e-learning in project management using simulation models: a case study based on the replication of an experiment

Current e-learning systems are increasing their importance in higher education. However, the state of the art of e-learning applications, besides the state of the practice, does not achieve the level of interactivity that current learning theories advocate. In this paper, the possibility of enhancing e-learning systems to achieve deep learning has been studied by replicating an experiment in which students had to learn basic software engineering principles. One group learned these principles using a static approach, while the other group learned the same principles using a system-dynamics-based approach, which provided interactivity and feedback. The results show that, quantitatively, the latter group achieved a better understanding of the principles; furthermore, qualitatively, they enjoyed the learning experience

‘Did Ronald McDonald also tend to scare you as a child?’: working to emplace consumption, commodities, and citizen-students in a large classroom setting

So-called ‘radical’ and ‘critical’ pedagogy seems to be everywhere these days on the landscapes of geographical teaching praxis and theory. Part of the remit of radical/critical pedagogy involves a de-centring of the traditional ‘banking’ method of pedagogical praxis. Yet, how do we challenge this ‘banking’ model of knowledge transmission in both a large-class setting and around the topic of commodity geographies where the banking model of information transfer still holds sway? This paper presents a theoretically and pedagogically driven argument, as well as a series of practical teaching ‘techniques’ and tools—mind-mapping and group work—designed to promote ‘deep learning’ and a progressive political potential in a first-year large-scale geography course centred around lectures on the Geographies of Consumption and Material Culture. Here students are not only asked to place themselves within and without the academic materials and other media but are urged to make intimate connections between themselves and their own consumptive acts and the commodity networks in which they are enmeshed. Thus, perhaps pedagogy needs to be emplaced firmly within the realms of research practice rather than as simply the transference of research findings.

Typo-resource: developing T&L support materials through collaboration

This paper reports on a collaborative project between staff and students in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading The Partnerships in Learning and Teaching (PLanT) project here described is a direct response to student needs for better online support materials. Methodologically, the project embeds user-centred design principles within an iterative process of design development and participant research. This process has underpinned the development of a prototype for an online interface called Typo-Resource. The resulting initial prototype addresses the usability and user experience dimensions of an online learning resource, moving beyond providing tutor-identified sets of resources to a multifaceted, collaborative, and visual platform for peer learning.

The effect of learning condition on perceptual anticipation, awareness, and visual search

The efficacy of explicit and implicit learning paradigms was examined during the very early stages of learning the perceptual-motor anticipation task of predicting ball direction from temporally occluded footage of soccer penalty kicks. In addition, the effect of instructional condition on point-of-gaze during learning was examined. A significant improvement in horizontal prediction accuracy was observed in the explicit learning group; however, similar improvement was evident in a placebo group who watched footage of soccer matches. Only the explicit learning intervention resulted in changes in eye movement behaviour and increased awareness of relevant postural cues. Results are discussed in terms of methodological and practical issues regarding the employment of implicit perceptual training interventions. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Learning associations between places and visual cues without learning to navigate: neither fornix nor entorhinal cortex is required

Rats with fornix transection, or with cytotoxic retrohippocampal lesions that removed entorhinal cortex plus ventral subiculum, performed a task that permits incidental learning about either allocentric (Allo) or egocentric (Ego) spatial cues without the need to navigate by them. Rats learned eight visual discriminations among computer-displayed scenes in a Y-maze, using the constant-negative paradigm. Every discrimination problem included two familiar scenes (constants) and many less familiar scenes (variables). On each trial, the rats chose between a constant and a variable scene, with the choice of the variable rewarded. In six problems, the two constant scenes had correlated spatial properties, either Alto (each constant appeared always in the same maze arm) or Ego (each constant always appeared in a fixed direction from the start arm) or both (Allo + Ego). In two No-Cue (NC) problems, the two constants appeared in randomly determined arms and directions. Intact rats learn problems with an added Allo or Ego cue faster than NC problems; this facilitation provides indirect evidence that they learn the associations between scenes and spatial cues, even though that is not required for problem solution. Fornix and retrohippocampal-lesioned groups learned NC problems at a similar rate to sham-operated controls and showed as much facilitation of learning by added spatial cues as did the controls; therefore, both lesion groups must have encoded the spatial cues and have incidentally learned their associations with particular constant scenes. Similar facilitation was seen in subgroups that had short or long prior experience with the apparatus and task. Therefore, neither major hippocampal input-output system is crucial for learning about allocentric or egocentric cues in this paradigm, which does not require rats to control their choices or navigation directly by spatial cues.

The role of perirhinal cortex in visual discrimination learning for visual secondary reinforcement in rats

Perirhinal cortex in monkeys has been thought to be involved in visual associative learning. The authors examined rats' ability to make associations between visual stimuli in a visual secondary reinforcement task. Rats learned 2-choice visual discriminations for secondary visual reinforcement. They showed significant learning of discriminations before any primary reinforcement. Following bilateral perirhinal cortex lesions, rats continued to learn visual discriminations for visual secondary reinforcement at the same rate as before surgery. Thus, this study does not support a critical role of perirhinal cortex in learning for visual secondary reinforcement. Contrasting this result with other positive results, the authors suggest that the role of perirhinal cortex is in "within-object" associations and that it plays a much lesser role in stimulus-stimulus associations between objects.

Fast training of self organizing maps for the visual exploration of molecular compounds

Visual exploration of scientific data in life science area is a growing research field due to the large amount of available data. The Kohonen’s Self Organizing Map (SOM) is a widely used tool for visualization of multidimensional data. In this paper we present a fast learning algorithm for SOMs that uses a simulated annealing method to adapt the learning parameters. The algorithm has been adopted in a data analysis framework for the generation of similarity maps. Such maps provide an effective tool for the visual exploration of large and multi-dimensional input spaces. The approach has been applied to data generated during the High Throughput Screening of molecular compounds; the generated maps allow a visual exploration of molecules with similar topological properties. The experimental analysis on real world data from the National Cancer Institute shows the speed up of the proposed SOM training process in comparison to a traditional approach. The resulting visual landscape groups molecules with similar chemical properties in densely connected regions.

Implicit and explicit processes in a second-language learning task

Two experiments examined the learning of a set of Greek pronunciation rules through explicit and implicit modes of rule presentation. Experiment 1 compared the effectiveness of implicit and explicit modes of presentation in two modalities, visual and auditory. Subjects in the explicit or rule group were presented with the rule set, and those in the implicit or natural group were shown a set of Greek words, composed of letters from the rule set, linked to their pronunciations. Subjects learned the Greek words to criterion and were then given a series of tests which aimed to tap different types of knowledge. The results showed an advantage of explicit study of the rules. In addition, an interaction was found between mode of presentation and modality. Explicit instruction was more effective in the visual than in the auditory modality, whereas there was no modality effect for implicit instruction. Experiment 2 examined a possible reason for the advantage of the rule groups by comparing different combinations of explicit and implicit presentation in the study and learning phases. The results suggested that explicit presentation of the rules is only beneficial when it is followed by practice at applying them.

Visual practices and the objects of design

Recent interest in material objects - the things of everyday interaction - has led to articulations of their role in the literature on organizational knowledge and learning. What is missing is a sense of how the use of these 'things' is patterned across both industrial settings and time. This research addresses this gap with a particular emphasis on visual materials. Practices are analysed in two contrasting design settings: a capital goods manufacturer and an architectural firm. Materials are observed to be treated both as frozen, and hence unavailable for change; and as fluid, open and dynamic. In each setting temporal patterns of unfreezing and refreezing are associated with the different types of materials used. The research suggests that these differing patterns or rhythms of visual practice are important in the evolution of knowledge and in structuring social relations for delivery. Hence, to improve their performance practitioners should not only consider the types of media they use, but also reflect on the pace and style of their interactions.

Semantic organization to enhance active learning based on distributed multimedia educational resources

In order to organize distributed educational resources efficiently, to provide active learners an integrated, extendible and cohesive interface to share the dynamically growing multimedia learning materials on the Internet, this paper proposes a generic resource organization model with semantic structures to improve expressiveness, scalability and cohesiveness. We developed an active learning system with semantic support for learners to access and navigate through efficient and flexible manner. We learning resources in an efficient and flexible manner. We provide facilities for instructors to manipulate the structured educational resources via a convenient visual interface. We also developed a resource discovering and gathering engine based on complex semantic associations for several specific topics.

Learning how older adults undertake computer tasks [poster]

This paper describes a study that was conducted to learn more about how older adults use the tools in a GUI to undertake tasks in Windows applications. The objective was to gain insight into what people did and what they found most difficult. File and folder manipulation, and some aspects of formatting presented difficulties, and these were thought to be related to a lack of understanding of the task model, the correct interpretation of the visual cues presented by the interface, and the recall and translation of the task model into a suitable sequence of actions.

The automatic layout model in the sequencing of construction activities of multi-objective diaphragm wall unit by using self-learning neural network

Foundation construction process has been an important key point in a successful construction engineering. The frequency of using diaphragm wall construction method among many deep excavation construction methods in Taiwan is the highest in the world. The traditional view of managing diaphragm wall unit in the sequencing of construction activities is to establish each phase of the sequencing of construction activities by heuristics. However, it conflicts final phase of engineering construction with unit construction and effects planning construction time. In order to avoid this kind of situation, we use management of science in the study of diaphragm wall unit construction to formulate multi-objective combinational optimization problem. Because the characteristic (belong to NP-Complete problem) of problem mathematic model is multi-objective and combining explosive, it is advised that using the 2-type Self-Learning Neural Network (SLNN) to solve the N=12, 24, 36 of diaphragm wall unit in the sequencing of construction activities program problem. In order to compare the liability of the results, this study will use random researching method in comparison with the SLNN. It is found that the testing result of SLNN is superior to random researching method in whether solution-quality or Solving-efficiency.

Effect of phonetic complexity on word reading and repetition in deep dyslexia

This investigation moves beyond the traditional studies of word reading to identify how the production complexity of words affects reading accuracy in an individual with deep dyslexia (JO). We examined JO’s ability to read words aloud while manipulating both the production complexity of the words and the semantic context. The classification of words as either phonetically simple or complex was based on the Index of Phonetic Complexity. The semantic context was varied using a semantic blocking paradigm (i.e., semantically blocked and unblocked conditions). In the semantically blocked condition words were grouped by semantic categories (e.g., table, sit, seat, couch,), whereas in the unblocked condition the same words were presented in a random order. JO’s performance on reading aloud was also compared to her performance on a repetition task using the same items. Results revealed a strong interaction between word complexity and semantic blocking for reading aloud but not for repetition. JO produced the greatest number of errors for phonetically complex words in semantically blocked condition. This interaction suggests that semantic processes are constrained by output production processes which are exaggerated when derived from visual rather than auditory targets. This complex relationship between orthographic, semantic, and phonetic processes highlights the need for word recognition models to explicitly account for production processes.