Content-based VLE designs improve learning efficiency in constructivist statistics education.

Science.gov (United States)

Wessa, Patrick; De Rycker, Antoon; Holliday, Ian Edward

2011-01-01

We introduced a series of computer-supported workshops in our undergraduate statistics courses, in the hope that it would help students to gain a deeper understanding of statistical concepts. This raised questions about the appropriate design of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in which such an approach had to be implemented. Therefore, we investigated two competing software design models for VLEs. In the first system, all learning features were a function of the classical VLE. The second system was designed from the perspective that learning features should be a function of the course's core content (statistical analyses), which required us to develop a specific-purpose Statistical Learning Environment (SLE) based on Reproducible Computing and newly developed Peer Review (PR) technology. The main research question is whether the second VLE design improved learning efficiency as compared to the standard type of VLE design that is commonly used in education. As a secondary objective we provide empirical evidence about the usefulness of PR as a constructivist learning activity which supports non-rote learning. Finally, this paper illustrates that it is possible to introduce a constructivist learning approach in large student populations, based on adequately designed educational technology, without subsuming educational content to technological convenience. Both VLE systems were tested within a two-year quasi-experiment based on a Reliable Nonequivalent Group Design. This approach allowed us to draw valid conclusions about the treatment effect of the changed VLE design, even though the systems were implemented in successive years. The methodological aspects about the experiment's internal validity are explained extensively. The effect of the design change is shown to have substantially increased the efficiency of constructivist, computer-assisted learning activities for all cohorts of the student population under investigation. The findings demonstrate that a

Content-based VLE designs improve learning efficiency in constructivist statistics education.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Patrick Wessa

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: We introduced a series of computer-supported workshops in our undergraduate statistics courses, in the hope that it would help students to gain a deeper understanding of statistical concepts. This raised questions about the appropriate design of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE in which such an approach had to be implemented. Therefore, we investigated two competing software design models for VLEs. In the first system, all learning features were a function of the classical VLE. The second system was designed from the perspective that learning features should be a function of the course's core content (statistical analyses, which required us to develop a specific-purpose Statistical Learning Environment (SLE based on Reproducible Computing and newly developed Peer Review (PR technology. OBJECTIVES: The main research question is whether the second VLE design improved learning efficiency as compared to the standard type of VLE design that is commonly used in education. As a secondary objective we provide empirical evidence about the usefulness of PR as a constructivist learning activity which supports non-rote learning. Finally, this paper illustrates that it is possible to introduce a constructivist learning approach in large student populations, based on adequately designed educational technology, without subsuming educational content to technological convenience. METHODS: Both VLE systems were tested within a two-year quasi-experiment based on a Reliable Nonequivalent Group Design. This approach allowed us to draw valid conclusions about the treatment effect of the changed VLE design, even though the systems were implemented in successive years. The methodological aspects about the experiment's internal validity are explained extensively. RESULTS: The effect of the design change is shown to have substantially increased the efficiency of constructivist, computer-assisted learning activities for all cohorts of the student

An investigation of the impact of selected prereading activities on student content learning through laboratory activities

Science.gov (United States)

Kass, Jesse (Shaya)

This study investigated whether two prereading activities impacted student learning from hands-on science activities. The study was based on constructivist learning theory. Based on the work of Piaget, it was hypothesized that students who activated prior knowledge would learn more from the activities. Based on the work of Vygotsky it was hypothesized that students who talk more and write more would learn more from the activity. The K-W-L chart and anticipation guide strategies were used with eighth grade students at Graves Middle School in Whittier, California before learning about levers and convection currents. D. M. Ogle (1986) created the three-column K-W-L chart to have students activate prior knowledge. In the first column, the students write what they already know about a subject, in the second column, the students write what they want to know about the subject, and the students complete the third column after learning about a subject by writing answers to the questions that they asked in the second column. Duffelmeyer (1994) created the anticipation guide based on Herber's (1978) reasoning guide. In the anticipation guide, the teacher creates three or four sentences that convey the major ideas of the topic and the students either agree or disagree with the statements. After learning about the topic, students revisit their answers and decide if they were correct or incorrect and they must defend their choices. This research used the Solomon (1947) four-square design and compared both the experimental groups to a control group that simply discussed the concepts before completing the activity. The research showed no significant difference between the control group and either of the treatment groups. The reasons for the lack of significant differences are considered. It was hypothesized that since the students were unfamiliar with the prereading activities and did not have much experience with using either writing-to-learn or talking-to-learn strategies, the

Promoting autonomous learning in English through the implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL in science and maths subjects

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andriani Putu Fika

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Autonomous learning is a concept in which the learner has the ability to take charge of their own learning. It becomes a notable aspect that should be perceived by students. The aim of this research is for finding out the strategies used by grade two teachers in Bali Kiddy Primary School to promote autonomous learning in English through the implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning in science and maths subjects. This study was designed in the form of descriptive qualitative study. The data were collected through observation, interview, and document study. The result of the study shows that there are some strategies of promoting autonomous learning in English through the implementation of CLIL in Science and Maths subjects. Those strategies are table of content training, questioning & presenting, journal writing, choosing activities, and using online activity. Those strategies can be adopted or even adapted as the way to promote autonomous learning in English subject.

A Novel Teaching Tool Combined With Active-Learning to Teach Antimicrobial Spectrum Activity.

Science.gov (United States)

MacDougall, Conan

2017-03-25

Objective. To design instructional methods that would promote long-term retention of knowledge of antimicrobial pharmacology, particularly the spectrum of activity for antimicrobial agents, in pharmacy students. Design. An active-learning approach was used to teach selected sessions in a required antimicrobial pharmacology course. Students were expected to review key concepts from the course reader prior to the in-class sessions. During class, brief concept reviews were followed by active-learning exercises, including a novel schematic method for learning antimicrobial spectrum of activity ("flower diagrams"). Assessment. At the beginning of the next quarter (approximately 10 weeks after the in-class sessions), 360 students (three yearly cohorts) completed a low-stakes multiple-choice examination on the concepts in antimicrobial spectrum of activity. When data for students was pooled across years, the mean number of correct items was 75.3% for the items that tested content delivered with the active-learning method vs 70.4% for items that tested content delivered via traditional lecture (mean difference 4.9%). Instructor ratings on student evaluations of the active-learning approach were high (mean scores 4.5-4.8 on a 5-point scale) and student comments were positive about the active-learning approach and flower diagrams. Conclusion. An active-learning approach led to modestly higher scores in a test of long-term retention of pharmacology knowledge and was well-received by students.

Development of Efficient Authoring Software for e-Learning Contents

Science.gov (United States)

Kozono, Kazutake; Teramoto, Akemi; Akiyama, Hidenori

The contents creation in e-Learning system becomes an important problem. The contents of e-Learning should include figure and voice media for a high-level educational effect. However, the use of figure and voice complicates the operation of authoring software considerably. A new authoring software, which can build e-Learning contents efficiently, has been developed to solve this problem. This paper reports development results of the authoring software.

Engaging colleagues in active learning pedagogies through mentoring and co-design

Science.gov (United States)

Adams, Rhys; Lenton, Kevin

2017-08-01

When implemented correctly, active learning pedagogies increase student engagement with discipline content. In addition, there is accumulating evidence that they also positively impact the learning of this content. This is particularly relevant for teaching science disciplines because many students perceive science as being difficult to fully understand. However, an ongoing problem is that instructors have difficulty implementing active learning pedagogies effectively and therefore see no benefit to it. Without persistence or guidance, instructors can become discouraged and return to a more traditional style of teaching. We report on how the Faculty of Science at Vanier College is getting more instructors to engage in active learning pedagogies through mentoring and activity co-design.

Lectures Abandoned: Active Learning by Active Seminars

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christensen, Henrik Bærbak; Corry, Aino Vonge

2012-01-01

Traditional lecture-based courses are widely criticised for be- ing less eective in teaching. The question is of course what should replace the lectures and various active learning tech- niques have been suggested and studied. In this paper, we report on our experiences of redesigning a software ......- tive seminars as a replacement of traditional lectures, an activity template for the contents of active seminars, an ac- count on how storytelling supported the seminars, as well as reports on our and the students' experiences....

Grooming. Learning Activity Package.

Science.gov (United States)

Stark, Pamela

This learning activity package on grooming for health workers is one of a series of 12 titles developed for use in health occupations education programs. Materials in the package include objectives, a list of materials needed, information sheets, reviews (self evaluations) of portions of the content, and answers to reviews. These topics are…

Analysis of Maths Learning Activities Developed By Pre-service Teachers in Terms of the Components of Content, Purpose, Application Methods

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Çağla Toprak

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Today- when the influence of the alteration movement done in order to keep up with the age of the educational system is still continuing- the importance of teachers in students’ learning and achieving what is expected from the education system has been stated by the studies conducted (Hazır & Bıkmaz, 2006. Teachers own a critical role in the stage of both preparing teaching materials and using them (Stein & Smith, 1998b; Swan, 2007. When the existing curriculums –in particular, maths and geometry cirriculums- are analyzed, it can be observed that activities are the most significant teaching materials (Bozkurt, 2012. In fact, it is possible to characterize the existing curriculums as activity-based ones (Report of Workshop Examining Content of Primary School Curriculums According to Branches, 2010; Epö, 2005. Therefore, what sort of learning activities there are, what qualities they need to have, how to design and apply them are topics that must be elaborated (Uğurel et al., 2010.  At this point, our study to increase the skills of pre-service teachers during the process of developing activities was conducted with 27 pre-service teachers -19 girls 8 boys- studying in the 4th year in Mathematics Education Department at a state university in the Aegean Region. The activity designs the pre-service teachers developed considering the patterns given after a series of practice were analyzed in documents in terms of the aim of design and the form of practice. As a result of the studies, it is observed that pre-service teachers deal with the topics from the maths curriculum and these topics are of different grade levels. The result of the examination named as target component suggests that activities developed aim firstly at providing learning and this is followed by reinforcing the concepts already learned. It is stated that pre-service teachers prefer mostly small group (cooperative studies in the activities they develop.Key Words: �

EFFORTS TO IMPROVE LEARNING MOTIVATION OF STUDENT WITH CONTENT MASTERY IN SMP NEGERI 1 METRO

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Hadi Pranoto

2013-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract: The study design using action research applied in guidance and counseling services (follow-services research. Subjects in this study, researchers took VII.4 grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Metro Odd Semester Lesson Tabun 2012/2013. Of the 24 students, there are 10 students who experience a lack of motivation to learn to 41.66%. The method used in collecting data by observation and field notes. Analysis of the data used is the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. Validity test is done through assessment experts /specialists ie counseling teachers SMP Negeri 1 Metro, other friends peer discussions that instrument with other friends FKIP students with courses in counseling. The results of this study, it can be concluded that the results obtained through the implementation of the procurement of content services in increasing the motivation of learners class VII.4 SMP Negeri 1 Metro Tabun Odd Semester Lesson 20 12/20 13 is visible from the change in behavior and ability of learners in learners become more willing to meet the needs of achievement, students can understand or have confidence in learning, learners have the ability to overcome failure in learning, and learners have a good competitiveness in the service learning. Through mastery of content supplied by BK teacher can increase the motivation of learners class VII.4 SMP Negeri 1 Metro Odd Semester Academic Year 201212013. There is increased the motivation of learners in the first cycle seen from the average percentage that is equal to 27.5% and in the second cycle of 75 %, resulting in an increase of 47.5%. Response and activity VIl.4 grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Metro Odd Semester Lesson Tabun 2012/2013 on the service in the content mastery enhance learning motivation is very positive, it is shown by the participation of learners in the service following the mastery of content, learner motivation and enthusiasm in participating services as well as content mastery

Content-Based VLE Designs Improve Learning Efficiency in Constructivist Statistics Education

Science.gov (United States)

Wessa, Patrick; De Rycker, Antoon; Holliday, Ian Edward

2011-01-01

Background We introduced a series of computer-supported workshops in our undergraduate statistics courses, in the hope that it would help students to gain a deeper understanding of statistical concepts. This raised questions about the appropriate design of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in which such an approach had to be implemented. Therefore, we investigated two competing software design models for VLEs. In the first system, all learning features were a function of the classical VLE. The second system was designed from the perspective that learning features should be a function of the course's core content (statistical analyses), which required us to develop a specific–purpose Statistical Learning Environment (SLE) based on Reproducible Computing and newly developed Peer Review (PR) technology. Objectives The main research question is whether the second VLE design improved learning efficiency as compared to the standard type of VLE design that is commonly used in education. As a secondary objective we provide empirical evidence about the usefulness of PR as a constructivist learning activity which supports non-rote learning. Finally, this paper illustrates that it is possible to introduce a constructivist learning approach in large student populations, based on adequately designed educational technology, without subsuming educational content to technological convenience. Methods Both VLE systems were tested within a two-year quasi-experiment based on a Reliable Nonequivalent Group Design. This approach allowed us to draw valid conclusions about the treatment effect of the changed VLE design, even though the systems were implemented in successive years. The methodological aspects about the experiment's internal validity are explained extensively. Results The effect of the design change is shown to have substantially increased the efficiency of constructivist, computer-assisted learning activities for all cohorts of the student population under

Active learning methods for interactive image retrieval.

Science.gov (United States)

Gosselin, Philippe Henri; Cord, Matthieu

2008-07-01

Active learning methods have been considered with increased interest in the statistical learning community. Initially developed within a classification framework, a lot of extensions are now being proposed to handle multimedia applications. This paper provides algorithms within a statistical framework to extend active learning for online content-based image retrieval (CBIR). The classification framework is presented with experiments to compare several powerful classification techniques in this information retrieval context. Focusing on interactive methods, active learning strategy is then described. The limitations of this approach for CBIR are emphasized before presenting our new active selection process RETIN. First, as any active method is sensitive to the boundary estimation between classes, the RETIN strategy carries out a boundary correction to make the retrieval process more robust. Second, the criterion of generalization error to optimize the active learning selection is modified to better represent the CBIR objective of database ranking. Third, a batch processing of images is proposed. Our strategy leads to a fast and efficient active learning scheme to retrieve sets of online images (query concept). Experiments on large databases show that the RETIN method performs well in comparison to several other active strategies.

Grooming. Instructor's Packet. Learning Activity Package.

Science.gov (United States)

Stark, Pamela

This instructor's packet accompanies the learning activity package (LAP) on grooming. Contents included in the packet are a time sheet, suggested uses for the LAP, an instruction sheet, final LAP reviews, a final LAP review answer key, suggested activities, an additional resources list, and student completion cards to issue to students as an…

A Bridge to Active Learning: A Summer Bridge Program Helps Students Maximize Their Active-Learning Experiences and the Active-Learning Experiences of Others

Science.gov (United States)

Cooper, Katelyn M.; Ashley, Michael; Brownell, Sara E.

2017-01-01

National calls to improve student academic success in college have sparked the development of bridge programs designed to help students transition from high school to college. We designed a 2-week Summer Bridge program that taught introductory biology content in an active-learning way. Through a set of exploratory interviews, we unexpectedly…

Resolving the Problem of Intelligent Learning Content in Learning Management Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Rey-Lopez, Marta; Brusilovsky, Peter; Meccawy, Maram; Diaz-Redondo, Rebeca; Fernandez-Vilas, Ana; Ashman, Helen

2008-01-01

Current e-learning standardization initiatives have put much effort into easing interoperability between systems and the reusability of contents. For this to be possible, one of the most relevant areas is the definition of a run-time environment, which allows Learning Management Systems to launch, track and communicate with learning objects.…

Strategies for active learning in online continuing education.

Science.gov (United States)

Phillips, Janet M

2005-01-01

Online continuing education and staff development is on the rise as the benefits of access, convenience, and quality learning are continuing to take shape. Strategies to enhance learning call for learner participation that is self-directed and independent, thus changing the educator's role from expert to coach and facilitator. Good planning of active learning strategies promotes optimal learning whether the learning content is presented in a course or a just-in-time short module. Active learning strategies can be used to enhance online learning during all phases of the teaching-learning process and can accommodate a variety of learning styles. Feedback from peers, educators, and technology greatly influences learner satisfaction and must be harnessed to provide effective learning experiences. Outcomes of active learning can be assessed online and implemented conveniently and successfully from the initiation of the course or module planning to the end of the evaluation process. Online learning has become accessible and convenient and allows the educator to track learner participation. The future of online education will continue to grow, and using active learning strategies will ensure that quality learning will occur, appealing to a wide variety of learning needs.

Content Production for E-Learning in Engineering

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andreas Auinger

2007-06-01

Full Text Available The didactic quality of lear0ning materialscan be improved by enriching learning material with didacticinformation. Such content elements assist selfdirectedlearning processes in virtual learningenvironments effectively. In order to develop didacticallymotivated for flexible use, e.g., at different terminaldevices such as PC or PDA, a structured procedure isrequired. We propose the selection and identification ofdidactically relevant information prior to enrichment ofhighly structured content with didactical information. Itcan be achieved by using the CoDEx method (ContentDidactically Explicit, and a mapping scheme to thelearning-technology standard conform XML contentstructures. Furthermore, aspects for multi-channel contentdelivery in the application field of engineering have to betaken into account. In this paper we refer to the objectivesand results of the EU-funded ELIE project (E-Learning InEngineering to demonstrate the proposed procedure’seffectiveness for content engineering.

Transforming existing content into reusable Learning Objects

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Doorten, Monique; Giesbers, Bas; Janssen, José; Daniels, Jan; Koper, Rob

2003-01-01

Please cite as: Doorten, M., Giesbers, B., Janssen, J., Daniëls, J, & Koper, E.J.R., (2004). Transforming existing content into reusable learning objects. In R. McGreal, Online Education using Learning Objects (pp. 116-127). London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Negotiating Content with Learners Using Technology Enhanced Teaching and Learning Solutions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Richard Smith

2011-09-01

Full Text Available This paper examines issues around learning ‘content’ and its place in the new digital learning culture. We focus on the increasing demands of digital learners for content that is relevant and the challenges this poses if educators are to stay relevant to them. We say ‘relevance’ is best achieved when content is negotiated with learners in collaboration with instructors. We describe strategies in which technology enhanced teaching and learning solutions have enabled learners to negotiate and create digitised learning content that is educationally, culturally and socially relevant. We cite two case studies that exemplify this approach: a trial of negotiated content with primary school aged digital learners at Brisbane School of Distance Education (BSDE, Australia, and the content decision-making processes used for the development of e-learning courses for hearing health professionals and Auditory-Verbal Therapy at Hear and Say WorldWide Brisbane, Australia. We focus on the changing demands and skill sets of digital learners, their learning managers and subject matter experts, and the use of technology enhanced teaching and learning solutions as the negotiating tool in the development of digital content that is academically rigorous and also learner friendly.

Sinkronisasi Content E-learning Terdistribusi Berbasis Model Komunikasi Indirect Menggunakan Sistem Publish-Subscribe

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sufrendo Saputra

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Sinkronisasi content antar e-learning memungkinkan beberapa e-learning memiliki content yang sama secara konsisten. Perubahan content pada salah satu e-learning akan membuat sistem memastikan e-learning lain mengetahui perubahan tersebut. Model komunikasi yang memungkinkan adanya sinkronisasi ini merupakan komunikasi indirect berbasis publish-subscribe. Setiap e-learning memiliki content-nya masing-masing yang secara otomatis akan di-publish oleh sistem. E-learning lain yang tergabung dalam sistem sinkronisasi kemudian dapat memilih content mana yang ingin di-subscribe. Jika terdapat perubahan pada sebuah content, dan content tersebut memiliki subscriber, maka sistem akan memberitahu subscriber bahwa telah terjadi perubahan pada content. Teknologi utama yang digunakan dalam sistem ini adalah Moodle, PHP, dan Java. Moodle sebagai modul yang digunakan untuk mensimulasikan e-learning. PHP dan Java sebagai framework dari sistem sinkronisasi. Model komunikasi yang digunakan merupakan komunikasi indirect berbasis publish-subscribe. Model komunikasi ini menempatkan sebuah perantara bagi komunikasi antar e-learning.

Oral Hygiene. Instructor's Packet. Learning Activity Package.

Science.gov (United States)

Hime, Kirsten

This instructor's packet accompanies the learning activity package (LAP) on oral hygiene. Contents included in the packet are a time sheet, suggested uses for the LAP, an instruction sheet, final LAP reviews, a final LAP review answer key, suggested activities, additional resources (student handouts), student performance checklists for both…

Adaptive Multimedia Content Delivery for Context-Aware U-Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Zhao, Xinyou; Okamoto, Toshio

2011-01-01

Empowered by mobile computing, teachers and students can benefit from computing in more scenarios beyond the traditional computer classroom. But because of the much diversity of device specification, learning contents and mobile context existing today, the learners get a bad learning experience (e.g. rich contents cannot be displayed correctly)…

Evaluation Criterion for Quality Assessment of E-Learning Content

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Alwani, Abdulkareem

2014-01-01

Research trends related to e-learning systems are oriented towards increasing the efficiency and capacity of the systems, thus they reflect a large variance in performance when considering content conformity and quality standards. The Framework related to standardisation of digital content for e-learning systems is likely to play a significant…

Oral Hygiene. Learning Activity Package.

Science.gov (United States)

Hime, Kirsten

This learning activity package on oral hygiene is one of a series of 12 titles developed for use in health occupations education programs. Materials in the package include objectives, a list of materials needed, a list of definitions, information sheets, reviews (self evaluations) of portions of the content, and answers to reviews. These topics…

Learning content and the creative cloud

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Specht, Marcus

2012-01-01

Specht, M. (2012, 18 April). Learning content and the creative cloud. Presentation given at the workshop for creative cloud CLICK workshop Faculteit Bouwkunde & Architectuur TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands.

Adolescent literacy: learning and understanding content.

Science.gov (United States)

Goldman, Susan R

2012-01-01

Learning to read--amazing as it is to small children and their parents--is one thing. Reading to learn, explains Susan Goldman of the University of Illinois at Chicago, is quite another. Are today's students able to use reading and writing to acquire knowledge, solve problems, and make decisions in academic, personal, and professional arenas? Do they have the literacy skills necessary to meet the demands of the twenty-first century? To answer these questions, Goldman describes the increasingly complex comprehension, reasoning skills, and knowledge that students need as they progress through school and surveys what researchers and educators know about how to teach those skills. Successfully reading to learn requires the ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information from multiple sources, Goldman writes. Effective readers must be able to apply different knowledge, reading, and reasoning processes to different types of content, from fiction to history and science, to news accounts and user manuals. They must assess sources of information for relevance, reliability, impartiality, and completeness. And they must connect information across multiple sources. In short, successful readers must not only use general reading skills but also pay close attention to discipline-specific processes. Goldman reviews the evidence on three different instructional approaches to reading to learn: general comprehension strategies, classroom discussion, and disciplinary content instruction. She argues that building the literacy skills necessary for U.S. students to read comprehensively and critically and to learn content in a variety of disciplines should be a primary responsibility for all of the nation's teachers. But outside of English, few subject-area teachers are aware of the need to teach subject-area reading comprehension skills, nor have they had opportunities to learn them themselves. Building the capacity of all teachers to meet the literacy needs of today's students

Assessing STEM content learning: using the Arctic's changing climate to develop 21st century learner

Science.gov (United States)

Henderson, G. R.; Durkin, S.; Moran, A.

2016-12-01

In recent years the U.S. federal government has called for an increased focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the educational system to ensure that there will be sufficient technical expertise to meet the needs of business and industry. As a direct result of this STEM emphasis, the number of outreach activities aimed at actively engaging these students in STEM learning has surged. Such activities, frequently in the form of summer camps led by university faculty, have targeted primary and secondary school students with the goal of growing student interest in STEM majors and STEM careers. This study assesses short-term content learning using a climate module that highlights rapidly changing Arctic climate conditions to illustrate concepts of radiative energy balance and climate feedback. Hands-on measurement of short and longwave radiation using simple instrumentation is used to demonstrate concepts that are then related back to the "big picture" Arctic issue. Pre and post module questionnaires were used to assess content learning, as this learning type has been identified as the basis for STEM literacy and the vehicle by which 21st century learning skills are usually developed. In this instance, students applied subject knowledge they gained by taking radiation measurements to better understand the real-world problem of climate change.

Modularization and Structured Markup for Learning Content in an Academic Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Schluep, Samuel; Bettoni, Marco; Schar, Sissel Guttormsen

2006-01-01

This article aims to present a flexible component model for modular, web-based learning content, and a simple structured markup schema for the separation of content and presentation. The article will also contain an overview of the dynamic Learning Content Management System (dLCMS) project, which implements these concepts. Content authors are a…

Patient learning of treatment contents in cognitive therapy.

Science.gov (United States)

Gumport, Nicole B; Dong, Lu; Lee, Jason Y; Harvey, Allison G

2018-03-01

Research has demonstrated that both memory and learning for treatment contents are poor, and that both are associated with worse treatment outcome. The Memory Support Intervention has been shown to improve memory for treatment, but it has not yet been established if this intervention can also improve learning of treatment contents. This study was designed to document the number of times participants exhibited each of the indices of learning, to examine the indices of learning and their relationship to recall of treatment points, and to investigate the association between the indices of learning and depression outcome. Adults diagnosed with major depressive disorder (N = 48) were randomly assigned to 14 sessions of cognitive therapy-as-usual (CT-as-usual) or cognitive therapy plus the Memory Support Intervention (CT + Memory Support). Measures of learning, memory, and depressive symptomatology were taken at mid-treatment, post-treatment, and at 6-month follow-up. Relative to the CT-as-usual group, participants in the CT + Memory Support group reported more accurate thoughts and applications of treatment points at mid-treatment, post-treatment, and 6-month follow-up. Patient recall was significantly correlated with application and cognitive generalization. Thoughts and application at mid-treatment were associated with increased odds of treatment response at post-treatment. The learning measure for this study has not yet been psychometrically validated. The results are based on a small sample. Learning during treatment is poor, but modifiable via the Memory Support Intervention. These results provide encouraging data that improving learning of treatment contents can reduce symptoms during and following treatment. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Course Wiki: Challenges in Facilitating and Assessing Student-Generated Learning Content for the Humanities Classroom

Science.gov (United States)

Lazda-Cazers, Rasma

2010-01-01

New Web technology allows for the design of traditionally lecture-centered humanities courses by fostering active learning and engaging students as producers of learning content. The article presents the experiences with a student-generated wiki for a Germanic Mythology course. Evaluations indicated an overwhelmingly positive student experience…

Telling Active Learning Pedagogies Apart: from theory to practice

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kelsey Hood Cattaneo

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Designing learning environments to incorporate active learning pedagogies is difficult as definitions are often contested and intertwined. This article seeks to determine whether classification of active learning pedagogies (i.e., project-based, problem-based, inquiry-based, case-based, and discovery-based, through theoretical and practical lenses, could function as a useful tool for researchers and practitioners in comparing pedagogies. This article classified five active learning pedagogies based on six constructivist elements. The comparison was completed through a comparative analysis and a content analysis informed by a systematic literature review. The findings were that learner-centeredness is a primary goal of all pedagogies; however, there is a strong dissonance between each pedagogy’s theoretical underpinnings and implementation realities. This dissonance complicates differentiating active learning pedagogies and classification as a comparative tool has proved to have limited usefulness.

DASL-Data and Activities for Solar Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Harrison P.; Henney, Carl; Hill, Frank; Gearen, Michael; Pompca, Stephen; Stagg, Travis; Stefaniak, Linda; Walker, Connie

2004-01-01

DASL-Data and Activities for Solar Learning Data and Activities for Solar Learning (DASL) provides a classroom learning environment based on a twenty-five year record of solar magnetograms from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) at Kitt Peak, AZ. The data, together with image processing software for Macs or PCs, can be used to learn basic facts about the Sun and astronomy at the middle school level. At the high school level, students can study properties of the Sun's magnetic cycle with classroom exercises emphasizing data and error analysis and can participate in a new scientific study, Research in Active Solar Longitudes (RASL), in collaboration with classrooms throughout the country and scientists at NSO and NASA. We present a half-day course to train teachers in the scientific content of the project and its classroom use. We will provide a compact disc with the data and software and will demonstrate software installation and use, classroom exercises, and participation in RASL with computer projection.

Retail Executives’ Professional Learning Contents

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eduardo de Aquino Lucena

2014-05-01

Full Text Available The research question that is addressed in this article is the following: what do the executives from small retailing firms learn in their work environment? The theoretical framework of the study is based on texts from the field of learning. This is a qualitative investigation. Ten interviews with clothing retail executives were carried out. Later, these interviews were transcribed and analyzed. In the data analysis stage, two categories were established in response to the research question. Regarding the first, respondents perceived difficulties (problems in their work environments and obtained specific information and knowledge in order to deal with these situations. So as to overcome different professional difficulties, respondents learned about colors and types of fabric and about certain manufacturing process aspects referring to the clothing sold by their companies. They also declared to have learned about their companies’ suppliers and about certain issues referring to sales, and to the accounting and the financial management of their companies. The second category refers to a change in some of the respondents’ habits. This learning content refers to predispositions to respond and/ or act in situations at their work environments. Respondents reported having changed the way they related to other people. They emphasized that they had learned how to interact with the employees at their stores and how to carry out supervision. Differently from other studies, we found that the retailers’ learning (individual learning affected their companies’ learning (organizational learning through changes in certain aspects of the analyzed companies’ organizational structures.

Adaptation of mathematical educational content in e-learning resources

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Yuliya V. Vainshtein

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Modern trends in the world electronic educational system development determine the necessity of adaptive learning intellectual environments and resources’ development and implementation. An upcoming trend in improvement the quality of studying mathematical disciplines is the development and application of adaptive electronic educational resources. However, the development and application experience of adaptive technologies in higher education is currently extremely limited and does not imply the usage flexibility. Adaptive educational resources in the electronic environment are electronic educational resources that provide the student with a personal educational space, filled with educational content that “adapts” to the individual characteristics of the students and provides them with the necessary information.This article focuses on the mathematical educational content adaptation algorithms development and their implementation in the e-learning system. The peculiarity of the proposed algorithms is the possibility of their application and distribution for adaptive e-learning resources construction. The novelty of the proposed approach is the three-step content organization of the adaptive algorithms for the educational content: “introductory adaptation of content”, “the current adaptation of content”, “estimative and a corrective adaptation”. For each stage of the proposed system, mathematical algorithms for educational content adaptation in adaptive e-learning resources are presented.Due to the high level of abstraction and complexity perception of mathematical disciplines, educational content is represented in the various editions of presentation that correspond to the levels of assimilation of the course material. Adaptation consists in the selection of the optimal edition of the material that best matches the individual characteristics of the student. The introduction of a three-step content organization of the adaptive

Plastics in Our Environment: A Jigsaw Learning Activity

Science.gov (United States)

Hampton, Elaine; Wallace, Mary Ann; Lee, Wen-Yee

2009-01-01

In this lesson, a ready-to-teach cooperative reading activity, students learn about the effects of plastics in our environment, specifically that certain petrochemicals act as artificial estrogens and impact hormonal activities. Much of the content in this lesson was synthesized from recent medical research about the impact of xenoestrogens and…

Language Learning of Gifted Individuals: A Content Analysis Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Beria Gokaydin

2017-11-01

Full Text Available This study aims to carry out a content analysis of the studies on language learning of gifted individuals and determine the trends in this field. Articles on language learning of gifted individuals published in the Scopus database were examined based on certain criteria including type of publication, year of publication, language, research discipline, countries of research, institutions of authors, key words, and resources. Data were analyzed with the content analysis method. Results showed that the number of studies on language learning of gifted individuals has increased throughout the years. Recommendations for further research and practices are provided.

GeoMapApp Learning Activities: Grab-and-go inquiry-based geoscience activities that bring cutting-edge technology to the classroom

Science.gov (United States)

Goodwillie, A. M.; Kluge, S.

2011-12-01

NSF-funded GeoMapApp Learning Activities (http://serc.carleton.edu/geomapapp) provide self-contained learning opportunities that are centred around the principles of guided inquiry. The activities allow students to interact with and analyse research-quality geoscience data to explore and enhance student understanding of underlying geoscience content and concepts. Each activity offers ready-to-use step-by-step student instructions and answer sheets that can be downloaded from the web page. Also provided are annotated teacher versions of the worksheets that include teaching tips, additional content and suggestions for further work. Downloadable pre- and post- quizzes tied to each activity help educators gauge the learning progression of their students. Short multimedia tutorials and details on content alignment with state and national teaching standards round out the package of material that comprises each "grab-and-go" activity. GeoMapApp Learning Activities expose students to content and concepts typically found at the community college, high school and introductory undergraduate levels. The activities are based upon GeoMapApp (http://www.geomapapp.org), a free, easy-to-use map-based data exploration and visualisation tool that allows students to access a wide range of geoscience data sets in a virtual lab-like environment. Activities that have so far been created under this project include student exploration of seafloor spreading rates, a study of mass wasting as revealed through geomorphological evidence, and an analysis of plate motion and hotspot traces. The step-by-step instructions and guided inquiry approach lead students through each activity, thus reducing the need for teacher intervention whilst also boosting the time that students can spend on productive exploration and learning. The activities can be used, for example, in a classroom lab with the educator present and as self-paced assignments in an out-of-class setting. GeoMapApp Learning Activities

How Technology and Collaboration Promote Formative Feedback: A Role for CSCL Research in Active Learning Interventions

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Sally P. W.; Rau, Martina A.

2017-01-01

Recent evidence for the effectiveness of active learning interventions has led educators to advocate for widespread adoption of active learning in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses. Active learning interventions implement technology and collaboration to engage students actively with the content. Yet, it is…

Content and language integrated learning: principles and perspectives

OpenAIRE

BAKLAGOVA J.

2014-01-01

This article is devoted to the innovative model for language education Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) which has gained in immense popularity all over the world. Based on communicative approach, CLIL provides progress in language and in the content subject, creativity and independence in language using, developing higher order thinking skills. A successful CLIL lesson should combine such elements as content, communication, cognition and culture

Rich media content adaptation in e-learning systems

OpenAIRE

Mirri, Silvia

2007-01-01

The wide use of e-technologies represents a great opportunity for underserved segments of the population, especially with the aim of reintegrating excluded individuals back into society through education. This is particularly true for people with different types of disabilities who may have difficulties while attending traditional on-site learning programs that are typically based on printed learning resources. The creation and provision of accessible e-learning contents may therefore become ...

Mapping Learning Outcomes and Assignment Tasks for SPIDER Activities

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Lyn Brodie

2011-05-01

Full Text Available Modern engineering programs have to address rapidly changing technical content and have to enable students to develop transferable skills such as critical evaluation, communication skills and lifelong learning. This paper introduces a combined learning and assessment activity that provides students with opportunities to develop and practice their soft skills, but also extends their theoretical knowledge base. Key tasks included self directed inquiry, oral and written communication as well as peer assessment. To facilitate the SPIDER activities (Select, Prepare and Investigate, Discuss, Evaluate, Reflect, a software tool has been implemented in the learning management system Moodle. Evidence shows increased student engagement and better learning outcomes for both transferable as well as technical skills. The study focuses on generalising the relationship between learning outcomes and assignment tasks as well as activities that drive these tasks. Trail results inform the approach. Staff evaluations and their views of assignments and intended learning outcomes also supported this analysis.

Active Learning Strategies for the Mathematics Classroom

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Kerrigan, John

2018-01-01

Active learning involves students engaging with course content beyond lecture: through writing, applets, simulations, games, and more (Prince, 2004). As mathematics is often viewed as a subject area that is taught using more traditional methods (Goldsmith & Mark, 1999), there are actually many simple ways to make undergraduate mathematics…

Four Characteristics of Facebook Activities for English Language Learning: A study of Malaysian University Students’ Needs and Preferences

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Shaidatul Akma Adi Kasuma

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This paper identifies Malaysian university students’ needs and preferences for online English language activities on a Facebook group that supports their formal learning. Two methods of data collection were employed; content analysis of the Facebook interactions, and semi structured interviews. Four main learning preferences or characteristics of online activities are identified; a teacher-led activities (tasks and learning content provided by teachers, b teachers’ presence (one or two authority figures to facilitate learning and keep group lively, c topics or content (entertainment-oriented, grammar quizzes, opinion-based discussions, d structure of the group (optional and ungraded. The passive participants found the activity beneficial in improving their online communication ability, while the more active participants felt a boost of confidence to use English in a more public space like Facebook. The findings indicate that the students are in need of technological changes in learning, but are dependent on teachers’ instructions to initiate the process. They exert selective interests in learning topics and content, and demonstrate partial autonomy in negotiating the online group’s structure. The theoretical and practical implications, and recommendation for future research are briefly presented.

E-LEARNING TOOLS: STRUCTURE, CONTENT, CLASSIFICATION

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Yuliya H. Loboda

2012-05-01

Full Text Available The article analyses the problems of organization of educational process with use of electronic means of education. Specifies the definition of "electronic learning", their structure and content. Didactic principles are considered, which are the basis of their creation and use. Given the detailed characteristics of e-learning tools for methodological purposes. On the basis of the allocated pedagogical problems of the use of electronic means of education presented and complemented by their classification, namely the means of theoretical and technological training, means of practical training, support tools, and comprehensive facilities.

Chaotic....!! Active and Engaged. Effects of an active learning classroom on student retention and engagement.

Science.gov (United States)

Palsole, S.; Serpa, L. F.

2014-12-01

Scientific literacy has been defined as the foremost challenge of this decade (AAAS, 2012). The Geological Society of American in its position statement postis that due to the systemic nature of the discipline of earth science, it is the most effective way to engage students in STEM disciplines. Given that the most common place for exposure to earth sciences is at the freshman level for non majors, we decided to transform a freshman introductory geology course to an active, student centered course, using an inquiry based approach. Our focus was to ensure the students saw the earth sciences as broadly applicative field, and not an esoteric science. To achieve this goal, we developed a series of problems that required the students to apply the concepts acquired through their self guided learning into the different topics of the course. This self guided learning took the form of didactic content uploaded into the learning management system (the various elements used to deliver the content were designed video clips, short text based lectures, short formative assessments, discussion boards and other web based discovery exercises) with the class time devoted to problem solving. A comparison of student performance in the active learning classroom vs. a traditional classroom as measured on a geoscience concept inventory (the questions were chosen by a third party who was not teaching either courses) showed that the the students in the active learning classroom scored 10% higher on the average in comparison to the traditional class. In addition to this heightened performance, the students in the active classroom also showed a higher degree of content retention 8 weeks after the semester had ended. This session will share the design process, some exercises and efficacy data collected.

Awareness for Contextualized Digital Contents in Ubiquitous Learning Environments

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Börner, Dirk

2010-01-01

Börner, D. (2009). Awareness for Contextualized Digital Contents in Ubiquitous Learning Environments. Presented at the Doctoral Consortium of the Fourth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2009). September, 29-October, 2, 2009, Nice, France.

From learning objects to learning activities

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dalsgaard, Christian

2005-01-01

This paper discusses and questions the current metadata standards for learning objects from a pedagogical point of view. From a social constructivist approach, the paper discusses how learning objects can support problem based, self-governed learning activities. In order to support this approach......, it is argued that it is necessary to focus on learning activities rather than on learning objects. Further, it is argued that descriptions of learning objectives and learning activities should be separated from learning objects. The paper presents a new conception of learning objects which supports problem...... based, self-governed activities. Further, a new way of thinking pedagogy into learning objects is introduced. It is argued that a lack of pedagogical thinking in learning objects is not solved through pedagogical metadata. Instead, the paper suggests the concept of references as an alternative...

A Generational Opportunity: A 21st Century Learning Content Delivery System

Science.gov (United States)

McElroy, Patrick

2007-01-01

This paper describes a collaboratively developed, open marketplace for network-based learning and research content for the higher education community. It explores how available technologies and standards can facilitate a new knowledge creation industry for higher education learning content that engages all stakeholders in new ways. The Advisory…

Awareness for Contextualized Digital Contents in Ubiquitous Learning Environments

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Börner, Dirk; Specht, Marcus

2010-01-01

Börner, D., & Specht, M. (2009). Awareness for Contextualized Digital Contents in Ubiquitous Learning Environments. Proceedings of the Doctoral Consortium of the Fourth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2009). September, 29-October, 2, 2009, Nice, France. [unpublished

Integrating language and content learning objectives : the Bilkent University adjunct model

OpenAIRE

Doğan, Egemen Barış

2003-01-01

Cataloged from PDF version of article. In response to a global interest in learning English, many instructional approaches, methods, and techniques have been developed. Some have been short-lived, and others have sustained themselves for longer periods of time. Content-based instruction (CBI) — a particular approach to CBI involving a pairing of language and content classes with shared language and content learning objectives — have been considered as viable ways to teach la...

Using Biomimicry to Engage Students in a Design-Based Learning Activity

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Gardner, Grant E.

2012-01-01

I describe a design-based learning activity that utilizes the interdisciplinary content domain of biomimicry. Design-based learning requires student creativity and technological innovation to address novel science problems, characteristics of the nature of science not often addressed in schools. Alignment with national standards documents,…

Interpretable Active Learning

OpenAIRE

Phillips, Richard L.; Chang, Kyu Hyun; Friedler, Sorelle A.

2017-01-01

Active learning has long been a topic of study in machine learning. However, as increasingly complex and opaque models have become standard practice, the process of active learning, too, has become more opaque. There has been little investigation into interpreting what specific trends and patterns an active learning strategy may be exploring. This work expands on the Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations framework (LIME) to provide explanations for active learning recommendations. W...

A cluster randomized control trial to assess the impact of active learning on child activity, attention control, and academic outcomes: The Texas I-CAN trial.

Science.gov (United States)

Bartholomew, John B; Jowers, Esbelle M; Errisuriz, Vanessa L; Vaughn, Sharon; Roberts, Gregory

2017-10-01

Active learning is designed to pair physical activity with the teaching of academic content. This has been shown to be a successful strategy to increase physical activity and improve academic performance. The existing designs have confounded academic lessons with physical activity. As a result, it is impossible to determine if the subsequent improvement in academic performance is due to: (1) physical activity, (2) the academic content of the active learning, or (3) the combination of academic material taught through physical activity. The Texas I-CAN project is a 3-arm, cluster randomized control trial in which 28 elementary schools were assigned to either control, math intervention, or spelling intervention. As a result, each intervention condition serves as an unrelated content control for the other arm of the trial, allowing the impact of physical activity to be separated from the content. That is, schools that perform only active math lessons provide a content control for the spelling schools on spelling outcomes. This also calculated direct observations of attention and behavior control following periods of active learning. This design is unique in its ability to separate the impact of physical activity, in general, from the combination of physical activity and specific academic content. This, in combination with the ability to examine both proximal and distal outcomes along with measures of time on task will do much to guide the design of future, school-based interventions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Do Gains in Secondary Teachers’ Content Knowledge Provide an ASSET to Student Learning?

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Hites, Travis

2015-01-01

During the Summer of 2013, a group of East Texas middle and high school science teachers attended the first year of the Astronomy Summer School of East Texas (ASSET), a two-week NASA funded workshop. This workshop focused on providing area teachers with a rigorous two-week experience loaded with interactive content lessons combined with hands-on activities, all relating to the universal laws of astronomy as well as solar system concepts.The effectiveness of this workshop was gauged in part through a series of content surveys given to each participating educator at the beginning and end of the workshop. Similar content surveys were also administered to each teacher's students as pre/post-content surveys in an effort to determine the extent to which teacher gains were transferred into student gains, as well as to judge the effectiveness of the teachers' lessons in conveying these concepts to the students.Overall, students performed best on concepts where teachers exhibited the highest gains in their learning and focused most of their emphasis. A question-by-question analysis, though, suggests that a broad analysis paints an incomplete picture of student learning. We will present an item analysis of student gains by topic along with a comparison of content coverage and teacher gains. Looking beyond these numbers will present results that demonstrate that giving secondary teachers professional development opportunities to increase content knowledge, and tools to present such knowledge to their students, can improve student learning and performance, but is dependent on teacher confidence and level of coverage.This project is supported by the NASA Science Mission Directorate Education and Public Outreach for Earth and Space Science (EPOESS), which is part of the Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES), Grant Number NNX12AH11G.

Active Learning Through Discussion in E-Learning

OpenAIRE

Daru Wahyuningsih

2016-01-01

Active learning is generally made by a lecturer in learning face to face. In the face to face learning, lecturer can implement a variety of teaching methods to make students actively involved in learning. This is different from learning that is actuating in e-learning. The main characteristic of e-learning is learning that can take place anytime and anywhere. Special strategies are needed so that lecturer can make students play an active role in the course of e-learning. Research in order to ...

Future of the Learning Activities in Teenage School: Content, Methods, and Forms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vorontsov A.B.

2015-11-01

Full Text Available the early 1990s their scientific research results have been formed in the educational system and began to be used in general primary school. However, when the widespread use of developmental education in elementary school, further studies on the age possibilities of adolescents and the content of their education have not been completed. Targeted research was organized again under the leadership of B.D. Elkonin only in 2000. Designing of teenage school in the framework of the principles and ideology of this system started at the same time at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education and many other educational institutions. The article presents the hypothetical ideas about the content, forms and methods of organization of educational process in the second stage of schooling. Particular attention is paid to the fate of the educational activity in teenage school, as well as methods and forms of organization of other activities in the adolescent school.

Language Learning of Gifted Individuals: A Content Analysis Study

Science.gov (United States)

Gokaydin, Beria; Baglama, Basak; Uzunboylu, Huseyin

2017-01-01

This study aims to carry out a content analysis of the studies on language learning of gifted individuals and determine the trends in this field. Articles on language learning of gifted individuals published in the Scopus database were examined based on certain criteria including type of publication, year of publication, language, research…

Combining traditional anatomy lectures with e-learning activities: how do students perceive their learning experience?

Science.gov (United States)

Lochner, Lukas; Wieser, Heike; Waldboth, Simone; Mischo-Kelling, Maria

2016-02-21

The purpose of this study was to investigate how students perceived their learning experience when combining traditional anatomy lectures with preparatory e-learning activities that consisted of fill-in-the-blank assignments, videos, and multiple-choice quizzes. A qualitative study was conducted to explore changes in study behaviour and perception of learning. Three group interviews with students were conducted and thematically analysed. Data was categorized into four themes: 1. Approaching the course material, 2. Understanding the material, 3. Consolidating the material, and 4. Perceived learning outcome. Students appreciated the clear structure of the course, and reported that online activities encouraged them towards a first engagement with the material. They felt that they were more active during in-class sessions, described self-study before the end-of-term exam as easier, and believed that contents would remain in their memories for a longer time. By adjusting already existing resources, lectures can be combined fairly easily and cost-effectively with preparatory e-learning activities. The creation of online components promote well-structured courses, can help minimize 'student passivity' as a characteristic element of lectures, and can support students in distributing their studies throughout the term, thus suggesting enhanced learning. Further research work should be designed to confirm the afore-mentioned findings through objective measurements of student learning outcomes.

Combining traditional anatomy lectures with e-learning activities: how do students perceive their learning experience?

Science.gov (United States)

Wieser, Heike; Waldboth, Simone; Mischo-Kelling, Maria

2016-01-01

Objectives The purpose of this study was to investigate how students perceived their learning experience when combining traditional anatomy lectures with preparatory e-learning activities that consisted of fill-in-the-blank assignments, videos, and multiple-choice quizzes. Methods A qualitative study was conducted to explore changes in study behaviour and perception of learning. Three group interviews with students were conducted and thematically analysed. Results Data was categorized into four themes: 1. Approaching the course material, 2. Understanding the material, 3. Consolidating the material, and 4. Perceived learning outcome.  Students appreciated the clear structure of the course, and reported that online activities encouraged them towards a first engagement with the material. They felt that they were more active during in-class sessions, described self-study before the end-of-term exam as easier, and believed that contents would remain in their memories for a longer time. Conclusions By adjusting already existing resources, lectures can be combined fairly easily and cost-effectively with preparatory e-learning activities. The creation of online components promote well-structured courses, can help minimize ‘student passivity’ as a characteristic element of lectures, and can support students in distributing their studies throughout the term, thus suggesting enhanced learning. Further research work should be designed to confirm the afore-mentioned findings through objective measurements of student learning outcomes. PMID:26897012

Modelization of cognition, activity and motivation as indicators for Interactive Learning Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Asmaa Darouich

2017-06-01

Full Text Available In Interactive Learning Environment (ILE, the cognitive activity and behavior of learners are the center of the researchers’ concerns. The improvement of learning through combining these axes as a structure of indicators for well-designed learning environment, encloses the measurement of the educational activity as a part of the learning process. In this paper, we propose a mathematical modeling approach based on learners actions to estimate the cognitive activity, learning behavior and motivation, in accordance with a proposed course content structure. This Cognitive indicator includes the study of knowledge, memory and reasoning. While, activity indicator aims to study effort, resistance and intensity. The results recovered on a sample of students with different levels of education, assume that the proposed approach presents a relation among all these indicators which is relatively reliable in the term of cognitive system.

But science is international! Finding time and space to encourage intercultural learning in a content-driven physiology unit.

Science.gov (United States)

Etherington, Sarah J

2014-06-01

Internationalization of the curriculum is central to the strategic direction of many modern universities and has widespread benefits for student learning. However, these clear aspirations for internationalization of the curriculum have not been widely translated into more internationalized course content and teaching methods in the classroom, particularly in scientific disciplines. This study addressed one major challenge to promoting intercultural competence among undergraduate science students: finding time to scaffold such learning within the context of content-heavy, time-poor units. Small changes to enhance global and intercultural awareness were incorporated into existing assessments and teaching activities within a second-year biomedical physiology unit. Interventions were designed to start a conversation about global and intercultural perspectives on physiology, to embed the development of global awareness into the assessment and to promote cultural exchanges through peer interactions. In student surveys, 40% of domestic and 60% of international student respondents articulated specific learning about interactions in cross-cultural groups resulting from unit activities. Many students also identified specific examples of how cultural beliefs would impact on the place of biomedical physiology within the global community. In addition, staff observed more widespread benefits for student engagement and learning. It is concluded that a significant development of intercultural awareness and a more global perspective on scientific understanding can be supported among undergraduates with relatively modest, easy to implement adaptations to course content.

Video Content Search System for Better Students Engagement in the Learning Process

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alanoud Alotaibi

2014-12-01

Full Text Available As a component of the e-learning educational process, content plays an essential role. Increasingly, the video-recorded lectures in e-learning systems are becoming more important to learners. In most cases, a single video-recorded lecture contains more than one topic or sub-topic. Therefore, to enable learners to find the desired topic and reduce learning time, e-learning systems need to provide a search capability for searching within the video content. This can be accomplished by enabling learners to identify the video or portion that contains a keyword they are looking for. This research aims to develop Video Content Search system to facilitate searching in educational videos and its contents. Preliminary results of an experimentation were conducted on a selected university course. All students needed a system to avoid time-wasting problem of watching long videos with no significant benefit. The statistics showed that the number of learners increased during the experiment. Future work will include studying impact of VCS system on students’ performance and satisfaction.

Active Learning: Engaging Students to Maximize Learning in an Online Course

Science.gov (United States)

Khan, Arshia; Egbue, Ona; Palkie, Brooke; Madden, Janna

2017-01-01

Student engagement is key to successful teaching and learning, irrespective of the content and format of the content delivery mechanism. However, engaging students presents a particular challenge in online learning environments. Unlike face-to-face courses, online courses present a unique challenge as the only social presence between the faculty…

Learning About Semi Conductors for Teaching—the Role Played by Content Knowledge in Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) Development

Science.gov (United States)

Rollnick, Marissa

2017-08-01

This study focuses on how teachers learn to teach a new topic and the role played by their developing content knowledge as they teach. The paper is based on seven high school science teachers' studies on the teaching of semiconductors, at the time a new topic in the curriculum. Analysis of artefacts such as teacher concept maps, video recordings of lessons, journals and other classroom-based evidence shows how the extent and type of teachers' content knowledge informed their choice of teaching approaches and how their learning of content took place alongside the development of teaching strategies. The development of content knowledge was combined with increased understanding of how to teach the topic in almost all cases. Evidence of development of teachers' PCK was found in their increased ability to design teaching strategies, and their use of representations and suitable assessment tasks for their lessons. Some specific common teaching strategies were identified across the teachers. These strategies could add to the canon of teachers' topic - specific professional knowledge for semiconductors. The study provides increased understanding of how teachers simultaneously master content and its teaching and how mediated self-reflection is a fruitful approach for assisting teachers to learn to teach a new topic.

Language-Building Activities and Interaction Variations with Mixed-Ability ESL University Learners in a Content-Based Course

Science.gov (United States)

Serna Dimas, Héctor Manuel; Ruíz Castellanos, Erika

2014-01-01

The preparation of both language-building activities and a variety of teacher/student interaction patterns increase both oral language participation and content learning in a course of manual therapy with mixed-language ability students. In this article, the researchers describe their collaboration in a content-based course in English with English…

The Challenge of Content Creation to Facilitate Personalized E-Learning Experiences

Science.gov (United States)

Turker, Ali; Gorgun, Ilhami; Conlan, Owen

2006-01-01

The runtime creation of pedagogically coherent learning content for an individual learner's needs and preferences is a considerable challenge. By selecting and combining appropriate learning assets into a new learning object such needs and preferences may be accounted for. However, to assure coherence, these objects should be consumed within…

Developing biology teachers' pedagogical content knowledge through learning study: the case of teaching human evolution

Science.gov (United States)

Bravo, Paulina; Cofré, Hernán

2016-11-01

This work explores how pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on evolution was modified by two biology teachers who participated in a professional development programme (PDP) that included a subsequent follow-up in the classroom. The PDP spanned a semester and included activities such as content updates, collaborative lesson planning, and the presentation of planned lessons. In the follow-up part, the lessons were videotaped and analysed, identifying strategies, activities, and conditions based on student learning about the theory of evolution. Data were collected in the first round with an interview before the training process, identifying these teachers' initial content representation (CoRe) for evolution. Then, a group interview was conducted after the lessons, and, finally, an interview of stimulated recall with each teacher was conducted regarding the subject taught to allow teachers to reflect on their practice (final CoRe). This information was analysed by the teachers and the researchers, reflecting on the components of the PCK, possible changes, and the rationale behind their actions. The results show that teachers changed their beliefs and knowledge about the best methods and strategies to teach evolution, and about students' learning obstacles and misconceptions on evolution. They realised how a review of their own practices promotes this transformation.

Authoring and Enactment of Mobile Pyramid-Based Collaborative Learning Activities

Science.gov (United States)

Manathunga, Kalpani; Hernández-Leo, Davinia

2018-01-01

Collaborative learning flow patterns (CLFPs) formulate best practices for the orchestration of activity sequences and collaboration mechanisms that can elicit fruitful social interactions. Mobile technology features offer opportunities to support interaction mediation and content accessibility. However, existing mobile collaborative learning…

Active-learning versus teacher-centered instruction for learning acids and bases

Science.gov (United States)

Acar Sesen, Burcin; Tarhan, Leman

2011-07-01

Background and purpose: Active-learning as a student-centered learning process has begun to take more interest in constructing scientific knowledge. For this reason, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of active-learning implementation on high-school students' understanding of 'acids and bases'. Sample The sample of this study was 45 high-school students (average age 17 years) from two different classes, which were randomly assigned to the experimental (n = 21) and control groups (n = 25), in a high school in Turkey. Design and methods A pre-test consisting of 25 items was applied to both experimental and control groups before the treatment in order to identify student prerequisite knowledge about their proficiency for learning 'acids and bases'. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to compare the pre-test scores for groups and no significant difference was found between experimental (ME = 40.14) and control groups (MC = 41.92) in terms of mean scores (F 1,43 = 2.66, p > 0.05). The experimental group was taught using an active-learning curriculum developed by the authors and the control group was taught using traditional course content based on teacher-centered instruction. After the implementation, 'Acids and Bases Achievement Test' scores were collected for both groups. Results ANOVA results showed that students' 'Acids and Bases Achievement Test' post-test scores differed significantly in terms of groups (F 1,43 = 102.53; p acid and base theories'; 'metal and non-metal oxides'; 'acid and base strengths'; 'neutralization'; 'pH and pOH'; 'hydrolysis'; 'acid-base equilibrium'; 'buffers'; 'indicators'; and 'titration'. Based on the achievement test and individual interview results, it was found that high-school students in the experimental group had fewer misconceptions and understood the concepts more meaningfully than students in control group. Conclusion The study revealed that active-learning implementation is more effective at

Interactive ontology-based user modelling for personalized learning content management

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Denaux, R.O.; Dimitrova, V.; Aroyo, L.M.; Aroyo, L.; Tasso, C.

2004-01-01

This position paper discusses the need for using interactive ontology-based user modeling to empower on the fly adaptation in learning information systems. We outline several open issues related to adaptive learning content delivery and present an approach to deal with these issues based on the

Effect of collaborative testing on learning and retention of course content in nursing students.

Science.gov (United States)

Rivaz, Mozhgan; Momennasab, Marzieh; Shokrollahi, Paymaneh

2015-10-01

Collaborative testing is a learning strategy that provides students with the opportunity to learn and practice collaboration. This study aimed to determine the effect of collaborative testing on test performance and retention of course content in nursing students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran. This quasi-experimental study was carried out on 84 students enrolled in the course of Medical-Surgical 2 in Spring 2013 and Fall 2013 semesters. The control group consisting of 39 students participated in the first mid-term exam in an individual format. The intervention group, on the other hand, consisted of 45 students who took the test in a two-stage process. The first stage included an individual testing, while the second stage was a collaborative one given in groups of five individuals chosen randomly. Four weeks later, in order to investigate retention of the course content, both groups took part in the second mid-term exam held individually. The study findings showed significant difference between the mean scores in the intervention group in the Fall 2013 semester (p=0.001). Besides, a statistically significant difference was found between the two groups regarding the tests mean scores (p=0.001). Moreover, retention of course content improved in the collaborative group (p=0.001). The results indicated an increase in test performance and a long-term learning enhancement in collaborative testing compared with the traditional method. Collaborative testing, as an active learning technique and a valuable assessment method, can help nursing instructors provide the alumni with strong problem-solving and critical thinking abilities at healthcare environments.

METHODS OF CONTENTS CURATOR

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

V. Kukharenko

2013-03-01

Full Text Available Content curated - a new activity (started in 2008 qualified network users with process large amounts of information to represent her social network users. To prepare content curators developed 7 weeks distance course, which examines the functions, methods and tools curator. Courses showed a significant relationship success learning on the availability of advanced personal learning environment and the ability to process and analyze information.

The Development of SCORM-Conformant Learning Content Based on the Learning Cycle Using Participatory Design

Science.gov (United States)

Su, C. Y.; Chiu, C. H.; Wang, T. I.

2010-01-01

This study incorporates the 5E learning cycle strategy to design and develop Sharable Content Object Reference Model-conformant materials for elementary science education. The 5E learning cycle that supports the constructivist approach has been widely applied in science education. The strategy consists of five phases: engagement, exploration,…

Assimilation of contents and learning through the use of video tutorials

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David JIMÉNEZ CASTILLO

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The need for a change in the university educational model promoted by the establishment of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA has promoted the implementation of numerous proposals for innovation in university teaching. These innovative practices that are based on a process of reflection and analysis of past teaching experience, are helping to improve qualitatively the teaching practice and, consequently, the learning process and outcomes of students, from a process of reflection and analysis of the teaching experience. In this context, this paper focuses on analyzing a specific teaching tool for innovation, the video tutorial, in order to assess its influence on the processes of assimilation of contents and self-learning. In particular, we attempt to show if the video tutorial allows reinforcing the understanding of practical contents that have been previously given by the classical method of masterly exposition. From the analysis of data obtained through a survey directed to a sample of students after experimenting with the teaching tool, it is shown that the video tutorial is considered a very suitable tool to improve the assimilation capacity of the contents taught previously and to acquire higher learning. After performing a regression analysis, the research also shows that students’ attitudes toward multimedia tools and the perceived utility of video tutorial positively influence these capacities. On the contrary, we find that the attitude towards individual learning and the attention paid by the student to the contents of the video tutorial do not affect the level of learning obtained from this tool.

Development of Usability Criteria for E-Learning Content Development Software

Science.gov (United States)

Celik, Serkan

2012-01-01

Revolutionary advancements have been observed in e-learning technologies though an amalgamated evaluation methodology for new generation e-learning content development tools is not available. The evaluation of educational software for online use must consider its usability and as well as its pedagogic effectiveness. This study is a first step…

Analysis of Documents Published in Scopus Database on Foreign Language Learning through Mobile Learning: A Content Analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Uzunboylu, Huseyin; Genc, Zeynep

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study is to determine the recent trends in foreign language learning through mobile learning. The study was conducted employing document analysis and related content analysis among the qualitative research methodology. Through the search conducted on Scopus database with the key words "mobile learning and foreign language…

Content validation of an interprofessional learning video peer assessment tool.

Science.gov (United States)

Nisbet, Gillian; Jorm, Christine; Roberts, Chris; Gordon, Christopher J; Chen, Timothy F

2017-12-16

Large scale models of interprofessional learning (IPL) where outcomes are assessed are rare within health professional curricula. To date, there is sparse research describing robust assessment strategies to support such activities. We describe the development of an IPL assessment task based on peer rating of a student generated video evidencing collaborative interprofessional practice. We provide content validation evidence of an assessment rubric in the context of large scale IPL. Two established approaches to scale development in an educational setting were combined. A literature review was undertaken to develop a conceptual model of the relevant domains and issues pertaining to assessment of student generated videos within IPL. Starting with a prototype rubric developed from the literature, a series of staff and student workshops were undertaken to integrate expert opinion and user perspectives. Participants assessed five-minute videos produced in a prior pilot IPL activity. Outcomes from each workshop informed the next version of the rubric until agreement was reached on anchoring statements and criteria. At this point the rubric was declared fit to be used in the upcoming mandatory large scale IPL activity. The assessment rubric consisted of four domains: patient issues, interprofessional negotiation; interprofessional management plan in action; and effective use of video medium to engage audience. The first three domains reflected topic content relevant to the underlying construct of interprofessional collaborative practice. The fourth domain was consistent with the broader video assessment literature calling for greater emphasis on creativity in education. We have provided evidence for the content validity of a video-based peer assessment task portraying interprofessional collaborative practice in the context of large-scale IPL activities for healthcare professional students. Further research is needed to establish the reliability of such a scale.

Theoretical Foundations of Active Learning

Science.gov (United States)

2009-05-01

I study the informational complexity of active learning in a statistical learning theory framework. Specifically, I derive bounds on the rates of...convergence achievable by active learning , under various noise models and under general conditions on the hypothesis class. I also study the theoretical...advantages of active learning over passive learning, and develop procedures for transforming passive learning algorithms into active learning algorithms

Content-Based Instruction Approach In Instructional Multimedia For English Learning

OpenAIRE

Farani, Rizki

2016-01-01

Content-based Instruction (CBI) is an approach in English learning that integrates certain topic and English learning objectives. This approach focuses on using English competencies as a “bridge” to comprehend certain topic or theme in English. Nowadays, this approach can be used in instructional multimedia to support English learning by using computer. Instructional multimedia with computer system refers to the sequential or simultaneous use of variety of media formats in a given presentatio...

"UML Quiz": Automatic Conversion of Web-Based E-Learning Content in Mobile Applications

Science.gov (United States)

von Franqué, Alexander; Tellioglu, Hilda

2014-01-01

Many educational institutions use Learning Management Systems to provide e-learning content to their students. This often includes quizzes that can help students to prepare for exams. However, the content is usually web-optimized and not very usable on mobile devices. In this work a native mobile application ("UML Quiz") that imports…

Mind and activity. Psychic mechanism of learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zoya A. Reshetova

2017-09-01

Full Text Available The paper is devoted to the issue of mechanisms of learning for understanding the nature of the human mind. Learning is regarded as a special activity that is important for developing the human mind in a specific cultural and historical setting and indirect activity. The author’s understanding of the ideas developed by the psychological theory of activity for establishing the principles of developing the human mind is highlighted. Interpretation of dialectical connections of brain processes and mind, and also the objective activity that emerges them is provided. According to the activity theory, the causes of the students’ psychological difficulties and the low efficacy of learning within predominant reproductive method or the use of the trial and error method are revealed. Thus, a new understanding of the renowned didactic principles of scientific rigour, accessibility, objectivity, the connection of learning with life and others is offered. The contribution of the psychological theory in organizing and managing the studies, increasing teaching activity and awareness, and the growth of the internal causes of motivation are shown. Particular attention is paid to the issue of intellectual development and creative abilities. The author believes the creative abilities of the student and the way the latter are taught are interconnected. At the same time, the developers and educators should make efforts to develop in the students a systemic orientation in the subject, primarily mastering the method of system analysis. Once the method of system analysis has been mastered, it becomes a general intellectual and developing tool through which activities are organized to solve any teaching problems with whatever type of content and difficulty level. Summing up, the organization and disclosure to the student of the process of learning as an activity with its social, consciously transformative and sense shaping meaning, the conditions of its development

E-learning in radiology - the practical use of the content management system ILIAS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schuetze, B.; Mildenberger, P.; Kaemmerer, M.

2006-01-01

Purpose: Due to the possibility of using different kinds of visualization, e-learning has the advantage of allowing individualized learning. A check should be performed to determine whether the use of the web-based content management system ILIAS simplifies the writing and production of electronic learning modules in radiology. Materials and methods: Internet-based e-learning provides access to existing learning modules regardless of time and location, since fast Internet connections are readily available. Results: Web Content Management Systems (WCMS) are suitable platforms for imparting radiology-related information (visual abilities like the recognition of patterns as well as interdisciplinary specialized knowledge). The open source product ILIAS is a free WCMS. It is used by many universities and is accepted by both students and lecturers. Its modular and object-oriented software architecture makes it easy to adapt and enlarge the platform. The employment of e-learning standards such as LOM and SCORM within ILIAS makes it possible to reuse contents, even if the platform has to be changed. Conclusion: ILIAS renders it possible to provide students with texts, images, or files of any other kind within a learning context which is defined by the lecturer. Students can check their acquired knowledge via online testing and receive direct performance feedback. The significant interest that students have shown in ILIAS proves that e-learning can be a useful addition to conventional learning methods. (orig.)

[E-Learning in radiology; the practical use of the content management system ILIAS].

Science.gov (United States)

Schütze, B; Mildenberger, P; Kämmerer, M

2006-05-01

Due to the possibility of using different kinds of visualization, e-learning has the advantage of allowing individualized learning. A check should be performed to determine whether the use of the web-based content management system ILIAS simplifies the writing and production of electronic learning modules in radiology. Internet-based e-learning provides access to existing learning modules regardless of time and location, since fast Internet connections are readily available. Web Content Management Systems (WCMS) are suitable platforms for imparting radiology-related information (visual abilities like the recognition of patterns as well as interdisciplinary specialized knowledge). The open source product ILIAS is a free WCMS. It is used by many universities and is accepted by both students and lecturers. Its modular and object-oriented software architecture makes it easy to adapt and enlarge the platform. The employment of e-learning standards such as LOM and SCORM within ILIAS makes it possible to reuse contents, even if the platform has to be changed. ILIAS renders it possible to provide students with texts, images, or files of any other kind within a learning context which is defined by the lecturer. Students can check their acquired knowledge via online testing and receive direct performance feedback. The significant interest that students have shown in ILIAS proves that e-learning can be a useful addition to conventional learning methods.

Automated analysis of high-content microscopy data with deep learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Kraus, Oren Z; Grys, Ben T; Ba, Jimmy; Chong, Yolanda; Frey, Brendan J; Boone, Charles; Andrews, Brenda J

2017-04-18

Existing computational pipelines for quantitative analysis of high-content microscopy data rely on traditional machine learning approaches that fail to accurately classify more than a single dataset without substantial tuning and training, requiring extensive analysis. Here, we demonstrate that the application of deep learning to biological image data can overcome the pitfalls associated with conventional machine learning classifiers. Using a deep convolutional neural network (DeepLoc) to analyze yeast cell images, we show improved performance over traditional approaches in the automated classification of protein subcellular localization. We also demonstrate the ability of DeepLoc to classify highly divergent image sets, including images of pheromone-arrested cells with abnormal cellular morphology, as well as images generated in different genetic backgrounds and in different laboratories. We offer an open-source implementation that enables updating DeepLoc on new microscopy datasets. This study highlights deep learning as an important tool for the expedited analysis of high-content microscopy data. © 2017 The Authors. Published under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.

Reply : Collective Action and the Empirical Content of Stochastic Learning Models

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Macy, M.W.; Flache, A.

2007-01-01

We are grateful for the opportunity that Bendor, Diermeier, and Ting (hereafter BDT) have provided to address important questions about the empirical content of learning theoretic solutions to the collective action problem. They discuss two well-known classes of adaptive models— stochastic learning

Re-imagining Active Learning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dall'Alba, Gloria; Bengtsen, Søren Smedegaard

2018-01-01

is largely lacking in the literature on active learning. In this article, we explore the possibility of re-imagining, or at least extending, the meaning of active learning by drawing out dimensions that are neither readily visible nor instrumental, as much of this literature implies. Drawing from educational......Ample attention is being paid in the higher education literature to promoting active learning among students. Where studies on active learning report student outcomes, they indicate improved or equivalent outcomes when compared with traditional lectures, which are considered more passive...... philosophy and, in particular, existential philosophies, we argue that active learning may also be partly invisible, unfocused, unsettling, and not at all instrumentalsometimes even leaving the learner more confused and (temporarily) incompetent. However, such forms of undisclosed or ‘dark’ learning, we...

Combining Digital Archives Content with Serious Game Approach to Create a Gamified Learning Experience

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

D.-T. Shih

2015-08-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an interdisciplinary to develop content-aware application that combines game with learning on specific categories of digital archives. The employment of content-oriented game enhances the gamification and efficacy of learning in culture education on architectures and history of Hsinchu County, Taiwan. The gamified form of the application is used as a backbone to support and provide a strong stimulation to engage users in learning art and culture, therefore this research is implementing under the goal of “The Digital ARt/ARchitecture Project”. The purpose of the abovementioned project is to develop interactive serious game approaches and applications for Hsinchu County historical archives and architectures. Therefore, we present two applications, “3D AR for Hukou Old ” and “Hsinchu County History Museum AR Tour” which are in form of augmented reality (AR. By using AR imaging techniques to blend real object and virtual content, the users can immerse in virtual exhibitions of Hukou Old Street and Hsinchu County History Museum, and to learn in ubiquitous computing environment. This paper proposes a content system that includes tools and materials used to create representations of digitized cultural archives including historical artifacts, documents, customs, religion, and architectures. The Digital ARt / ARchitecture Project is based on the concept of serious game and consists of three aspects: content creation, target management, and AR presentation. The project focuses on developing a proper approach to serve as an interactive game, and to offer a learning opportunity for appreciating historic architectures by playing AR cards. Furthermore, the card game aims to provide multi-faceted understanding and learning experience to help user learning through 3D objects, hyperlinked web data, and the manipulation of learning mode, and then effectively developing their learning levels on cultural and historical archives in

Combining Digital Archives Content with Serious Game Approach to Create a Gamified Learning Experience

Science.gov (United States)

Shih, D.-T.; Lin, C. L.; Tseng, C.-Y.

2015-08-01

This paper presents an interdisciplinary to develop content-aware application that combines game with learning on specific categories of digital archives. The employment of content-oriented game enhances the gamification and efficacy of learning in culture education on architectures and history of Hsinchu County, Taiwan. The gamified form of the application is used as a backbone to support and provide a strong stimulation to engage users in learning art and culture, therefore this research is implementing under the goal of "The Digital ARt/ARchitecture Project". The purpose of the abovementioned project is to develop interactive serious game approaches and applications for Hsinchu County historical archives and architectures. Therefore, we present two applications, "3D AR for Hukou Old " and "Hsinchu County History Museum AR Tour" which are in form of augmented reality (AR). By using AR imaging techniques to blend real object and virtual content, the users can immerse in virtual exhibitions of Hukou Old Street and Hsinchu County History Museum, and to learn in ubiquitous computing environment. This paper proposes a content system that includes tools and materials used to create representations of digitized cultural archives including historical artifacts, documents, customs, religion, and architectures. The Digital ARt / ARchitecture Project is based on the concept of serious game and consists of three aspects: content creation, target management, and AR presentation. The project focuses on developing a proper approach to serve as an interactive game, and to offer a learning opportunity for appreciating historic architectures by playing AR cards. Furthermore, the card game aims to provide multi-faceted understanding and learning experience to help user learning through 3D objects, hyperlinked web data, and the manipulation of learning mode, and then effectively developing their learning levels on cultural and historical archives in Hsinchu County.

Practice of the Education for the Principle of Otto Cycle by the E-Learning CG-Content

Science.gov (United States)

Sato, Tomoaki; Nagaoka, Keizo; Oguchi, Kosei

A CG-animation content which supports the learning of the Otto cycle was developed. This content has a piston assembly and the diagrams of PV, VS, TP and TS. The each diagram has a pointer which moves along the line of the graph and they are synchronized with the movement of the piston. The learners can operate this content directly on the e-learning system. While watching the movements of the piston assembly, the learners can confirm the state of the engine about temperature, pressure, volume, and entropy by the synchronized pointer on the diagrams. This content was used for the class of the machining practice exercise. The learning effect of the content was examined by the score of the short test. As the result of this examination, the CG-animation content was effective in the learning of the Otto cycle.

Nurse practitioner preferences for distance education methods related to learning style, course content, and achievement.

Science.gov (United States)

Andrusyszyn, M A; Cragg, C E; Humbert, J

2001-04-01

The relationships among multiple distance delivery methods, preferred learning style, content, and achievement was sought for primary care nurse practitioner students. A researcher-designed questionnaire was completed by 86 (71%) participants, while 6 engaged in follow-up interviews. The results of the study included: participants preferred learning by "considering the big picture"; "setting own learning plans"; and "focusing on concrete examples." Several positive associations were found: learning on own with learning by reading, and setting own learning plans; small group with learning through discussion; large group with learning new things through hearing and with having learning plans set by others. The most preferred method was print-based material and the least preferred method was audio tape. The most suited method for content included video teleconferencing for counseling, political action, and transcultural issues; and video tape for physical assessment. Convenience, self-direction, and timing of learning were more important than delivery method or learning style. Preferred order of learning was reading, discussing, observing, doing, and reflecting. Recommended considerations when designing distance courses include a mix of delivery methods, specific content, outcomes, learner characteristics, and state of technology.

Iranian Clinical Nurses' Activities for Self-Directed Learning: A Qualitative Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Ghiyasvandian, Shahrzad; Malekian, Morteza; Cheraghi, Mohammad Ali

2015-09-01

Clinical nurses need lifelong learning skills for responding to the rapid changes of clinical settings. One of the best strategies for lifelong learning is self-directed learning. The aim of this study was to explore Iranian clinical nurses' activities for self-directed learning. In this qualitative study, 23 semi-structured personal interviews were conducted with nineteen clinical nurses working in all four hospitals affiliated to Isfahan Social Security Organization, Isfahan, Iran. Study data were analyzed by using the content analysis approach. The study was conducted from June 2013 to October 2014. Study participants' activities for self-directed learning fell into two main categories of striving for knowledge acquisition and striving for skill development. The main theme of the study was 'Revising personal performance based on intellectual-experiential activities'. Study findings suggest that Iranian clinical nurses continually revise their personal performance by performing self-directed intellectual and experiential activities to acquire expertise. The process of acquiring expertise is a linear process which includes two key steps of knowledge acquisition and knowledge development. In order to acquire and advance their knowledge, nurses perform mental learning activities such as sensory perception, self-evaluation, and suspended judgment step-by-step. Moreover, they develop their skills through doing activities like apprenticeship, masterly performance, and self-regulation. The absolute prerequisite to expertise acquisition is that a nurse needs to follow these two steps in a sequential manner.

A Studi on High Plant Systems Course with Active Learning in Higher Education Through Outdoor Learning to Increase Student Learning Activities

OpenAIRE

Nur Rokhimah Hanik, Anwari Adi Nugroho

2015-01-01

Biology learning especially high plant system courses needs to be applied to active learning centered on the student (Active Learning In Higher Education) to enhance the students' learning activities so that the quality of learning for the better. Outdoor Learning is one of the active learning invites students to learn outside of the classroom by exploring the surrounding environment. This research aims to improve the students' learning activities in the course of high plant systems through t...

Figure analysis: A teaching technique to promote visual literacy and active Learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Wiles, Amy M

2016-07-08

Learning often improves when active learning techniques are used in place of traditional lectures. For many of these techniques, however, students are expected to apply concepts that they have already grasped. A challenge, therefore, is how to incorporate active learning into the classroom of courses with heavy content, such as molecular-based biology courses. An additional challenge is that visual literacy is often overlooked in undergraduate science education. To address both of these challenges, a technique called figure analysis was developed and implemented in three different levels of undergraduate biology courses. Here, students learn content while gaining practice in interpreting visual information by discussing figures with their peers. Student groups also make connections between new and previously learned concepts on their own while in class. The instructor summarizes the material for the class only after students grapple with it in small groups. Students reported a preference for learning by figure analysis over traditional lecture, and female students in particular reported increased confidence in their analytical abilities. There is not a technology requirement for this technique; therefore, it may be utilized both in classrooms and in nontraditional spaces. Additionally, the amount of preparation required is comparable to that of a traditional lecture. © 2016 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 44(4):336-344, 2016. © 2016 The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

A New Approach toward Digital Storytelling: An Activity Focused on Writing Self-Efficacy in a Virtual Learning Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Yan; Park, Hyungsung; Baek, Youngkyun

2011-01-01

Recently, computer technology and multimedia elements have been developed and integrated into teaching and learning. Entertainment-based learning environments can make learning contents more attractive, and thus can lead to learners' active participation and facilitate learning. A significant amount of research examines using video editing…

Integrating Curriculum through the Learning Cycle: Content-Based Reading and Vocabulary Instruction

Science.gov (United States)

Spencer, Brenda H.; Guillaume, Andrea M.

2006-01-01

The content areas provide rich contexts for developing vocabulary. This article presents some principles and a lesson model--the learning cycle--that can be used to develop vocabulary while building understanding in science. Because science instruction and the learning cycle model promote learning in real-world contexts, they provide students with…

Supervised learning of tools for content-based search of image databases

Science.gov (United States)

Delanoy, Richard L.

1996-03-01

A computer environment, called the Toolkit for Image Mining (TIM), is being developed with the goal of enabling users with diverse interests and varied computer skills to create search tools for content-based image retrieval and other pattern matching tasks. Search tools are generated using a simple paradigm of supervised learning that is based on the user pointing at mistakes of classification made by the current search tool. As mistakes are identified, a learning algorithm uses the identified mistakes to build up a model of the user's intentions, construct a new search tool, apply the search tool to a test image, display the match results as feedback to the user, and accept new inputs from the user. Search tools are constructed in the form of functional templates, which are generalized matched filters capable of knowledge- based image processing. The ability of this system to learn the user's intentions from experience contrasts with other existing approaches to content-based image retrieval that base searches on the characteristics of a single input example or on a predefined and semantically- constrained textual query. Currently, TIM is capable of learning spectral and textural patterns, but should be adaptable to the learning of shapes, as well. Possible applications of TIM include not only content-based image retrieval, but also quantitative image analysis, the generation of metadata for annotating images, data prioritization or data reduction in bandwidth-limited situations, and the construction of components for larger, more complex computer vision algorithms.

Transfer of Active Learning Strategies from the Teacher Education Classroom to PreK-12th Grade Classrooms

Science.gov (United States)

Pepper, Kaye; Blackwell, Sarah; Monroe, Ann; Coskey, Shawn

2012-01-01

In this study, researchers investigated the influence of modeling active learning strategies in an introductory foundations teacher preparation course: 1) on teacher candidates' perceptions of participating in active learning in the college classroom, 2) on participants' acquisition of course content, and 3) on participants' later use of active…

GeoMapApp Learning Activities: A Virtual Lab Environment for Student-Centred Engagement with Geoscience Data

Science.gov (United States)

Kluge, S.; Goodwillie, A. M.

2012-12-01

As STEM learning requirements enter the mainstream, there is benefit to providing the tools necessary for students to engage with research-quality geoscience data in a cutting-edge, easy-to-use map-based interface. Funded with an NSF GeoEd award, GeoMapApp Learning Activities ( http://serc.carleton.edu/geomapapp/collection.html ) are being created to help in that endeavour. GeoMapApp Learning Activities offer step-by-step instructions within a guided inquiry approach that enables students to dictate the pace of learning. Based upon GeoMapApp (http://www.geomapapp.org), a free, easy-to-use map-based data exploration and visualisation tool, each activity furnishes the educator with an efficient package of downloadable documents. This includes step-by-step student instructions and answer sheet; an educator's annotated worksheet containing teaching tips, additional content and suggestions for further work; and, quizzes for use before and after the activity to assess learning. Examples of activities so far created involve calculation and analysis of the rate of seafloor spreading; compilation of present-day evidence for huge ancient landslides on the seafloor around the Hawaiian islands; a study of radiometrically-dated volcanic rocks to help understand the concept of hotspots; and, the optimisation of contours as a means to aid visualisation of 3-D data sets on a computer screen. The activities are designed for students at the introductory undergraduate, community college and high school levels, and present a virtual lab-like environment to expose students to content and concepts typically found in those educational settings. The activities can be used in the classroom or out of class, and their guided nature means that the requirement for teacher intervention is reduced thus allowing students to spend more time analysing and understanding geoscience data, content and concepts. Each activity is freely available through the SERC-Carleton web site.

Enhancing students' learning in problem based learning: validation of a self-assessment scale for active learning and critical thinking.

Science.gov (United States)

Khoiriyah, Umatul; Roberts, Chris; Jorm, Christine; Van der Vleuten, C P M

2015-08-26

Problem based learning (PBL) is a powerful learning activity but fidelity to intended models may slip and student engagement wane, negatively impacting learning processes, and outcomes. One potential solution to solve this degradation is by encouraging self-assessment in the PBL tutorial. Self-assessment is a central component of the self-regulation of student learning behaviours. There are few measures to investigate self-assessment relevant to PBL processes. We developed a Self-assessment Scale on Active Learning and Critical Thinking (SSACT) to address this gap. We wished to demonstrated evidence of its validity in the context of PBL by exploring its internal structure. We used a mixed methods approach to scale development. We developed scale items from a qualitative investigation, literature review, and consideration of previous existing tools used for study of the PBL process. Expert review panels evaluated its content; a process of validation subsequently reduced the pool of items. We used structural equation modelling to undertake a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the SSACT and coefficient alpha. The 14 item SSACT consisted of two domains "active learning" and "critical thinking." The factorial validity of SSACT was evidenced by all items loading significantly on their expected factors, a good model fit for the data, and good stability across two independent samples. Each subscale had good internal reliability (>0.8) and strongly correlated with each other. The SSACT has sufficient evidence of its validity to support its use in the PBL process to encourage students to self-assess. The implementation of the SSACT may assist students to improve the quality of their learning in achieving PBL goals such as critical thinking and self-directed learning.

Information Society and teacher training. E-activities and collaborative learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Miguel Ángel Martín Sánchez

2012-01-01

Full Text Available In this article, virtual educational spaces are depicted as new learning communities and contexts, i.e. where (human interaction and the forging of educational relationships are possible. This does not include, however, other spatial, geographical or temporal limitations. In this study, Internet is presented as a universal tool for both teaching staff and general users. It is used for searching specific information, exchanging ideas, or discussing research. Within the context of this new virtual educational area, the most suitable activities are those that foster the creation of knowledge and that promote experimentation and problem solving in an individual or group context. It also refers to activities that combine students’ previous knowledge with the new contents of virtual courses. In this way, there is greater autonomous learning and problem solving of specific theoretical questions. We also examine core didactic activities that are used in virtual education areas, that is, in terms of collaborative learning.

Teaching Plate Tectonic Concepts using GeoMapApp Learning Activities

Science.gov (United States)

Goodwillie, A. M.; Kluge, S.

2012-12-01

GeoMapApp Learning Activities ( http://serc.carleton.edu/geomapapp/collection.html ) can help educators to expose undergraduate students to a range of earth science concepts using high-quality data sets in an easy-to-use map-based interface called GeoMapApp. GeoMapApp Learning Activities require students to interact with and analyse research-quality geoscience data as a means to explore and enhance their understanding of underlying content and concepts. Each activity is freely available through the SERC-Carleton web site and offers step-by-step student instructions and answer sheets. Also provided are annotated educator versions of the worksheets that include teaching tips, additional content and suggestions for further work. The activities can be used "off-the-shelf". Or, since the educator may require flexibility to tailor the activities, the documents are provided in Word format for easy modification. Examples of activities include one on the concept of seafloor spreading that requires students to analyse global seafloor crustal age data to calculate spreading rates in different ocean basins. Another activity has students explore hot spots using radiometric age dating of rocks along the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain. A third focusses upon the interactive use of contours and profiles to help students visualise 3-D topography on 2-D computer screens. A fourth activity provides a study of mass wasting as revealed through geomorphological evidence. The step-by-step instructions and guided inquiry approach reduce the need for teacher intervention whilst boosting the time that students can spend on productive exploration and learning. The activities can be used, for example, in a classroom lab with the educator present and as self-paced assignments in an out-of-class setting. GeoMapApp Learning Activities are funded through the NSF GeoEd program and are aimed at students in the introductory undergraduate, community college and high school levels. The activities are

Less Is Sometimes More: Goal Content Matters

Science.gov (United States)

Vansteenkiste, Maarten; Simons, Joke; Lens, Willy; Soenens, Bart; Matos, Lennia; Lacante, Marlies

2004-01-01

According to expectancy-value theories, increasing the utility value of a learning activity should result in higher motivation and better learning. In contrast, self-determination theory posits that the content of the future goals (intrinsic vs. extrinsic) that enhance the utility value of the learning activity needs to be considered as well.…

Scaffolding the design of accessible eLearning content: a user-centered approach and cognitive perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Catarci, Tiziana; De Giovanni, Loredana; Gabrielli, Silvia; Kimani, Stephen; Mirabella, Valeria

2008-08-01

There exist various guidelines for facilitating the design, preparation, and deployment of accessible eLearning applications and contents. However, such guidelines prevalently address accessibility in a rather technical sense, without giving sufficient consideration to the cognitive aspects and issues related to the use of eLearning materials by learners with disabilities. In this paper we describe how a user-centered design process was applied to develop a method and set of guidelines for didactical experts to scaffold their creation of accessible eLearning content, based on a more sound approach to accessibility. The paper also discusses possible design solutions for tools supporting eLearning content authors in the adoption and application of the proposed approach.

A Familiar(ity Problem: Assessing the Impact of Prerequisites and Content Familiarity on Student Learning.

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Justin F Shaffer

Full Text Available Prerequisites are embedded in most STEM curricula. However, the assumption that the content presented in these courses will improve learning in later courses has not been verified. Because a direct comparison of performance between students with and without required prerequisites is logistically difficult to arrange in a randomized fashion, we developed a novel familiarity scale, and used this to determine whether concepts introduced in a prerequisite course improved student learning in a later course (in two biology disciplines. Exam questions in the latter courses were classified into three categories, based on the degree to which the tested concept had been taught in the prerequisite course. If content familiarity mattered, it would be expected that exam scores on topics covered in the prerequisite would be higher than scores on novel topics. We found this to be partially true for "Very Familiar" questions (concepts covered in depth in the prerequisite. However, scores for concepts only briefly discussed in the prerequisite ("Familiar" were indistinguishable from performance on topics that were "Not Familiar" (concepts only taught in the later course. These results imply that merely "covering" topics in a prerequisite course does not result in improved future performance, and that some topics may be able to removed from a course thereby freeing up class time. Our results may therefore support the implementation of student-centered teaching methods such as active learning, as the time-intensive nature of active learning has been cited as a barrier to its adoption. In addition, we propose that our familiarity system could be broadly utilized to aid in the assessment of the effectiveness of prerequisites.

A Familiar(ity) Problem: Assessing the Impact of Prerequisites and Content Familiarity on Student Learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Shaffer, Justin F; Dang, Jennifer V; Lee, Amanda K; Dacanay, Samantha J; Alam, Usman; Wong, Hollie Y; Richards, George J; Kadandale, Pavan; Sato, Brian K

2016-01-01

Prerequisites are embedded in most STEM curricula. However, the assumption that the content presented in these courses will improve learning in later courses has not been verified. Because a direct comparison of performance between students with and without required prerequisites is logistically difficult to arrange in a randomized fashion, we developed a novel familiarity scale, and used this to determine whether concepts introduced in a prerequisite course improved student learning in a later course (in two biology disciplines). Exam questions in the latter courses were classified into three categories, based on the degree to which the tested concept had been taught in the prerequisite course. If content familiarity mattered, it would be expected that exam scores on topics covered in the prerequisite would be higher than scores on novel topics. We found this to be partially true for "Very Familiar" questions (concepts covered in depth in the prerequisite). However, scores for concepts only briefly discussed in the prerequisite ("Familiar") were indistinguishable from performance on topics that were "Not Familiar" (concepts only taught in the later course). These results imply that merely "covering" topics in a prerequisite course does not result in improved future performance, and that some topics may be able to removed from a course thereby freeing up class time. Our results may therefore support the implementation of student-centered teaching methods such as active learning, as the time-intensive nature of active learning has been cited as a barrier to its adoption. In addition, we propose that our familiarity system could be broadly utilized to aid in the assessment of the effectiveness of prerequisites.

An M-Learning Content Recommendation Service by Exploiting Mobile Social Interactions

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Chao, Han-Chieh; Lai, Chin-Feng; Chen, Shih-Yeh; Huang, Yueh-Min

2014-01-01

With the rapid development of the Internet and the popularization of mobile devices, participating in a mobile community becomes a part of daily life. This study aims the influence impact of social interactions on mobile learning communities. With m-learning content recommendation services developed from mobile devices and mobile network…

Active Learning Strategies: An illustrative approach to bring out better learning outcomes from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM students

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Adusumilli Srinath

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Teaching in a Teacher centric manner has been the mainframe teaching style in engineering education, however students feel it as a single sided approach and feel they are only passive listeners thus this style has now paved way to a Learner centric style of teaching-learning which is ACTIVE LEARNING, wherein every student is actively involved in one or the other form of learning and thus gets a chance to develop the key aspects of the course either on their own or by being a member of an active-learning group. They thus not only learn and practice the course contents but also learn managerial and team skills which are of much importance in present scenario in regard to Industries and companies where these students will be ultimately hired as employees. Professional education is making one’s students ready for the profession which includes team work, management and technical skills, thus Active learning has emerged as a mainframe tool for cherishing this aim of professional education, especially Science, Technology, Engineering and Management (STEM education. This paper aims to focus on a few facets of this active learning process and give an overview to the teaching faculty as well as students on what their individual roles must be like in this process for getting the most out of this process.

Active Learning Using Hint Information.

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Li, Chun-Liang; Ferng, Chun-Sung; Lin, Hsuan-Tien

2015-08-01

The abundance of real-world data and limited labeling budget calls for active learning, an important learning paradigm for reducing human labeling efforts. Many recently developed active learning algorithms consider both uncertainty and representativeness when making querying decisions. However, exploiting representativeness with uncertainty concurrently usually requires tackling sophisticated and challenging learning tasks, such as clustering. In this letter, we propose a new active learning framework, called hinted sampling, which takes both uncertainty and representativeness into account in a simpler way. We design a novel active learning algorithm within the hinted sampling framework with an extended support vector machine. Experimental results validate that the novel active learning algorithm can result in a better and more stable performance than that achieved by state-of-the-art algorithms. We also show that the hinted sampling framework allows improving another active learning algorithm designed from the transductive support vector machine.

Learning through Hallmark People in the Content Areas

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Ciecierski, Lisa M.; Bintz, William P.

2018-01-01

This article shares aspects to consider when designing and implementing content area instruction through the study of people. It begins with a description of an inquiry that investigated students' learning with the use of authentic literature and meaningful writing in social studies, and then extends to a discussion of how to apply these same…

A Study on the Instructor Role in Dealing with Mixed Contents: How It Affects Learner Satisfaction and Retention in e-Learning

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Seung Jae Lee

2018-03-01

Full Text Available The information and communication technology has become an indispensable part of modern education. The paradigm shift in the educational environment makes the instructors recollect the traditional roles in classroom education and adjust their responsibilities to accommodate a transformed pedagogy and learner expectations. This paper aims at the instructor’s role in on-line education and studies how the instructor affects the learner satisfaction via the instructor involvement. Modifying the information system success model, the learning-environment qualities are rearranged into two-tiered formats—rigid and flexible contents—depending on the instructor’s manageability. A partial least square analysis was used to examine the structural relationship among rigid and flexible contents qualities (i.e., technology-assisted learning-environment qualities, learner satisfaction, and learner retention, and found that the instructor involvement had a moderating effect on flexible contents qualities (test and activity; further, the moderating effect of instructor is captured as high involvement in tests and low involvement in activities. Consequently, this paper confirms the relationship between learning-environment qualities, learner satisfaction, and instructor involvement. Empirically, the instructor role in on-line education and the degree of instructor involvement in higher education are substantiated; the result of this study will also contribute to e-learning design or content delivery system development in a practical way.

USER-DEFINED CONTENT IN A MODERN LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR ENGINEERING GRAPHICS

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DOLGA Lia

2008-07-01

Full Text Available New pedagogic methods are developed during the current “knowledge-based era”. They replace the “taught lesson” by collaboration, reflection and iteration; in this context, the internet should not remain only a convenient and cheep (if not free mechanism for delivering traditional materials online. As the amount of available information continues to enlarge and diversify, the skills needed to access and process this information become quickly outdated. The ability to use new technologies and a wide range of multimedia tools will define success. This paper outlines the important role played by the user-generated content in defining new pedagogical approaches to learning in the context of online communities. Graphical subjects, like “Computer Graphics” and “Computer Aided Design” require an active participation of the student. Students-led lessons and students generated content give consistency and aid value to the educational process. The term of “teaching” transforms in “studying”.

Active-learning laboratory session to teach the four M's of diabetes care.

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Darbishire, Patricia L; Plake, Kimberly S; Nash, Christiane L; Shepler, Brian M

2009-04-07

To implement an active-learning methodology for teaching diabetes care to pharmacy students and evaluate its effectiveness. Laboratory instruction was divided into 4 primary areas of diabetes care, referred to by the mnemonic, the 4 M's: meal planning, motion, medication, and monitoring. Students participated in skill-based learning laboratory stations and in simulated patient experiences. A pretest, retrospective pretest, and posttest were administered to measure improvements in students' knowledge about diabetes and confidence in providing care to diabetes patients. Students knowledge of and confidence in each area assessed improved. Students enjoyed the laboratory session and felt it contributed to their learning. An active-learning approach to teaching diabetes care allowed students to experience aspects of the disease from the patient's perspective. This approach will be incorporated in other content areas.

Integrator element as a promoter of active learning in engineering teaching

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Oliveira, Paulo C.; Oliveira, Cristina G.

2014-03-01

In this paper, we present a teaching proposal used in an Introductory Physics course to civil engineering students from Porto's Engineering Institute/Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP). The proposal was born from the need to change students' perception and motivation for learning physics. It consists in the use of an integrator element, called the physics elevator project. This integrator element allows us to use, in a single project, all the content taught in the course and uses several active learning strategies. In this paper, we analyse this project as: (i) a clarifying element of the contents covered in the course; (ii) a promoter element of motivation and active participation in class and finally and (iii) a link between the contents covered in the course and the 'real world'. The data were collected by a questionnaire and interviews to students. From the data collected, it seems that the integrator element improves students' motivation towards physics and develops several skills that they consider to be important to their professional future. It also acts as a clarifying element and makes the connection between the physics that is taught and the 'real world'.

Active Learning Methods

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Zayapragassarazan, Z.; Kumar, Santosh

2012-01-01

Present generation students are primarily active learners with varied learning experiences and lecture courses may not suit all their learning needs. Effective learning involves providing students with a sense of progress and control over their own learning. This requires creating a situation where learners have a chance to try out or test their…

When increasing distraction helps learning: Distractor number and content interact in their effects on memory.

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Nussenbaum, Kate; Amso, Dima; Markant, Julie

2017-11-01

Previous work has demonstrated that increasing the number of distractors in a search array can reduce interference from distractor content during target processing. However, it is unclear how this reduced interference influences learning of target information. Here, we investigated how varying the amount and content of distraction present in a learning environment affects visual search and subsequent memory for target items. In two experiments, we demonstrate that the number and content of competing distractors interact in their influence on target selection and memory. Specifically, while increasing the number of distractors present in a search array made target detection more effortful, it did not impair learning and memory for target content. Instead, when the distractors contained category information that conflicted with the target, increasing the number of distractors from one to three actually benefitted learning and memory. These data suggest that increasing numbers of distractors may reduce interference from conflicting conceptual information during encoding.

Taking an active stance: How urban elementary students connect sociocultural experiences in learning science

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Upadhyay, Bhaskar; Maruyama, Geoffrey; Albrecht, Nancy

2017-12-01

In this interpretive case study, we draw from sociocultural theory of learning and culturally relevant pedagogy to understand how urban students from nondominant groups leverage their sociocultural experiences. These experiences allow them to gain an empowering voice in influencing science content and activities and to work towards self-determining the sciences that are personally meaningful. Furthermore, tying sociocultural experiences with science learning helps generate sociopolitical awareness among students. We collected interview and observation data in an urban elementary classroom over one academic year to understand the value of urban students' sociocultural experiences in learning science and choosing science activities.

ICT-supported language learning tools for Chinese as a foreign Language: a content review

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Tina Čok

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The paper presents a meta-analysis of 37 scientific papers dealing with the use and adoption of ICT for learning and teaching Chinese as a foreign language. It has shown that systematic content reviews providing overall insight into the nature and level of development in the field are rare. The author tries to fill this content gap by answering three research questions: 1 What is the overall state of research in the field of ICT-assisted learning of CFL in terms of language teaching methods? 2 Which learning technologies are in use for the specific teaching and learning methods for Chinese as a foreign language? 3 Are some learning technologies used more often for practis ng specific language skills than others?

Influences of Multimedia Lesson Contents On Effective Learning

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Tuncay Yavuz Ozdemir

2013-11-01

Full Text Available In the information era that we experience today, there is a rapid change in the methods, techniques and materials used for education and teaching. The usage of information and communication technology-assisted teaching materials are becoming more commonplace. Parallel to these developments, the Ministry of National Education took steps to develop IT substructures of all schools in the country and implemented many projects. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not the multimedia lesson content used by teachers affect effective learning. This study is a qualitative study, conducted with 45 teachers working in primary schools during the 2011-2012 academic year. According to the study findings, participants believe that using multimedia lesson content during lectures increases student motivation, makes students more curious and interested, and think that using multimedia lesson content has positive effects.

Effective Educational Videos: Principles and Guidelines for Maximizing Student Learning from Video Content

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Brame, Cynthia J.

2016-01-01

Educational videos have become an important part of higher education, providing an important content-delivery tool in many flipped, blended, and online classes. Effective use of video as an educational tool is enhanced when instructors consider three elements: how to manage cognitive load of the video; how to maximize student engagement with the video; and how to promote active learning from the video. This essay reviews literature relevant to each of these principles and suggests practical ways instructors can use these principles when using video as an educational tool. PMID:27789532

Strategic and Organisational Considerations in Planning Content and Language Integrated Learning: A Study on the Coordination between Content and Language Teachers

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Pavón Vázquez, Víctor; Ávila López, Javier; Gallego Segador, Arturo; Espejo Mohedano, Roberto

2015-01-01

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is generally recognised as a fruitful example of bilingual education. However, success in CLIL may not be straightforward and may require the establishment of coordination between content and language teachers. The aim of this study is to investigate if content and language teachers are able to plan…

Active learning and student-centered pedagogy improve student attitudes and performance in introductory biology.

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Armbruster, Peter; Patel, Maya; Johnson, Erika; Weiss, Martha

2009-01-01

We describe the development and implementation of an instructional design that focused on bringing multiple forms of active learning and student-centered pedagogies to a one-semester, undergraduate introductory biology course for both majors and nonmajors. Our course redesign consisted of three major elements: 1) reordering the presentation of the course content in an attempt to teach specific content within the context of broad conceptual themes, 2) incorporating active and problem-based learning into every lecture, and 3) adopting strategies to create a more student-centered learning environment. Assessment of our instructional design consisted of a student survey and comparison of final exam performance across 3 years-1 year before our course redesign was implemented (2006) and during two successive years of implementation (2007 and 2008). The course restructuring led to significant improvement of self-reported student engagement and satisfaction and increased academic performance. We discuss the successes and ongoing challenges of our course restructuring and consider issues relevant to institutional change.

The influence of inquiry learning model on additives theme with ethnoscience content to cultural awareness of students

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Sudarmin, S.; Selia, E.; Taufiq, M.

2018-03-01

The purpose of this research is to determine the influence of inquiry learning model on additives theme with ethnoscience content to cultural awareness of students and how the students’ responses to learning. The method applied in this research is a quasi-experimental with non-equivalent control group design. The sampling technique applied in this research is the technique of random sampling. The samples were eight grade students of one of junior high schools in Semarang. The results of this research were (1) thestudents’ cultural awareness of the experiment class is better than the control class (2) inquiry learning model with ethnoscience content strongly influencing the cultural awareness of students by 78% and (3) students gave positive responses to inquiry learning model with ethnoscience content. The conclusions of this research are inquiry-learning model with ethnoscience content has positive influence on students’ cultural awareness.

Electronic Dictionary as a Tool for Integration of Additional Learning Content

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Stefka Kovacheva

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Electronic Dictionary as a Tool for Integration of Additional Learning Content This article discusses electronic dictionary as an element of the „Bulgarian cultural and historical heritage under the protection of UNESCO” database developed in IMI (BAS, that will be used to integrate additional learning content. The electronic dictionary is described as an easily accessible book of reference, offering information to the shape, meaning, usage and the origin of words in connection to the cultural-historical heritage sites in Bulgaria, protected by UNESCO. The dictionary targets 9–11 year old students from Bulgarian schools, who study the subjects “Man and Society” in 4th grade and “History and Civilization” in 5th grade.

Comparing Efficiency of Web Based Learning Contents on Different Media

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Julija Lapuh Bele

2009-11-01

Full Text Available The purpose of the research was to find out what kind of multimedia learning materials gave the most efficient and effective results with regards to learning time and knowledge gained. Different web based learning materials were used as regards presentation mode: static pictures, animations with online text and animations with narrated text. Although the research results showed that learners from WBL contents with static graphics learnt less time than learners from animations, we did not find significant differences in learning time between experimental groups. However, we proved significant differences between three experimental groups in terms of gained knowledge. The learners using learning materials with static graphics performed worse than learners using materials with animations. Furthermore, we did not prove significant differences in gained knowledge between groups that learnt from audio animations and the animations with online text.

Building the Body: Active Learning Laboratories that Emphasize Practical Aspects of Anatomy and Integration with Radiology

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Zumwalt, Ann C.; Lufler, Rebecca S.; Monteiro, Joseph; Shaffer, Kitt

2010-01-01

Active learning exercises were developed to allow advanced medical students to revisit and review anatomy in a clinically meaningful context. In our curriculum, students learn anatomy two to three years before they participate in the radiology clerkship. These educational exercises are designed to review anatomy content while highlighting its…

Active Learning with Statistical Models.

Science.gov (United States)

1995-01-01

Active Learning with Statistical Models ASC-9217041, NSF CDA-9309300 6. AUTHOR(S) David A. Cohn, Zoubin Ghahramani, and Michael I. Jordan 7. PERFORMING...TERMS 15. NUMBER OF PAGES Al, MIT, Artificial Intelligence, active learning , queries, locally weighted 6 regression, LOESS, mixtures of gaussians...COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING DEPARTMENT OF BRAIN AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES A.I. Memo No. 1522 January 9. 1995 C.B.C.L. Paper No. 110 Active Learning with

Language Alternation and Language Norm in Vocational Content and Language Integrated Learning

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Kontio, Janne; Sylvén, Liss Kerstin

2015-01-01

The present article deals with language choice as communicative strategies in the language learning environment of an English-medium content and language integrated learning (CLIL) workshop at an auto mechanics class in a Swedish upper secondary school. The article presents the organisation and functions of language alternations (LAs) which are…

Learning outcomes between Socioscientific Issues-Based Learning and Conventional Learning Activities

OpenAIRE

Piyaluk Wongsri; Prasart Nuangchalerm

2010-01-01

Problem statement: Socioscientific issues-based learning activity is essential for scientific reasoning skills and it could be used for analyzing problems be applied to each situation for more successful and suitable. The purposes of this research aimed to compare learning achievement, analytical thinking and moral reasoning of seventh grade students who were organized between socioscientific issues-based learning and conventional learning activities. Approach: The samples used in research we...

A deep learning and novelty detection framework for rapid phenotyping in high-content screening

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Sommer, Christoph; Hoefler, Rudolf; Samwer, Matthias; Gerlich, Daniel W.

2017-01-01

Supervised machine learning is a powerful and widely used method for analyzing high-content screening data. Despite its accuracy, efficiency, and versatility, supervised machine learning has drawbacks, most notably its dependence on a priori knowledge of expected phenotypes and time-consuming classifier training. We provide a solution to these limitations with CellCognition Explorer, a generic novelty detection and deep learning framework. Application to several large-scale screening data sets on nuclear and mitotic cell morphologies demonstrates that CellCognition Explorer enables discovery of rare phenotypes without user training, which has broad implications for improved assay development in high-content screening. PMID:28954863

Tracking Active Learning in the Medical School Curriculum: A Learning-Centered Approach.

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McCoy, Lise; Pettit, Robin K; Kellar, Charlyn; Morgan, Christine

2018-01-01

Medical education is moving toward active learning during large group lecture sessions. This study investigated the saturation and breadth of active learning techniques implemented in first year medical school large group sessions. Data collection involved retrospective curriculum review and semistructured interviews with 20 faculty. The authors piloted a taxonomy of active learning techniques and mapped learning techniques to attributes of learning-centered instruction. Faculty implemented 25 different active learning techniques over the course of 9 first year courses. Of 646 hours of large group instruction, 476 (74%) involved at least 1 active learning component. The frequency and variety of active learning components integrated throughout the year 1 curriculum reflect faculty familiarity with active learning methods and their support of an active learning culture. This project has sparked reflection on teaching practices and facilitated an evolution from teacher-centered to learning-centered instruction.

Faculty and second-year medical student perceptions of active learning in an integrated curriculum.

Science.gov (United States)

Tsang, Alexander; Harris, David M

2016-12-01

Patients expect physicians to be lifelong learners who are able to interpret and evaluate diagnostic tests, and most medical schools list the development of lifelong learning in their program objectives. However, lecture is the most often utilized form of teaching in the first two years and is considered passive learning. The current generation of medical students has many characteristics that should support active learning pedagogies. The purpose of this study was to analyze student and faculty perceptions of active learning in an integrated medical curriculum at the second-year mark, where students have been exposed to multiple educational pedagogies. The first hypothesis of the study was that faculty would favor active learning methods. The second hypothesis was that Millennial medical students would favor active learning due to their characteristics. Primary faculty for years 1 and 2 and second-year medical students were recruited for an e-mail survey consisting of 12 questions about active learning and lecture. Students perceived that lecture and passive pedagogies were more effective for learning, whereas faculty felt active and collaborative learning was more effective. Students believed that more content should be covered by lecture than faculty. There were also significant differences in perceptions of what makes a good teacher. Students and faculty both felt that lack of time in the curriculum and preparation time were barriers for faculty. The data suggest that students are not familiar with the process of learning and that more time may be needed to help students develop lifelong learning skills. Copyright © 2016 The American Physiological Society.

TECHNOLOGIES OF INITIATING STUDENTS INTO INDEPENDENT (SELF-GUIDED ACTIVITY IN SUPPLEMENTARY DISTANCE LEARNING

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Irina V. Abakumova

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The research in question investigates the technologies of initiating independent activity within the framework of distance learning and their psychological aspects. The authors’ classification of educational technologies of initiating students into independent cognitive activity is presented. Such technologies utilize various psychological mechanisms of exciting students’ cognitive interest, intensifying cognitive processes, developing independent activity skills, and, as a result, increase motivation for independent activity and learning on the whole. These include such types of technologies as developmental technologies, interactive technologies, technologies of information transfer, technologies of meaning-making initiation. The research of the attitude of distance learning educators to independent activity of students and the content of the academic courses were done at Moodle-based education programs. The findings show the differences in retention rate among distance learning educators whose competence in terms of initiating students into independent (self-guided activity varies. It’s emphasized that interactive lectures, videoconferences, audio-visual aids, interactive seminars, glossaries, interactive tests are considered the most efficient technologies in initiating students into independent (self-guided activity. The obtained results have made it possible to stress the developmental effect of distance learning technologies and the technologies of initiating students into independent (self-guided activity in various psychic spheres of students: cognitive, individual, emotional. We mention the changes in motivational sphere of students and their meaning-making activity. In the course of correct development of distance learning we notice the development of voluntary and nonvoluntary cognitive activity. A student starts actively participating in educational process, he becomes the creator of his own world.

Active-constructive-interactive: a conceptual framework for differentiating learning activities.

Science.gov (United States)

Chi, Michelene T H

2009-01-01

Active, constructive, and interactive are terms that are commonly used in the cognitive and learning sciences. They describe activities that can be undertaken by learners. However, the literature is actually not explicit about how these terms can be defined; whether they are distinct; and whether they refer to overt manifestations, learning processes, or learning outcomes. Thus, a framework is provided here that offers a way to differentiate active, constructive, and interactive in terms of observable overt activities and underlying learning processes. The framework generates a testable hypothesis for learning: that interactive activities are most likely to be better than constructive activities, which in turn might be better than active activities, which are better than being passive. Studies from the literature are cited to provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. Moreover, postulating underlying learning processes allows us to interpret evidence in the literature more accurately. Specifying distinct overt activities for active, constructive, and interactive also offers suggestions for how learning activities can be coded and how each kind of activity might be elicited. Copyright © 2009 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Tracking Active Learning in the Medical School Curriculum: A Learning-Centered Approach

Science.gov (United States)

McCoy, Lise; Pettit, Robin K; Kellar, Charlyn; Morgan, Christine

2018-01-01

Background: Medical education is moving toward active learning during large group lecture sessions. This study investigated the saturation and breadth of active learning techniques implemented in first year medical school large group sessions. Methods: Data collection involved retrospective curriculum review and semistructured interviews with 20 faculty. The authors piloted a taxonomy of active learning techniques and mapped learning techniques to attributes of learning-centered instruction. Results: Faculty implemented 25 different active learning techniques over the course of 9 first year courses. Of 646 hours of large group instruction, 476 (74%) involved at least 1 active learning component. Conclusions: The frequency and variety of active learning components integrated throughout the year 1 curriculum reflect faculty familiarity with active learning methods and their support of an active learning culture. This project has sparked reflection on teaching practices and facilitated an evolution from teacher-centered to learning-centered instruction. PMID:29707649

Homepage to distribute the anatomy learning contents including Visible Korean products, comics, and books.

Science.gov (United States)

Chung, Beom Sun; Chung, Min Suk

2018-03-01

The authors have operated the homepage (http://anatomy.co.kr) to provide the learning contents of anatomy. From the homepage, sectioned images, volume models, and surface models-all Visible Korean products-can be downloaded. The realistic images can be interactively manipulated, which will give rise to the interest in anatomy. The various anatomy comics (learning comics, comic strips, plastination comics, etc.) are approachable. Visitors can obtain the regional anatomy book with concise contents, mnemonics, and schematics as well as the simplified dissection manual and the pleasant anatomy essay. Medical students, health allied professional students, and even laypeople are expected to utilize the easy and comforting anatomy contents. It is hoped that other anatomists successively produce and distribute their own informative contents.

Homepage to distribute the anatomy learning contents including Visible Korean products, comics, and books

Science.gov (United States)

Chung, Beom Sun

2018-01-01

The authors have operated the homepage (http://anatomy.co.kr) to provide the learning contents of anatomy. From the homepage, sectioned images, volume models, and surface models—all Visible Korean products—can be downloaded. The realistic images can be interactively manipulated, which will give rise to the interest in anatomy. The various anatomy comics (learning comics, comic strips, plastination comics, etc.) are approachable. Visitors can obtain the regional anatomy book with concise contents, mnemonics, and schematics as well as the simplified dissection manual and the pleasant anatomy essay. Medical students, health allied professional students, and even laypeople are expected to utilize the easy and comforting anatomy contents. It is hoped that other anatomists successively produce and distribute their own informative contents. PMID:29644104

E-Learning Content Design Standards Based on Interactive Digital Concepts Maps in the Light of Meaningful and Constructivist Learning Theory

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Afify, Mohammed Kamal

2018-01-01

The present study aims to identify standards of interactive digital concepts maps design and their measurement indicators as a tool to develop, organize and administer e-learning content in the light of Meaningful Learning Theory and Constructivist Learning Theory. To achieve the objective of the research, the author prepared a list of E-learning…

Learning from instructional explanations: effects of prompts based on the active-constructive-interactive framework.

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Roelle, Julian; Müller, Claudia; Roelle, Detlev; Berthold, Kirsten

2015-01-01

Although instructional explanations are commonly provided when learners are introduced to new content, they often fail because they are not integrated into effective learning activities. The recently introduced active-constructive-interactive framework posits an effectiveness hierarchy in which interactive learning activities are at the top; these are then followed by constructive and active learning activities, respectively. Against this background, we combined instructional explanations with different types of prompts that were designed to elicit these learning activities and tested the central predictions of the active-constructive-interactive framework. In Experiment 1, N = 83 students were randomly assigned to one of four combinations of instructional explanations and prompts. To test the active learning hypothesis, the learners received either (1) complete explanations and engaging prompts designed to elicit active activities or (2) explanations that were reduced by inferences and inference prompts designed to engage learners in constructing the withheld information. Furthermore, in order to explore how interactive learning activities can be elicited, we gave the learners who had difficulties in constructing the prompted inferences adapted remedial explanations with either (3) unspecific engaging prompts or (4) revision prompts. In support of the active learning hypothesis, we found that the learners who received reduced explanations and inference prompts outperformed the learners who received complete explanations and engaging prompts. Moreover, revision prompts were more effective in eliciting interactive learning activities than engaging prompts. In Experiment 2, N = 40 students were randomly assigned to either (1) a reduced explanations and inference prompts or (2) a reduced explanations and inference prompts plus adapted remedial explanations and revision prompts condition. In support of the constructive learning hypothesis, the learners who received

Minimax bounds for active learning

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Castro, R.M.; Nowak, R.

2008-01-01

This paper analyzes the potential advantages and theoretical challenges of "active learning" algorithms. Active learning involves sequential sampling procedures that use information gleaned from previous samples in order to focus the sampling and accelerate the learning process relative to "passive

Memory reactivation during rest supports upcoming learning of related content

Science.gov (United States)

Schlichting, Margaret L.; Preston, Alison R.

2014-01-01

Although a number of studies have highlighted the importance of offline processes for memory, how these mechanisms influence future learning remains unknown. Participants with established memories for a set of initial face–object associations were scanned during passive rest and during encoding of new related and unrelated pairs of objects. Spontaneous reactivation of established memories and enhanced hippocampal–neocortical functional connectivity during rest was related to better subsequent learning, specifically of related content. Moreover, the degree of functional coupling during rest was predictive of neural engagement during the new learning experience itself. These results suggest that through rest-phase reactivation and hippocampal–neocortical interactions, existing memories may come to facilitate encoding during subsequent related episodes. PMID:25331890

Memory reactivation during rest supports upcoming learning of related content.

Science.gov (United States)

Schlichting, Margaret L; Preston, Alison R

2014-11-04

Although a number of studies have highlighted the importance of offline processes for memory, how these mechanisms influence future learning remains unknown. Participants with established memories for a set of initial face-object associations were scanned during passive rest and during encoding of new related and unrelated pairs of objects. Spontaneous reactivation of established memories and enhanced hippocampal-neocortical functional connectivity during rest was related to better subsequent learning, specifically of related content. Moreover, the degree of functional coupling during rest was predictive of neural engagement during the new learning experience itself. These results suggest that through rest-phase reactivation and hippocampal-neocortical interactions, existing memories may come to facilitate encoding during subsequent related episodes.

Cooperative Learning in Turkey: A Content Analysis of Theses

Science.gov (United States)

Dirlikli, Murat

2016-01-01

This study is a content analysis of theses concerning cooperative learning prepared in Turkey between the years 1993 and 2014. A total of 220 theses which were accessible online (open access) at the site of Council of Higher Education (CoHE) were analyzed. The publishing classification form used in this study was prepared analyzing similar forms…

Active Learning Using Arbitrary Binary Valued Queries

Science.gov (United States)

1990-10-01

active learning in the sense that the learner has complete choice in the information received. Specifically, we allow the learner to ask arbitrary yes...no questions. We consider both active learning under a fixed distribution and distribution-free active learning . In the case of active learning , the...a concept class is actively learnable iff it is finite, so that active learning is in fact less powerful than the usual passive learning model. We

Designing Online Teaching and Learning Activities for Higher Education in Hong Kong

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kevin Downing

2008-06-01

Full Text Available Instruction using the Web as a vehicle for content dissemination has increasingly dominated debates related to online learning (Nash, 2004 and there is little doubt that the exponential growth in the use of the internet and web-based instruction continues to present educators with considerable opportunities and challenges (Boettcher, 1999; McNaught & Lam, 2005. Many teachers and researchers (Wood, 1997; Littlejohn et al., 1999 point out that the organization and reflection necessary to effectively teach online often improves an instructor’s traditional teaching. This is a theme continued by Downing (2001 who identifies the eventual success or failure of online teaching as largely due to the same factors that have always been central to the provision of a quality learning experience. These factors include the energy, commitment and imagination of those responsible for providing the teaching and learning environment, whether it is virtual or actual. It is within this context that the authors of this paper set themselves the task of designing innovative online teaching and learning activities which add value to the student experience and genuinely assist learning traditionally difficult and dynamic concepts. The increasing adoption of outcomes based teaching and learning environments in universities around the world has provided wide-ranging opportunities to reflect on current learning and teaching practice. Whilst outcomes based teaching and learning is not a new idea (Biggs, 1999, many academic colleagues are actively seeking ways to leverage information technology solutions to design constructively aligned online teaching and learning activities which add value to the student learning experience and significantly assist in the understanding of difficult concepts and processes. This paper will describe and demonstrate the innovative development of online teaching and learning activities which adhere to the principles of both outcomes based

Student-Centered Modules to Support Active Learning in Hydrology: Development Experiences and Users' Perspectives

Science.gov (United States)

Tarboton, D. G.; Habib, E. H.; Deshotel, M.; Merck, M. F.; Lall, U.; Farnham, D. J.

2016-12-01

Traditional approaches to undergraduate hydrology and water resource education are textbook based, adopt unit processes and rely on idealized examples of specific applications, rather than examining the contextual relations in the processes and the dynamics connecting climate and ecosystems. The overarching goal of this project is to address the needed paradigm shift in undergraduate education of engineering hydrology and water resources education to reflect parallel advances in hydrologic research and technology, mainly in the areas of new observational settings, data and modeling resources and web-based technologies. This study presents efforts to develop a set of learning modules that are case-based, data and simulation driven and delivered via a web user interface. The modules are based on real-world case studies from three regional hydrologic settings: Coastal Louisiana, Utah Rocky Mountains and Florida Everglades. These three systems provide unique learning opportunities on topics such as: regional-scale budget analysis, hydrologic effects of human and natural changes, flashflood protection, climate-hydrology teleconnections and water resource management scenarios. The technical design and contents of the modules aim to support students' ability for transforming their learning outcomes and skills to hydrologic systems other than those used by the specific activity. To promote active learning, the modules take students through a set of highly engaging learning activities that are based on analysis of hydrologic data and model simulations. The modules include user support in the form of feedback and self-assessment mechanisms that are integrated within the online modules. Module effectiveness is assessed through an improvement-focused evaluation model using a mixed-method research approach guiding collection and analysis of evaluation data. Both qualitative and quantitative data are collected through student learning data, product analysis, and staff interviews

Learning by Doing: Twenty Successful Active Learning Exercises for Information Systems Courses

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alanah Mitchell

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Aim/Purpose: This paper provides a review of previously published work related to active learning in information systems (IS courses. Background: There are a rising number of strategies in higher education that offer promise in regards to getting students’ attention and helping them learn, such as flipped classrooms and offering courses online. These learning strategies are part of the pedagogical technique known as active learning. Active learning is a strategy that became popular in the early 1990s and has proven itself as a valid tool for helping students to be engaged with learning. Methodology: This work follows a systematic method for identifying and coding previous research based on an aspect of interest. The authors identified and assessed research through a search of ABI/Inform scholarly journal abstracts and keywords, as well as additional research databases, using the search terms “active learning” and “information systems” from 2000 through June 2016. Contribution: This synthesis of active learning exercises provides guidance for information technology faculty looking to implement active learning strategies in their classroom by demonstrating how IS faculty might begin to introduce more active learning techniques in their teaching as well as by presenting a sample teaching agenda for a class that uses a mix of active and passive learning techniques to engage student learning. Findings: Twenty successful types of active learning exercises in IS courses are presented. Recommendations for Practitioners\t: This paper offers a “how to” resource of successful active learning strategies for IS faculty interested in implementing active learning in the classroom. Recommendation for Researchers: This work provides an example of a systematic literature review as a means to assess successful implementations of active learning in IS. Impact on Society: An updated definition of active learning is presented as well as a meaningful

Using Competency-Based Digital Open Learning Activities to Facilitate and Promote Health Professions Education (OLAmeD): A Proposal.

Science.gov (United States)

Vaitsis, Christos; Stathakarou, Natalia; Barman, Linda; Zary, Nabil; McGrath, Cormac

2016-07-07

Traditional learning in medical education has been transformed with the advent of information technology. We have recently seen global initiatives to produce online activities in an effort to scale up learning opportunities through learning management systems and massive open online courses for both undergraduate and continued professional education. Despite the positive impact of such efforts, factors such as cost, time, resources, and the specificity of educational contexts restrict the design and exchange of online medical educational activities. The goal is to address the stated issues within the health professions education context while promoting learning by proposing the Online Learning Activities for Medical Education (OLAmeD) concept which builds on unified competency frameworks and generic technical standards for education. We outline how frameworks used to describe a set of competencies for a specific topic in medical education across medical schools in the United States and Europe can be compared to identify commonalities that could result in a unified set of competencies representing both contexts adequately. Further, we examine how technical standards could be used to allow standardization, seamless sharing, and reusability of educational content. The entire process of developing and sharing OLAmeD is structured and presented in a set of steps using as example Urology as a part of clinical surgery specialization. Beyond supporting the development, sharing, and repurposing of educational content, we expect OLAmeD to work as a tool that promotes learning and sets a base for a community of medical educational content developers across different educational contexts.

Evaluation of antioxidant activity and polyphenolic contents of two ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Total phenolic content were determined by Folin-Ciocalteu test, and antioxidant activity measured using cyclic voltammetry. Correlations between antioxidant activity and total phenolic content were also examined. Within each cultivar, the total phenolic content and antioxidant activity were highest in the peels, followed by ...

Improvements from a flipped classroom may simply be the fruits of active learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Jensen, Jamie L; Kummer, Tyler A; d M Godoy, Patricia D

2015-03-02

The "flipped classroom" is a learning model in which content attainment is shifted forward to outside of class, then followed by instructor-facilitated concept application activities in class. Current studies on the flipped model are limited. Our goal was to provide quantitative and controlled data about the effectiveness of this model. Using a quasi-experimental design, we compared an active nonflipped classroom with an active flipped classroom, both using the 5-E learning cycle, in an effort to vary only the role of the instructor and control for as many of the other potentially influential variables as possible. Results showed that both low-level and deep conceptual learning were equivalent between the conditions. Attitudinal data revealed equal student satisfaction with the course. Interestingly, both treatments ranked their contact time with the instructor as more influential to their learning than what they did at home. We conclude that the flipped classroom does not result in higher learning gains or better attitudes compared with the nonflipped classroom when both utilize an active-learning, constructivist approach and propose that learning gains in either condition are most likely a result of the active-learning style of instruction rather than the order in which the instructor participated in the learning process. © 2015 J. L. Jensen et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2015 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

Main components and content of sports volunteer activities

OpenAIRE

Петренко, Ірина

2017-01-01

Iryna PetrenkоPurpose: identification of the main structural components and content of sports volunteer activities. Material & Methods: used analysis of literature and documents, organizational analysis. Result: basic structural components of sports volunteer activity are defined. The content of sports volunteer activity is disclosed. Conclusion: sports volunteer activity includes the following structural components: subject, object, purpose, motivation, means, actions; subject is a sport...

STEM learning activity among home-educating families

Science.gov (United States)

Bachman, Jennifer

2011-12-01

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning was studied among families in a group of home-educators in the Pacific Northwest. Ethnographic methods recorded learning activity (video, audio, fieldnotes, and artifacts) which was analyzed using a unique combination of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and Mediated Action (MA), enabling analysis of activity at multiple levels. Findings indicate that STEM learning activity is family-led, guided by parents' values and goals for learning, and negotiated with children to account for learner interests and differences, and available resources. Families' STEM education practice is dynamic, evolves, and influenced by larger societal STEM learning activity. Parents actively seek support and resources for STEM learning within their home-school community, working individually and collectively to share their funds of knowledge. Home-schoolers also access a wide variety of free-choice learning resources: web-based materials, museums, libraries, and community education opportunities (e.g. afterschool, weekend and summer programs, science clubs and classes, etc.). A lesson-heuristic, grounded in Mediated Action, represents and analyzes home STEM learning activity in terms of tensions between parental goals, roles, and lesson structure. One tension observed was between 'academic' goals or school-like activity and 'lifelong' goals or everyday learning activity. Theoretical and experiential learning was found in both activity, though parents with academic goals tended to focus more on theoretical learning and those with lifelong learning goals tended to be more experiential. Examples of the National Research Council's science learning strands (NRC, 2009) were observed in the STEM practices of all these families. Findings contribute to the small but growing body of empirical CHAT research in science education, specifically to the empirical base of family STEM learning practices at home. It also fills a

Active learning in practice: Implementation of the principles of active learning in an engineering course

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rützou, C.

2017-01-01

The most common form of teaching is still the form where a teacher presents the subject of the lecture to a listening audience. During teaching history this has proved to be an effective way of teaching, however the probability of students being inactive is high and the learning outcome may...... through the same curriculum as usual during a term? • Will Active Learning reduce failure rate? • Will Active Learning give a higher learning outcome than traditional teaching? This paper deals with the results of this experiment, answers the mentioned questions and presents a way to implement Active...

How can students contribute? A qualitative study of active student involvement in development of technological learning material for clinical skills training.

Science.gov (United States)

Haraldseid, Cecilie; Friberg, Febe; Aase, Karina

2016-01-01

Policy initiatives and an increasing amount of the literature within higher education both call for students to become more involved in creating their own learning. However, there is a lack of studies in undergraduate nursing education that actively involve students in developing such learning material with descriptions of the students' roles in these interactive processes. Explorative qualitative study, using data from focus group interviews, field notes and student notes. The data has been subjected to qualitative content analysis. Active student involvement through an iterative process identified five different learning needs that are especially important to the students: clarification of learning expectations, help to recognize the bigger picture, stimulation of interaction, creation of structure, and receiving context- specific content. The iterative process involvement of students during the development of new technological learning material will enhance the identification of important learning needs for students. The use of student and teacher knowledge through an adapted co-design process is the most optimal level of that involvement.

The Effect of Scaffolded Strategies on Content Learning in a Designed Science Cyberlearning Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Kern, Cynthia Lee

2013-01-01

Scientific inscriptions--graphs, diagrams, and data--and argumentation are integral to generating and communicating scientific understanding. Scientific inscriptions and argumentation are also important to learning science. However, previous research has indicated that learners struggle to understand and learn science content represented in…

Incorporating active learning in psychiatry education.

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Sonia; McLean, Loyola; Nash, Louise; Trigwell, Keith

2017-06-01

We aim to summarise the active learning literature in higher education and consider its relevance for postgraduate psychiatry trainees, to inform the development of a new Formal Education Course (FEC): the Master of Medicine (Psychiatry) at the University of Sydney. We undertook a literature search on 'active learning', 'flipped classroom', 'problem-based learning' and 'psychiatry education'. The effectiveness of active learning pedagogy in higher education is well supported by evidence; however, there have been few psychiatry-specific studies. A new 'flipped classroom' format was developed for the Master of Medicine (Psychiatry). Postgraduate psychiatry training is an active learning environment; the pedagogical approach to FECs requires further evaluation.

Student-Generated Content: Enhancing Learning through Sharing Multiple-Choice Questions

Science.gov (United States)

Hardy, Judy; Bates, Simon P.; Casey, Morag M.; Galloway, Kyle W.; Galloway, Ross K.; Kay, Alison E.; Kirsop, Peter; McQueen, Heather A.

2014-01-01

The relationship between students' use of PeerWise, an online tool that facilitates peer learning through student-generated content in the form of multiple-choice questions (MCQs), and achievement, as measured by their performance in the end-of-module examinations, was investigated in 5 large early-years science modules (in physics, chemistry and…

The Challenges in Developing E-Content

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jowati Juhary

2010-11-01

Full Text Available Malaysia is considered an active key player in information communication technologies (ICTs especially in education. In fact, in the National Higher Education Strategic Plan, one of the Critical Agenda Projects (CAPs of the Minister of Higher Education is e-learning. It goes without saying that all higher learning providers in Malaysia must be prepared to provide state-of-the-art facilities for the students. One critical aspect of e-learning is the quality and quantity of the content, or what will be referred by many scholars as e-content. This paper attempts to identify the challenges of content development for e-learning practice at the National Defence University of Malaysia (NDUM. It is crucial to investigate this issue since the university just purchased its Learning Management System (LMS. It is expected that resistance will be present as the academics at the defence university is a mixture of junior and senior lecturers, as well as civilian and military lecturers; and some of these academics have been teaching without the assistance of e-learning. In so doing, the methodology of this paper will mainly be content analysis of various reports, governmental documents, as well as semi-structured interviews with lecturers at the NDUM. As this paper acts as a preliminary investigation into the issue of e-content at the university, only seven lecturers were interviewed. Initial findings suggest that there are basically five challenges of developing e-content at the NDUM. These include the lack of ICT and e-learning policy that can provide guidelines to academics; the uncertainty of ownership for e-learning initiatives; the lack of understanding of the roles of e-learning; the lack of awareness on e-learning; and the difficulties to develop military based content due to confidentiality issues. Two possible solutions for these challenges are also examined which take into consideration the urgent need to set up an e-Learning Unit and to provide

Instructional Utility and Learning Efficacy of Common Active Learning Strategies

Science.gov (United States)

McConell, David A.; Chapman, LeeAnna; Czaijka, C. Douglas; Jones, Jason P.; Ryker, Katherine D.; Wiggen, Jennifer

2017-01-01

The adoption of active learning instructional practices in college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses has been shown to result in improvements in student learning, contribute to increased retention rates, and reduce the achievement gap among different student populations. Descriptions of active learning strategies…

Nursing students' views of sociocultural factors in clinical learning: a qualitative content analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Dadgaran, Ideh; Parvizy, Soroor; Peyrovi, Hamid

2013-06-01

The aim of this study is description of nursing students' views of sociocultural factors in clinical learning. A qualitative content analysis was conducted to describe nursing students' views of sociocultural factors in clinical learning. The participants consisted of 21 nursing students. Semi-structured and interactive interviews were used to collect data. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed, and then, they were analyzed using Qualitative Content Analysis and Max Qualitative Data Analysis 2010. From the transcripts, a remarkable number of primary themes, main themes, and sub-themes emerged. The main themes consisted of elements related to "society and culture", "family", "staff", and "classmates". The themes encompassed a spectrum of facilitators of and impediments to clinical learning. The findings showed that the administrators of nursing education should coordinate with faculty and staff by adopting interactive and participatory solutions, including the establishment of clinical learning teams and the transformation of hospitals into suitable sociocultural environments for education. © 2012 The Authors. Japan Journal of Nursing Science © 2012 Japan Academy of Nursing Science.

Doing physical activity – not learning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Jens-Ole

2017-01-01

Introduction In recent years there have been a raising critique concerning PE as a subject which is more concerned with keeping pupils physically active than insuring that they learn something (Annerstedt, 2008). In Denmark, this issue has been actualized in a new sense. In 2014, a new school...... reform with 45 minutes of daily physical activity was introduced to enhance the pupils’ health, well-being and learning capabilities. Instead of focusing on learning bodily skills, physical activities has become an instrument to improve learning in the academic subjects. Physical activities.......g. Biesta, 2010; Standal, 2015) I will argue that the focus on learning outcome and effects on physical activity has gone too far in order to reach the objectives. If the notion of ‘keeping pupils physically active’ is understood as a representation of the core quality of physical activity, it seems...

The Flipped Classroom: An active teaching and learning strategy for making the sessions more interactive and challenging.

Science.gov (United States)

Sultan, Amber Shamim

2018-04-01

Flipping the classroom is a pedagogical model that employs easy to use, readily accessible technology based resources such as video lectures, reading handouts, and practice problems outside the classroom, whereas interactive group-based, problem-solving activities conducted in the classroom. This strategy permits for an extended range of learning activities during the session. Using class time for active learning provides greater opportunity for mentoring and peer to peer collaboration. Instead of spending too much time on delivering lectures, class time can best be utilized by interacting with students, discussing their concerns related to the particular topic to be taught, providing real life examples relevant to the course content, challenging students to think in a broader aspect about complex process and encouraging different team based learning activities.

Students' Perceptions of Teaching in Context-based and Traditional Chemistry Classrooms: Comparing content, learning activities, and interpersonal perspectives

Science.gov (United States)

Overman, Michelle; Vermunt, Jan D.; Meijer, Paulien C.; Bulte, Astrid M. W.; Brekelmans, Mieke

2014-07-01

Context-based curriculum reforms in chemistry education are thought to bring greater diversity to the ways in which chemistry teachers organize their teaching. First and foremost, students are expected to perceive this diversity. However, empirical research on how students perceive their teacher's teaching in context-based chemistry classrooms, and whether this teaching differs from traditional chemistry lessons, is scarce. This study aims to develop our understanding of what teaching looks like, according to students, in context-based chemistry classrooms compared with traditional chemistry classrooms. As such, it might also provide a better understanding of whether teachers implement and attain the intentions of curriculum developers. To study teacher behaviour we used three theoretical perspectives deemed to be important for student learning: a content perspective, a learning activities perspective, and an interpersonal perspective. Data were collected from 480 students in 24 secondary chemistry classes in the Netherlands. Our findings suggest that, according to the students, the changes in teaching in context-based chemistry classrooms imply a lessening of the emphasis on fundamental chemistry and the use of a teacher-centred approach, compared with traditional chemistry classrooms. However, teachers in context-based chemistry classrooms seem not to display more 'context-based' teaching behaviour, such as emphasizing the relation between chemistry, technology, and society and using a student-centred approach. Furthermore, students in context-based chemistry classrooms perceive their teachers as having less interpersonal control and showing less affiliation than teachers in traditional chemistry classrooms. Our findings should be interpreted in the context of former and daily experiences of both teachers and students. As only chemistry is reformed in the schools in which context-based chemistry is implemented, it is challenging for both students and teachers to

Information Theoretical Analysis of Identification based on Active Content Fingerprinting

OpenAIRE

Farhadzadeh, Farzad; Willems, Frans M. J.; Voloshinovskiy, Sviatoslav

2014-01-01

Content fingerprinting and digital watermarking are techniques that are used for content protection and distribution monitoring. Over the past few years, both techniques have been well studied and their shortcomings understood. Recently, a new content fingerprinting scheme called {\\em active content fingerprinting} was introduced to overcome these shortcomings. Active content fingerprinting aims to modify a content to extract robuster fingerprints than the conventional content fingerprinting....

Improvements from a Flipped Classroom May Simply Be the Fruits of Active Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Jensen, Jamie L.; Kummer, Tyler A.; Godoy, Patricia D. d. M.

2015-01-01

The "flipped classroom" is a learning model in which content attainment is shifted forward to outside of class, then followed by instructor-facilitated concept application activities in class. Current studies on the flipped model are limited. Our goal was to provide quantitative and controlled data about the effectiveness of this model.…

The ICAP Active Learning Framework Predicts the Learning Gains Observed in Intensely Active Classroom Experiences

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Benjamin L. Wiggins

2017-05-01

Full Text Available STEM classrooms (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in postsecondary education are rapidly improved by the proper use of active learning techniques. These techniques occupy a descriptive spectrum that transcends passive teaching toward active, constructive, and, finally, interactive methods. While aspects of this framework have been examined, no large-scale or actual classroom-based data exist to inform postsecondary education STEM instructors about possible learning gains. We describe the results of a quasi-experimental study to test the apex of the ICAP framework (interactive, constructive, active, and passive in this ecological classroom environment. Students in interactive classrooms demonstrate significantly improved learning outcomes relative to students in constructive classrooms. This improvement in learning is relatively subtle; similar experimental designs without repeated measures would be unlikely to have the power to observe this significance. We discuss the importance of seemingly small learning gains that might propagate throughout a course or departmental curriculum, as well as improvements with the necessity for faculty to develop and implement similar activities.

Design Brief--Packaging: More than Just a Box! Communications: Getting the Message across with Advertising. Technology Learning Activities.

Science.gov (United States)

Technology Teacher, 1991

1991-01-01

Each technology learning activity in this article includes content description, objectives, required materials, challenge, and evaluation questions. Subjects are designing product packages and communication through advertising. (SK)

Learning effective color features for content based image retrieval in dermatology

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bunte, Kerstin; Biehl, Michael; Jonkman, Marcel F.; Petkov, Nicolai

We investigate the extraction of effective color features for a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) application in dermatology. Effectiveness is measured by the rate of correct retrieval of images from four color classes of skin lesions. We employ and compare two different methods to learn

Create a good learning environment and motivate active learning enthusiasm

Science.gov (United States)

Bi, Weihong; Fu, Guangwei; Fu, Xinghu; Zhang, Baojun; Liu, Qiang; Jin, Wa

2017-08-01

In view of the current poor learning initiative of undergraduates, the idea of creating a good learning environment and motivating active learning enthusiasm is proposed. In practice, the professional tutor is allocated and professional introduction course is opened for college freshman. It can promote communication between the professional teachers and students as early as possible, and guide students to know and devote the professional knowledge by the preconceived form. Practice results show that these solutions can improve the students interest in learning initiative, so that the active learning and self-learning has become a habit in the classroom.

Social Web Content Enhancement in a Distance Learning Environment: Intelligent Metadata Generation for Resources

Science.gov (United States)

García-Floriano, Andrés; Ferreira-Santiago, Angel; Yáñez-Márquez, Cornelio; Camacho-Nieto, Oscar; Aldape-Pérez, Mario; Villuendas-Rey, Yenny

2017-01-01

Social networking potentially offers improved distance learning environments by enabling the exchange of resources between learners. The existence of properly classified content results in an enhanced distance learning experience in which appropriate materials can be retrieved efficiently; however, for this to happen, metadata needs to be present.…

Taking an Active Stance: How Urban Elementary Students Connect Sociocultural Experiences in Learning Science

Science.gov (United States)

Upadhyay, Bhaskar; Maruyama, Geoffrey; Albrecht, Nancy

2017-01-01

In this interpretive case study, we draw from sociocultural theory of learning and culturally relevant pedagogy to understand how urban students from nondominant groups leverage their sociocultural experiences. These experiences allow them to gain an empowering voice in influencing science content and activities and to work towards…

Face-to-Face Activities in Blended Learning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærgaard, Annemette

While blended learning combines online and face-to-face teaching, research on blended learning has primarily focused on the role of technology and the opportunities it creates for engaging students. Less focus has been put on face-to-face activities in blended learning. This paper argues...... that it is not only the online activities in blended learning that provide new opportunities for rethinking pedagogy in higher education, it is also imperative to reconsider the face-to-face activities when part of the learning is provided online. Based on a review of blended learning in business and management...... education, we identify what forms of teaching and learning are suggested to take place face-to-face when other activities are moved online. We draw from the Community of Inquiry framework to analyze how face-to-face activities contribute to a blended learning pedagogy and discuss the implications...

Educational Information Quantization for Improving Content Quality in Learning Management Systems

Science.gov (United States)

Rybanov, Alexander Aleksandrovich

2014-01-01

The article offers the educational information quantization method for improving content quality in Learning Management Systems. The paper considers questions concerning analysis of quality of quantized presentation of educational information, based on quantitative text parameters: average frequencies of parts of speech, used in the text; formal…

Effects of preparation method and active metal content on of Ni/kieselguhr catalyst activity

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Galuh Widiyarti; Wuryaningsih Sri Rahayu

2010-01-01

The preparation and the active metal content influence the activity of catalyst. Study has been conducted to see the activity of Ni/kieselguhr based on preparation method and Nickel (Ni) contents in the catalyst in the laboratory scale. The Ni/kieselguhr catalyst were prepared by impregnation and precipitation methods, with Ni active contents of 10, 20, and 30 % by weight. The catalysts characterization was analyzed using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). Catalysts activities were analyzed based on decreasing of iodine number from hydrogenation of crude palm oil for 2 hours. The activity tests results show that precipitation catalysts are more active than impregnation catalysts. The decreasing in iodine number of fatty acid after 2 hours of hydrogenation process using precipitation catalysts and impregnation catalysts are 51.53 and 21.85 %, respectively. In addition, the catalysts are more active with increasing Ni contents. (author)

Interactive Multimodal Molecular Set – Designing Ludic Engaging Science Learning Content

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thorsen, Tine Pinholt; Christiansen, Kasper Holm Bonde; Jakobsen Sillesen, Kristian

2014-01-01

This paper reports on an exploratory study investigating 10 primary school students’ interaction with an interactive multimodal molecular set fostering ludic engaging science learning content in primary schools (8th and 9th grade). The concept of the prototype design was to bridge the physical...... and virtual worlds with electronic tags and, through this, blend the familiarity of the computer and toys, to create a tool that provided a ludic approach to learning about atoms and molecules. The study was inspired by the participatory design and informant design methodologies and included design...

The effect of content delivery style on student performance in anatomy.

Science.gov (United States)

White, Lloyd J; McGowan, Heath W; McDonald, Aaron C

2018-04-12

The development of new technologies and ensuing pedagogical research has led many tertiary institutions to integrate and adopt online learning strategies. The authors of this study have incorporated online learning strategies into existing educational practices of a second year anatomy course, resulting in half of the course content delivered via face-to-face lectures, and half delivered online via tailored video vignettes, with accompanying worksheets and activities. The effect of the content delivery mode on student learning was analyzed by tailoring questions to content presented either face-to-face or online. Four practical tests were conducted across the semester with each consisting of four questions. Within each test, two questions were based on content delivered face-to-face, and two questions were based on content delivered online. Examination multiple choice questions were similarly divided and assessed. Findings indicate that student learning is consistent regardless of the mode of content delivery. However, student viewing habits had a significant impact on learning, with students who viewed videos multiple times achieving higher marks than those less engaged with the online content. Student comments also indicated that content delivery mode was not an influence on learning. Therefore student engagement, rather than the mode of content delivery, is a determinant of student learning and performance in human anatomy. Anat Sci Educ. © 2018 American Association of Anatomists. © 2018 American Association of Anatomists.

Recommendation of standardized health learning contents using archetypes and semantic web technologies.

Science.gov (United States)

Legaz-García, María del Carmen; Martínez-Costa, Catalina; Menárguez-Tortosa, Marcos; Fernández-Breis, Jesualdo Tomás

2012-01-01

Linking Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) content to educational materials has been considered a key international recommendation to enable clinical engagement and to promote patient safety. This would suggest citizens to access reliable information available on the web and to guide them properly. In this paper, we describe an approach in that direction, based on the use of dual model EHR standards and standardized educational contents. The recommendation method will be based on the semantic coverage of the learning content repository for a particular archetype, which will be calculated by applying semantic web technologies like ontologies and semantic annotations.

A Learning Activity Design Framework for Supporting Mobile Learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jalal Nouri

2016-01-01

Full Text Available This article introduces the Learning Activity Design (LEAD framework for the development and implementation of mobile learning activities in primary schools. The LEAD framework draws on methodological perspectives suggested by design-based research and interaction design in the specific field of technology-enhanced learning (TEL. The LEAD framework is grounded in four design projects conducted over a period of six years. It contributes a new understanding of the intricacies and multifaceted aspects of the design-process characterizing the development and implementation of mobile devices (i.e. smart phones and tablets in curricular activities conducted in Swedish primary schools. This framework is intended to provide both designers and researchers with methodological tools that take account of the pedagogical foundations of technologically-based educational interventions, usability issues related to the interaction with the mobile application developed, multiple data streams generated during the design project, multiple stakeholders involved in the design process and sustainability aspects of the mobile learning activities implemented in the school classroom.

Do International Students Appreciate Active Learning in Lectures?

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Mauricio Marrone

2018-03-01

Full Text Available Active learning has been linked with increased student motivation, engagement and understanding of course material. It promotes deep learning, helping to develop critical thinking and writing skills in students. Less well understood, however, are the responses of international students to active learning. Using social constructivist theory, the purpose of this study is to examine domestic and international student perceptions of active learning introduced into large undergraduate Accounting Information Systems lectures. Several active learning strategies were implemented over one semester and examined through the use of semi-structured interviews as well as pre- and post- implementation surveys. Our results suggest broad improvements for international students in student engagement and understanding of unit material when implementing active learning strategies. Other key implications include international student preference for active learning compared with passive learning styles, and that international students may receive greater benefits from active learning strategies than domestic students due to social factors. Based on these findings this paper proposes that educators should seek to implement active learning to better assist and integrate students of diverse backgrounds.

Active Learning versus Traditional Teaching

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L.A. Azzalis

2009-05-01

Full Text Available In traditional teaching most of the class time is spent with the professor lecturing and the students watching and listening. The students work individually, and cooperation is discouraged. On the other hand,  active learning  changes the focus of activity from the teacher to the learners, in which students solve problems, answer questions, formulate questions of their own, discuss, explain, debate during class;  moreover, students work in teams on problems and projects under conditions that assure positive interdependence and individual accountability. Although student-centered methods have repeatedly been shown to be superior to the traditional teacher-centered approach to instruction, the literature regarding the efficacy of various teaching methods is inconclusive. The purpose of this study was to compare the student perceptions of course and instructor effectiveness, course difficulty, and amount learned between the active learning and lecture sections  in Health Sciences´ courses by statistical data from Anhembi Morumbi University. Results indicated significant  difference between active  learning and traditional  teaching. Our conclusions were that strategies promoting  active  learning to  traditional lectures could increase knowledge and understanding.

[Exploring dream contents by neuroimaging].

Science.gov (United States)

Horikawa, Tomoyasu; Kamitani, Yukiyasu

2014-04-01

Dreaming is a subjective experience during sleep that is often accompanied by vivid perceptual and emotional contents. Because of its fundamentally subjective nature, the objective study of dream contents has been challenging. However, since the discovery of rapid eye movements during sleep, scientific knowledge on the relationship between dreaming and physiological measures including brain activity has accumulated. Recent advances in neuroimaging analysis methods have made it possible to uncover direct links between specific dream contents and brain activity patterns. In this review, we first give a historical overview on dream researches with a focus on the neurophysiological and behavioral signatures of dreaming. We then discuss our recent study in which visual dream contents were predicted, or decoded, from brain activity during sleep onset periods using machine learning-based pattern recognition of functional MRI data. We suggest that advanced analytical tools combined with neural and behavioral databases will reveal the relevance of spontaneous brain activity during sleep to waking experiences.

Quality Content in Distance Education

Science.gov (United States)

Yildiz, Ezgi Pelin; Isman, Aytekin

2016-01-01

In parallel with technological advances in today's world of education activities can be conducted without the constraints of time and space. One of the most important of these activities is distance education. The success of the distance education is possible with content quality. The proliferation of e-learning environment has brought a need for…

Active Learning in Engineering Education: a (re)introduction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lima, Rui M.; Andersson, Pernille Hammar; Saalman, Elisabeth

2017-01-01

The informal network ‘Active Learning in Engineering Education’ (ALE) has been promoting Active Learning since 2001. ALE creates opportunity for practitioners and researchers of engineering education to collaboratively learn how to foster learning of engineering students. The activities in ALE...... were reviewed by the European Journal of Engineering Education community and this theme issue ended up with eight contributions, which are different both in their research and Active Learning approaches. These different Active Learning approaches are aligned with the different approaches that can...

The strategic use of lecture recordings to facilitate an active and self-directed learning approach.

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Topale, Luminica

2016-08-12

New learning technologies have the capacity to dramatically impact how students go about learning and to facilitate an active, self-directed learning approach. In U. S. medical education, students encounter a large volume of content, which must be mastered at an accelerated pace. The added pressure to excel on the USMLE Step 1 licensing exam and competition for residency placements, require that students adopt an informed approach to the use of learning technologies so as to enhance rather than to detract from the learning process. The primary aim of this study was to gain a better understanding of how students were using recorded lectures in their learning and how their study habits have been influenced by the technology. Survey research was undertaken using a convenience sample. Students were asked to voluntarily participate in an electronic survey comprised of 27 closed ended, multiple choice questions, and one open ended item. The survey was designed to explore students' perceptions of how recorded lectures affected their choices regarding class participation and impacted their learning and to gain an understanding of how recorded lectures facilitated a strategic, active learning process. Findings revealed that recorded lectures had little influence on students' choices to participate, and that the perceived benefits of integrating recorded lectures into study practices were related to their facilitation of and impact on efficient, active, and self-directed learning. This study was a useful investigation into how the availability of lecture capture technology influenced medical students' study behaviors and how students were making valuable use of the technology as an active learning tool.

21st Century Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Science Teaching and Learning

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Slough, Scott; Chamblee, Gregory

2017-01-01

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a theoretical framework that has enjoyed widespread applications as it applies to the integration of technology in the teaching and learning process. This paper reviews the background for TPACK, discusses some of its limitations, and reviews and introduces a new theoretical framework, 21st…

Trans/Languaging and the Triadic Dialogue in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Classrooms

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Lin, Angel M. Y.; Lo, Yuen Yi

2017-01-01

There has been a rich literature on the role of language in learning and on its role in knowledge (co-)construction in the science classroom. This literature, rooted in social semiotics theories and sociocultural theories, discussed research conducted largely in contexts where students are learning content in their first language (L1). In this…

The relationship between student engagement with online content and achievement in a blended learning anatomy course.

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Green, Rodney A; Whitburn, Laura Y; Zacharias, Anita; Byrne, Graeme; Hughes, Diane L

2017-12-13

Blended learning has become increasingly common in higher education. Recent findings suggest that blended learning achieves better student outcomes than traditional face-to-face teaching in gross anatomy courses. While face-to-face content is perceived as important to learning there is less evidence for the significance of online content in improving student outcomes. Students enrolled in a second-year anatomy course from the physiotherapy (PT), exercise physiology (EP), and exercise science (ES) programs across two campuses were included (n = 500). A structural equation model was used to evaluate the relationship of prior student ability (represented by grade in prerequisite anatomy course) and final course grade and whether the relationship was mediated by program, campus or engagement with the online elements of the learning management system (LMS; proportion of documents and video segments viewed and number of interactions with discussion forums). PT students obtained higher grades and were more likely to engage with online course materials than EP and ES students. Prerequisite grade made a direct contribution to course final grade (P learning outcomes in a blended anatomy course can be predicted the by level of engagement with online content. Anat Sci Educ. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.

LEAN-GREEN MANUFACTURING: COLLABORATIVE CONTENT AND LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION AND ENGINEERING COURSES

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MARCELO RUDOLFO CALVETE GASPAR

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Lean and Green manufacturing processes aim at achieving lower material and labour costs, while reducing impacts on the environment, and promoting sustainability as a whole. This paper reports on a pilot experiment with higher education and engineering students, exploring the full potential of a collaborative approach on courses integrating the Portuguese Polytechnic of Castelo Branco engineering studies curricula, while simultaneously improving their proficiency in English. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL has become a key area of curricular innovation since it is known for improving both language and content teacher and student motivation. In this context, instructional design for CLIL entailed tandem work of content (engineering and language (English teacher to design learning sequences and strategies. This allowed students to improve not only their language skills in English but also their knowledge in the specific engineering domain content on green and lean manufacturing processes.

DEVELOPMENT OF USABILITY CRITERIA FOR E-LEARNING CONTENT DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE

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Serkan ÇELIK

2012-04-01

Full Text Available Revolutionary advancements have been observed in e-learning technologies though an amalgamated evaluation methodology for new generation e-learning content development tools is not available. The evaluation of educational software for online use must consider its usability and as well as its pedagogic effectiveness. This study is a first step towards the definition of criteria for evaluating e-learning tools. A preliminary user study involving a group of pre-service instructional designers, observed during their interaction with e-learning tools, is reported. Throughout the study, specific usability attributes of these e-learning tools were identified. Participants were assigned to rate the importance of functional and pedagogical competences proposed during the criteria development phase. The findings of the study revealed 31 evaluation criteria under the headings of technical, media, and assessment competences. Among the groups of benchmarks proposed and rated by the users, assessment was considered as the most important one while technical and media features were even.The following step was actual implemention of the usability criteria into evaluation of fifteen leading software used in e-learning across the world. Mostly, tools were observed as having limitations in terms of capabilities. Comparing to the other software, Captivate, Softchalk, and Lectora were regarded as outstanding tools by the participants. Following the discussion on the limitations of the study, some implications for further research were proposed.

An Innovative Teaching Method To Promote Active Learning: Team-Based Learning

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Balasubramanian, R.

2007-12-01

Traditional teaching practice based on the textbook-whiteboard- lecture-homework-test paradigm is not very effective in helping students with diverse academic backgrounds achieve higher-order critical thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Consequently, there is a critical need for developing a new pedagogical approach to create a collaborative and interactive learning environment in which students with complementary academic backgrounds and learning skills can work together to enhance their learning outcomes. In this presentation, I will discuss an innovative teaching method ('Team-Based Learning (TBL)") which I recently developed at National University of Singapore to promote active learning among students in the environmental engineering program with learning abilities. I implemented this new educational activity in a graduate course. Student feedback indicates that this pedagogical approach is appealing to most students, and promotes active & interactive learning in class. Data will be presented to show that the innovative teaching method has contributed to improved student learning and achievement.

Active Learning in the Era of Big Data

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Jamieson, Kevin [Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States); Davis, IV, Warren L. [Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

2015-10-01

Active learning methods automatically adapt data collection by selecting the most informative samples in order to accelerate machine learning. Because of this, real-world testing and comparing active learning algorithms requires collecting new datasets (adaptively), rather than simply applying algorithms to benchmark datasets, as is the norm in (passive) machine learning research. To facilitate the development, testing and deployment of active learning for real applications, we have built an open-source software system for large-scale active learning research and experimentation. The system, called NEXT, provides a unique platform for realworld, reproducible active learning research. This paper details the challenges of building the system and demonstrates its capabilities with several experiments. The results show how experimentation can help expose strengths and weaknesses of active learning algorithms, in sometimes unexpected and enlightening ways.

The Importance and Use of Targeted Content Knowledge with Scaffolding Aid in Educational Simulation Games

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Tsai, Fu-Hsing; Kinzer, Charles; Hung, Kuo-Hsun; Chen, Cheng-Ling Alice; Hsu, I-Ying

2013-01-01

While most current educational simulation games provide learners with gameplay experience to motivate learning, there is often a lack of focus on ensuring that the desired content knowledge is actually learned. Students may focus on completing game activities without learning the targeted content knowledge, thus negating the desired learning…

Is Peer Interaction Necessary for Optimal Active Learning?

Science.gov (United States)

Linton, Debra L.; Farmer, Jan Keith; Peterson, Ernie

2014-01-01

Meta-analyses of active-learning research consistently show that active-learning techniques result in greater student performance than traditional lecture-based courses. However, some individual studies show no effect of active-learning interventions. This may be due to inexperienced implementation of active learning. To minimize the effect of…

"Wow! Look at That!": Discourse as a Means to Improve Teachers' Science Content Learning in Informal Science Institutions

Science.gov (United States)

Holliday, Gary M.; Lederman, Judith S.; Lederman, Norman G.

2014-12-01

Currently, it is not clear whether professional development staff at Informal Science Institutions (ISIs) are considering the way exhibits contribute to the social aspects of learning as described by the contextual model of learning (CML) (Falk & Dierking in The museum experience. Whalesback, Washington, 1992; Learning from museums: visitor experiences and the making of meaning. Altamira Press, New York, 2000) and recommended in the reform documents (see Cox-Peterson et al. in Journal of Research in Science Teaching 40:200-218, 2003). In order to move beyond only preparing science teachers for field trips, while necessary, it is also important to understand the role exhibits play in influencing teachers' content-related social interactions while engaged in ISI professional development. This study looked at a life science course that was offered at and taught by education staff of a large science and technology museum located in the Midwest, USA. The course was offered to three sections of teachers throughout the school year and met six times for a full day. The courses met approximately once a month from September through the beginning of June and provided 42 contact hours overall. Elementary and middle school teachers ( n = 94) were audio- and videotaped while participating in the content courses and interacting with the museum's exhibits. When considering the two factors within the sociocultural context of CML: within-group sociocultural mediation and facilitated mediation by others, the use of exhibits during both courses generally did not fully take into account these elements. In this study, it seemed that teachers' talk always had a purpose but it is argued that it did not always have a direction or connection to the desired content or exhibit. When freely exploring the museum, teachers often purely reacted to the display itself or the novelty of it. However, when PD staff made explicit connections between exhibits, content, and activities, participants were

Student Perceptions of Active Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Lumpkin, Angela; Achen, Rebecca M.; Dodd, Regan K.

2015-01-01

A paradigm shift from lecture-based courses to interactive classes punctuated with engaging, student-centered learning activities has begun to characterize the work of some teachers in higher education. Convinced through the literature of the values of using active learning strategies, we assessed through an action research project in five college…

Learning Pedagogy in Physics

Science.gov (United States)

Harlow, Danielle B.; Swanson, Lauren H.; Dwyer, Hilary A.; Bianchini, Julie A.

2010-10-01

We report on an adapted version of the Physics and Everyday Thinking (PET) curriculum. A unique aspect of PET is its inclusion of special activities that focus on Learning about Learning (LAL) in which undergraduates analyze videos of children talking about science and explicitly consider the nature of science. To create a course that intentionally linked science content, children's ideas, and strategies for science instruction, we augmented the existing LAL activities with discussions about teaching, and added activities focused on LAL from companion curricula such as Physical Science and Everyday Thinking (PSET) and Learning Physical Science (LEPS). To compensate for the additional time on LAL, we reduced the content activities to only those that directly supported LAL activities. We found that students made significant gains on the CLASS and expressed beliefs about teaching consistent with the PET pedagogy.

Active-Learning versus Teacher-Centered Instruction for Learning Acids and Bases

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Sesen, Burcin Acar; Tarhan, Leman

2011-01-01

Background and purpose: Active-learning as a student-centered learning process has begun to take more interest in constructing scientific knowledge. For this reason, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of active-learning implementation on high-school students' understanding of "acids and bases". Sample: The sample of this…

Are students' impressions of improved learning through active learning methods reflected by improved test scores?

Science.gov (United States)

Everly, Marcee C

2013-02-01

To report the transformation from lecture to more active learning methods in a maternity nursing course and to evaluate whether student perception of improved learning through active-learning methods is supported by improved test scores. The process of transforming a course into an active-learning model of teaching is described. A voluntary mid-semester survey for student acceptance of the new teaching method was conducted. Course examination results, from both a standardized exam and a cumulative final exam, among students who received lecture in the classroom and students who had active learning activities in the classroom were compared. Active learning activities were very acceptable to students. The majority of students reported learning more from having active-learning activities in the classroom rather than lecture-only and this belief was supported by improved test scores. Students who had active learning activities in the classroom scored significantly higher on a standardized assessment test than students who received lecture only. The findings support the use of student reflection to evaluate the effectiveness of active-learning methods and help validate the use of student reflection of improved learning in other research projects. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Structure, Content, Delivery, Service, and Outcomes: Quality e-Learning in higher education

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Colla J. MacDonald

2005-07-01

Full Text Available This paper addresses the need for quality e-Learning experiences. We used the Demand-Driven Learning Model (MacDonald, Stodel, Farres, Breithaupt, and Gabriel, 2001 to evaluate an online Masters in Education course. Multiple data collection methods were used to understand the experiences of stakeholders in this case study: the learners, design team, and facilitators. We found that all five dimensions of the model (structure, content, delivery, service, and outcomes must work in concert to implement a quality e-Learning course. Key themes include evolving learner needs, the search for connection, becoming an able e-participant, valued interactions, social construction of content, integration of delivery partners, and mindful weighing of benefits and trade-offs. By sharing insights into what is needed to design and deliver an e-Learning experience, our findings add to the growing knowledge of online learning. Using this model to evaluate perceptions of quality by key stakeholders has led to insights and recommendations on the Demand Driven Learning Model itself which may be useful for researchers in this area and strengthen the model. Quality has been defined in terms of the design of the e-Learning experience, the contextualized experience of learners, and evidence of learning outcomes (Carr and Carr, 2000; Jung 2000; Salmon, 2000. Quality and design of e-Learning courses, however, are sometimes compromised in an “ . . . effort to simply get something up and running��� in response to pressing consumer demands (Dick, 1996, p. 59. Educators and researchers have voiced concern over the lack of rigorous evaluation studies of e-Learning programs (e.g., Arbaugh, 2000; Howell, Saba, Lindsay, and Williams, 2004; Lockyer, Patterson, and Harper, 1999; Robinson, 2001. McGorry (2003 adds, “although the number of courses being delivered via the Internet is increasing rapidly, our knowledge of what makes these courses effective learning experiences

Main components and content of sports volunteer activities

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Iryna Petrenkо

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Purpose: identification of the main structural components and content of sports volunteer activities. Material & Methods: used analysis of literature and documents, organizational analysis. Result: basic structural components of sports volunteer activity are defined. The content of sports volunteer activity is disclosed. Conclusion: sports volunteer activity includes the following structural components: subject, object, purpose, motivation, means, actions; subject is a sports volunteer, the object is a sports competition, the goal is to provide gratuitous assistance for a quality competition, the means are the special knowledge, skills, communication abilities of sports volunteers, actions should be understood as types of volunteer activities and functions that volunteers perform during the preparation and conduct of competitions. Main types of sports volunteer activity are: 1 organizational; 2 judiciary; 3 coaching; 4 legal; 5 medical. Functions that volunteers perform in the competition system are general and special. Content of the functions of sports volunteering depends on the specifics of the sports, the rank of the competition, the specifics of the competition for people with special needs.

Active Learning in the Middle Grades

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Edwards, Susan

2015-01-01

What is active learning and what does it look like in the classroom? If students are participating in active learning, they are playing a more engaged role in the learning process and are not overly reliant on the teacher (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2003; Petress, 2008). The purpose of this article is to propose a framework to describe and…

Active Learning Not Associated with Student Learning in a Random Sample of College Biology Courses

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Andrews, T. M.; Leonard, M. J.; Colgrove, C. A.; Kalinowski, S. T.

2011-01-01

Previous research has suggested that adding active learning to traditional college science lectures substantially improves student learning. However, this research predominantly studied courses taught by science education researchers, who are likely to have exceptional teaching expertise. The present study investigated introductory biology courses randomly selected from a list of prominent colleges and universities to include instructors representing a broader population. We examined the relationship between active learning and student learning in the subject area of natural selection. We found no association between student learning gains and the use of active-learning instruction. Although active learning has the potential to substantially improve student learning, this research suggests that active learning, as used by typical college biology instructors, is not associated with greater learning gains. We contend that most instructors lack the rich and nuanced understanding of teaching and learning that science education researchers have developed. Therefore, active learning as designed and implemented by typical college biology instructors may superficially resemble active learning used by education researchers, but lacks the constructivist elements necessary for improving learning. PMID:22135373

Surveying In-Service Teachers' Beliefs about Game-Based Learning and Perceptions of Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge of Games

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Hsu, Chung-Yuan; Tsai, Meng-Jung; Chang, Yu-Hsuan; Liang, Jyh-Chong

2017-01-01

Using the Game-based-learning Teaching Belief Scale (GTBS) and the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge--Games questionnaire (TPACK-G), this study investigated 316 Taiwanese in-service teachers' teaching beliefs about game-based learning and their perceptions of game-based pedagogical content knowledge (GPCK). Both t-tests and ANOVA…

Faculty motivations to use active learning among pharmacy educators.

Science.gov (United States)

Rockich-Winston, Nicole; Train, Brian C; Rudolph, Michael J; Gillette, Chris

2018-03-01

Faculty motivations to use active learning have been limited to surveys evaluating faculty perceptions within active learning studies. Our objective in this study was to evaluate the relationship between faculty intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and demographic variables and the extent of active learning use in the classroom. An online survey was administered to individual faculty members at 137 colleges and schools of pharmacy across the United States. The survey assessed intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, active learning strategies, classroom time dedicated to active learning, and faculty development resources. Bivariate associations and multivariable stepwise linear regression were used to analyze the results. In total, 979 faculty members completed the questionnaire (23.6% response rate). All motivation variables were significantly correlated with percent active learning use (p active learning methods used in the last year (r = 0.259, p active learning use. Our results suggest that faculty members who are intrinsically motivated to use active learning are more likely to dedicate additional class time to active learning. Furthermore, intrinsic motivation may be positively associated with encouraging faculty members to attend active learning workshops and supporting faculty to use various active learning strategies in the classroom. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Polyphenols content, antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

25 wild plants were collected from the south of Tunisia. The dried aerial parts were extracted under a continuous reflux set-up in a Soxhlet extractor with hexane, ethyl acetate, methanol and water. The extracts were screened for total phenolic content, antioxidant and antimicrobial activities. Total phenolic contents were ...

The Adaptation of Contents for the Creation of Foreign Language Learning Exams for Mobile Devices

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Gimenez López Jose Luis

2009-07-01

Full Text Available This article describes the process of adaptation of online digital contents for the realization of foreign language learning tests through mobile devices. Taking into account the need detected in relation to the quick development of mobile technologies, the development and adaptation of existing online exams for mobile devices will be studied. We will do that by considering the possible navigation limits when using multiplatforms, and the aspects related to the formal and technical conditions which the audiovisual contents shown by the device must fulfil. The existing online language learning tests can be adapted to mobile devices through the programming XHTML language. But, the limitations of navigability in relation to contents and the handling of interaction devices available for users to do the tests must also be considered.

MO-E-18C-03: Incorporating Active Learning Into A Traditional Graduate Medical Physics Course

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Burmeister, J [Wayne State University School of Medicine / Karmanos Cancer Center, Detroit, MI (United States)

2014-06-15

Purpose: To improve the ability of graduate students to learn medical physics concepts through the incorporation of active learning techniques. Methods: A traditional lecture-based radiological physics course was modified such that: (1) traditional (two-hour) lectures were provided online for students to watch prior to class, (2) a student was chosen randomly at the start of each class to give a two minute synopsis of the material and its relevance (two-minute drill), (3) lectures were significantly abbreviated and remaining classroom time used for group problem solving, and (4) videos of the abbreviated lectures were made available online for review. In the transition year, students were surveyed about the perceived effects of these changes on learning. Student performance was evaluated for 3 years prior to and 4 years after modification. Results: The survey tool used a five point scale from 1=Not True to 5=Very True. While nearly all students reviewed written materials prior to class (4.3±0.9), a minority watched the lectures (2.1±1.5). A larger number watched the abbreviated lectures for further clarification (3.6±1.6) and found it helpful in learning the content (4.2±1.0). Most felt that the two-minute drill helped them get more out of the lecture (3.9±0.8) and the problem solving contributed to their understanding of the content (4.1±0.8). However, no significant improvement in exam scores resulted from the modifications (mean scores well within 1 SD during study period). Conclusion: Students felt that active learning techniques improved their ability to learn the material in what is considered the most difficult course in the program. They valued the ability to review the abbreviated class lecture more than the opportunity to watch traditional lectures prior to class. While no significant changes in student performance were observed, aptitude variations across the student cohorts make it difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of active

MO-E-18C-03: Incorporating Active Learning Into A Traditional Graduate Medical Physics Course

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Burmeister, J

2014-01-01

Purpose: To improve the ability of graduate students to learn medical physics concepts through the incorporation of active learning techniques. Methods: A traditional lecture-based radiological physics course was modified such that: (1) traditional (two-hour) lectures were provided online for students to watch prior to class, (2) a student was chosen randomly at the start of each class to give a two minute synopsis of the material and its relevance (two-minute drill), (3) lectures were significantly abbreviated and remaining classroom time used for group problem solving, and (4) videos of the abbreviated lectures were made available online for review. In the transition year, students were surveyed about the perceived effects of these changes on learning. Student performance was evaluated for 3 years prior to and 4 years after modification. Results: The survey tool used a five point scale from 1=Not True to 5=Very True. While nearly all students reviewed written materials prior to class (4.3±0.9), a minority watched the lectures (2.1±1.5). A larger number watched the abbreviated lectures for further clarification (3.6±1.6) and found it helpful in learning the content (4.2±1.0). Most felt that the two-minute drill helped them get more out of the lecture (3.9±0.8) and the problem solving contributed to their understanding of the content (4.1±0.8). However, no significant improvement in exam scores resulted from the modifications (mean scores well within 1 SD during study period). Conclusion: Students felt that active learning techniques improved their ability to learn the material in what is considered the most difficult course in the program. They valued the ability to review the abbreviated class lecture more than the opportunity to watch traditional lectures prior to class. While no significant changes in student performance were observed, aptitude variations across the student cohorts make it difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of active

Active Learning in Engineering Education: A (Re)Introduction

Science.gov (United States)

Lima, Rui M.; Andersson, Pernille Hammar; Saalman, Elisabeth

2017-01-01

The informal network "Active Learning in Engineering Education" (ALE) has been promoting Active Learning since 2001. ALE creates opportunity for practitioners and researchers of engineering education to collaboratively learn how to foster learning of engineering students. The activities in ALE are centred on the vision that learners…

The double-loop feedback for active learning with understanding

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christensen, Hans Peter

2004-01-01

Learning is an active process, and in engineering education authentic projects is often used to activate the students and promote learning. However, it is not all activity that leads to deep learning; and in a rapid changing society deep understanding is necessary for life-long learning. Empirical...... findings at DTU question the direct link between high activity and a deep approach to learning. Active learning is important to obtain engineering competencies, but active learning requires more than activity. Feedback and reflection is crucial to the learning process, since new knowledge is built...... on the student’s existing understanding. A model for an active learning process with a double-loop feedback is suggested - the first loop gives the student experience through experimentation, the second conceptual understanding through reflection. Students often miss the second loop, so it is important...

e-Learning Content Design for Corrective Maintenance of Toshiba BMC 80.5 based on Knowledge Conversion using SECI Method: A Case Study in Aerospace Company

Science.gov (United States)

Permata Shabrina, Ayu; Pramuditya Soesanto, Rayinda; Kurniawati, Amelia; Teguh Kurniawan, Mochamad; Andrawina, Luciana

2018-03-01

Knowledge is a combination of experience, value, and information that is based on the intuition that allows an organization to evaluate and combine new information. In an organization, knowledge is not only attached to document but also in routine value creating activities, therefore knowledge is an important asset for the organization. X Corp is a company that focused on manufacturing aerospace components. In carrying out the production process, the company is supported by various machines, one of the machines is Toshiba BMC 80.5. The machine is used occasionally and therefore maintenance activity is needed, especially corrective maintenance. Corrective maintenance is done to make a breakdown machine back to work. Corrective maintenance is done by maintenance operator whose retirement year is close. The long term experience of the maintenance operator needs to be captured by the organization and shared across maintenance division. E-learning is one type of media that can support and assist knowledge sharing. This research purpose is to create the e-learning content for best practice of corrective maintenance activity for Toshiba BMC 80.5 by extracting the knowledge and experience from the operator based on knowledge conversion using SECI method. The knowledge source in this research is a maintenance supervisor and a senior maintenance engineer. From the evaluation of the e-learning content, it is known that the average test score of the respondents who use the e-learning increases from 77.5 to 87.5.

DIRECTIONS OF PREPARATION OF FUTURE TEACHERS TO THE USE OF DISTANCE LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES IN PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY (PRAXIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF THE ACTIVITY APPROACH

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tatyana A. Boronenko

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of the article is to demonstrate the need of preparing future teachers to use distance learning technologies in the professional activities. Introduction in educational process of distance learning technologies contributes to improving the quality of education. Methods. The authors’ technique of preparation of students of pedagogical specialities to work in the information-educational environment is designed on the basis of the analysis and generalisation of numerous scientific publications. Results. The system of training to implementation of the distance learning technologies in the teaching activity is developed and described, consisting of the following directions: realisation within the program of the principal educational program of specialised training courses in variable-based curriculum parts; the organisation of educational and research activity of students with the use of distance learning technologies; classroom-based and extracurricular independent work of students directed to designing of teaching and learning aids and materials on the basis of distance learning technologies; application of elements of distance learning technologies for students’ teaching; attraction of students to formation of corpus of multimedia educational resources of university. The purposes, the content and expected results of each direction are specified. Scientific novelty. The authors point out that concrete scientifically wellfounded methodical recommendations for the future teachers on implementation of distance learning technologies haven’t been presented in the Russian literature till now; despite an abundance of scientifically-information sources of distance learning technologies and sufficiently high-leveled degree knowledge of the issues of its efficiency in educational activity, conditions of introduction of such technologies in high school, construction of models of distance training. Authors of article have tried to close this

From Tootsie Rolls to Composites: Assessing a Spectrum of Active Learning Activities in Engineering Mechanics

Science.gov (United States)

2009-05-01

The introduction of active learning exercises into a traditional lecture has been shown to improve students’ learning. Hands-on learning...opportunities in labs and projects provide are additional tools in the active learning toolbox. This paper presents a series of innovative hands-on active ... learning activities for mechanics of materials topics. These activities are based on a Methodology for Developing Hands-on Active Learning Activities, a

Automatic Earthquake Detection by Active Learning

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Bergen, K.; Beroza, G. C.

2017-12-01

In recent years, advances in machine learning have transformed fields such as image recognition, natural language processing and recommender systems. Many of these performance gains have relied on the availability of large, labeled data sets to train high-accuracy models; labeled data sets are those for which each sample includes a target class label, such as waveforms tagged as either earthquakes or noise. Earthquake seismologists are increasingly leveraging machine learning and data mining techniques to detect and analyze weak earthquake signals in large seismic data sets. One of the challenges in applying machine learning to seismic data sets is the limited labeled data problem; learning algorithms need to be given examples of earthquake waveforms, but the number of known events, taken from earthquake catalogs, may be insufficient to build an accurate detector. Furthermore, earthquake catalogs are known to be incomplete, resulting in training data that may be biased towards larger events and contain inaccurate labels. This challenge is compounded by the class imbalance problem; the events of interest, earthquakes, are infrequent relative to noise in continuous data sets, and many learning algorithms perform poorly on rare classes. In this work, we investigate the use of active learning for automatic earthquake detection. Active learning is a type of semi-supervised machine learning that uses a human-in-the-loop approach to strategically supplement a small initial training set. The learning algorithm incorporates domain expertise through interaction between a human expert and the algorithm, with the algorithm actively posing queries to the user to improve detection performance. We demonstrate the potential of active machine learning to improve earthquake detection performance with limited available training data.

Generating pedagogical content knowledge in teacher education students

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van den Berg, Ed

2015-01-01

Some pre-service teaching activities can contribute much to the learning of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and subsequent teaching as these activities are generating PCK within the pre-service teacher's own classroom. Three examples are described: preparing exhibitions of science experiments,

Content and Language Integrated Learning through an Online Game in Primary School: A Case Study

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Dourda, Kyriaki; Bratitsis, Tharrenos; Griva, Eleni; Papadopoulou, Penelope

2014-01-01

In this paper an educational design proposal is presented which combines two well established teaching approaches, that of Game-based Learning (GBL) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). The context of the proposal was the design of an educational geography computer game, utilizing QR Codes and Google Earth for teaching English…

International Student Carbon Footprint Challenge--Social Media as a Content and Language Integrated Learning Environment

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Fauville, Géraldine; Lantz-Andersson, Annika; Säljö, Roger

2012-01-01

Environmental education (EE) is now clearly specified in educational standards in many parts of the world, and at the same time the view of language learning is moving towards a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) strategy, to make English lessons more relevant and attractive for students (Eurydice, 2006). In this respect,…

Active learning of Pareto fronts.

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Campigotto, Paolo; Passerini, Andrea; Battiti, Roberto

2014-03-01

This paper introduces the active learning of Pareto fronts (ALP) algorithm, a novel approach to recover the Pareto front of a multiobjective optimization problem. ALP casts the identification of the Pareto front into a supervised machine learning task. This approach enables an analytical model of the Pareto front to be built. The computational effort in generating the supervised information is reduced by an active learning strategy. In particular, the model is learned from a set of informative training objective vectors. The training objective vectors are approximated Pareto-optimal vectors obtained by solving different scalarized problem instances. The experimental results show that ALP achieves an accurate Pareto front approximation with a lower computational effort than state-of-the-art estimation of distribution algorithms and widely known genetic techniques.

Relationship between the grades of a learned aversive-feeding response and the dopamine contents in Lymnaea

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Hitoshi Aonuma

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The pond snail Lymnaea learns conditioned taste aversion (CTA and remembers not to respond to food substances that initially cause a feeding response. The possible relationship between how well snails learn to follow taste-aversion training and brain dopamine contents is not known. We examined this relationship and found the following: first, snails in the act of eating just before the commencement of CTA training were poor learners and had the highest dopamine contents in the brain; second, snails which had an ad libitum access to food, but were not eating just before training, were average learners and had lower dopamine contents; third, snails food-deprived for one day before training were the best learners and had significantly lower contents of dopamine compared to the previous two cohorts. There was a negative correlation between the CTA grades and the brain dopamine contents in these three cohorts. Fourth, snails food-deprived for five days before training were poor learners and had higher dopamine contents. Thus, severe hunger increased the dopamine content in the brain. Because dopamine functions as a reward transmitter, CTA in the severely deprived snails (i.e. the fourth cohort was thought to be mitigated by a high dopamine content.

Textbooks for Content and Language Integrated Learning: policy, market and appropriate didactics?

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María Ángeles Martín del Pozo

2015-02-01

Full Text Available The paper begins by approaching the concept of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning providing a brief overview of the history of bilingual education. The influence of the linguistic policies of the European Union is discussed along with some beliefs about language teaching and how both have influenced the celerity of CLIL implementation, momentum and expansion. There are some indicators of the lack of a theoretical framework for CLIL, of insufficient teacher education and or inadequacy of materials. It is necessary to reflect systematically on to what extent commercially published textbooks match the demands of bilingual education. The second section centers on CLIL textbooks, mainly those commercialized by publishers, by referring to some recent studies which attempt to approach systematically their design and use. Since, by definition CLIL includes both content and language, our research question is if content books (in English also include content and language objectives. A corpus of 25 books from different subjects, years, and publishers is analyzed. The analysis shows an insufficient presence of linguistic objectives. Some reflections are made about this scarcity with the warning that this lack could hindrance an efficient implementation of CLIL. Thus, it could be said that these textbooks are not the product of discipline or didactic considerations but the result of the logic of market, publishers and linguistic policy.How to reference this articleMartín del Pozo, M. A., Rascón Estébanez, D. (2015. Textbooks for Content and Language Integrated Learning: policy, market and appropriate didactics?. Foro de Educación, 13(18, pp. 123-141. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14516/fde.2015.013.018.007 

Adventure Learning: Theory and Implementation of Hybrid Learning

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Doering, A.

2008-12-01

Adventure Learning (AL), a hybrid distance education approach, provides students and teachers with the opportunity to learn about authentic curricular content areas while interacting with adventurers, students, and content experts at various locations throughout the world within an online learning environment (Doering, 2006). An AL curriculum and online environment provides collaborative community spaces where traditional hierarchical classroom roles are blurred and learning is transformed. AL has most recently become popular in K-12 classrooms nationally and internationally with millions of students participating online. However, in the literature, the term "adventure learning" many times gets confused with phrases such as "virtual fieldtrip" and activities where someone "exploring" is posting photos and text. This type of "adventure learning" is not "Adventure Learning" (AL), but merely a slideshow of their activities. The learning environment may not have any curricular and/or social goals, and if it does, the environment design many times does not support these objectives. AL, on the other hand, is designed so that both teachers and students understand that their online and curriculum activities are in synch and supportive of the curricular goals. In AL environments, there are no disparate activities as the design considers the educational, social, and technological affordances (Kirschner, Strijbos, Kreijns, & Beers, 2004); in other words, the artifacts of the learning environment encourage and support the instructional goals, social interactions, collaborative efforts, and ultimately learning. AL is grounded in two major theoretical approaches to learning - experiential and inquiry-based learning. As Kolb (1984) noted, in experiential learning, a learner creates meaning from direct experiences and reflections. Such is the goal of AL within the classroom. Additionally, AL affords learners a real-time authentic online learning experience concurrently as they

Students' Satisfaction on Their Learning Process in Active Learning and Traditional Classrooms

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Hyun, Jung; Ediger, Ruth; Lee, Donghun

2017-01-01

Studies have shown Active Learning Classrooms [ALCs] help increase student engagement and improve student performance. However, remodeling all traditional classrooms to ALCs entails substantial financial burdens. Thus, an imperative question for institutions of higher education is whether active learning pedagogies can improve learning outcomes…

Group-Based Active Learning of Classification Models.

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Luo, Zhipeng; Hauskrecht, Milos

2017-05-01

Learning of classification models from real-world data often requires additional human expert effort to annotate the data. However, this process can be rather costly and finding ways of reducing the human annotation effort is critical for this task. The objective of this paper is to develop and study new ways of providing human feedback for efficient learning of classification models by labeling groups of examples. Briefly, unlike traditional active learning methods that seek feedback on individual examples, we develop a new group-based active learning framework that solicits label information on groups of multiple examples. In order to describe groups in a user-friendly way, conjunctive patterns are used to compactly represent groups. Our empirical study on 12 UCI data sets demonstrates the advantages and superiority of our approach over both classic instance-based active learning work, as well as existing group-based active-learning methods.

An Analysis of Learning Objectives and Content Coverage in Introductory Psychology Syllabi

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Homa, Natalie; Hackathorn, Jana; Brown, Carrie M.; Garczynski, Amy; Solomon, Erin D.; Tennial, Rachel; Sanborn, Ursula A.; Gurung, Regan A. R.

2013-01-01

Introductory psychology is one of the most popular undergraduate courses and often serves as the gateway to choosing psychology as an academic major. However, little research has examined the typical structure of introductory psychology courses. The current study examined student learning objectives (SLOs) and course content in introductory…

Scene recognition based on integrating active learning with dictionary learning

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Wang, Chengxi; Yin, Xueyan; Yang, Lin; Gong, Chengrong; Zheng, Caixia; Yi, Yugen

2018-04-01

Scene recognition is a significant topic in the field of computer vision. Most of the existing scene recognition models require a large amount of labeled training samples to achieve a good performance. However, labeling image manually is a time consuming task and often unrealistic in practice. In order to gain satisfying recognition results when labeled samples are insufficient, this paper proposed a scene recognition algorithm named Integrating Active Learning and Dictionary Leaning (IALDL). IALDL adopts projective dictionary pair learning (DPL) as classifier and introduces active learning mechanism into DPL for improving its performance. When constructing sampling criterion in active learning, IALDL considers both the uncertainty and representativeness as the sampling criteria to effectively select the useful unlabeled samples from a given sample set for expanding the training dataset. Experiment results on three standard databases demonstrate the feasibility and validity of the proposed IALDL.

Integrative Student Learning: An Effective Team Learning Activity in a Learner-Centered Paradigm

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Reza Karimi, RPh, PhD

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Purpose: An Integrative Student Learning (ISL activity was developed with the intent to enhance the dynamic of student teamwork and enhance student learning by fostering critical-thinking skills, self-directed learning skills, and active learning. Case Study: The ISL activity consists of three portions: teambuilding, teamwork, and a facilitator driven “closing the loop” feedback discussion. For teambuilding, a set of clue sheets or manufacturer‘s drug containers were distributed among student pairs who applied their pharmaceutical knowledge to identify two more student pairs with similar clues or drugs, thus building a team of six. For teamwork, each team completed online exams, composed of integrated pharmaceutical science questions with clinical correlates, using only selected online library resources. For the feedback discussion, facilitators evaluated student impressions, opened a discussion about the ISL activity, and provided feedback to teams’ impressions and questions. This study describes three different ISL activities developed and implemented over three days with first year pharmacy students. Facilitators’ interactions with students and three surveys indicated a majority of students preferred ISL over traditional team activities and over 90% agreed ISL activities promoted active learning, critical-thinking, self-directed learning, teamwork, and student confidence in online library searches. Conclusions: The ISL activity has proven to be an effective learning activity that promotes teamwork and integration of didactic pharmaceutical sciences to enhance student learning of didactic materials and confidence in searching online library resources. It was found that all of this can be accomplished in a short amount of class time with a very reasonable amount of preparation.

Integrative Student Learning: An Effective Team Learning Activity in a Learner-Centered Paradigm

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Reza Karimi

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Purpose: An Integrative Student Learning (ISL activity was developed with the intent to enhance the dynamic of student teamwork and enhance student learning by fostering critical-thinking skills, self-directed learning skills, and active learning. Case Study: The ISL activity consists of three portions: teambuilding, teamwork, and a facilitator driven "closing the loop" feedback discussion. For teambuilding, a set of clue sheets or manufacturer's drug containers were distributed among student pairs who applied their pharmaceutical knowledge to identify two more student pairs with similar clues or drugs, thus building a team of six. For teamwork, each team completed online exams, composed of integrated pharmaceutical science questions with clinical correlates, using only selected online library resources. For the feedback discussion, facilitators evaluated student impressions, opened a discussion about the ISL activity, and provided feedback to teams' impressions and questions. This study describes three different ISL activities developed and implemented over three days with first year pharmacy students. Facilitators' interactions with students and three surveys indicated a majority of students preferred ISL over traditional team activities and over 90% agreed ISL activities promoted active learning, critical-thinking, self-directed learning, teamwork, and student confidence in online library searches. Conclusions: The ISL activity has proven to be an effective learning activity that promotes teamwork and integration of didactic pharmaceutical sciences to enhance student learning of didactic materials and confidence in searching online library resources. It was found that all of this can be accomplished in a short amount of class time with a very reasonable amount of preparation.   Type: Case Study

Exploring the role of content knowledge in teacher design conversations

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boschman, F.B.; McKenney, Susan; Pieters, Julius Marie; Voogt, Joke

2016-01-01

This study investigated the role of content knowledge in conversations of kindergarten teachers during collaborative curriculum design of learning material for technology-enhanced learning. Two teams of teachers received support from an early literacy expert during these design activities. Resulting

Machine Learning-Based Content Analysis: Automating the analysis of frames and agendas in political communication research

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Burscher, B.

2016-01-01

We used machine learning to study policy issues and frames in political messages. With regard to frames, we investigated the automation of two content-analytical tasks: frame coding and frame identification. We found that both tasks can be successfully automated by means of machine learning

Augmented Reality and Mobile Pedestrian Navigation with Heritage thematic contents: Perception of learning

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Jorge Joo Nagata

2017-03-01

Full Text Available By creating a mobile learning app about heritage elements, related to the implementation of resources such as Augmented Reality (AR and Mobile Pedestrian Navigation (MPN, some training process has been developed in mobility contexts, linked to the territorial information on the historical and cultural patrimony corresponding to the cities of Salamanca (Spain and Santiago (Chile. The software development focuses on two major areas: the first is the determination of the territorial scenarios, generating a database that can be used in mobile contexts; the second is focused on the design and the development of the AR-MPN application, defining its architecture, functionality, interface and implementation. The results are the construction of flexible software in a mobile environment that allows the presentation of contents on the historical heritage of the selected cities. In a complementary way, the determination of the effectiveness of the application is carried out within a context of situated and mobile learning. From the students’ perception, both the mobile application and the developed learning are evaluated, using an instrument (questionnaire, consulting dimensions such as the hardware, the software and the patrimonial contents as part of the educational process in a mobile and localized context. The results establish that there is a positive evaluation around the tools and the implemented experiences, allowing the generation of new learning methodologies mediated in mobile contexts.

Effects of short-term hormonal replacement on learning and on basal forebrain ChAT and TrkA content in ovariectomized rats.

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Espinosa-Raya, Judith; Plata-Cruz, Noemí; Neri-Gómez, Teresa; Camacho-Arroyo, Ignacio; Picazo, Ofir

2011-02-23

It has been proposed that sex steroid hormones improve performance in some cognitive tasks by regulating the basal forebrain cholinergic function. However, the molecular basis of such influence still remains unknown. Current study analyzed the performance of ovariectomized rats in an autoshaping learning task after a short-term treatment with 17β-estradiol (E2: 4 and 40μg/kg) and/or progesterone (P4: 4mg/kg). These results were correlated with basal forebrain choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and TrkA protein content. The high dose of E2 enhanced both acquisition in the autoshaping task and the content of ChAT and TrkA. P4 treatment increased ChAT and TrkA content without affecting performance of rats in the autoshaping learning task. Interestingly, the continuous and simultaneous administration of E2 plus P4 did not significantly modify behavioral and biochemical evaluated parameters. These results address the influence of both E2 and P4 on cholinergic and TrkA activity and suggest that the effects of ovarian hormones on cognitive performance involve basal forebrain cholinergic neurons. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Brain Based Learning in Science Education in Turkey: Descriptive Content and Meta Analysis of Dissertations

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Yasar, M. Diyaddin

2017-01-01

This study aimed at performing content analysis and meta-analysis on dissertations related to brain-based learning in science education to find out the general trend and tendency of brain-based learning in science education and find out the effect of such studies on achievement and attitude of learners with the ultimate aim of raising awareness…

Improving Elementary School Students’ English Vocabulary Through Local Cultural Content Materials

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Frans Manurung

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Abstract Elementary students of a certain public school in Indonesia had difficulties in learning English. One of the crucial problems was learning English vocabulary. In an attempt to help the students learn and improve English vocabulary, the researchers decided to use CAR to teach English vocabulary with local cultural content materials. The aim of this study was to investigate how the teaching of English vocabulary with local cultural content materials contributed to the improvement of the students’ English vocabulary mastery. The topics covered in the materials were selected based on schemata theory. Vocabulary learning process was done through several activities provided in the materials: classroom and outside vocabulary learning. The results showed that the teaching of local cultural content materials have contributed to the improvement of the Elementary students’ vocabulary mastery. The schematic knowledge found in the familiar topics has aroused the students’ interest and motivation in learning English vocabulary. Students who were more familiar with the topics could respond to the vocabulary learning better than those who were not familiar with. The vocabulary mastery was more successful only if the students participated in both classroom and outside vocabulary learning process. Keywords: Vocabulary Mastery, Vocabulary Improvement, Local Cultural Content Materials, Vocabulary Learning, Schemata

TEACHER’S PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE IN E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT: CONTENT AND SPHERES OF APPLICATION

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Irene Stetsenko

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The article lays bare the notion “e-learning”. It presents and reasons the advantages of using e-learning tools and technologies. It shows the contents of teachers’ professional competence in the field of information and communication technologies. The problems and ways to compile and update the skills required to work effectively in e-learning environment in the context of continuous pedagogical educational system (pedagogical high school student-teacher-teacher educational organization are discussed in the article as well.

We are what we do: Examining learner-generated content in the anatomy laboratory through the lens of activity theory.

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Doubleday, Alison F; Wille, Sarah J

2014-01-01

Video and photography are often used for delivering content within the anatomical sciences. However, instructors typically produce these resources to provide instructional or procedural information. Although the benefits of learner-generated content have been explored within educational research, virtually no studies have investigated the use of learner-generated video and photograph content within anatomy dissection laboratories. This study outlines an activity involving learner-generated video diaries and learner-generated photograph assignments produced during anatomy laboratory sessions. The learner-generated photographs and videos provided instructors with a means of formative assessment and allowed instructors to identify evidence of collaborative behavior in the laboratory. Student questionnaires (n = 21) and interviews (n = 5), as well as in-class observations, were conducted to examine student perspectives on the laboratory activities. The quantitative and qualitative data were examined using the framework of activity theory to identify contradictions between student expectations of, and engagement with, the activity and the actual experiences of the students. Results indicate that learner-generated photograph and video content can act as a rich source of data on student learning processes and can be used for formative assessment, for observing collaborative behavior, and as a starting point for class discussions. This study stresses the idea that technology choice for activities must align with instructional goals. This research also highlights the utility of activity theory as a framework for assessing classroom and laboratory activities, demonstrating that this approach can guide the development of laboratory activities. © 2014 American Association of Anatomists.

Research on Mobile Learning Activities Applying Tablets

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Kurilovas, Eugenijus; Juskeviciene, Anita; Bireniene, Virginija

2015-01-01

The paper aims to present current research on mobile learning activities in Lithuania while implementing flagship EU-funded CCL project on application of tablet computers in education. In the paper, the quality of modern mobile learning activities based on learning personalisation, problem solving, collaboration, and flipped class methods is…

Active Learning with Irrelevant Examples

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Wagstaff, Kiri; Mazzoni, Dominic

2009-01-01

An improved active learning method has been devised for training data classifiers. One example of a data classifier is the algorithm used by the United States Postal Service since the 1960s to recognize scans of handwritten digits for processing zip codes. Active learning algorithms enable rapid training with minimal investment of time on the part of human experts to provide training examples consisting of correctly classified (labeled) input data. They function by identifying which examples would be most profitable for a human expert to label. The goal is to maximize classifier accuracy while minimizing the number of examples the expert must label. Although there are several well-established methods for active learning, they may not operate well when irrelevant examples are present in the data set. That is, they may select an item for labeling that the expert simply cannot assign to any of the valid classes. In the context of classifying handwritten digits, the irrelevant items may include stray marks, smudges, and mis-scans. Querying the expert about these items results in wasted time or erroneous labels, if the expert is forced to assign the item to one of the valid classes. In contrast, the new algorithm provides a specific mechanism for avoiding querying the irrelevant items. This algorithm has two components: an active learner (which could be a conventional active learning algorithm) and a relevance classifier. The combination of these components yields a method, denoted Relevance Bias, that enables the active learner to avoid querying irrelevant data so as to increase its learning rate and efficiency when irrelevant items are present. The algorithm collects irrelevant data in a set of rejected examples, then trains the relevance classifier to distinguish between labeled (relevant) training examples and the rejected ones. The active learner combines its ranking of the items with the probability that they are relevant to yield a final decision about which item

Active Learning by Querying Informative and Representative Examples.

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Huang, Sheng-Jun; Jin, Rong; Zhou, Zhi-Hua

2014-10-01

Active learning reduces the labeling cost by iteratively selecting the most valuable data to query their labels. It has attracted a lot of interests given the abundance of unlabeled data and the high cost of labeling. Most active learning approaches select either informative or representative unlabeled instances to query their labels, which could significantly limit their performance. Although several active learning algorithms were proposed to combine the two query selection criteria, they are usually ad hoc in finding unlabeled instances that are both informative and representative. We address this limitation by developing a principled approach, termed QUIRE, based on the min-max view of active learning. The proposed approach provides a systematic way for measuring and combining the informativeness and representativeness of an unlabeled instance. Further, by incorporating the correlation among labels, we extend the QUIRE approach to multi-label learning by actively querying instance-label pairs. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed QUIRE approach outperforms several state-of-the-art active learning approaches in both single-label and multi-label learning.

Brazilian Capsicum peppers: capsaicinoid content and antioxidant activity.

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Bogusz, Stanislau; Libardi, Silvia H; Dias, Fernanda Fg; Coutinho, Janclei P; Bochi, Vivian C; Rodrigues, Daniele; Melo, Arlete Mt; Godoy, Helena T

2018-01-01

Capsicum peppers are known as a source of capsaicinoids, phenolic compounds and antioxidants. Brazilian Capsicum peppers are important spices used in foods worldwide. However, little information is available on the chemical composition and antioxidant activity of these peppers. Capsaicin, dihydrocapsaicin, total phenolic compounds and antioxidant activity were investigated in extracts of three Brazilian peppers: Capsicum frutescens, C. chinense and C. baccatum var. pendulum, in two different harvest years and at two ripening stages. The bioactive compound content was dependent on harvest year, and changes in the concentration profiles were found for capsaicin. Mature fruits of C. chinense harvested in the first year had the highest capsaicin concentration (2.04 mg g -1 fresh pepper), and mature fruits of C. frutescens harvested in the same first year had the highest dihydrocapsaicin content (0.95 mg g -1 fresh pepper). Mature fruits of C. frutescens harvested in the first year showed the major total phenolic compound content (2.46 mg g -1 fresh pepper). The total phenolic compound content was directly related to antioxidant activity. Our results suggest that phenolic compounds significantly contribute to the antioxidant activity of the investigated peppers. Also, these data add valued novel information that enhances current knowledge of Brazilian pepper fruits. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.

Construction and validation of clinical contents for development of learning objects.

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Hortense, Flávia Tatiana Pedrolo; Bergerot, Cristiane Decat; Domenico, Edvane Birelo Lopes de

2018-01-01

to describe the process of construction and validation of clinical contents for health learning objects, aimed at patients in the treatment of head and neck cancer. descriptive, methodological study. The development of the script and the storyboard were based on scientific evidence and submitted to the appreciation of specialists for validation of content. The agreement index was checked quantitatively and the suggestions were qualitatively evaluated. The items described in the roadmap were approved by 99% of expert experts. The suggestions for adjustments were inserted in their entirety in the final version. The free-marginal kappa statistical test, for multiple evaluators, presented value equal to 0.68%, granting a substantial agreement. The steps taken in the construction and validation of the content for the production of educational material for patients with head and neck cancer were adequate, relevant and suitable for use in other subjects.

Antioxidant activity, phenolic content and colour of the Slovak cabernet sauvignon wines

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Daniel Bajčan

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Antioxidants are specific substances that oxidize themselves and in this way they protect other sensitive bioactive food components against destruction. At the same time, they restrict the activity of free radicals and change them to less active forms. Grapes and wine are a significant source of antioxidants in human nutrition. One of the most important group occuring in grapes and wines are polyphenols. Many of phenolic compounds have been reported to have multiple biological activities, including cardioprotective, anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, antiviral and antibacterial properties attributed mainly to their antioxidant and antiradical activity. Therefore, it is important to know the content of polyphenols and their antioxidant effects in foods and beverages. Twenty-eight Cabernet Sauvignon wine samples, originated from different Slovak vineyard regions, were analyzed using spectrophotometry for the content of total polyphenols, content of total anthocyanins, antioxidant activity and wine colour density. Determined values of antioxidant activity in observed wines were within the interval 69.0 - 84.2% inhibition of DPPH (average value was 78.8% inhibition of DPPH and total polyphenol content ranged from 1,218 to 3,444 mg gallic acid per liter (average content was 2,424 mg gallic acid.L-1. Determined total anthocyanin contents were from 68.6 to 430.7 mg.L-1 (average content was 220.6 mg.L-1 and values of wine colour density ranged from 0.756 to 2.782 (average value was 1.399. The statistical evaluation of the obtained results did not confirm any linear correlations between total polyphenol content, resp. total anthocyanin content and antioxidant activity. The correlations between total polyphenol content and total anthocyanin content, resp. the content of total anthocyanins and wine colour density were strong. The results confirmed very strong correlations between wine colour density and total polyphenol content, resp. antioxidant

The role of service-learning in college students' environmental literacy: Content knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors

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Singletary, Joanna Lynn Bush

This study evaluated the relationship of environmental service-learning on environmental literacy in undergraduates. The subjects were 36 undergraduates at a small liberal arts university enrolled in an environmental biology course. To determine the role of environmental service-learning on college students' environmental knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and environmental literacy, this study utilized concurrent mixed methods approach for qualitative and quantitative analysis. A quasi-experimental repeated measures approach was the design of the quantitative component of the study. Data were collected on attitude, behavior, and content knowledge aspects of environmental literacy as measured by the Environmental Literacy Survey (Kibert, 2000). Hypotheses were tested by independent samples ttests and repeated measures ANOVA. Repeated measures ANOVA conducted on participants' three subscales scores for the Environmental Literacy Survey (attitude, behavior, and knowledge) indicated that students who participated in environmental service-learning scored statistically significantly higher than those that did not initially participate in service-learning. Qualitative data collected in the form of journal reflections and portfolios were evaluated for themes of environmental attitudes or affective statements, environmentally positive behaviors and skills, and ecological content. Quantitative and qualitative data support the positive role of environmental service-learning in the development of environmental literacy in undergraduate students.

Assessing Student Behaviors and Motivation for Actively Learning Biology

Science.gov (United States)

Moore, Michael Edward

Vision and Change states that one of the major changes in the way we design biology courses should be a switch in approach from teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning and identifies active learning as a recommended methods. Studies show performance benefits for students taking courses that use active learning. What is unknown is why active learning is such an effective instructional tool and the limits of this instructional method’s ability to influence performance. This dissertation builds a case in three steps for why active learning is an effective instructional tool. In step one, I assessed the influence of different types of active learning (clickers, group activities, and whole class discussions) on student engagement behavior in one semester of two different introductory biology courses and found that active learning positively influenced student engagement behavior significantly more than lecture. For step two, I examined over four semesters whether student engagement behavior was a predictor of performance and found participation (engagement behavior) in the online (video watching) and in-class course activities (clicker participation) that I measure were significant predictors of performance. In the third, I assessed whether certain active learning satisfied the psychological needs that lead to students’ intrinsic motivation to participate in those activities when compared over two semesters and across two different institutions of higher learning. Findings from this last step show us that student’s perceptions of autonomy, competency, and relatedness in doing various types of active learning are significantly higher than lecture and consistent across two institutions of higher learning. Lastly, I tie everything together, discuss implications of the research, and address future directions for research on biology student motivation and behavior.

The International Active Learning Space

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Manners, Ian James

2015-01-01

-Danish students receive the basic international and intercultural skills and knowledge they need in current society. The English-language masters’ seminars I teach at the Department of Political Science are international in terms of students and teacher, but they are also Active Learning seminars......-Danish students (and sometimes teachers) rarely speak to each other or learn each other’s names. In the international AL spaces I create, students must work together on joint tasks which require interaction to address tasks and integration in order to benefit from the multinational activity groups. Planning AL...... that complete the seminar soon become vocal advocates of international AL. Ultimately, enriching student learning through immersing Danish and international students in an international AL space is, for me, the best way of ensuring an internationalised learning outcome, rather than just international mobility....

Exploring Changes to a Teacher's Teaching Practices and Student Learning through a Volleyball Content Knowledge Workshop

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Insook

2016-01-01

This paper describes how improving a teacher's content knowledge changes his teaching practices and its subsequent effects on student learning during a middle school volleyball instructional unit. The study was designed to challenge teacher educators' thinking about the importance of in-depth content knowledge for effective teaching by…

IMPROVING CAUSE DETECTION SYSTEMS WITH ACTIVE LEARNING

Data.gov (United States)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration — IMPROVING CAUSE DETECTION SYSTEMS WITH ACTIVE LEARNING ISAAC PERSING AND VINCENT NG Abstract. Active learning has been successfully applied to many natural language...

Gamification: Questing to Integrate Content Knowledge, Literacy, and 21st-Century Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Kingsley, Tara L.; Grabner-Hagen, Melissa M.

2015-01-01

This article showcases the use of gamification as a means to turn an existing curriculum into a game-based learning environment. The purpose of this article is to examine how gamification, coupled with effective pedagogy, can support the acquisition of 21st-century skills. Gamifying content allows students to earn experience points, badges, and…

The Activity Theory Approach to Learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ritva Engeström

2014-12-01

Full Text Available In this paper the author offers a practical view of the theory-grounded research on education action. She draws on studies carried out at the Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE at the University of Helsinki in Finland. In its work, the Center draws on cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT and is well-known for the theory of Expansive Learning and its more practical application called Developmental Work Research (DWR. These approaches are widely used to understand professional learning and have served as a theoreticaland methodological foundation for studies examining change and professional development in various human activities.

History and Evolution of Active Learning Spaces

Science.gov (United States)

Beichner, Robert J.

2014-01-01

This chapter examines active learning spaces as they have developed over the years. Consistently well-designed classrooms can facilitate active learning even though the details of implementing pedagogies may differ.

Effects of Learning Design Patterns in Service Learning Courses

Science.gov (United States)

Gerholz, Karl-Heinz; Liszt, Verena; Klingsieck, Katrin B.

2018-01-01

Students participate during service learning courses in a service project, which fits to a community need and has a link to curricular content. Students have a chance while engaged in the service project to apply curricular content in community practice, where they gain insights into civic engagement activities. Empirical studies revealed the…

Bioactive content, hepatoprotective and antioxidant activities of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Bioactive content, hepatoprotective and antioxidant activities of whole plant extract of Micromeria fruticosa (L) Druce ssp Serpyllifolia F Lamiaceae against Carbon tetrachloride-induced hepatotoxicity in mice.

Active Learning Environment with Lenses in Geometric Optics

Science.gov (United States)

Tural, Güner

2015-01-01

Geometric optics is one of the difficult topics for students within physics discipline. Students learn better via student-centered active learning environments than the teacher-centered learning environments. So this study aimed to present a guide for middle school teachers to teach lenses in geometric optics via active learning environment…

Implementing Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) in Undergraduate Biomechanics: Lessons Learned by a Novice

Science.gov (United States)

Simonson, Shawn R.; Shadle, Susan E.

2013-01-01

Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) uses specially designed activities and cooperative learning to teach content and to actively engage students in inquiry, analytical thinking and teamwork. It has been used extensively in Chemistry education, but the use of POGIL is not well documented in other physical and biological sciences. This…

Effects of learning content in context on knowledge acquisition and recall: a pretest-posttest control group design.

Science.gov (United States)

Bergman, Esther M; de Bruin, Anique B H; Vorstenbosch, Marc A T M; Kooloos, Jan G M; Puts, Ghita C W M; Leppink, Jimmie; Scherpbier, Albert J J A; van der Vleuten, Cees P M

2015-08-15

It is generally assumed that learning in context increases performance. This study investigates the relationship between the characteristics of a paper-patient context (relevance and familiarity), the mechanisms through which the cognitive dimension of context could improve learning (activation of prior knowledge, elaboration and increasing retrieval cues), and test performance. A total of 145 medical students completed a pretest of 40 questions, of which half were with a patient vignette. One week later, they studied musculoskeletal anatomy in the dissection room without a paper-patient context (control group) or with (ir)relevant-(un)familiar context (experimental groups), and completed a cognitive load scale. Following a short delay, the students completed a posttest. Surprisingly, our results show that students who studied in context did not perform better than students who studied without context. This finding may be explained by an interaction of the participants' expertise level, the nature of anatomical knowledge and students' approaches to learning. A relevant-familiar context only reduced the negative effect of learning the content in context. Our results suggest discouraging the introduction of an uncommon disease to illustrate a basic science concept. Higher self-perceived learning scores predict higher performance. Interestingly, students performed significantly better on the questions with context in both tests, possibly due to a 'framing effect'. Since studies focusing on the physical and affective dimensions of context have also failed to find a positive influence of learning in a clinically relevant context, further research seems necessary to refine our theories around the role of context in learning.

Learning a Language and Studying Content in an Additional Language: Student Opinions

Science.gov (United States)

Ger, Ugur; Bahar, Mustafa

2018-01-01

This study aims to understand the opinions of middle school and high school students about language learning and studying other content in an additional language in the school settings where English is used as the medium of instruction to teach more than 50% of the curriculum. For this end, 261 students from three different schools were…

Collegewide Promotion of E-Learning/Active Learning and Faculty Development

Science.gov (United States)

Ogawa, Nobuyuki; Shimizu, Akira

2016-01-01

Japanese National Institutes of Technology have revealed a plan to strongly promote e-Learning and active learning under the common schematization of education in over 50 campuses nationwide. Our e-Learning and ICT-driven education practiced for more than fifteen years were highly evaluated, and is playing a leading role in promoting e-Learning…

Pedagogical Distance: Explaining Misalignment in Student-Driven Online Learning Activities Using Activity Theory

Science.gov (United States)

Westberry, Nicola; Franken, Margaret

2015-01-01

This paper provides an Activity Theory analysis of two online student-driven interactive learning activities to interrogate assumptions that such groups can effectively learn in the absence of the teacher. Such an analysis conceptualises learning tasks as constructed objects that drive pedagogical activity. The analysis shows a disconnect between…

Construction and validation of clinical contents for development of learning objects

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Flávia Tatiana Pedrolo Hortense

Full Text Available ABSTRACT Objective: to describe the process of construction and validation of clinical contents for health learning objects, aimed at patients in the treatment of head and neck cancer. Method: descriptive, methodological study. The development of the script and the storyboard were based on scientific evidence and submitted to the appreciation of specialists for validation of content. The agreement index was checked quantitatively and the suggestions were qualitatively evaluated. Results: The items described in the roadmap were approved by 99% of expert experts. The suggestions for adjustments were inserted in their entirety in the final version. The free-marginal kappa statistical test, for multiple evaluators, presented value equal to 0.68%, granting a substantial agreement. Conclusion: The steps taken in the construction and validation of the content for the production of educational material for patients with head and neck cancer were adequate, relevant and suitable for use in other subjects.

Manifold Regularized Experimental Design for Active Learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Lining; Shum, Hubert P H; Shao, Ling

2016-12-02

Various machine learning and data mining tasks in classification require abundant data samples to be labeled for training. Conventional active learning methods aim at labeling the most informative samples for alleviating the labor of the user. Many previous studies in active learning select one sample after another in a greedy manner. However, this is not very effective because the classification models has to be retrained for each newly labeled sample. Moreover, many popular active learning approaches utilize the most uncertain samples by leveraging the classification hyperplane of the classifier, which is not appropriate since the classification hyperplane is inaccurate when the training data are small-sized. The problem of insufficient training data in real-world systems limits the potential applications of these approaches. This paper presents a novel method of active learning called manifold regularized experimental design (MRED), which can label multiple informative samples at one time for training. In addition, MRED gives an explicit geometric explanation for the selected samples to be labeled by the user. Different from existing active learning methods, our method avoids the intrinsic problems caused by insufficiently labeled samples in real-world applications. Various experiments on synthetic datasets, the Yale face database and the Corel image database have been carried out to show how MRED outperforms existing methods.

Active learning: a step towards automating medical concept extraction.

Science.gov (United States)

Kholghi, Mahnoosh; Sitbon, Laurianne; Zuccon, Guido; Nguyen, Anthony

2016-03-01

This paper presents an automatic, active learning-based system for the extraction of medical concepts from clinical free-text reports. Specifically, (1) the contribution of active learning in reducing the annotation effort and (2) the robustness of incremental active learning framework across different selection criteria and data sets are determined. The comparative performance of an active learning framework and a fully supervised approach were investigated to study how active learning reduces the annotation effort while achieving the same effectiveness as a supervised approach. Conditional random fields as the supervised method, and least confidence and information density as 2 selection criteria for active learning framework were used. The effect of incremental learning vs standard learning on the robustness of the models within the active learning framework with different selection criteria was also investigated. The following 2 clinical data sets were used for evaluation: the Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside/Veteran Affairs (i2b2/VA) 2010 natural language processing challenge and the Shared Annotated Resources/Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (ShARe/CLEF) 2013 eHealth Evaluation Lab. The annotation effort saved by active learning to achieve the same effectiveness as supervised learning is up to 77%, 57%, and 46% of the total number of sequences, tokens, and concepts, respectively. Compared with the random sampling baseline, the saving is at least doubled. Incremental active learning is a promising approach for building effective and robust medical concept extraction models while significantly reducing the burden of manual annotation. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Agnostic Active Learning Without Constraints

OpenAIRE

Beygelzimer, Alina; Hsu, Daniel; Langford, John; Zhang, Tong

2010-01-01

We present and analyze an agnostic active learning algorithm that works without keeping a version space. This is unlike all previous approaches where a restricted set of candidate hypotheses is maintained throughout learning, and only hypotheses from this set are ever returned. By avoiding this version space approach, our algorithm sheds the computational burden and brittleness associated with maintaining version spaces, yet still allows for substantial improvements over supervised learning f...

Using assistive technology adaptations to include students with learning disabilities in cooperative learning activities.

Science.gov (United States)

Bryant, D P; Bryant, B R

1998-01-01

Cooperative learning (CL) is a common instructional arrangement that is used by classroom teachers to foster academic achievement and social acceptance of students with and without learning disabilities. Cooperative learning is appealing to classroom teachers because it can provide an opportunity for more instruction and feedback by peers than can be provided by teachers to individual students who require extra assistance. Recent studies suggest that students with LD may need adaptations during cooperative learning activities. The use of assistive technology adaptations may be necessary to help some students with LD compensate for their specific learning difficulties so that they can engage more readily in cooperative learning activities. A process for integrating technology adaptations into cooperative learning activities is discussed in terms of three components: selecting adaptations, monitoring the use of the adaptations during cooperative learning activities, and evaluating the adaptations' effectiveness. The article concludes with comments regarding barriers to and support systems for technology integration, technology and effective instructional practices, and the need to consider technology adaptations for students who have learning disabilities.

Using Oceanography to Support Active Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Byfield, V.

2012-04-01

Teachers are always on the lookout for material to give their brightest students, in order to keep them occupied, stimulated and challenged, while the teacher gets on with helping the rest. They are also looking for material that can inspire and enthuse those who think that school is 'just boring!' Oceanography, well presented, has the capacity to do both. As a relatively young science, oceanography is not a core curriculum subject (possibly an advantage), but it draws on the traditional sciences of biology, chemistry, physic and geology, and can provide wonderful examples for teaching concepts in school sciences. It can also give good reasons for learning science, maths and technology. Exciting expeditions (research cruises) to far-flung places; opportunities to explore new worlds, a different angle on topical debates such as climate change, pollution, or conservation can bring a new life to old subjects. Access to 'real' data from satellites or Argo floats can be used to develop analytical and problem solving skills. The challenge is to make all this available in a form that can easily be used by teachers and students to enhance the learning experience. We learn by doing. Active teaching methods require students to develop their own concepts of what they are learning. This stimulates new neural connections in the brain - the physical manifestation of learning. There is a large body of evidence to show that active learning is much better remembered and understood. Active learning develops thinking skills through analysis, problem solving, and evaluation. It helps learners to use their knowledge in realistic and useful ways, and see its importance and relevance. Most importantly, properly used, active learning is fun. This paper presents experiences from a number of education outreach projects that have involved the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK. All contain some element of active learning - from quizzes and puzzles to analysis of real data from

Teaching with Stories as the Content and Context for Learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Frances Vitali

2016-02-01

Full Text Available Undergraduate teacher education program students have the opportunity to work with diverse student populations in a local school district in the Four Corners Area in the Northwest part of New Mexico. The family oral history practicum is a way to connect theory and practice while recognizing the issue that language is not a neutral landscape. What better way to demonstrate this complementarity than through stories. The goal is to bring an awareness of respect for oral language in relationship to literate language and explore how to balance both perspectives in school culture as prospective teachers. Preservice teacher candidates become storytelling coaches and team up with third graders in semester long storytelling projects, collaborating with local elementary school teachers. Students' family stories become the content and context for teaching and learning. With a diverse classroom population of Navajo, Hispanic, Mexican, and White students, family stories are the heart and central theme of the project. Storytelling coaches learn the nuances of diversity when theory is massaged with authentic experience of students as they share what they have learned beside their young storytellers and authors.

Contents and purpose of financing activities: problems of definition

OpenAIRE

М. І. Дамірчиєв

2015-01-01

The author explores the purpose and content of financial activities. Focuses attention on the relationship categories "public financial activities" and "financial activities of the State," examines the relationship of financial activity to the financial system.

Introduction of active learning method in learning physiology by MBBS students.

Science.gov (United States)

Gilkar, Suhail Ahmad; Lone, Shabiruddin; Lone, Riyaz Ahmad

2016-01-01

Active learning has received considerable attention over the past several years, often presented or perceived as a radical change from traditional instruction methods. Current research on learning indicates that using a variety of teaching strategies in the classroom increases student participation and learning. To introduce active learning methodology, i.e., "jigsaw technique" in undergraduate medical education and assess the student and faculty response to it. This study was carried out in the Department of Physiology in a Medical College of North India. A topic was chosen and taught using one of the active learning methods (ALMs), i.e., jigsaw technique. An instrument (questionnaire) was developed in English through an extensive review of literature and was properly validated. The students were asked to give their response on a five-point Likert scale. The feedback was kept anonymous. Faculty also provided their feedback in a separately provided feedback proforma. The data were collected, compiled, and analyzed. Of 150 students of MBBS-first year batch 2014, 142 participated in this study along with 14 faculty members of the Physiology Department. The majority of the students (>90%) did welcome the introduction of ALM and strongly recommended the use of such methods in teaching many more topics in future. 100% faculty members were of the opinion that many more topics shall be taken up using ALMs. This study establishes the fact that both the medical students and faculty want a change from the traditional way of passive, teacher-centric learning, to the more active teaching-learning techniques.

Active Math Learning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

The presentation is concerned with general course planning philosophy and a specific case study (boomerang flight geometro-dynamics) for active learning of mathematics via computer assisted and hands-on unfolding of first principles - in this case the understanding of rotations and Eulers equatio...

COLOUR, PHENOLIC CONTENT AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF THE SLOVAK ALIBERNET RED WINE SAMPLES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel Bajčan

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Sixteen Alibernet wine samples, originated from three most important Slovak vineyard regions, were evaluated spectrophotometrically for the content of total polyphenols, content of total anthocyanins, antioxidant activity and wine colour density. The determined total polyphenol contents in observed wines ranged from 2141 to 4274 mg gallic acid per liter (average content was 3057 mg gallic acid/L and total anthocyanin contents ranged from 73.4 to 791.2 mg/L (average content was 403.4 mg/L. Determined values of antioxidant activity were within the interval 54.8 – 86.8% (average value was 74.5% and the values of wine colour density varied between 0.944 and 4.592 (average value was 2.317. The statistical evaluation of the obtained results confirmed only weak linear correlation between total polyphenol content and total anthocyanin content, however strong linear correlations between total anthocyanin content and antioxidant activity, resp. wine colour density were observed. Our results also confirmed very highly significant linear relationship between wine colour density and total polyphenol content, resp. antioxidant activity and between antioxidant activity and total phenolic content.

Distance Learning Skills and Responsibilities: A Content Analysis of Job Announcements 1996-2010

Science.gov (United States)

Rebmann, Kristen Radsliff; Molitor, Simone; Rainey, Bonnie

2012-01-01

Archived job advertisements from the "International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) LIBJOBS" mailing list (1996-2010) were examined using content analysis. Findings suggest that distance learning (DL) skillsets as job qualifications emerged in the late 1990's and continue to be relevant today. Jobs with DL…

The effects of CLIL on mathematical content learning: A longitudinal study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jill Surmont

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Previous research has shown that content and language integrated learning (CLIL, an educational approach that offers content courses through more than one educational language, increases metalinguistic awareness. This improved insight into language structures is supposed to extend beyond the linguistic domain. In the present study, the question whether pupils who learn in a CLIL environment outperform their traditionally schooled peers in mathematics is investigated. In total, 107 pupils entered the study. All participants were in the first year of secondary education at a school in Ostend, in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Thirty-five pupils followed CLIL education in a foreign language (French and 72 followed traditional education that was given in the native language (Dutch. All participants were tested using a mathematical test at the beginning of the year, after three months, and after ten months. The first measurement of the mathematical scores showed that the two groups did not differ. In accordance with our hypothesis, the CLIL group scored higher than the non-CLIL group after ten months. Surprisingly, an effect was also found after three months. To conclude, CLIL appears to have a positive impact on the mathematical performance of pupils even after a short period of time.

Learning Styles, Online Content Usage and Exam Performance in a Mixed-Format Introductory Computer Information Systems Course

Science.gov (United States)

Lang, Guido; O'Connell, Stephen D.

2015-01-01

We investigate the relationship between learning styles, online content usage and exam performance in an undergraduate introductory Computer Information Systems class comprised of both online video tutorials and in-person classes. Our findings suggest that, across students, (1) traditional learning style classification methodologies do not predict…

Investigation the opinions of the primary science teachers toward practice of teaching and learning activities in science learning area

Science.gov (United States)

Chamnanwong, Pornpaka; Thathong, Kongsak

2018-01-01

In preparing a science lesson plan, teachers may deal with numerous difficulties. Having a deep understanding of their problems and their demands is extremely essential for the teachers in preparing themselves for the job. Moreover, it is also crucial for the stakeholders in planning suitable and in-need teachers' professional development programs, in school management, and in teaching aid. This study aimed to investigate the primary school science teachers' opinion toward practice of teaching and learning activities in science learning area. Target group was 292 primary science teachers who teach Grade 4 - 6 students in Khon Kaen Province, Thailand in the academic year of 2014. Data were collected using Questionnaire about Investigation the opinions of the primary science teachers toward practice of teaching and learning activities in science learning area. The questionnaires were consisted of closed questions scored on Likert scale and open-ended questions that invite a sentence response to cover from LS Process Ideas. Research findings were as follow. The primary science teachers' level of opinion toward teaching and learning science subject ranged from 3.19 - 3.93 (mean = 3.43) as "Moderate" level of practice. The primary school science teachers' needs to participate in a training workshop based on LS ranged from 3.66 - 4.22 (mean = 3.90) as "High" level. The result indicated that they were interested in attending a training course under the guidance of the Lesson Study by training on planning of management of science learning to solve teaching problems in science contents with the highest mean score 4.22. Open-ended questions questionnaire showed the needs of the implementation of the lesson plans to be actual classrooms, and supporting for learning Medias, innovations, and equipment for science experimentation.

Manganese contents of soils as determined by activation analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

El-Kholi, A.F.; Hamdy, A.A.; Al Metwally, A.I.; El-Damaty, A.H.

1976-01-01

The object of this investigation is to determine total manganese by means of neutron activation analysis and evaluate this technique in comparison with the corresponding data obtained by conventional chemical analysis. Data obtained revealed that the values of total manganese in calcareous soils obtained by both chemical analysis and that by neutron activation analysis were similar. Therefore, activation analysis could be recommended as a quick laboratory, less tedious, and time consuming method for the determination of Mn content in both soils and plants than the conventional chemical techniques due to its great specificity, sensitivity and simplicity. Statistical analysis showed that there is a significant correlation at 5% probability level between manganese content in Soybean plant and total manganese determined by activation and chemical analysis giving the evidence that in the case of those highly calcareous soils of low total manganese content this fraction has to be considered as far as available soil manganese is concerned

Advanced Cell Classifier: User-Friendly Machine-Learning-Based Software for Discovering Phenotypes in High-Content Imaging Data.

Science.gov (United States)

Piccinini, Filippo; Balassa, Tamas; Szkalisity, Abel; Molnar, Csaba; Paavolainen, Lassi; Kujala, Kaisa; Buzas, Krisztina; Sarazova, Marie; Pietiainen, Vilja; Kutay, Ulrike; Smith, Kevin; Horvath, Peter

2017-06-28

High-content, imaging-based screens now routinely generate data on a scale that precludes manual verification and interrogation. Software applying machine learning has become an essential tool to automate analysis, but these methods require annotated examples to learn from. Efficiently exploring large datasets to find relevant examples remains a challenging bottleneck. Here, we present Advanced Cell Classifier (ACC), a graphical software package for phenotypic analysis that addresses these difficulties. ACC applies machine-learning and image-analysis methods to high-content data generated by large-scale, cell-based experiments. It features methods to mine microscopic image data, discover new phenotypes, and improve recognition performance. We demonstrate that these features substantially expedite the training process, successfully uncover rare phenotypes, and improve the accuracy of the analysis. ACC is extensively documented, designed to be user-friendly for researchers without machine-learning expertise, and distributed as a free open-source tool at www.cellclassifier.org. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Architecture for Collaborative Learning Activities in Hybrid Learning Environments

OpenAIRE

Ibáñez, María Blanca; Maroto, David; García Rueda, José Jesús; Leony, Derick; Delgado Kloos, Carlos

2012-01-01

3D virtual worlds are recognized as collaborative learning environments. However, the underlying technology is not sufficiently mature and the virtual worlds look cartoonish, unlinked to reality. Thus, it is important to enrich them with elements from the real world to enhance student engagement in learning activities. Our approach is to build learning environments where participants can either be in the real world or in its mirror world while sharing the same hybrid space in a collaborative ...

Aggregate-then-Curate: how digital learning champions help communities nurture online content

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrew Whitworth

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Informational resources are essential for communities, rooting them in their own history, helping them learn and solve problems, giving them a voice in decision-making and so on. For digital inclusion – and inclusion in the informational and democratic processes of society more generally – it is essential that communities retain the skills, awareness and motivation to create and manage their own informational resources.This article explores a model for the creation of online content that incorporates the different ways in which the quality and relevance of information can be assured. This model, “Aggregate-then-Curate” (A/C, was developed from earlier work concerning digital inclusion in UK online centres, models of informal e-learning and ecologies of resources. A/C shows how creating online content can be viewed as a 7-step process, initiated by individuals but bringing in “digital learning champions”, other community members and formal educational institutions at different stages. A/C can be used to design training to help build the capacity to manage community informational resources in an inclusive way. The article then discusses and evaluates MOSI-ALONG, a Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC funded project founded on these ideas, which illustrates how A/C can be used to design training to help build the capacity to manage community informational resources in an inclusive way. This conclusion is supported by evaluations of the work done so far in MOSI-ALONG.

Active Ageing, Active Learning: Policy and Provision in Hong Kong

Science.gov (United States)

Tam, M.

2011-01-01

This paper discusses the relationship between ageing and learning, previous literature having confirmed that participation in continued learning in old age contributes to good health, satisfaction with life, independence and self-esteem. Realizing that learning is vital to active ageing, the Hong Kong government has implemented policies and…

Experiential Learning and Learning Environments: The Case of Active Listening Skills

Science.gov (United States)

Huerta-Wong, Juan Enrique; Schoech, Richard

2010-01-01

Social work education research frequently has suggested an interaction between teaching techniques and learning environments. However, this interaction has never been tested. This study compared virtual and face-to-face learning environments and included active listening concepts to test whether the effectiveness of learning environments depends…

Supervised machine learning and active learning in classification of radiology reports.

Science.gov (United States)

Nguyen, Dung H M; Patrick, Jon D

2014-01-01

This paper presents an automated system for classifying the results of imaging examinations (CT, MRI, positron emission tomography) into reportable and non-reportable cancer cases. This system is part of an industrial-strength processing pipeline built to extract content from radiology reports for use in the Victorian Cancer Registry. In addition to traditional supervised learning methods such as conditional random fields and support vector machines, active learning (AL) approaches were investigated to optimize training production and further improve classification performance. The project involved two pilot sites in Victoria, Australia (Lake Imaging (Ballarat) and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (Melbourne)) and, in collaboration with the NSW Central Registry, one pilot site at Westmead Hospital (Sydney). The reportability classifier performance achieved 98.25% sensitivity and 96.14% specificity on the cancer registry's held-out test set. Up to 92% of training data needed for supervised machine learning can be saved by AL. AL is a promising method for optimizing the supervised training production used in classification of radiology reports. When an AL strategy is applied during the data selection process, the cost of manual classification can be reduced significantly. The most important practical application of the reportability classifier is that it can dramatically reduce human effort in identifying relevant reports from the large imaging pool for further investigation of cancer. The classifier is built on a large real-world dataset and can achieve high performance in filtering relevant reports to support cancer registries. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Developing metacognition: a basis for active learning

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vos, Henk; de Graaff, E.

2004-01-01

The reasons to introduce formats of Active Learning in Engineering (ALE) like project work, problem based learning, use of cases, etc., are mostly based on practical experience and sometimes from applied research on teaching and learning. Such research shows that students learn more and different

Measuring Learning Outcomes and Attitudes in a Flipped Introductory Statistics Course

Science.gov (United States)

Cilli-Turner, Emily

2015-01-01

Recent studies have highlighted the positive effects on learning and retention rates that active learning brings to the classroom. A flipped classroom is a type of active learning where transmission of content occurs outside of the classroom environment and problem solving and learning activities become the focus of classroom time. This article…

TRAINING OF E-LEARNING MANAGERS: COMPETENCY APPROACH

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nataliia V. Morze

2017-09-01

Full Text Available The article analyzes the competencies necessary for the successful professional activity of e-learning managers. The content of the professional qualification "e-learning manager" is revealed. The model of competency system of the e-learning manager is offered. The model, which defines the content, forms, methods and means of training, tools and indicators for assessing the results of training e-learning managers by levels, is substantiated. Examples of competency tasks for forming of professional competencies in innovative teaching methods and technologies, Web 2.0 services, e-learning expertise, e-environment design, IT infrastructure management, and the development of Soft skills are presented. It is proposed to solve the problem of training specialists who will be able not only to use ICT in educational activities, but also to master the competencies of e-learning management.

Effect of extraction solvent on total phenol content, total flavonoid content, and antioxidant activity of Limnophila aromatica

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Quy Diem Do

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Limnophila aromatica is commonly used as a spice and a medicinal herb in Southeast Asia. In this study, water and various concentrations (50%, 75%, and 100% of methanol, ethanol, and acetone in water were used as solvent in the extraction of L. aromatica. The antioxidant activity, total phenolic content, and total flavonoid content of the freeze-dried L. aromatica extracts were investigated using various in vitro assays. The extract obtained by 100% ethanol showed the highest total antioxidant activity, reducing power and DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging activity. The same extract also exhibited the highest phenolic content (40.5 mg gallic acid equivalent/g of defatted L. aromatica and the highest flavonoid content (31.11 mg quercetin equivalent/g of defatted L. aromatica. The highest extraction yield was obtained by using 50% aqueous acetone. These results indicate that L. aromatica can be used in dietary applications with a potential to reduce oxidative stress.

Active learning reduces annotation time for clinical concept extraction.

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Kholghi, Mahnoosh; Sitbon, Laurianne; Zuccon, Guido; Nguyen, Anthony

2017-10-01

To investigate: (1) the annotation time savings by various active learning query strategies compared to supervised learning and a random sampling baseline, and (2) the benefits of active learning-assisted pre-annotations in accelerating the manual annotation process compared to de novo annotation. There are 73 and 120 discharge summary reports provided by Beth Israel institute in the train and test sets of the concept extraction task in the i2b2/VA 2010 challenge, respectively. The 73 reports were used in user study experiments for manual annotation. First, all sequences within the 73 reports were manually annotated from scratch. Next, active learning models were built to generate pre-annotations for the sequences selected by a query strategy. The annotation/reviewing time per sequence was recorded. The 120 test reports were used to measure the effectiveness of the active learning models. When annotating from scratch, active learning reduced the annotation time up to 35% and 28% compared to a fully supervised approach and a random sampling baseline, respectively. Reviewing active learning-assisted pre-annotations resulted in 20% further reduction of the annotation time when compared to de novo annotation. The number of concepts that require manual annotation is a good indicator of the annotation time for various active learning approaches as demonstrated by high correlation between time rate and concept annotation rate. Active learning has a key role in reducing the time required to manually annotate domain concepts from clinical free text, either when annotating from scratch or reviewing active learning-assisted pre-annotations. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Effect of Content Representation Design Principles on Users' Intuitive Beliefs and Use of E-Learning Systems

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Al-Samarraie, Hosam; Selim, Hassan; Zaqout, Fahed

2016-01-01

A model is proposed to assess the effect of different content representation design principles on learners' intuitive beliefs about using e-learning. We hypothesized that the impact of the representation of course contents is mediated by the design principles of alignment, quantity, clarity, simplicity, and affordance, which influence the…

Harnessing the Power of Learning Management Systems: An E-Learning Approach for Professional Development.

Science.gov (United States)

White, Meagan; Shellenbarger, Teresa

E-learning provides an alternative approach to traditional professional development activities. A learning management system may help nursing professional development practitioners deliver content more efficiently and effectively; however, careful consideration is needed during planning and implementation. This article provides essential information in the selection and use of a learning management system for professional development.

Phenolic Content, and Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Activities of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Erah

Methods: The content of total phenols, flavonoids and anthocyanins of the alcohol, hydroalcohol and aqueous extracts of ... Keywords: Crataegus oxyacantha L.; Natural phenolic compounds; Antioxidant and antimicrobial activity, Southeast Serbia. ..... Antioxidant activities of Sechium edule (Jacq.) Swart extracts, Food ...

How an active-learning class influences physics self-efficacy in pre-service teachers

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Gaffney, Jon D. H.; Housley Gaffney, Amy L.; Usher, Ellen L.; Mamaril, Natasha A.

2013-01-01

Education majors in an inquiry-based physics content course were asked to reflect on the ways the course affected their self-efficacy for completing physics tasks, such as creating a circuit. Responses were coded according to the contributor of the influence and whether that influence was positive or negative. The group learning structure, hands-on activities in the class, and the constructed repertoire of science knowledge, processes, and activities, were all reported to be positive influences on self-efficacy, whereas the influence of the instructor was mixed. Overall, students' responses indicated both a desire for more guidance and lecture and an appreciation for their ability to construct their own understanding through the class activities.

Understanding the challenges to facilitating active learning in the resident conferences: a qualitative study of internal medicine faculty and resident perspectives.

Science.gov (United States)

Sawatsky, Adam P; Zickmund, Susan L; Berlacher, Kathryn; Lesky, Dan; Granieri, Rosanne

2015-01-01

In the Next Accreditation System, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education outlines milestones for medical knowledge and requires regular didactic sessions in residency training. There are many challenges to facilitating active learning in resident conferences, and we need to better understand resident learning preferences and faculty perspectives on facilitating active learning. The goal of this study was to identify challenges to facilitating active learning in resident conferences, both through identifying specific implementation barriers and identifying differences in perspective between faculty and residents on effective teaching and learning strategies. The investigators invited core residency faculty to participate in focus groups. The investigators used a semistructured guide to facilitate discussion about learning preferences and teaching perspectives in the conference setting and used an 'editing approach' within a grounded theory framework to qualitative analysis to code the transcripts and analyze the results. Data were compared to previously collected data from seven resident focus groups. Three focus groups with 20 core faculty were conducted. We identified three domains pertaining to facilitating active learning in resident conferences: barriers to facilitating active learning formats, similarities and differences in faculty and resident learning preferences, and divergence between faculty and resident opinions about effective teaching strategies. Faculty identified several setting, faculty, and resident barriers to facilitating active learning in resident conferences. When compared to residents, faculty expressed similar learning preferences; the main differences were in motivations for conference attendance and type of content. Resident preferences and faculty perspectives differed on the amount of information appropriate for lecture and the role of active participation in resident conferences. This study highlights several

How organizational learning is associated with patient rights: a qualitative content analysis.

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Heidari, Shahin; Nayeri, Nahid Dehghan; Ravari, Ali; Sabzevari, Sakineh

2016-01-01

Nowadays, patient rights, particularly receiving favorable health care based on modern knowledge, informed consent, and privacy, are important issues in health care delivery systems. Organizational learning is considered an important factor influencing health care quality and patient rights. However, there is little evidence regarding this issue. The present study was conducted to explore the role of organizational learning in patient rights from clinical nurses' viewpoint. This qualitative study was conducted through conventional content analysis. In total, 18 nurses who met the inclusion criteria participated in this study through purposive sampling with maximum variation. Data were gathered through 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, which continued until data saturation was achieved. Data collection also included constant and simultaneous comparative analyses. Data analysis led to four major themes: conservation of patient safety, providing favorable care, being the patient's advocate, and informing the patients. All the participants believed that organizational learning could play a vital role in respecting patient rights and interests. Participants believed that their efforts to conduct organizational learning, tried to improve respecting the patient rights via conservation of patient safety, trying to improve quality of care, being an advocate, and informing the patient. It would be appreciable if nursing managers honored the commitment of the nurses for learning, highlight their role as defenders of patient rights, and encourage them to initiate organizational learning.

How organizational learning is associated with patient rights: a qualitative content analysis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Shahin Heidari

2016-07-01

Full Text Available Background: Nowadays, patient rights, particularly receiving favorable health care based on modern knowledge, informed consent, and privacy, are important issues in health care delivery systems. Organizational learning is considered an important factor influencing health care quality and patient rights. However, there is little evidence regarding this issue. Objective: The present study was conducted to explore the role of organizational learning in patient rights from clinical nurses’ viewpoint. Design: This qualitative study was conducted through conventional content analysis. In total, 18 nurses who met the inclusion criteria participated in this study through purposive sampling with maximum variation. Data were gathered through 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, which continued until data saturation was achieved. Data collection also included constant and simultaneous comparative analyses. Results: Data analysis led to four major themes: conservation of patient safety, providing favorable care, being the patient's advocate, and informing the patients. All the participants believed that organizational learning could play a vital role in respecting patient rights and interests. Conclusions: Participants believed that their efforts to conduct organizational learning, tried to improve respecting the patient rights via conservation of patient safety, trying to improve quality of care, being an advocate, and informing the patient. It would be appreciable if nursing managers honored the commitment of the nurses for learning, highlight their role as defenders of patient rights, and encourage them to initiate organizational learning.

Leveraging Affective Learning for Developing Future Airmen

Science.gov (United States)

2009-11-01

highly inter- active, information-saturated, and global environment is tougher than ever. Mission success requires knowledge-enabled Airmen who...and learning aids. According to the eLearning Guild, over 30 percent of organizations surveyed currently deliver some amount of learning content

Phenolic content and antioxidant activities of burr parsley (Caucalis platycarpos L.).

Science.gov (United States)

Plazonić, Ana; Mornar, Ana; Maleš, Željan; Kujundžić, Nikola

2013-07-22

Since C. platycarpos contains a wide variety of antioxidants, in the present study total flavonoid and phenolic acid content as well as antioxidative activity of various C. platycarpos extracts were investigated. The results obtained show a significant polyphenol content and antioxidant activity of the investigated plant. Moreover, a positive correlation between antioxidant activity and content of flavonoids and phenolic acids was found, indicating the responsibility of these compounds for the antioxidant effectiveness of C. platycarpos extracts and making C. platycarpos a good potential source of natural antioxidants.

Active Learning and Cooperative Learning in the Organic Chemistry Lecture Class

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Paulson, Donald R.

1999-08-01

Faculty in the physical sciences are one of the academic groups least receptive to the use of active learning strategies and cooperative learning in their classrooms. This is particularly so in traditional lecture classes. It is the objective of this paper to show how effective these techniques can be in improving student performance in classes. The use of active learning strategies and cooperative learning groups in my organic chemistry lecture classes has increased the overall pass rate in my classes by an astounding 20-30% over the traditional lecture mode. This has been accomplished without any reduction in "standards". The actual methods employed are presented as well as a discussion of how I came to radically change the way I teach my classes.

Active Learning and Teaching: Improving Postsecondary Library Instruction.

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Allen, Eileen E.

1995-01-01

Discusses ways to improve postsecondary library instruction based on theories of active learning. Topics include a historical background of active learning; student achievement and attitudes; cognitive development; risks; active teaching; and instructional techniques, including modified lectures, brainstorming, small group work, cooperative…

Actively learning human gaze shifting paths for semantics-aware photo cropping.

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Zhang, Luming; Gao, Yue; Ji, Rongrong; Xia, Yingjie; Dai, Qionghai; Li, Xuelong

2014-05-01

Photo cropping is a widely used tool in printing industry, photography, and cinematography. Conventional cropping models suffer from the following three challenges. First, the deemphasized role of semantic contents that are many times more important than low-level features in photo aesthetics. Second, the absence of a sequential ordering in the existing models. In contrast, humans look at semantically important regions sequentially when viewing a photo. Third, the difficulty of leveraging inputs from multiple users. Experience from multiple users is particularly critical in cropping as photo assessment is quite a subjective task. To address these challenges, this paper proposes semantics-aware photo cropping, which crops a photo by simulating the process of humans sequentially perceiving semantically important regions of a photo. We first project the local features (graphlets in this paper) onto the semantic space, which is constructed based on the category information of the training photos. An efficient learning algorithm is then derived to sequentially select semantically representative graphlets of a photo, and the selecting process can be interpreted by a path, which simulates humans actively perceiving semantics in a photo. Furthermore, we learn a prior distribution of such active graphlet paths from training photos that are marked as aesthetically pleasing by multiple users. The learned priors enforce the corresponding active graphlet path of a test photo to be maximally similar to those from the training photos. Experimental results show that: 1) the active graphlet path accurately predicts human gaze shifting, and thus is more indicative for photo aesthetics than conventional saliency maps and 2) the cropped photos produced by our approach outperform its competitors in both qualitative and quantitative comparisons.

Enhancing the T-shaped learning profile when teaching hydrology using data, modeling, and visualization activities

Science.gov (United States)

Sanchez, Christopher A.; Ruddell, Benjamin L.; Schiesser, Roy; Merwade, Venkatesh

2016-03-01

Previous research has suggested that the use of more authentic learning activities can produce more robust and durable knowledge gains. This is consistent with calls within civil engineering education, specifically hydrology, that suggest that curricula should more often include professional perspective and data analysis skills to better develop the "T-shaped" knowledge profile of a professional hydrologist (i.e., professional breadth combined with technical depth). It was expected that the inclusion of a data-driven simulation lab exercise that was contextualized within a real-world situation and more consistent with the job duties of a professional in the field, would provide enhanced learning and appreciation of job duties beyond more conventional paper-and-pencil exercises in a lower-division undergraduate course. Results indicate that while students learned in both conditions, learning was enhanced for the data-driven simulation group in nearly every content area. This pattern of results suggests that the use of data-driven modeling and visualization activities can have a significant positive impact on instruction. This increase in learning likely facilitates the development of student perspective and conceptual mastery, enabling students to make better choices about their studies, while also better preparing them for work as a professional in the field.

Contextual Teaching and Learning Approach of Mathematics in Primary Schools

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Selvianiresa, D.; Prabawanto, S.

2017-09-01

The Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) approach is an approach involving active students in the learning process to discover the concepts learned through to knowledge and experience of the students. Similar to Piaget’s opinion that learning gives students an actives trying to do new things by relating their experiences and building their own minds. When students to connecting mathematics with real life, then students can looking between a conceptual to be learned with a concept that has been studied. So that, students can developing of mathematical connection ability. This research is quasi experiment with a primary school in the city of Kuningan. The result showed that CTL learning can be successful, when learning used a collaborative interaction with students, a high level of activity in the lesson, a connection to real-world contexts, and an integration of science content with other content and skill areas. Therefore, CTL learning can be applied by techer to mathematics learning in primary schools.

Resource Letter ALIP-1: Active-Learning Instruction in Physics

Science.gov (United States)

Meltzer, David E.; Thornton, Ronald K.

2012-06-01

This Resource Letter provides a guide to the literature on research-based active-learning instruction in physics. These are instructional methods that are based on, assessed by, and validated through research on the teaching and learning of physics. They involve students in their own learning more deeply and more intensely than does traditional instruction, particularly during class time. The instructional methods and supporting body of research reviewed here offer potential for significantly improved learning in comparison to traditional lecture-based methods of college and university physics instruction. We begin with an introduction to the history of active learning in physics in the United States, and then discuss some methods for and outcomes of assessing pedagogical effectiveness. We enumerate and describe common characteristics of successful active-learning instructional strategies in physics. We then discuss a range of methods for introducing active-learning instruction in physics and provide references to those methods for which there is published documentation of student learning gains.

Phenolic Content and Antioxidant Activities of Burr Parsley (Caucalis platycarpos L.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Željan Maleš

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Since C. platycarpos contains a wide variety of antioxidants, in the present study total flavonoid and phenolic acid content as well as antioxidative activity of various C. platycarpos extracts were investigated. The results obtained show a significant polyphenol content and antioxidant activity of the investigated plant. Moreover, a positive correlation between antioxidant activity and content of flavonoids and phenolic acids was found, indicating the responsibility of these compounds for the antioxidant effectiveness of C. platycarpos extracts and making C. platycarpos a good potential source of natural antioxidants.

Empathy and feedback processing in active and observational learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Rak, Natalia; Bellebaum, Christian; Thoma, Patrizia

2013-12-01

The feedback-related negativity (FRN) and the P300 have been related to the processing of one's own and other individuals' feedback during both active and observational learning. The aim of the present study was to elucidate the role of trait-empathic responding with regard to the modulation of the neural correlates of observational learning in particular. Thirty-four healthy participants completed an active and an observational learning task. On both tasks, the participants' aim was to maximize their monetary gain by choosing from two stimuli the one that showed the higher probability of reward. Participants gained insight into the stimulus-reward contingencies according to monetary feedback presented after they had made an active choice or by observing the choices of a virtual partner. Participants showed a general improvement in learning performance on both learning tasks. P200, FRN, and P300 amplitudes were larger during active, as compared with observational, learning. Furthermore, nonreward elicited a significantly more negative FRN than did reward in the active learning task, while only a trend was observed for observational learning. Distinct subcomponents of trait cognitive empathy were related to poorer performance and smaller P300 amplitudes for observational learning only. Taken together, both the learning performance and event-related potentials during observational learning are affected by different aspects of trait cognitive empathy, and certain types of observational learning may actually be disrupted by a higher tendency to understand and adopt other people's perspectives.

The Ways to Promote Pre-service Science Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Inquiry in Learning Management in Science Course

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Siriphan Satthaphon

2017-09-01

Full Text Available This classroom action research aimed to study the ways to promote pre-service science teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge for inquiry (PCK for inquiry. The participants were 37 students who enrolled in Learning Management in Science course in academic year 2014. Multiple data sources including students’ lesson plans, reflective journals, teacher’s logs, and worksheets were collected. The inductive approach was used to analyze data. The findings revealed the ways to promote pre-service science teachers’ PCK for inquiry consisted of being teacher’s explicit role model ; providing students to reflect their practices that link between their knowledge and understandings ; reflection from video case ; collaboration between students and teacher in learning activities planning, and allowing students to practice in actual situation could be better influence students not only reflect their understandings but also design, and teach science through inquiry.

Creation and Assessment of an Active E-Learning Introductory Geoscience Course

Science.gov (United States)

Sit, S. M.; Brudzinski, M. R.

2014-12-01

The recent emphasis in higher education on both student engagement and online learning has encouraged us to work on the development of an active e-learning environment for our ~90 student undergraduate introductory geohazards course. To begin designing our course, we established a set of student learning outcomes (SLOs) focused on key scientific investigation skills, like analyzing data, evaluating hypotheses, and conveying information to peers. We designed these outcomes to provide students with powerful reasoning and critical thinking skills. Along with this new framework and increased student expectations, we found it beneficial to additionally establish student development outcomes (SDOs). Specifically, SDOs were constructed to address self-evaluation, student responsibility for learning, and valuing group work. Based on these new SLOs and SDOs, we developed a set of course components that engaged students in content, authentic scientific investigations, and group discussions, all within an online environment. The course includes common online learning features like video lectures and comprehension quizzes, but also uses 50% of class periods for student investigation assignments that are conducted using Google Earth and Microsoft Excel. For those assignments, students commonly utilize a short video tutorial demonstrating a new software skill and then apply that knowledge towards investigating topics such as predicting population growth in India or identifying types of volcanoes observed in Hawaii. Results from multiple semesters of teaching both a hybrid and completely online course show significant gains in the geoscience concept inventory over traditional and redesigned face-to-face courses. Additionally, student survey and evaluation data show that our online course improves on SLOs and SDOs when compared to a traditional lecture based course and achieve similar results to a redesigned face-to-face course focused on engagement. In particular, at the end of

An e-learning approach to informed problem solving

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Georg Weichhart

2012-06-01

Full Text Available When taking into account individualized learning processes not only content and interaction facilities need to be re-considered, but also the design of learning processes per se. Besides explicitness of learning objectives, interactive means of education need to enable intertwining content and communication elements as basic elements of active learning in a flexible way while preserving a certain structure of the learning process. Intelligibility Catchers are a theoretically grounded framework to enable such individualized processes. It allows learners and teachers agreeing and determining a desired learning outcome in written form. This type of e-learning contract enables students to individually explore content and participate in social interactions, while being guided by a transparent learning process structure. The developed implementation empowers learners in terms of creative problem-solving capabilities, and requires adaptation of classroom situations. The framework and its supporting semantic e-learning environment not only enables diverse learning and problem solving processes, but also supports the collaborative construction of e-learning contracts.

#13ReasonsWhy Health Professionals and Educators are Tweeting: A Systematic Analysis of Uses and Perceptions of Show Content and Learning Outcomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Walker, Kimberly K; Burns, Kelli

2018-04-27

This study is a content analysis of health professionals' and educators' tweets about a popular Netflix show that depicts teen suicide: 13 Reasons Why. A content analysis of 740 tweets was conducted to determine the main themes associated with professionals' and educators' tweets about the show, as well as the valence of the tweets. Additionally, a thematic analysis of linked content in tweets (n = 178) was conducted to explore additional content shared about the show and modeling outcomes. Results indicated the largest percentage of tweets was related to social learning, particularly about outcomes that could occur from viewing the show. The valence of the tweets about outcomes was more positive than negative. However, linked materials commonly circulated in tweets signified greater concern with unintended learning outcomes. Some of the linked content included media guidelines for reporting on suicide with recommendations that entertainment producers follow the guidelines. This study emphasizes the importance of including social learning objectives in future typologies of Twitter uses and demonstrates the importance of examining linked content in Twitter studies.

Contextual Teaching and Learning for Practitioners

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Clemente Charles Hudson

2008-08-01

Full Text Available Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL is defined as a way to introduce content using a variety of activelearning techniques designed to help students connect what they already know to what they are expected to learn, and to construct new knowledge from the analysis and synthesis of this learning process. A theoretical basis for CTL is outlined, with a focus on Connection, Constructivist, and Active Learning theories. A summary of brain activity during the learning process illustrates the physiological changes and connections that occur during educational activities. Three types of learning scenarios (project-based, goal-based, and inquiry-oriented are presented to illustrate how CTL can be applied by practitioners.

Total phenol content and antioxidant activity of water solutions of plant extracts

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mirela Kopjar

2009-01-01

Full Text Available Water solutions of extracts were investigated for total phenol content, flavonoid content and antioxidant activity. Susceptibility to degradation of water solutions of plant extracts, under light and in the dark, during storage at room temperature was investigated in order to determine their stability prior to their application for fortification of food products. Large dispersion of total phenol (TP content in the investigated model solutions of selected extracts (olive leaves, green tea, red grape, red wine, pine bark PE 5:1, pine bark PE 95 %, resveratrol, ranging from 11.10 mg GAE/100 mL to 92.19 mg GAE/100 mL was observed. Consequently, large dispersion of total flavonoids (TF content (8.89 mg to 61.75 mg CTE/100 mL was also observed. Since phenols have been mostly responsible for antioxidant activity of extracts, in most cases, antioxidant activity followed the TP content. That was proven by estimation of correlation coefficient between the total phenol content and antioxidant activity. Correlation coefficients between investigated parameters ranged from 0.5749 to 0.9604. During storage of 5 weeks at room temperature loss of phenols and flavonoids occurred. Antioxidant activity decreased with the decrease of TP and TF content. Degradations of phenols and flavonoids were more pronounced in samples stored at light.

Faculty Perceptions about Barriers to Active Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Michael, Joel

2007-01-01

Faculty may perceive many barriers to active learning in their classrooms. Four groups of participants in a faculty development workshop were asked to list their perceived barriers to active learning. Many of the problems identified were present on more than one list. The barriers fall into three categories: student characteristics, issues…

Active Multi-Field Learning for Spam Filtering

OpenAIRE

Wuying Liu; Lin Wang; Mianzhu Yi; Nan Xie

2015-01-01

Ubiquitous spam messages cause a serious waste of time and resources. This paper addresses the practical spam filtering problem, and proposes a universal approach to fight with various spam messages. The proposed active multi-field learning approach is based on: 1) It is cost-sensitive to obtain a label for a real-world spam filter, which suggests an active learning idea; and 2) Different messages often have a similar multi-field text structure, which suggests a multi-field learning idea. The...

Managing Active Learning Processes in Large First Year Physics Classes: The Advantages of an Integrated Approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael J. Drinkwater

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Turning lectures into interactive, student-led question and answer sessions is known to increase learning, but enabling interaction in a large class seems aninsurmountable task. This can discourage adoption of this new approach – who has time to individualize responses, address questions from over 200 students and encourage active participation in class? An approach adopted by a teaching team in large first-year classes at a research-intensive university appears to provide a means to do so. We describe the implementation of active learning strategies in a large first-year undergraduate physics unit of study, replacing traditional, content-heavy lectures with an integrated approach to question-driven learning. A key feature of our approach is that it facilitates intensive in-class discussions by requiring students to engage in preparatory reading and answer short written quizzes before every class. The lecturer uses software to rapidly analyze the student responses and identify the main issues faced by the students before the start of each class. We report the success of the integration of student preparation with this analysis and feedback framework, and the impact on the in-class discussions. We also address some of the difficulties commonly experienced by staff preparing for active learning classes.

Active Learning: The Importance of Developing a Comprehensive Measure

Science.gov (United States)

Carr, Rodney; Palmer, Stuart; Hagel, Pauline

2015-01-01

This article reports on an investigation into the validity of a widely used scale for measuring the extent to which higher education students employ active learning strategies. The scale is the active learning scale in the Australasian Survey of Student Engagement. This scale is based on the Active and Collaborative Learning scale of the National…

Age-related impairments in active learning and strategic visual exploration

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kelly L Brandstatt

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Old age could impair memory by disrupting learning strategies used by younger individuals. We tested this possibility by manipulating the ability to use visual-exploration strategies during learning. Subjects controlled visual exploration during active learning, thus permitting the use of strategies, whereas strategies were limited during passive learning via predetermined exploration patterns. Performance on tests of object recognition and object-location recall was matched for younger and older subjects for objects studied passively, when learning strategies were restricted. Active learning improved object recognition similarly for younger and older subjects. However, active learning improved object-location recall for younger subjects, but not older subjects. Exploration patterns were used to identify a learning strategy involving repeat viewing. Older subjects used this strategy less frequently and it provided less memory benefit compared to younger subjects. In previous experiments, we linked hippocampal-prefrontal co-activation to improvements in object-location recall from active learning and to the exploration strategy. Collectively, these findings suggest that age-related memory problems result partly from impaired strategies during learning, potentially due to reduced hippocampal-prefrontal co-engagement.

Age-related impairments in active learning and strategic visual exploration.

Science.gov (United States)

Brandstatt, Kelly L; Voss, Joel L

2014-01-01

Old age could impair memory by disrupting learning strategies used by younger individuals. We tested this possibility by manipulating the ability to use visual-exploration strategies during learning. Subjects controlled visual exploration during active learning, thus permitting the use of strategies, whereas strategies were limited during passive learning via predetermined exploration patterns. Performance on tests of object recognition and object-location recall was matched for younger and older subjects for objects studied passively, when learning strategies were restricted. Active learning improved object recognition similarly for younger and older subjects. However, active learning improved object-location recall for younger subjects, but not older subjects. Exploration patterns were used to identify a learning strategy involving repeat viewing. Older subjects used this strategy less frequently and it provided less memory benefit compared to younger subjects. In previous experiments, we linked hippocampal-prefrontal co-activation to improvements in object-location recall from active learning and to the exploration strategy. Collectively, these findings suggest that age-related memory problems result partly from impaired strategies during learning, potentially due to reduced hippocampal-prefrontal co-engagement.

The Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) Project

Science.gov (United States)

Beichner, Robert J.

2011-04-01

How do you keep a classroom of 100 undergraduates actively learning? Can students practice communication and teamwork skills in a large class? How do you boost the performance of underrepresented groups? The Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) Project has addressed these concerns. Because of their inclusion in a leading introductory physics textbook, project materials are used by more than 1/3 of all science, math, and engineering majors nationwide. The room design and pedagogy have been adopted at more than 100 leading institutions across the country. Physics, chemistry, math, astronomy, biology, engineering, earth sciences, and even literature classes are currently being taught this way. Educational research indicates that students should collaborate on interesting tasks and be deeply involved with the material they are studying. We promote active learning in a redesigned classroom for 100 students or more. (Of course, smaller classes can also benefit.) Class time is spent primarily on "tangibles" and "ponderables"--hands-on activities, simulations, and interesting questions. Nine students sit in three teams at round tables. Instructors circulate and engage in Socratic dialogues. The setting looks like a banquet hall, with lively interactions nearly all the time. Hundreds of hours of classroom video and audio recordings, transcripts of numerous interviews and focus groups, data from conceptual learning assessments (using widely-recognized instruments in a pretest/posttest protocol), and collected portfolios of student work are part of our rigorous assessment effort. Our findings (based on data from over 16,000 students collected over five years as well as replications at adopting sites) can be summarized as the following: 1) Female failure rate is 1/5 of previous levels, even though more is demanded of students. 2) Minority failure rate is 1/4 that seen in traditionally taught courses. 3) At-risk students are more

Assessing Student Behaviors and Motivation for Actively Learning Biology

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Moore, Michael Edward

2017-01-01

Vision and Change states that one of the major changes in the way we design biology courses should be a switch in approach from teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning and identifies active learning as a recommended methods. Studies show performance benefits for students taking courses that use active learning. What is unknown is…

Thai EFL Learners' Attitudes and Motivation towards Learning English through Content-Based Instruction

Science.gov (United States)

Lai Yuanxing; Aksornjarung, Prachamon

2018-01-01

This study examined EFL learners' attitudes and motivation towards learning English through content-based instruction (CBI) at a university in Thailand. Seventy-one (71) university students, the majority sophomores, answered a 6-point Likert scale questionnaire on attitudes and motivation together with six open-ended questions regarding learning…

Active Learning and Self-Regulation Enhance Student Teachers’ Professional Competences

OpenAIRE

Virtanen, Päivi; Niemi, Hannele M.; Nevgi, Anne

2017-01-01

The study identifies the relationships between active learning, student teachers’ self-regulated learning and professional competences. Further, the aim is to investigate how active learning promotes professional competences of student teachers with different self-regulation profiles. Responses from 422 student teachers to an electronic survey were analysed using statistical methods. It was found that the use of active learning methods, such as goal-oriented and intentional learning as well a...

Active learning for noisy oracle via density power divergence.

Science.gov (United States)

Sogawa, Yasuhiro; Ueno, Tsuyoshi; Kawahara, Yoshinobu; Washio, Takashi

2013-10-01

The accuracy of active learning is critically influenced by the existence of noisy labels given by a noisy oracle. In this paper, we propose a novel pool-based active learning framework through robust measures based on density power divergence. By minimizing density power divergence, such as β-divergence and γ-divergence, one can estimate the model accurately even under the existence of noisy labels within data. Accordingly, we develop query selecting measures for pool-based active learning using these divergences. In addition, we propose an evaluation scheme for these measures based on asymptotic statistical analyses, which enables us to perform active learning by evaluating an estimation error directly. Experiments with benchmark datasets and real-world image datasets show that our active learning scheme performs better than several baseline methods. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An integrative review of in-class activities that enable active learning in college science classroom settings

Science.gov (United States)

Arthurs, Leilani A.; Kreager, Bailey Zo

2017-10-01

Engaging students in active learning is linked to positive learning outcomes. This study aims to synthesise the peer-reviewed literature about 'active learning' in college science classroom settings. Using the methodology of an integrative literature review, 337 articles archived in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) are examined. Four categories of in-class activities emerge: (i) individual non-polling activities, (ii) in-class polling activities, (iii) whole-class discussion or activities, and (iv) in-class group activities. Examining the collection of identified in-class activities through the lens of a theoretical framework informed by constructivism and social interdependence theory, we synthesise the reviewed literature to propose the active learning strategies (ALSs) model and the instructional decisions to enable active learning (IDEAL) theory. The ALS model characterises in-class activities in terms of the degrees to which they are designed to promote (i) peer interaction and (ii) social interdependence. The IDEAL theory includes the ALS model and provides a framework for conceptualising different levels of the general concept 'active learning' and how these levels connect to instructional decision-making about using in-class activities. The proposed ALS model and IDEAL theory can be utilised to inform instructional decision-making and future research about active learning in college science courses.

ONLINE EDUCATION, ACTIVE LEARNING, AND ANDRAGOGY: An approach for Student Engagement

OpenAIRE

CARUTH, Gail D.

2015-01-01

Online learning opportunities have become essential for today’s colleges and universities. Online technology can support active learning approaches to learning. The purpose of the paper was to investigate why active learning in online classes has a positive effect on student engagement. A review of the literature revealed that research studies have been conducted to investigate the benefits of active learning. There exists extensive evidence to support the notion that active learning enhances...

Service learning in Guatemala: using qualitative content analysis to explore an interdisciplinary learning experience among students in health care professional programs

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fries KS

2013-02-01

Full Text Available Kathleen S Fries,1 Donna M Bowers,2 Margo Gross,3 Lenore Frost31Nursing Program, 2Department of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Science, 3Graduate Program in Occupational Therapy, College of Health Professions, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT, USAIntroduction: Interprofessional collaboration among health care professionals yields improved patient outcomes, yet many students in health care programs have limited exposure to interprofessional collaboration in the classroom and in clinical and service-learning experiences. This practice gap implies that students enter their professions without valuing interprofessional collaboration and the impact it has on promoting positive patient outcomes.Aim: The aim of this study was to describe the interprofessional experiences of students in health care professional programs as they collaborated to provide health care to Guatemalan citizens over a 7-day period.Methods: In light of the identified practice gap and a commitment by college administration to fund interprofessional initiatives, faculty educators from nursing, occupational therapy, and physical therapy conducted a qualitative study to explore a service-learning initiative focused on promoting interprofessional collaboration. Students collaborated in triads (one student from each of the three disciplines to provide supervised health care to underserved Guatemalan men, women, children, and infants across a variety of community and health care settings. Eighteen students participated in a qualitative research project by describing their experience of interprofessional collaboration in a service-learning environment. Twice before arriving in Guatemala, and on three occasions during the trip, participants reflected on their experiences and provided narrative responses to open-ended questions. Qualitative content analysis methodology was used to describe their experiences of interprofessional collaboration.Results: An interprofessional service-learning

Investigating the impact of a LEGO(TM)-based, engineering-oriented curriculum compared to an inquiry-based curriculum on fifth graders' content learning of simple machines

Science.gov (United States)

Marulcu, Ismail

This mixed method study examined the impact of a LEGO-based, engineering-oriented curriculum compared to an inquiry-based curriculum on fifth graders' content learning of simple machines. This study takes a social constructivist theoretical stance that science learning involves learning scientific concepts and their relations to each other. From this perspective, students are active participants, and they construct their conceptual understanding through the guidance of their teacher. With the goal of better understanding the use of engineering education materials in classrooms the National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council in the book "Engineering in K-12 Education" conducted an in-depth review of the potential benefits of including engineering in K--12 schools as (a) improved learning and achievement in science and mathematics, (b) increased awareness of engineering and the work of engineers, (c) understanding of and the ability to engage in engineering design, (d) interest in pursuing engineering as a career, and (e) increased technological literacy (Katehi, Pearson, & Feder, 2009). However, they also noted a lack of reliable data and rigorous research to support these assertions. Data sources included identical written tests and interviews, classroom observations and videos, teacher interviews, and classroom artifacts. To investigate the impact of the design-based simple machines curriculum compared to the scientific inquiry-based simple machines curriculum on student learning outcomes, I compared the control and the experimental groups' scores on the tests and interviews by using ANCOVA. To analyze and characterize the classroom observation videotapes, I used Jordan and Henderson's (1995) method and divide them into episodes. My analyses revealed that the design-based Design a People Mover: Simple Machines unit was, if not better, as successful as the inquiry-based FOSS Levers and Pulleys unit in terms of students' content learning. I also

StreamAR: incremental and active learning with evolving sensory data for activity recognition

OpenAIRE

Abdallah, Z.; Gaber, M.; Srinivasan, B.; Krishnaswamy, S.

2012-01-01

Activity recognition focuses on inferring current user activities by leveraging sensory data available on today’s sensor rich environment. Supervised learning has been applied pervasively for activity recognition. Typical activity recognition techniques process sensory data based on point-by-point approaches. In this paper, we propose a novel cluster-based classification for activity recognition Systems, termed StreamAR. The system incorporates incremental and active learning for mining user ...

Content and Language Integrated Learning in the Netherlands: Teachers' Self-Reported Pedagogical Practices

Science.gov (United States)

van Kampen, Evelyn; Admiraal, Wilfried; Berry, Amanda

2018-01-01

In recent years, a surging uptake of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has permeated the European context. This article presents the outcomes of a study about the self-reported pedagogical practices of CLIL teachers in the Netherlands. To investigate these teachers' pedagogies, a questionnaire was designed, validated and,…

Learning Science Content through Socio-Scientific Issues-Based Instruction: A Multi-Level Assessment Study

Science.gov (United States)

Sadler, Troy D.; Romine, William L.; Topçu, Mustafa Sami

2016-01-01

Science educators have presented numerous conceptual and theoretical arguments in favor of teaching science through the exploration of socio-scientific issues (SSI). However, the empirical knowledge base regarding the extent to which SSI-based instruction supports student learning of science content is limited both in terms of the number of…

Student Buy-In to Active Learning in a College Science Course

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Cavanagh, Andrew J.; Aragón, Oriana R.; Chen, Xinnian; Couch, Brian; Durham, Mary; Bobrownicki, Aiyana; Hanauer, David I.; Graham, Mark J.

2016-01-01

The benefits of introducing active learning in college science courses are well established, yet more needs to be understood about student buy-in to active learning and how that process of buy-in might relate to student outcomes. We test the exposure–persuasion–identification–commitment (EPIC) process model of buy-in, here applied to student (n = 245) engagement in an undergraduate science course featuring active learning. Student buy-in to active learning was positively associated with engagement in self-regulated learning and students’ course performance. The positive associations among buy-in, self-regulated learning, and course performance suggest buy-in as a potentially important factor leading to student engagement and other student outcomes. These findings are particularly salient in course contexts featuring active learning, which encourage active student participation in the learning process. PMID:27909026

Exploring Characteristics of Fine-Grained Behaviors of Learning Mathematics in Tablet-Based E-Learning Activities

Science.gov (United States)

Yeung, Cheuk Yu; Shum, Kam Hong; Hui, Lucas Chi Kwong; Chu, Samuel Kai Wah; Chan, Tsing Yun; Kuo, Yung Nin; Ng, Yee Ling

2017-01-01

Attributes of teaching and learning contexts provide rich information about how students participate in learning activities. By tracking and analyzing snapshots of these attributes captured continuously throughout the duration of the learning activities, teachers can identify individual students who need special attention and apply different…

Development of life skills through physics content

Science.gov (United States)

Pivarči, Tomáš; Raganová, Janka

2017-01-01

The paper deals with students' life skills which the physics teacher should intentionally develop through physics content. An attention is given not only to the physics content and activities connected with it, but also to the development of responsibility, freedom, ability to make decisions, group cooperation, self-evaluation and experience of success. Three activities implemented in the seventh class of the elementary school are described in the paper. Authors describe reasons for class selection, the physics content and the used methods as well as the skills which they decided to purposely develop. They emphasize the importance of activities requiring students' inquiry-based learning and the need to change organization and philosophy of physics teaching at secondary schools. At the end of the paper authors analyze the achievement of objectives, positives as well as negatives of the implemented approaches and propose changes for a future realization.

Active teaching methods, studying responses and learning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christensen, Hans Peter; Vigild, Martin Etchells; Thomsen, Erik Vilain

2010-01-01

Students’ study strategies when exposed to activating teaching methods are measured, analysed and compared to study strategies in more traditional lecture-based teaching. The resulting learning outcome is discussed.......Students’ study strategies when exposed to activating teaching methods are measured, analysed and compared to study strategies in more traditional lecture-based teaching. The resulting learning outcome is discussed....

Language Learning and Its Impact on the Brain: Connecting Language Learning with the Mind through Content-Based Instruction

Science.gov (United States)

Kennedy, Teresa J.

2006-01-01

Cognitive sciences are discovering many things that educators have always intuitively known about language learning. However, the important point is actively using this new information to improve both students learning and current teaching practices. The implications of neuroscience for educational reform regarding second language (L2) learning…

The Pedagogical, Linguistic, and Content Features of Popular English Language Learning Websites in China: A Framework for Analysis and Design

Science.gov (United States)

Kettle, Margaret; Yuan, Yifeng; Luke, Allan; Ewing, Robyn; Shen, Huizhong

2012-01-01

As increasing numbers of Chinese language learners choose to learn English online, there is a need to investigate popular websites and their language learning designs. This paper reports on the first stage of a study that analyzed the pedagogical, linguistic, and content features of 25 Chinese English Language Learning (ELL) websites ranked…

Lifeguard Final Exam—Encouraging the Use of Active Learning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elise N. Griswold

2015-08-01

Full Text Available To anyone familiar with the extensive literature on teaching and learning, there is little question that active learning is more effective than passive learning. Thus, we are not directing this letter to that particular audience. Instead, we are attempting to address the question of the best way to convince instructors who have not tried to incorporate elements of active learning into their courses to make such an attempt. There are numerous examples where it becomes immediately clear that active learning is preferable to a lecture/note-taking approach. Here, we provide a question for group discussion that can be used as one such illustration.

The effect of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) on English performance and self-confidence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jansma, Marrit; Minnaert, Alexander; Klinkenberg, Edwin

2015-01-01

In this study, it was investigated whether third language teaching through Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) was more effective than teaching a third language as an isolated subject. By means of a cross-sectional study design, English vocabulary, speaking performance and

Diverse Expected Gradient Active Learning for Relative Attributes.

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You, Xinge; Wang, Ruxin; Tao, Dacheng

2014-06-02

The use of relative attributes for semantic understanding of images and videos is a promising way to improve communication between humans and machines. However, it is extremely labor- and time-consuming to define multiple attributes for each instance in large amount of data. One option is to incorporate active learning, so that the informative samples can be actively discovered and then labeled. However, most existing active-learning methods select samples one at a time (serial mode), and may therefore lose efficiency when learning multiple attributes. In this paper, we propose a batch-mode active-learning method, called Diverse Expected Gradient Active Learning (DEGAL). This method integrates an informativeness analysis and a diversity analysis to form a diverse batch of queries. Specifically, the informativeness analysis employs the expected pairwise gradient length as a measure of informativeness, while the diversity analysis forces a constraint on the proposed diverse gradient angle. Since simultaneous optimization of these two parts is intractable, we utilize a two-step procedure to obtain the diverse batch of queries. A heuristic method is also introduced to suppress imbalanced multi-class distributions. Empirical evaluations of three different databases demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.

Learning shapes spontaneous activity itinerating over memorized states.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomoki Kurikawa

Full Text Available Learning is a process that helps create neural dynamical systems so that an appropriate output pattern is generated for a given input. Often, such a memory is considered to be included in one of the attractors in neural dynamical systems, depending on the initial neural state specified by an input. Neither neural activities observed in the absence of inputs nor changes caused in the neural activity when an input is provided were studied extensively in the past. However, recent experimental studies have reported existence of structured spontaneous neural activity and its changes when an input is provided. With this background, we propose that memory recall occurs when the spontaneous neural activity changes to an appropriate output activity upon the application of an input, and this phenomenon is known as bifurcation in the dynamical systems theory. We introduce a reinforcement-learning-based layered neural network model with two synaptic time scales; in this network, I/O relations are successively memorized when the difference between the time scales is appropriate. After the learning process is complete, the neural dynamics are shaped so that it changes appropriately with each input. As the number of memorized patterns is increased, the generated spontaneous neural activity after learning shows itineration over the previously learned output patterns. This theoretical finding also shows remarkable agreement with recent experimental reports, where spontaneous neural activity in the visual cortex without stimuli itinerate over evoked patterns by previously applied signals. Our results suggest that itinerant spontaneous activity can be a natural outcome of successive learning of several patterns, and it facilitates bifurcation of the network when an input is provided.

Active-learning strategies: the use of a game to reinforce learning in nursing education. A case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Boctor, Lisa

2013-03-01

The majority of nursing students are kinesthetic learners, preferring a hands-on, active approach to education. Research shows that active-learning strategies can increase student learning and satisfaction. This study looks at the use of one active-learning strategy, a Jeopardy-style game, 'Nursopardy', to reinforce Fundamentals of Nursing material, aiding in students' preparation for a standardized final exam. The game was created keeping students varied learning styles and the NCLEX blueprint in mind. The blueprint was used to create 5 categories, with 26 total questions. Student survey results, using a five-point Likert scale showed that they did find this learning method enjoyable and beneficial to learning. More research is recommended regarding learning outcomes, when using active-learning strategies, such as games. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cooperative activity and its potential for learning in tertiary education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cirila Peklaj

2007-01-01

Full Text Available A learning situation can be structured in different ways, as an individual, competitive, or cooperative activity. Each of these structures can be used for different purposes and can lead to different learning outcomes. This paper focuses on cooperative activity and its potential for learning in tertiary education. After defining cooperative activity (or, in a broader sense, learning in interaction and introducing the CAMS theoretical framework to analyse cooperative activity, the main discussion focuses on the theoretical reasons for the usefulness of group learning and on the research of effects of cooperative learning on cognitive (metacognitive, affective-motivational and social processes in university students. The key elements that should be established for successful cooperation are also discussed. At the end, a new direction in using cooperative activity in learning—computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL, which emerged with rapid technology development in the last two decades—is presented and discussed.

Telling Active Learning Pedagogies Apart: From Theory to Practice

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Cattaneo, Kelsey Hood

2017-01-01

Designing learning environments to incorporate active learning pedagogies is difficult as definitions are often contested and intertwined. This article seeks to determine whether classification of active learning pedagogies (i.e., project-based, problem-based, inquiry-based, case-based, and discovery-based), through theoretical and practical…

Active-learning implementation in an advanced elective course on infectious diseases.

Science.gov (United States)

Hidayat, Levita; Patel, Shreya; Veltri, Keith

2012-06-18

To describe the development, implementation, and assessment of an advanced elective course on infectious diseases using active-learning strategies. Pedagogy for active learning was incorporated by means of mini-lecture, journal club, and debate with follow-up discussion. Forty-eight students were enrolled in this 4-week elective course, in which 30% of course time was allocated for active-learning exercises. All activities were fundamentally designed as a stepwise approach in complementing each active-learning exercise. Achievement of the course learning objectives was assessed using a 5-point Likert scale survey instrument. Students' awareness of the significance of antimicrobial resistance was improved (p ≤ 0.05). Students' ability to critically evaluate the infectious-disease literature and its application in informed clinical judgments was also enhanced through these active-learning exercises (p ≤ 0.05). Students agreed that active learning should be part of the pharmacy curriculum and that active-learning exercises improved their critical-thinking, literature-evaluation, and self-learning skills. An elective course using active-learning strategies allowed students to combine information gained from the evaluation of infectious-disease literature, critical thinking, and informed clinical judgment. This blended approach ultimately resulted in an increased knowledge and awareness of infectious diseases.

Student Activity and Learning Outcomes in a Virtual Learning Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Romanov, Kalle; Nevgi, Anne

2008-01-01

The aim of the study was to explore the relationship between degree of participation and learning outcomes in an e-learning course on medical informatics. Overall activity in using course materials and degree of participation in the discussion forums of an online course were studied among 39 medical students. Students were able to utilise the…

Students using mobile phones in the classroom: Can the phones increase content learning

Science.gov (United States)

Rinehart, David Lee

A study was conducted at a high-performing school in Southern California to explore the effects on learning content from students using their own smart phones in and out of the classroom. The study used a Switching Replications design format which allowed two independent analyses of posttest scores between a group using e-flash cards on smart phones and a group using paper flash cards. Quantitative data was collected via two tailed, t-tests and qualitative data was collected through observations and interviews. Results suggest that knowledge level learning may be increased with mobile phone use, but no effect on comprehension level learning was found. Students found the phones to be convenient in accessing flash cards anytime and anywhere. Enthusiasm for using the phones in class while initially high waned over the 1 month study duration. Students perceived the phones to not be a significant source of distraction outside of class.

Active inference and learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Friston, Karl; FitzGerald, Thomas; Rigoli, Francesco; Schwartenbeck, Philipp; O Doherty, John; Pezzulo, Giovanni

2016-09-01

This paper offers an active inference account of choice behaviour and learning. It focuses on the distinction between goal-directed and habitual behaviour and how they contextualise each other. We show that habits emerge naturally (and autodidactically) from sequential policy optimisation when agents are equipped with state-action policies. In active inference, behaviour has explorative (epistemic) and exploitative (pragmatic) aspects that are sensitive to ambiguity and risk respectively, where epistemic (ambiguity-resolving) behaviour enables pragmatic (reward-seeking) behaviour and the subsequent emergence of habits. Although goal-directed and habitual policies are usually associated with model-based and model-free schemes, we find the more important distinction is between belief-free and belief-based schemes. The underlying (variational) belief updating provides a comprehensive (if metaphorical) process theory for several phenomena, including the transfer of dopamine responses, reversal learning, habit formation and devaluation. Finally, we show that active inference reduces to a classical (Bellman) scheme, in the absence of ambiguity. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Development of instructional manual encouraging student active learning for high school teaching on fluid mechanics through Torricelli's tank experiment

Science.gov (United States)

Apiwan, Suttinee; Puttharugsa, Chokchai; Khemmani, Supitch

2018-01-01

The purposes of this research were to help students to perform Physics laboratory by themselves and to provide guidelines for high school teacher to develop active learning on fluid mechanics by using Torricelli's tank experiment. The research was conducted as follows: 1) constructed an appropriate Torricelli's tank experiment for high school teaching and investigated the condition for maximum water falling distance. As a consequence, it was found that the distance of the falling water measured from the experiment was shorter than that obtained from the theory of ideal fluid because of the energy loss during a flow, 2) developed instructional manual for high school teaching that encourages active learning by using problem based learning (PBL) approach, which is consistent with the trend of teaching and learning in 21st century. The content validity of our instructional manual using Index of Item-objective Congruence (IOC) as evaluated by three experts was over 0.67. The manual developed was therefore qualified for classroom practice.

It doesn't matter what you say: FMRI correlates of voice learning and recognition independent of speech content.

Science.gov (United States)

Zäske, Romi; Awwad Shiekh Hasan, Bashar; Belin, Pascal

2017-09-01

Listeners can recognize newly learned voices from previously unheard utterances, suggesting the acquisition of high-level speech-invariant voice representations during learning. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we investigated the anatomical basis underlying the acquisition of voice representations for unfamiliar speakers independent of speech, and their subsequent recognition among novel voices. Specifically, listeners studied voices of unfamiliar speakers uttering short sentences and subsequently classified studied and novel voices as "old" or "new" in a recognition test. To investigate "pure" voice learning, i.e., independent of sentence meaning, we presented German sentence stimuli to non-German speaking listeners. To disentangle stimulus-invariant and stimulus-dependent learning, during the test phase we contrasted a "same sentence" condition in which listeners heard speakers repeating the sentences from the preceding study phase, with a "different sentence" condition. Voice recognition performance was above chance in both conditions although, as expected, performance was higher for same than for different sentences. During study phases activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) was related to subsequent voice recognition performance and same versus different sentence condition, suggesting an involvement of the left IFG in the interactive processing of speaker and speech information during learning. Importantly, at test reduced activation for voices correctly classified as "old" compared to "new" emerged in a network of brain areas including temporal voice areas (TVAs) of the right posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG), as well as the right inferior/middle frontal gyrus (IFG/MFG), the right medial frontal gyrus, and the left caudate. This effect of voice novelty did not interact with sentence condition, suggesting a role of temporal voice-selective areas and extra-temporal areas in the explicit recognition of learned voice identity

Improving active Mealy machine learning for protocol conformance testing

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Aarts, F.; Kuppens, H.; Tretmans, J.; Vaandrager, F.; Verwer, S.

2014-01-01

Using a well-known industrial case study from the verification literature, the bounded retransmission protocol, we show how active learning can be used to establish the correctness of protocol implementation I relative to a given reference implementation R. Using active learning, we learn a model M

Patient-reported physical activity questionnaires: A systematic review of content and format

Science.gov (United States)

2012-01-01

Background Many patients with chronic illness are limited in their physical activities. This systematic review evaluates the content and format of patient-reported outcome (PRO) questionnaires that measure physical activity in elderly and chronically ill populations. Methods Questionnaires were identified by a systematic literature search of electronic databases (Medline, Embase, PsychINFO & CINAHL), hand searches (reference sections and PROQOLID database) and expert input. A qualitative analysis was conducted to assess the content and format of the questionnaires and a Venn diagram was produced to illustrate this. Each stage of the review process was conducted by at least two independent reviewers. Results 104 questionnaires fulfilled our criteria. From these, 182 physical activity domains and 1965 items were extracted. Initial qualitative analysis of the domains found 11 categories. Further synthesis of the domains found 4 broad categories: 'physical activity related to general activities and mobility', 'physical activity related to activities of daily living', 'physical activity related to work, social or leisure time activities', and '(disease-specific) symptoms related to physical activity'. The Venn diagram showed that no questionnaires covered all 4 categories and that the '(disease-specific) symptoms related to physical activity' category was often not combined with the other categories. Conclusions A large number of questionnaires with a broad range of physical activity content were identified. Although the content could be broadly organised, there was no consensus on the content and format of physical activity PRO questionnaires in elderly and chronically ill populations. Nevertheless, this systematic review will help investigators to select a physical activity PRO questionnaire that best serves their research question and context. PMID:22414164

Moments of movement: active learning and practice development.

Science.gov (United States)

Dewing, Jan

2010-01-01

As our understanding of practice development becomes more sophisticated, we enhance our understanding of how the facilitation of learning in and from practice, can be more effectively achieved. This paper outlines an approach for enabling and maximizing learning within practice development known as 'Active Learning'. It considers how, given establishing a learning culture is a prerequisite for the sustainability of PD within organisations, practice developers can do more to maximize learning for practitioners and other stakeholders. Active Learning requires that more attention be given by organisations committed to PD, at a corporate and strategic level for how learning strategies are developed in the workplace. Specifically, a move away from a heavy reliance on training may be required. Practice development facilitators also need to review: how they organise and offer learning, so that learning strategies are consistent with the vision, aims and processes of PD; have skills in the planning, delivery and evaluation of learning as part of their role and influence others who provide more traditional methods of training and education.

DPT Student Perceptions of the Physical Therapist Assistant's Role: Effect of Collaborative Case-Based Learning Compared to Traditional Content Delivery and Clinical Experience.

Science.gov (United States)

Colgrove, Yvonne M; VanHoose, Lisa D

2017-01-01

Doctor of physical therapy (DPT) student learning about role delineation of physical therapist assistants (PTAs) is essential to ethical and legal practice. Survey assessment of three DPT student cohorts compared collaborative interprofessional case-based learning with PTA students to traditional curriculum delivery strategies. Control cohorts were assessed one time. The intervention group was assessed pre-intervention, immediately post-intervention, and after completing a full-time clinical experience. The case-based learning covered 46% of survey content, allowing for the assessment of content-specific material and potential learning through collaboration. Following the educational intervention, the intervention group improved significantly in areas inside and outside the case-based study content, outscoring both control groups on 25-34% of the survey items. Following the clinical experience, the intervention group declined answer accuracy for patient evaluation and treatment implementation, suggesting unlearning. Improvement in the administrative section was observed after the clinical experience. Perceptions of the tasks within the PTA role were diminished while tasks outside the scope of practice appeared clarified following the clinical experience. While case-based collaborative intraprofessional learning proves effective in student learning about the PTA role, changes following the clinical experience raise questions about the influence of the clinical environment on learning and the practical application of recently learned knowledge.

It takes biking to learn: Physical activity improves learning a second language.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Fengqin; Sulpizio, Simone; Kornpetpanee, Suchada; Job, Remo

2017-01-01

Recent studies have shown that concurrent physical activity enhances learning a completely unfamiliar L2 vocabulary as compared to learning it in a static condition. In this paper we report a study whose aim is twofold: to test for possible positive effects of physical activity when L2 learning has already reached some level of proficiency, and to test whether the assumed better performance when engaged in physical activity is limited to the linguistic level probed at training (i.e. L2 vocabulary tested by means of a Word-Picture Verification task), or whether it extends also to the sentence level (which was tested by means of a Sentence Semantic Judgment Task). The results show that Chinese speakers with basic knowledge of English benefited from physical activity while learning a set of new words. Furthermore, their better performance emerged also at the sentential level, as shown by their performance in a Semantic Judgment task. Finally, an interesting temporal asymmetry between the lexical and the sentential level emerges, with the difference between the experimental and control group emerging from the 1st testing session at the lexical level but after several weeks at the sentential level.

Advertising Content in Physical Activity Print Materials.

Science.gov (United States)

Cardinal, Bradley J.

2002-01-01

Evaluated the advertising content contained in physical activity print materials. Analysis of print materials obtained from 80 sources (e.g., physicians' offices and fitness events) indicated that most materials contained some form of advertising. Materials coming from commercial product vendors generally contained more advertising than materials…

Medical Student Perspectives of Active Learning: A Focus Group Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Walling, Anne; Istas, Kathryn; Bonaminio, Giulia A; Paolo, Anthony M; Fontes, Joseph D; Davis, Nancy; Berardo, Benito A

2017-01-01

Phenomenon: Medical student perspectives were sought about active learning, including concerns, challenges, perceived advantages and disadvantages, and appropriate role in the educational process. Focus groups were conducted with students from all years and campuses of a large U.S. state medical school. Students had considerable experience with active learning prior to medical school and conveyed accurate understanding of the concept and its major strategies. They appreciated the potential of active learning to deepen and broaden learning and its value for long-term professional development but had significant concerns about the efficiency of the process, the clarity of expectations provided, and the importance of receiving preparatory materials. Most significantly, active learning experiences were perceived as disconnected from grading and even as impeding preparation for school and national examinations. Insights: Medical students understand the concepts of active learning and have considerable experience in several formats prior to medical school. They are generally supportive of active learning concepts but frustrated by perceived inefficiencies and lack of contribution to the urgencies of achieving optimal grades and passing United States Medical Licensing Examinations, especially Step 1.

77 FR 75198 - Standard Format and Content for Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report

Science.gov (United States)

2012-12-19

... NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [NRC-2012-0299] Standard Format and Content for Post-Shutdown... regulatory guide (DG), DG-1272, ``Standard Format and Content for Post-shutdown Decommissioning Activities... Content for Post-shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report,'' which was issued in July 2000. DG-1271...

Teacher feedback during active learning: current practices in primary schools.

Science.gov (United States)

van den Bergh, Linda; Ros, Anje; Beijaard, Douwe

2013-06-01

Feedback is one of the most powerful tools, which teachers can use to enhance student learning. It appears difficult for teachers to give qualitatively good feedback, especially during active learning. In this context, teachers should provide facilitative feedback that is focused on the development of meta-cognition and social learning. The purpose of the present study is to contribute to the existing knowledge about feedback and to give directions to improve teacher feedback in the context of active learning. The participants comprised 32 teachers who practiced active learning in the domain of environmental studies in the sixth, seventh, or eighth grade of 13 Dutch primary schools. A total of 1,465 teacher-student interactions were examined. Video observations were made of active learning lessons in the domain of environmental studies. A category system was developed based on the literature and empirical data. Teacher-student interactions were assessed using this system. Results. About half of the teacher-student interactions contained feedback. This feedback was usually focused on the tasks that were being performed by the students and on the ways in which these tasks were processed. Only 5% of the feedback was explicitly related to a learning goal. In their feedback, the teachers were directing (rather than facilitating) the learning processes. During active learning, feedback on meta-cognition and social learning is important. Feedback should be explicitly related to learning goals. In practice, these kinds of feedback appear to be scarce. Therefore, giving feedback during active learning seems to be an important topic for teachers' professional development. © 2012 The British Psychological Society.