance structure of a public health board and its perceived impact on the efficacy of clinical operations. Design/methodology/approach Structural issues examined the level of centralisation and public participation, and whether governance should occur through elected boards or appointed managers. These issues were examined through multiple lenses. First was the intention of the structure, examining the issues identified by parliament when the new structure was created. Second, the activities of the board were examined through an analysis of board meetings. Finally, hospital clinicians were surveyed through semi-structured interviews with both quantitative and qualitative questioning. Findings A contradiction was revealed between intention, perception and actual activities. This raises concerns over whether the public are significantly informed to elect the best-skilled appointees to governance positions. Practical implications This research holds implications for selecting governance structures of public health providers. Originality/value Few studies have looked at the role of a publicly elected healthcare governance structure from the perspective of the clinicians. Hence, this study contributes to the literature on healthcare structure and its impact on clinical operations, by including a clinician’s perspective. However, this paper goes beyond the survey and also considers the intention of the structure as proposed by parliament, and board activities or what the board actually does. This enables a comparison of intention with outcomes and perception of those outcomes.

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Because of the shortcomings of the Malaysian official poverty line, this paper offers several alternative regional poverty line estimations with varying underlying assumptions. Using the Household Expenditure Survey 2004/2005, poverty lines are estimated based on the consumption patterns of 10th and 20th percentile household per capita expenditure. The regional poverty lines from these reference groups produced robust poverty measurement rankings across regions in the country. We suggest that the poverty lines from both reference groups be used as lower and upper poverty lines for the country.