Reading Instruction and Instructors’ Perceptions of Learners’ Needs in LINC Level 1-3 Classes

This study investigates instructors’ perceptions of reading instruction and difficulties among Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) Level 1-3 learners. Statistics Canada reports that 60% of immigrants possess inadequate literacy skills. Newcomers are placed in classes using the Canadian Language Benchmarks but large, mixed-level classes create little opportunity for individualized instruction, leading some clients to demonstrate little change in their reading benchmarks. Data were collected (via demographic questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, teaching plans, and field study notes) to create a case study of five LINC instructors’ perceptions of why some clients do not progress through the LINC reading levels as expected and how their previous experiences relate to those within the LINC program. Qualitative analyses of the data revealed three primary themes: client/instructor background and classroom needs, reading, strategies, methods and challenges, and assessment expectations and progress, each containing a number of subthemes. A comparison between the themes and literature demonstrated six areas for discussion: (a) some clients, specifically refugees, require more time to progress to higher benchmarks; (b) clients’ level of prior education can be indicative of their literacy skills; (c) clients with literacy needs should be separated and placed into literacy-specific classes; (d) evidence-based approaches to reading instruction were not always evident in participants’ responses, demonstrating a lack of knowledge about these approaches; (e) first language literacy influences second language reading acquisition through a transfer of skills; and (f) collaboration in the classroom supports learning by extending clients’ capabilities. These points form the basis of recommendations about how reading instruction might be improved for such clients.

Introduction to engineering : a case study of an interdisciplinary course in Mathematics, Science and Technology

This thesis research was a qualitative case study of a single class of Interdisciplinary Studies: Introduction to Engineering taught in a secondary school. The study endeavoured to explore students' experiences in and perceptions of the course, and to investigate the viability of engineering as an interdisciplinary theme at the secondary school level. Data were collected in the form of student questionnaires, the researcher's observations and reflections, and artefacts representative of students' work. Data analysis was performed by coding textual data and classifying text segments into common themes. The themes that emerged from the data were aligned with facets of interdisciplinary study, including making connections, project-based learning, and student engagement and affective outcomes. The findings of the study showed that students were positive about their experiences in the course, and enjoyed its project-driven nature. Content from mathematics, physics, and technological design was easily integrated under the umbrella of engineering. Students felt that the opportunity to develop problem solving and teamwork skills were two of the most important aspects of the course and could be relevant not only for engineering, but for other disciplines or their day-to-day lives after secondary school. The study concluded that engineering education in secondary school can be a worthwhile experience for a variety of students and not just those intending postsecondary study in engineering. This has implications for the inclusion of engineering in the secondary school curriculum and can inform the practice of curriculum planners at the school, school board, and provincial levels. Suggested directions for further research include classroom-based action research in the areas of technological education, engineering education in secondary school, and interdisciplinary education.

Les croyances des enseignants et leurs pratiques relativement à l’évaluation de l’oral : étude de cas de deux enseignants de français de 3e secondaire

Depuis quelques années, plusieurs didacticiens du français se penchent sur l’enseignement et l’évaluation de l’oral, mais peu d’informations sont encore disponibles concernant les pratiques effectives des enseignants à cet égard. Notre recherche vise à décrire les croyances de deux enseignants de français au secondaire et leurs pratiques au sujet de l’évaluation de l’oral, plus particulièrement de l’oral dans une situation d’interaction entre pairs. Une entrevue dirigée a permis d’avoir accès à leurs croyances et à leurs pratiques déclarées, alors que le think-aloud a été employé pour observer leur pratique d’évaluation, à l’étape du jugement, d’une situation d’interaction entre pairs. Nos résultats montrent que, du point de vue de leurs croyances, les enseignants ont tous deux des préoccupations concernant les tâches et les instruments d’évaluation, et que leurs pratiques d’évaluation déclarées sont assez semblables en ce qui a trait aux tâches retenues, à leur fréquence et à l’intention poursuivie. Du côté de leurs pratiques d’évaluation observées à l’étape du jugement, nous exposons de façon détaillée les gestes d’enseignants en situation authentique, en identifiant les principaux processus cognitifs et métacognitifs impliqués dans cette tâche complexe. Des divergences entre les deux enseignants ont été observées relativement à leurs croyances, pratiques déclarées et pratiques observées durant le jugement. Tout d’abord, les critères retenus pour l’évaluation (pratique déclarée) ne tiennent pas toujours compte de ce qu’ils croient important d’enseigner en classe (croyance). De plus, malgré une pratique déclarée positive concernant l’autoévaluation, ces enseignants n’y ont peu ou pas eu recours durant leur jugement. Enfin, les gestes de l’un, durant le jugement, tendaient vers la posture d’instructeur-contrôleur, alors que ceux de l’autre s’inscrivaient davantage dans la posture de conseiller-didacticien. De façon générale, nous constatons que les pratiques de ces enseignants sont plus influencées par les situations rencontrées en tant qu’élèves et les traditions d’enseignement de la discipline que par le programme en vigueur.

Production, purification, genetic characterization and application studies of tannase enzyme from marine fungus Aspergillus awamori

Marine fungi remain totally unexplored as a source of industrial enzyme and prospective applications. Further tannase production by a marine organism has so far not been established. The primary objective of this study included the evaluation of the potential of Aspergillus awamori isolated from sea water as part of an earlier study and available in the culture collection of the Microbial technology laboratory for tannase production through different fermentation methods, optimization of bioprocess variables by statistical methods, purification and characterization of the enzyme, genetic study, and assessment of its potential applications.

Impact of Information Communication Technology (ICT) on Professional Development and Educational Needs of Library Professionals in the Universities of Kerala

The shift from print to digital information has a high impact on all components of the academic library system in India especially the users, services and the staff. Though information is considered as an important resource, the use of ICT tools to collect and disseminate information has been in a slow pace in majority of the University libraries This may be due to various factors like insufficient funds, inadequate staff trained in handling computers and software packages, administrative concerns etc. In Kerala, automation has been initiated in almost all University libraries using library automation software and is under different stages of completion. There are not much studies conducted about the effects of information communication technologies on the professional activities of library professionals in the universities in Kerala. It is important to evaluate whether progress in ICT has had any impact on the library profession in these highest educational institutions. The aim of the study is to assess whether the developments in information communication technologies have any influence on the library professionals’ professional development, and the need for further education and training in the profession and evaluate their skills in handling developments in ICT. The total population of the study is 252 including the permanently employed professional library staff in central libraries and departmental libraries in the main campuses of the universities under study. This is almost a census study of the defined population of users. The questionnaire method was adopted for collection of data for this study, supplemented by interviews of Librarians to gather additional information. Library Professionals have a positive approach towards ICT applications and services in Libraries, but majority do not have the opportunities to develop their skills and competencies in their work environment. To develop competitive personnel in a technologically advanced world, high priority must be given to develop competence in ICT applications, library management and soft skills in library professionals, by the University administrators and Library associations. Library science schools and teaching departments across the country have to take significant steps to revise library science curriculum, and incorporate significant changes to achieve the demands and challenges of library science profession.

Marine Engineering Training in India -A Pedagogic Introspection

Indian marine engineers are renowned for employment globally due to their knowledge, skill and reliability. This praiseworthy status has been achieved mainly due to the systematic training imparted to marine engineering cadets. However, in an era of advancing technology, marine engineering training has to remain dynamic to imbibe latest technology as well as to meet the demands of the shipping industry. New subjects of studies have to be included in the curriculum in a timely manner taking into consideration the industry requirements and best practices in shipping. Technical competence of marine engineers also has to be subjected to changes depending upon the needs of the ever growing and over regulated shipping industry. Besides. certain soft skills are to be developed and improved amongst the marine engineers in order to alter or amend the personality traits leading to their career success.If timely corrective action is taken. Indian marine engineers can be in still greater demand for employment in global maritime field. In order to enhance the employability of our mmine engineers by improving their quality, a study of marine engineers in general and class IV marine engineers in particular was conducted based on three distinct surveys, viz., survey among senior marine engineers, survey among employers of marine engineers and survey of class IV marine engineers themselves.The surveys have been planned and questionnaires have been designed to focus the study of marine engineer officer class IV from the point of view of the three distinct groups of maritime personnels. As a result of this, the strength and weakness of class IV marine engineers are identified with regard to their performance on board ships, acquisition of necessary technical skills. employability and career success. The criteria of essential qualities of a marine engineer are classified as academic, technical, social, psychological. physical, mental, emergency responsive, communicative and leadership, and have been assessed for a practicing marine engineer by statistical analysis of data collected from surveys. These are assessed for class IV marine engineers from the point of view of senior marine engineers and employers separately. The Endings are delineated and graphically depicted in this thesis.Besides. six pertinent personality traits of a marine engineer viz. self esteem. learning style. decision making. motivation. team work and listening self inventory have been subjected to study and their correlation with career success have been established wherever possible. This is carried out to develop a theoretical framework to understand what leads a marine engineer to his career attainment. This enables the author to estimate the personality strengths and weaknesses of a serving marine engineer and eventually to deduce possible corrective measures or modifications in marine engineering training in India.Maritime training is largely based on International Conventions on Standard of Training. Certification and Watch keeping for Seafarers 1995. its associated Code and Merchant Shipping (STCW for Seafarers) Rules 1998. Further, Maritime Education, Training and Assessment (META) Manual was subjected to a critical scrutiny and relevant Endings of thc surveys arc superimposed on the existing rule requirement and curriculum. Views of senior marine engineers and executives of various shipping companies are taken into account before arriving at the revision of syllabus of marine engineering courses. Modifications in the pattern of workshop and sea service for graduate mechanical engineering trainees are recommended. Desirable age brackets of junior engineers and chief engineers. use of Training and Assessment Record book (TAR Book) during training etc. have also been evaluated.As a result of the pedagogic introspection of the existing system of marine engineering training in India. in this thesis, a revised pattern of workshop training of six months duration for graduate mechanical engineers. revised pattern of sea service training of one year duration and modified now diagram incorporating the above have been arrived at. Effects of various personality traits on career success have been established along with certain findings for improvement of desirable personality traits of marine engineers.

Enhancing learning beyond the classroom: blogging and other social networking tools

Blogging has become one of the key ingredients of the so-called socials networks. This phenomenon has indeed invaded the world of education. Connections between people, comments on each other posts, and assessment of innovation are usually interesting characteristics of blogs related to students and scholars. Blogs have become a kind of new form of authority, bringing about (divergent) discussions which lead to creation of knowledge. The use of blogs as an innovative, educational tool is not at all new. However, their use in universities is not very widespread yet. Blogging for personal affairs is rather commonplace, but blogging for professional affairs – teaching, research and service, is scarce, despite the availability of ready-to-use, free tools. Unfortunately, Information Society has not reached yet enough some universities: not only are (student) blogs scarcely used as an educational tool, but it is quite rare to find a blog written by University professors. The Institute of Computational Chemistry of the University of Girona and the Department of Chemistry of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has joined forces to create “InnoCiència”, a new Group on Digital Science Communitation. This group, formed by ca. ten researchers, has promoted the use of blogs, twitters. wikis and other tools of Web 2.0 in activities in Catalonia concerning the dissemination of Science, like Science Week, Open Day or Researchers’ Night. Likewise, its members promote use of social networking tools in chemistry- and communication-related courses. This communication explains the outcome of social-network experiences with teaching undergraduate students and organizing research communication events. We provide live, hands-on examples and interactive ground to show how blogs and twitters can be used to enhance the yield of teaching and research. Impact of blogging and other social networking tools on the outcome of the learning process is very depending on the target audience and the environmental conditions. A few examples are provided and some proposals to use these techniques efficiently to help students are hinted

Experience in introduction of English terminology in engineering lessons: methodology and evaluation

This communication explains a experience for the introduction of English terminology in a technical degree of higher education. We present the methodology and assessment procedures used to evaluate the way the students perceived the introduction of terminology in English in two different subjects from 3rd and 5th year courses of a Computer Science degree in which English was not the vehicular language. We propose a strategy based on two main pillars, namely: 1) The design of materials, explanations, and exams, paying particular attention to the way in which the specific terminology was exposed to the students, and 2) The assessment of the impact in the students by means of the analysis of the feedback trough a set of enquiries. Our experience showed that the students responded very positively to the introduction of English terminology, and presented an affirmative feedback about the impact that an improvement of their linguistic abilities would have in their future work. Further, we present statistics regarding the use of English as the vehicular language for technical reports, which is envisaged as very useful by the students. Finally, we propose a set of questions for further debate which are centered in the role that English terminology should pay in technical degrees, and about the way in which universities should deploy resources in English languages within the different Syllabus

Estudio comparativo de los programas de maestría en administración en salud y afines que ofrecen algunas universidades a nivel nacional e internacional

El objetivo de este estudio es revisar de manera comparativa la oferta de formación en administración en salud y afines a nivel de maestría, que presentan algunas de las universidades tanto colombianas como de referencia internacional. La investigación fue de tipo mixta con un enfoque descriptivo y está enmarcado dentro de la investigación y documental. Se consideró como muestra data, (13) programas de maestría afines a Administración en Salud de Universidades Nacionales e Internacionales, y se analizó de cada maestría del año vigente: denominaciones, contenidos curriculares, organización de las actividades académicas, investigación, relación con el sector externo y mecanismos de selección y evaluación. Una vez llevada a cabo la revisión, descripción y comparación de los programas de maestría, se presentó una propuesta final para la reforma de la Maestría en Administración en Salud de la Universidad del Rosario.

Introduction to Game Design and Development

This is the introductory lecture to COMP3218. We introduce ourselves, cover the philosophy of the course, the structure and assessment process, and lead an initial game design exercise.

Adaptaciones en la enseñanza de los maestros de educación general : repercusiones de las respuestas de inclusión.

Resumen tomado de la publicación. Monográfico con el título: 'La educación ante la inclusión del alumnado con necesidades específicas de apoyo'

Formação continuada de professores e melhoria do exercício docente

O presente trabalho teve como ponto de partida os resultados dos rendimentos escolares apresentados pelo SAEB (Sistema de Avaliação da Educação Básica) e o SAEPE (Sistema de Avaliação Escolar de Pernambuco), frente às ações de intervenções promovidas pelas políticas públicas implementadas pelo governo de Pernambuco, através dos programas de formação continuada, direcionados na perspectiva de reverter os baixos índices do rendimento escolar, o que nos possibilitou a delinear objetivos que nos permitissem a identificar a relação entre os indicadores do SAEB, SAEPE e Programas de Formação Continuada no redimensionamento do saber fazer docente e implicações na melhoria do desempenho docente, bem como identificar limites e possibilidades da formação na melhoria do desempenho docente, em razão dos indicadores apresentados. As transformações do mundo têm interferido de forma contundente no campo da educação, bem como nos vários aspectos da gestão educacional, escolar, curricular e particularmente na formação continuada, com vistas no desempenho docente, tendo como objeto crescente a atenção dos pesquisadores com atuação na educação. As políticas educacionais no Brasil vêm demonstrado preocupação com a qualidade do ensino ofertada pela escola pública, decorrente das pressões dos organismos internacionais, que veem na educação a solução dos problemas enfrentados por um mundo cada vez mais globalizado, de transformações e descobertas tecnológicas que caracterizam hoje, a chamada sociedade do conhecimento. Tal contexto, em que a escola pública brasileira se encontrava, mobilizou os gestores a buscarem ações de intervenção no sentido de reverter o quadro tão comprometedor que o ensino público da Educação Básica brasileira se apresentava. O repensar das práticas pedagógicas vivenciadas no contexto escolar, recai sobre o professor, a responsabilidade do resultado que a escola apresenta. Falar da prática pedagógica recai necessariamente na formação inicial e continuada desse professor. Para sua realização utilizou-se uma abordagem quantitativa e qualitativa. As técnicas de coleta de dados foram aplicação de questionários a 100 professores da educação básica da rede pública, entrevistas com cinco formadores e análise dos documentos relacionados com a política de formação continuada. O estudo demonstrou que o modelo proposto, pouco tem contribuído para o desenvolvimento profissional docente, não envolvendo, portanto, o professor diretamente no processo formativo, com exceção dos que participam de alguns programas (SAEB / SAEPE) que visam diretamente à melhoria dos índices de aprendizagem em língua portuguesa e matemática, na perspectiva de que a formação os instrumentalize a aplicar técnicas, que a formação continuada não atende nem suas necessidades, nem da escola. Os demais professores só se encontram uma vez por ano, em estilo de grande evento, enquanto as formações ocorrem de forma desarticulada e fragmentada. Em consequência, foram apresentadas algumas reflexões no intuito de provocar e contribuir na revisão da concepção de formação continuada vivenciada pelos professores da rede pública do ensino de Pernambuco.

Understanding safety and production risks in rail engineering planning and protection

Much of the published human factors work on risk is to do with safety and within this is concerned with prediction and analysis of human error and with human reliability assessment. Less has been published on human factors contributions to understanding and managing project, business, engineering and other forms of risk and still less jointly assessing risk to do with broad issues of ‘safety’ and broad issues of ‘production’ or ‘performance’. This paper contains a general commentary on human factors and assessment of risk of various kinds, in the context of the aims of ergonomics and concerns about being too risk averse. The paper then describes a specific project, in rail engineering, where the notion of a human factors case has been employed to analyse engineering functions and related human factors issues. A human factors issues register for potential system disturbances has been developed, prior to a human factors risk assessment, which jointly covers safety and production (engineering delivery) concerns. The paper concludes with a commentary on the potential relevance of a resilience engineering perspective to understanding rail engineering systems risk. Design, planning and management of complex systems will increasingly have to address the issue of making trade-offs between safety and production, and ergonomics should be central to this. The paper addresses the relevant issues and does so in an under-published domain – rail systems engineering work.

Evaluation of the SPICE auditory training curriculum

This study evaluates the progress of children with cochlear implants on the Speech Perception Instructional Curriculum and Evaluation (SPICE) auditory training protocol.

A description of characteristics of very young children referred for speech and language evaluation at Central Institute for the Deaf

This paper discusses the early identification and assessment of children younger than six who were referred to the Central Institute for the Deaf Speech and Hearing Clinic.