Cognitive emotion regulation as a mediator between posttraumatic stress symptoms and hypomanic personality within a non-clinical population

Background: There is a high prevalence of traumatic life events within individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder. However, currently there is limited theoretical understanding of this relationship. Aims: To explore whether non-clinical symptoms of posttraumatic stress have a direct effect on the non-clinical symptoms of bipolar disorder, or whether this relationship is mediated by cognitive emotion regulation strategies. Method: A cross-sectional design within non-clinical participants completing an online survey including the Impact of Events Scale, Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and the Hypomanic Personality Scale. Results: Posttraumatic stress symptoms were associated with hypomanic personality. Intrusive memories contributed a small but significant proportion of the variance between these two measures. Rumination of negative emotions mediated the relationship between posttraumatic stress and hypomanic personality. Conclusions: The relationship between traumatic events and an increased prevalence of bipolar disorder remains poorly understood. Further research should explore rumination as a potential target for treatment within those suffering from both posttraumatic stress and bipolar disorder.

Using mobile devices to enhance undergraduate field research

Mobile devices can enhance undergraduate research projects and students’ research capabilities. The use of mobile devices such as tablet computers will not automatically make undergraduates better researchers, but their use should make investigations, writing, and publishing more effective and may even save students time. We have explored some of the possibilities of using “tablets” and “smartphones” to aid the research and inquiry process in geography and bioscience fieldwork. We provide two case studies as illustration of how students working in small research groups use mobile devices to gather and analyze primary data in field-based inquiry. Since April 2010, Apple’s iPad has changed the way people behave in the digital world and how they access their music, watch videos, or read their email much as the entrepreneurs Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive intended. Now with “apps” and “the cloud” and the ubiquitous references to them appearing in the press and on TV, academics’ use of tablets is also having an impact on education and research. In our discussion we will refer to use of smartphones such as the iPhone, iPod, and Android devices under the term “tablet”. Android and Microsoft devices may not offer the same facilities as the iPad/iphone, but many app producers now provide versions for several operating systems. Smartphones are becoming more affordable and ubiquitous (Melhuish and Falloon 2010), but a recent study of undergraduate students (Woodcock et al. 2012, 1) found that many students who own smartphones are “largely unaware of their potential to support learning”. Importantly, however, students were found to be “interested in and open to the potential as they become familiar with the possibilities” (Woodcock et al. 2012). Smartphones and iPads could be better utilized than laptops when conducting research in the field because of their portability (Welsh and France 2012). It is imperative for faculty to provide their students with opportunities to discover and employ the potential uses of mobile devices in their learning. However, it is not only the convenience of the iPad or tablet devices or smartphones we wish to promote, but also a way of thinking and behaving digitally. We essentially suggest that making a tablet the center of research increases the connections between related research activities.

A psychometric analysis of reliability and validity of the index of learning styles (ILS)

Prior literature showed that Felder and Silverman learning styles model (FSLSM) was widely adopted to cater to individual styles of learners whether in traditional or Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). In order to infer this model, the Index of Learning Styles (ILS) instrument was proposed. This research aims to analyse the soundness of this instrument in an Arabic sample. Data were integrated from different courses and years. A total of 259 engineering students participated voluntarily in the study. The reliability was analysed by applying internal construct reliability, inter-scale correlation, and total item correlation. The construct validity was also considered by running factor analysis. The overall results indicated that the reliability and validity of perception and input dimensions were moderately supported, whereas processing and understanding dimensions showed low internal-construct consistency and their items were weakly loaded in the associated constructs. Generally, the instrument needs further effort to improve its soundness. However, considering the consistency of the produced results of engineering students irrespective of cross-cultural differences, it can be adopted to diagnose learning styles.

Interoperability for eLearning Service Management and Provision

Learning Objects offer flexibility and adaptability for users to request personalised information for learning. There are standards to guide the development of learning objects. However, individual developers may customise these standards for serving different purposes when defining, describing, managing and providing learning objects, which are normally stored in heterogeneous repositories. Barriers to interoperability hinder sharing of learning services and subsequently affect quality of instructional design as learners expect to be able to receive their personalised learning content. All these impose difficulties to the users in getting the right information from the right sources. This paper investigates the interoperability issues in eLearning services management and provision and presents an approach to resolve interoperability at three levels.

Implicit learning: Below the subjective threshold?

In this review, we consider three possible criteria by which knowledge might be regarded as implicit or inaccessible: It might be implicit only in the sense that it is difficult to articulate freely, or it might be implicit according to either an objective threshold or a subjective threshold. We evaluate evidence for these criteria in relation to artificial grammar learning, the control of complex systems, and sequence learning, respectively. We argue that the convincing evidence is not yet in, but construing the implicit nature of implicit learning in terms of a subjective threshold is most likely to prove fruitful for future research. Furthermore, the subjective threshold criterion may demarcate qualitatively different types of knowledge. We argue that (1) implicit, rather than explicit, knowledge is often relatively inflexible in transfer to different domains, (2) implicit, rather than explicit, learning occurs when attention is focused on specific items and not underlying rules, and (3) implicit learning and the resulting knowledge are often relatively robust.

Learning to talk to users in participatory design situations

In participatory design situations the competence of the facilitator will influence the opportunities for a user group to become engaged in the process of design. Based on the observation of the conversations from a series of design workshops, the performance of design facilitation expertise by an expert architect is compared with a less experienced architectural graduate. The skills that are the focus of this research are the conversational competences deployed by architects to engage users in the design of an architectural project. The difference between the conversational behaviour of a project architect and a less experienced graduate was observed to illustrate with examples the effect the performance of facilitation had on the opportunity for user engagement in design, and of learning the skill of facilitation that occurred in these situations.

Giving up on modern foreign languages? Students' perceptions of learning French

This article reports on the findings of an investigation into the attitudes of English students aged 16 to 19 years towards French and how they view the reasons behind their level of achievement. Those students who attributed success to effort, high ability, and effective learning strategies had higher levels of achievement, and students intending to continue French after age 16 were more likely than noncontinuers to attribute success to these factors. Low ability and task difficulty were the main reasons cited for lack of achievement in French, whereas the possible role of learning strategies tended to be overlooked by students. It is argued that learners' self-concept and motivation might be enhanced through approaches that encourage learners to explore the causal links between the strategies they employ and their academic performance, thereby changing the attributions they make for success or failure.

Effective e-learning integration with traditional learning in a blended learning environment

E-Learning is an emerging tool that uses advanced technology to provide training and development in higher education and within industry. Its rapid growth has been facilitated by the Internet and the massive opportunities in global education. The aim of this study is to consider how effective and efficient e-learning is when integrated with traditional learning in a blended learning environment. The study will provide a comparison between purist ELearning and Blended learning environment. The paper will also provide directions for the blended learning environment which can be used by all the three main stakeholder student, tutors and institution to make strategic decision about the learning and teaching initiatives. The paper concludes that blended learning approaches offer the most flexible and scalable route to E-Learning.

Factors mediating the routinisation of e-learning within a traditional university education environment

Technology-enhanced or Computer Aided Learning (e-learning) can be institutionally integrated and supported by learning management systems or Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) to offer efficiency gains, effectiveness and scalability of the e-leaning paradigm. However this can only be achieved through integration of pedagogically intelligent approaches and lesson preparation tools environment and VLE that is well accepted by both the students and teachers. This paper critically explores some of the issues relevant to scalable routinisation of e-learning at the tertiary level, typically first year university undergraduates, with the teaching of Relational Data Analysis (RDA), as supported by multimedia authoring, as a case study. The paper concludes that blended learning approaches which balance the deployment of e-learning with other modalities of learning delivery such as instructor–mediated group learning etc offer the most flexible and scalable route to e-learning but that this requires the graceful integration of platforms for multimedia production, distribution and delivery through advanced interactive spaces that provoke learner engagement and promote learning autonomy and group learning facilitated by a cooperative-creative learning environment that remains open to personal exploration of constructivist-constructionist pathways to learning.

A parallel convolutional coder including embedded puncturing with application to consumer devices

As consumers demand more functionality) from their electronic devices and manufacturers supply the demand then electrical power and clock requirements tend to increase, however reassessing system architecture can fortunately lead to suitable counter reductions. To maintain low clock rates and therefore reduce electrical power, this paper presents a parallel convolutional coder for the transmit side in many wireless consumer devices. The coder accepts a parallel data input and directly computes punctured convolutional codes without the need for a separate puncturing operation while the coded bits are available at the output of the coder in a parallel fashion. Also as the computation is in parallel then the coder can be clocked at 7 times slower than the conventional shift-register based convolutional coder (using DVB 7/8 rate). The presented coder is directly relevant to the design of modern low-power consumer devices

The development and impact of the Livestock Guru: meeting the knowledge needs of poor livestock keepers in Tamil Nadu, India

Livestock keepers comprise 2/3rds of the 2.8 billion households living on less than two dollars per day. However, as a group they tend to be marginalised and excluded from formal service provision, particularly in relation to animal health. Therefore, the following paper describes the development of the Livestock Guru, a multi-media learning programme created to meet the knowledge needs of poor livestock keepers in Tamil Nadu, India. The findings from the study illustrate the importance of both appropriate visuals, voice-overs but also the need for addressing issues in the environment in which learning will take place.

The longitudinal development of emotion regulation capacities in children at risk for externalizing disorders

The development of emotional regulation capacities in children at high versus low risk for externalizing disorder was examined in a longitudinal study investigating: a) whether disturbances in emotion regulation precede and predict the emergence of externalizing symptoms; and b) whether sensitive maternal behavior is a significant influence on the development of child emotion regulation. Families experiencing high (n=58) and low (n=63) levels of psychosocial adversity were recruited to the study during pregnancy. Direct observational assessments of child emotion regulation capacities and maternal sensitivity were completed in early infancy, at 12 and 18-months, and at 5-years. Key findings were as follows. First, high risk children showed poorer emotion regulation capacities than their low risk counterparts at every stage of assessment. Second, from 12-months onwards, emotion regulation capacities showed a degree of stability, and were associated with behavioral problems, both concurrently and prospectively. Third, maternal sensitivity was related to child emotion regulation capacities throughout development, with poorer emotion regulation in the high risk group being associated with lower maternal sensitivity. The results are consistent with a causal role for problems in the regulation of negative emotions in the etiology of externalizing psychopathology, and highlight insensitive parenting as a potentially key developmental influence.

Improving insight and non-insight problem solving with brief interventions

Developing brief training interventions that benefit different forms of problem solving is challenging. In earlier research, Chrysikou (2006) showed that engaging in a task requiring generation of alternative uses of common objects improved subsequent insight problem solving. These benefits were attributed to a form of implicit transfer of processing involving enhanced construction of impromptu, on-the-spot or ‘ad hoc’ goal-directed categorizations of the problem elements. Following this, it is predicted that the alternative uses exercise should benefit abilities that govern goal-directed behaviour, such as fluid intelligence and executive functions. Similarly, an indirect intervention – self-affirmation (SA) – that has been shown to enhance cognitive and executive performance after self-regulation challenge and when under stereotype threat, may also increase adaptive goal-directed thinking and likewise should bolster problem-solving performance. In Experiment 1, brief single-session interventions, involving either alternative uses generation or SA, significantly enhanced both subsequent insight and visual–spatial fluid reasoning problem solving. In Experiment 2, we replicated the finding of benefits of both alternative uses generation and SA on subsequent insight problem-solving performance, and demonstrated that the underlying mechanism likely involves improved executive functioning. Even brief cognitive– and social–psychological interventions may substantially bolster different types of problem solving and may exert largely similar facilitatory effects on goal-directed behaviours.

Guiding e-learning: introducing online informal learning to a global voluntary organisation

The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) is the umbrella organisation for Member Organisations from 145 countries around the world, with a total membership of ten million. While Member Organisations offer training and development within their own countries, WAGGGS offers international opportunities. This project seeks to explore how technology can be used to offer similar opportunities to those provided by the face-to-face courses to a much wider audience, while retaining the community and interactive learning aspects of the existing programmes.

Problem-based learning approaches in meteorology

Problem-Based Learning, despite recent controversies about its effectiveness, is used extensively as a teaching method throughout higher education. In meteorology, there has been little attempt to incorporate Problem-Based Learning techniques into the curriculum. Motivated by a desire to enhance the reflective engagement of students within a current field course module, this project describes the implementation of two test Problem-Based Learning activities and testing and improvement using several different and complementary means of evaluation. By the end of a 2-year program of design, implementation, testing, and reflection and re-evaluation, two robust, engaging activities have been developed that provide an enhanced and diverse learning environment in the field course. The results suggest that Problem-Based Learning techniques would be a useful addition to the meteorology curriculum and suggestions for courses and activities that may benefit from this approach are included in the conclusions.