Media Education in the Finnish School System : A Conceptual Analysis of the Subject Didactic Dimension of Media Education

The aim of the doctoral dissertation was to further our theoretical and empirical understanding of media education as practised in the context of Finnish basic education. The current era of intensive use of the Internet is recognised too. The doctoral dissertation presents the subject didactic dimension of media education as one of the main results of the conceptual analysis. The theoretical foundation is based on the idea of dividing the concept of media education into media and education (Vesterinen et al., 2006). As two ends of the dimension, these two can be understood didactically as content and pedagogy respectively. In the middle, subject didactics is considered to have one form closer to content matter (Subject Didactics I learning about media) and another closer to general pedagogical questions (Subject Didactics II learning with/through media). The empirical case studies of the dissertation are reported with foci on media literacy in the era of Web 2.0 (Kynäslahti et al., 2008), teacher reasoning in media educational situations (Vesterinen, Kynäslahti - Tella, 2010) and the research methodological implications of the use of information and communication technologies in the school (Vesterinen, Toom - Patrikainen, 2010). As a conclusion, Media-Based Media Education and Cross-Curricular Media Education are presented as two subject didactic modes of media education in the school context. Episodic Media Education is discussed as the third mode of media education where less organised teaching, studying and learning related to media takes place, and situations (i.e. episodes, if you like) without proper planning or thorough reflection are in focus. Based on the theoretical and empirical understanding gained in this dissertation, it is proposed that instead of occupying a corner of its own in the school curriculum, media education should lead the wider change in Finnish schools.

A comparison between conceptual clustering and conventional clustering

Clustering is a process of partitioning a given set of patterns into meaningful groups. The clustering process can be viewed as consisting of the following three phases: (i) feature selection phase, (ii) classification phase, and (iii) description generation phase. Conventional clustering algorithms implicitly use knowledge about the clustering environment to a large extent in the feature selection phase. This reduces the need for the environmental knowledge in the remaining two phases, permitting the usage of simple numerical measure of similarity in the classification phase. Conceptual clustering algorithms proposed by Michalski and Stepp [IEEE Trans. PAMI, PAMI-5, 396–410 (1983)] and Stepp and Michalski [Artif. Intell., pp. 43–69 (1986)] make use of the knowledge about the clustering environment in the form of a set of predefined concepts to compute the conceptual cohesiveness during the classification phase. Michalski and Stepp [IEEE Trans. PAMI, PAMI-5, 396–410 (1983)] have argued that the results obtained with the conceptual clustering algorithms are superior to conventional methods of numerical classification. However, this claim was not supported by the experimental results obtained by Dale [IEEE Trans. PAMI, PAMI-7, 241–244 (1985)]. In this paper a theoretical framework, based on an intuitively appealing set of axioms, is developed to characterize the equivalence between the conceptual clustering and conventional clustering. In other words, it is shown that any classification obtained using conceptual clustering can also be obtained using conventional clustering and vice versa.

AEROSAT - a space-borne sensor for continental aerosols: evaluation of the conceptual model

Even though satellite observations are the most effective means to gather global information in a short span of time, the challenges in this field still remain over continental landmass, despite most of the aerosol sources being land-based. This is a hurdle in global and regional aerosol climate forcing assessment. Retrieval of aerosol properties over land is complicated due to irregular terrain characteristics and the high and largely uncertain surface reflection which acts as `noise' to the much smaller amount of radiation scattered by aerosols, which is the `signal'. In this paper, we describe a satellite sensor the - `Aerosol Satellite (AEROSAT)', which is capable of retrieving aerosols over land with much more accuracy and reduced dependence on models. The sensor, utilizing a set of multi-spectral and multi-angle measurements of polarized components of radiation reflected from the Earth's surface, along with measurements of thermal infrared broadband radiance, results in a large reduction of the `noise' component (compared to the `signal). A conceptual engineering model of AEROSAT has been designed, developed and used to measure the land-surface features in the visible spectral band. Analysing the received signals using a polarization radiative transfer approach, we demonstrate the superiority of this method. It is expected that satellites carrying sensors following the AEROSAT concept would be `self-sufficient', to obtain all the relevant information required for aerosol retrieval from its own measurements.

Ideas generated in conceptual design and their effects on creativity

Search of design spaces to generate solutions affects the design outcomes during conceptual design. This research aims to understand the different types of search that occurs during conceptual design and their effect on the design outcomes. Additionally, we study the effect of other factors, such as creativity, problem-solving style, and experience of designers, on the design outcomes. Two sets of design experiments, with experienced and novice designers, are used in this study. We find that designers employ twelve different types of searches during conceptual design for problem understanding, solution generation, and solution evaluation activities. Results also suggest that creativity is influenced positively by the type and amount of searches, duration of designing, and experience of designers.

Evaluating FuncSION: A software for automated synthesis of design solutions for stimulating ideation during mechanical conceptual design

The goal of the work reported in this paper is to use automated, combinatorial synthesis to generate alternative solutions to be used as stimuli by designers for ideation. FuncSION, a computational synthesis tool that can automatically synthesize solution concepts for mechanical devices by combining building blocks from a library, is used for this purpose. The objectives of FuncSION are to help generate a variety of functional requirements for a given problem and a variety of concepts to fulfill these functions. A distinctive feature of FuncSION is its focus on automated generation of spatial configurations, an aspect rarely addressed by other computational synthesis programs. This paper provides an overview of FuncSION in terms of representation of design problems, representation of building blocks, and rules with which building blocks are combined to generate concepts at three levels of abstraction: topological, spatial, and physical. The paper then provides a detailed account of evaluating FuncSION for its effectiveness in providing stimuli for enhanced ideation.

An empirical understanding of use of internal analogies in conceptual design

Internal analogies are created if the knowledge of source domain is obtained only from the cognition of designers. In this paper, an understanding of the use of internal analogies in conceptual design is developed by studying: the types of internal analogies; the roles of internal analogies; the influence of design problems on the creation of internal analogies; the role of experience of designers on the use of internal analogies; the levels of abstraction at which internal analogies are searched in target domain, identified in source domain, and realized in the target domain; and the effect of internal analogies from the natural and artificial domains on the solution space created using these analogies. To facilitate this understanding, empirical studies of design sessions from earlier research, each involving a designer solving a design problem by identifying requirements and developing conceptual solutions, without using any support, are used. The following are the important findings: designers use analogies from the natural and artificial domains; analogies are used for generating requirements and solutions; the nature of the design problem influences the use of analogies; the role of experience of designers on the use of analogies is not clearly ascertained; analogical transfer is observed only at few levels of abstraction while many levels remain unexplored; and analogies from the natural domain seem to have more positive influence than the artificial domain on the number of ideas and variety of idea space.

SYNTHESIS OF CONCEPTUAL DESIGNS FOR SENSORS USING SAPPHIRE-LITE

The demand for variety of products and the shorter time to market is encouraging designers to adopt computer aided concept generation techniques. One such technique is being explored here. The present work makes an attempt towards synthesis of concepts for sensors using physical laws and effects as building blocks. A database of building blocks based upon the SAPPhIRE-lite model of causality is maintained. It uses composition to explore the solution space. The algorithm has been implemented in a web based tool. The tool generates two types of sensor designs: direct sensing designs and feedback sensing designs. According to the literature, synthesis using building blocks often lead to vague solutions principles. The current work tries to avoid uninteresting solutions by using some heuristics. A particularly novel outcome of the work described here is the generation of feedback based solutions, something not generated automatically before. A number of patent violations were observed with the set of generated concepts; thus emphasizing some amount of novelty in the designs.

SUPPORTING ENVIRONMENTALLY-BENIGN DESIGN ELUCIDATING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT PROPAGATION IN CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PHASE BY SAPPHIRE MODEL OF CAUSALITY

Conceptual Design Phase is the most critical for design decisions and their impact on the Environment. It is also a phase of many `unknowns' making it flexible and allowing exploration of many solutions. Thus, it is a challenge to determine the most Environmentally-benign Solution or Concept to be translated in to a `good' product. The SAPPhIRE Model captures the various levels of abstractions present in Conceptual Design by Outcomes and defines a Solution-variant as a set of verifiable and quantifiable Outcomes. The Causality explains the propagation of Environmental Impact across Outcomes at varying levels of abstraction, suggesting that the Environmental Impact of an Outcome at a certain level can be represented as a collation of Environmental Impact information of all the Outcomes at each of its subsequent lower levels of abstraction. Thus a ball-park impact value can be associated with the higher-levels of abstraction, thereby supporting design decisions taken earlier on in Conceptual Design directing towards Environmentally-benign Design.

Conceptual design of three-dimensional scaffolds of powder-based materials for bone tissue engineering applications

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibility to construct tissue-engineered bone repair scaffolds with pore size distributions using rapid prototyping techniques. Design/methodology/approach - The fabrication of porous scaffolds with complex porous architectures represents a major challenge in tissue engineering and the design aspects to mimic complex pore shape as well as spatial distribution of pore sizes of natural hard tissue remain unexplored. In this context, this work aims to evaluate the three-dimensional printing process to study its potential for scaffold fabrication as well as some innovative design of homogeneously porous or gradient porous scaffolds is described and such design has wider implication in the field of bone tissue engineering. Findings - The present work discusses biomedically relevant various design strategies with spatial/radial gradient in pore sizes as well as with different pore sizes and with different pore geometries. Originality/value - One of the important implications of the proposed novel design scheme would be the development of porous bioactive/biodegradable composites with gradient pore size, porosity, composition and with spatially distributed biochemical stimuli so that stem cells loaded into scaffolds would develop into complex tissues such as those at the bone-cartilage interface.

Behaviour of a puff of resuspended sediment: a conceptual model

The particulate matter concentration above the seabed is usually assumed to decrease with height, following an exponential or Rouse profile. Many particulate matter concentration profiles with a peak were found on the North Mediterranean bottom water at a few tens of metres above the bottom. A particle size signal at the same altitude was found in this area and on the New York Eight shelf. It is assumed that this unexpected shape is due to a cloud of resuspended cohesive sediments originating from an impulse resuspension process. A simplified three-dimensional numerical model is proposed to describe the behaviour of resuspended particulate matter that originates from a sediment impulse vertically injected in the bottom water. This model reproduces the concentration profile shape observed, and it gives indications concerning the length and time characteristics of such a cloud, depending on the water velocity and bottom boundary layer properties.