Learning analytics in practice: setting up a laboratory for action research at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Since its inception in 1994 as a purely online university, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya(UOC) has been able to position itself among the main universities of the Catalan and Spanish university systems. Most of the students at the UOC (currently more than 60,000) are adults who have a profile that could hardly fit into the traditional university system, thus finding in the UOC an opportunity to start or continue their higher education grades, in a very innovative environment. The intensive use of ICT for both theteaching/learning processes and management allowsresearchers and practitioners to obtain data aboutwhat takes place in the UOC Virtual Campus, which is continuously being improved according to suchfindings.

Gridifying IBM's Generic Log Adapter to Speed-Up the Processing of Log Data

Peer-reviewed

Technology Catching-up and the Role of Institutions

The aim of the paper is to investigate the role played by differences in Institutional Quality on the process of technology catch-up across countries. Empirical evidence shows how countries endowed with better institutions are those experiencing higher TFP growth rates, faster rates of technology adoption and hence being those more rapidly closing the gap with the frontier. Conversely, countries lacking some minimum institutional level are shown to diverge in the long run and not to catch-up. Some institutions, however, play an ambiguous role in the creation and adoption of technology. We find that the tightening of Intellectual Property Rights reduces the ability of followers to freely imitate technology slowing down their catchup rate. This negative effect is stronger the farther the countriesare found from the frontier. Other institutional categories such as openness to trade, instead, benefit both leaders and followers.

Scale-up model obtained from the rheological analysis of highly concentrated emulsions prepared at three scales

We examine the scale invariants in the preparation of highly concentrated w/o emulsions at different scales and in varying conditions. The emulsions are characterized using rheological parameters, owing to their highly elastic behavior. We first construct and validate empirical models to describe the rheological properties. These models yield a reasonable prediction of experimental data. We then build an empirical scale-up model, to predict the preparation and composition conditions that have to be kept constant at each scale to prepare the same emulsion. For this purpose, three preparation scales with geometric similarity are used. The parameter N¿D^α, as a function of the stirring rate N, the scale (D, impeller diameter) and the exponent α (calculated empirically from the regression of all the experiments in the three scales), is defined as the scale invariant that needs to be optimized, once the dispersed phase of the emulsion, the surfactant concentration, and the dispersed phase addition time are set. As far as we know, no other study has obtained a scale invariant factor N¿Dα for the preparation of highly concentrated emulsions prepared at three different scales, which covers all three scales, different addition times and surfactant concentrations. The power law exponent obtained seems to indicate that the scale-up criterion for this system is the power input per unit volume (P/V).

Multisystem Developmental Disorder in Children from 2 to 6 Years Old : A Three Years Follow-Up Study

This research studied children who had been diagnosed with Multisystem Developmental Disorder (MSDD) (NC, 2002) under the Diagnostic Classifications of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood (DC: 0 - 3). They all showed, to a varying degree, difficulties in relating to others, play, affective interaction and severe delay in developing communication skills. Some studies have observed continuity in the diagnosis of autism during the first years of life. The objective of this study is to analyse the development of infants with MSDD whose diagnosis of autism was not confirmed. We also attempted to verify any possible psychomotor developmental differences based on, or related to, the severity and typology (B and C) of the MSDD. To enable us to do this we carried out a 3-year follow-up during which we assessed the infants (n = 15) and their parents. They are 2 - 4 years old. Results showed that type B children did present a greater impairment of psychomotor development in assessment tests. However, we did not observe any correlation between the degree of severity of the initial symptoms and later diagnoses. Conclusion: although our sample is small, we can conclude that there isn’t a clear evolution in the diagnosis, but we have found significant differences in the symptomatology between the type B and C

Language recovery and evidence of residual deficits after nonthalamic subcortical stroke: A 1 year follow-up study

A variety of language disturbances including aphasia have been described after subcortical stroke but less is known about the factors that influence the long-term recovery of stroke-induced language dysfunction. We prospectively examined the role of the affected hemisphere and the lesion site in the occurrence and recovery of language deficits in nonthalamic subcortical stroke. Forty patients with unilateral basal gangliastroke underwent language assessment within 1 week, 3 months and 1 year after stroke. Disturbances in at least one language domain were observed in 35 patients during the first week post stroke including aphasia diagnosed in 11 patients. Importantly, the appearance of deficits after stroke onset and the improvement of language function were not determined by the site of subcortical lesion, but instead were critically influenced by the affected hemisphere. In fact, the language impairments following left and right basal ganglia stroke mirrored the language dysfunction observed after cortical lesions in the same hemisphere. A significant overall language improvement was observed at 3 months after stroke, although residual deficits in languageexecutive function were the most commonly observed impairment at 1 year follow-up. Although a substantial improvement of language function can be expected after nonthalamic subcortical stroke, our findings suggest that language recovery may not be fully achieved at 1 year post

Una visión actualizada de la didáctica de la matemática en educación infantil = An up-to-date vision of pre-school mathematics teaching

This article aims to investigate pre-school mathematics teaching from an uptodate perspective. To pursue this contemporary vision we focus on four key questions: what kind of maths is being worked on, who is doing it, how it is being done, and why it is being done